This is part 2 of a conversation between four Chinese American pastors about the future of the Chinese heritage church. See Part 1 of the conversation here.
The pastors talk about how their Chinese heritage has helped shape their identity, whether Chinese churches should become multiethnic, and their hopes for the Chinese heritage church.
This conversation was moderated by Casey Young, who currently serves on the English staff of First Chinese Baptist Church in Los Angeles and is a SOLA’s Conference Team member. The three participating pastors are: Hanley Liu, the English pastor at First Chinese Baptist Church of Walnut; Ben Pun, lead pastor at Anchor Community Church in Walnut; and Joey Chen, lead English pastor at Sunset Church in San Francisco.
We hope this conversation will be informative to the church and especially encouraging to fellow Chinese American Christians who have grown up with or serve in Chinese heritage churches.
Below is an edited transcript of their conversation. It has been modified for clarity and length. You can listen to the audio here.
Casey Young: From your personal leadership standpoint, how important has it been to get in touch with your Chinese identity? This is getting at the cultural tensions or challenges of being on leadership in the Chinese heritage church. What are some things that you can say to someone that’s listening who was a second or third generation ABC, you know, as we call them?
What is the benefit of staying in the Chinese church? We’re in a cultural moment where it’s en vogue where there seems to be a more nuanced way of answering that than say 5-10 years ago. Does anyone want to chime in on that?
Ben Pun: My original call to ministry had to do with hearing about how Chinese Americans were a huge mission field. All of us know Steve Chin, a legendary English pastor from Boston. I remember I was going to this little conference where he was speaking to some Chinese American pastors, and he brought this up: “This is the harvest. This is the mission field that Jesus is calling workers to.” When you look at just how many Chinese Americans there are in America and the percentage of them that are evangelical Christians, it is very low, very low. I forget the exact percentage, but it is much lower than Koreans.
What compelled me also was Steve Chin saying there are not a lot of second-generation Chinese Americans in seminary. They are just not that many pastors. That also has to do with the uniqueness of our culture. It’s really hard to be a pastor as a Chinese American. Being a pastor is not something our parents want us to do. It’s not regarded as a noble thing most of the time. I’m thankful my parents were very supportive. For me, that was a specific calling — that I felt like I was a Chinese American, grew up in a Chinese church, I understood the different struggles of Chinese Americans, and that God was maybe calling me to minister to those who were like me.
It’s just a huge mission field. There are so many Chinese Americans who need the gospel and who have unique things about them that need to be spoken to.
Hanley Liu: When you are a Chinese American in ministry or a Chinese heritage minister and you are in the space of White majority culture, surrounded by different pastors with different ethnicities, we’re always trying to ask ourselves, “How should I present myself? Do I make a joke about myself? Say something funny about Asian culture” Or I ask, “How did they see me?”
I think that question is harder for me to actually deal with. I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with that. Joey, you grew up in the Midwest or somewhere where it was more pronounced that you’re Chinese. But growing up in Southern California in a suburb where you’re surrounded by Asians, maybe we don’t have to ask ourselves that question until we get into ministry, and we’re realizing, “Oh, there’s a majority culture.” It’s a journey for me. It’s a process right now trying to figure out what it means to be a Chinese, a Chinese American, or North American pastor.
Joey Chen: I don’t know if you’re alluding to this, Casey, but I think one of the questions implied is: Is there legitimacy for English-speaking ministries that are ethnically specific over the long haul? First-generation and immigrant churches totally make sense because it’s distinctly obvious because of language and culture. They’re not American.
But if you have a long enough time, is there a need? Is it even legitimate to have an ethnic ministry? I’ve been wrestling with that for quite some time too because we also have this multiethnic movement, which I’m not against. I’m actually for the idea of seeing greater diversity, but that’s sometimes used as a criticism against ethnic-specific ministries.
Although interestingly, if you ever listened to these conversations, it’s often not criticizing majority-White churches. It’s also not criticizing majority Black churches because no one’s gonna do that. But somehow it is uniquely criticizing Chinese ones or Korean ones. For some reason, this lack of diversity within our spheres gets criticized. And I don’t have an answer for that other than that, just observing that like this part of the journey.
That’s the question people ask: Is there legitimacy for Chinese American churches that are English-speaking over the long haul that maybe are not even attached to an immigrant church anymore, like Ben’s, if you give it 50 years? If that relationship is different or evolved or dissolved 50 years from now? Will there be legitimacy for Ben’s church if it’s still primarily Chinese American English-speaking? Is that okay?
Even asking that question seems strange today because people almost automatically presume is going to be multiethnic. That’s not to criticize. Again, I’m not against that; I’m actually for that. I think our churches could see more of that, even from the Chinese ones, but somehow uniquely, it’s criticizing the Asian ones, the Chinese ones, “How come you’re not more diverse?”
I even hear that from our own people, right? They leave our churches often because of a lack of diversity. But then that direction of increasing diversity is usually departing the Chinese-ness versus coming to the Chinese-ness, and I find that to be very strange. Why can’t it be the other way around as well? No one judges the White Christians for not joining our churches.
Hanley Liu: Let’s just say that you don’t have a language barrier and everybody understands English, or they’re at least understanding Chinglish so we can have English-only services. What’s the legitimacy? I think it comes down to your community. Where do you live? What are the demographics?
There’s a difference between being ethnocentrically Chinese and excluding others versus “we happen to be a Chinese heritage church that began as a mission to Chinese people.” This community is still filled with Chinese people, so we’re a community church, and there’s a lot of Chinese and Chinese American who come, but in our tone, in our vision, in our preaching, and in everything that we say, we make it very clear that we’re not exclusive and we’re open to all ethnicities. I think that’s the difference.
Again, that conversation is going to be different for different contexts and different churches. We’ve often talked about changing our name and taking the Chinese out. I think the conclusion is that that still might be a goal but it would just be cosmetic because we have such a Chinese culture with the two other language congregations. We could say that we’re Walnut Community Church or something like that, but at the end of day, when you come in, there’s going to be some things that are translated, there’s going to be some Chinese writing here and there, and you’re going to eat Chinese food, most likely.
So in many ways, anybody who comes in and we welcome, they’re going to know right away that this is a Chinese church and they’re going to have some affinity with Chinese culture. That’s just how I think it’s going to be in some of our churches for a couple of generations unless you’re in a situation like Ben’s where he’s independently planted out.
Ben Pun: Yeah, we’re independent, but we’re still predominantly Chinese American. Once we did plant, we did have more non-Chinese, non-Asian people visit than we ever did before, and so it did remove a barrier.
There’s just this tension in our churches between appreciating and celebrating the fact that we are Chinese American — that God made us that way. That’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s also being challenged to go out of our comfort zone because the gospel should push us to reach out to those who are different from us.
There’s definitely a temptation in Chinese American churches to be very inward and very comfortable. Everyone’s like me; I’m here because I’m comfortable. That does need to be challenged.
But Joey makes a great point, right? There still is legitimacy to having a place where you can celebrate the fact that you’re Chinese and be understood. So I think that’s just that ongoing tension that needs to be continually discussed.
Casey Young: The English-speaking congregation in our Chinese heritage churches are in a very strategic place as the direct linguistic bridge-building with our communities where the majority culture is English speaking. What does it look like in your own church and in your own experiences? What does it mean to see a Chinese heritage church with the English-speaking congregation now being more of the anchor or the bridge to the community?
If you think of it as a spectrum of development in terms of church growth or church development over time, from where you’re standing, what does it look like for the English-speaking congregation to be that, aside from the most pragmatic and traditional ends of it, which is to help with children youth ministries? That becomes a very obvious way of anchoring the importance of English ministries. But what are other ways in which we can facilitate them more widely?
Hanley Liu: It’s a bigger framework of putting our identity in Christ ahead of our Chinese identity. There’s still an upholding of the value of being Chinese but we’re Christian first.
So when you ask a Chinese immigrant about attending church in America, “Why did you come here?”, some of them might say, “Oh, I’m going back to Asia” But for others, they come here to assimilate. They came here to become American, in some sense, while retaining some of their culture. So in many ways, it’s an assimilation question, meaning every immigrant parent wants their kids to assimilate. So English becomes the unifying language if you will.
So most Cantonese understand some level of English, and if they’re from Hong Kong, they understand English well enough to function and at least hear a sermon. It’s the Mandarin immigrants who are coming more recently that need a lot more translation. But at the end of the day, if there’s one singular functional language that could bridge all three Chinese congregations in some of our churches, that would be English.
It goes back down to the future. And I get it: If you have a church that’s predominantly the older generation of immigrants and you have just youth, they might not let the youth lead. But if a youth pastor stays long enough, if families are built, and if you have enough emerging young adults, then eventually you have to allow the English-speaking congregation to lead.
It goes back to the question of if every youth pastor leaves, then who will the youth have to look up to? As they become adults, they leave too. The whole idea is that at a certain generation, there needs to be a stopgap where you need to allow the English pastor or English ministry to at least be equal to the Chinese congregations in decision making, in vision, in value, and setting the course of the direction of the church as a whole. I think that’s the healthiest because the English-speaking congregation is the future in many ways.
This goes back to the question: If we were Asian American pastors in a majority White culture church, what would it look like? We would probably have to tailor our philosophy of ministry, our sermon applications, and our ministries to the majority culture, and we will be going with a framework of White evangelicalism or standard American evangelicalism. But I think the uniqueness of the English congregation in a Chinese heritage church is we specifically can contextualize and apply the gospel to deal with issues of people who are bicultural, people who grow up in immigrant homes, or who are wrestling with their Asian identity. We can actually deal with the idols and we can hit it pretty hard and more directly.
If the Chinese heritage church wants a future, then the English-speaking congregation has to have a prominent position, at least equal if not anchoring. I like the word anchoring because it’s not, “We’re leading; we’re better; we’re ahead.” But “we’re anchoring” means that when the English congregation flourishes, it leads to the flourishing of both the Mandarin and Cantonese.
Joey Chen: Yeah, that’s generational baton passing. That’s very difficult. We’ve probably only seen a few. The oldest Chinese churches in the country (in San Francisco, probably New York, and Los Angeles maybe have a few) are 100-plus years old and some of these old historic Chinese churches in Chinatowns — maybe have seen some.
But it’s especially hard to pass that generational baton because it’s not only generational — it’s also cultural and linguistic. But that has to be part of the framework if we’re answering the question, “What’s the future?” or “How can there be a better future for Chinese heritage church families?”
I think Hanley’s right. What made me want to stay in my Chinese heritage church here is the fact that they demonstrated that very clearly. I was the youth pastor, and now I’m the lead English pastor. I took on that role when I was younger, and that was because the leaders were willing to try and pass the baton. If that didn’t happen. I don’t know if I would have stayed for long because those who want to lead and have the desire for greater ownership, they’ll find it somewhere else.
We tend to use the term “power” pejoratively when we’re talking about ministry because no one wants to grab power. But there is a power dynamic, whether we want to recognize it or not, that has to be given to another generation. Unless we do that, it’s very difficult to see a positive future because that generation of leaders will probably leave. That’s very likely. You look at that in any other cultural context: If you don’t pass the baton generationally, it’s not going to be healthy.
It’s just harder [in Chinese Churches] because you may have started these Chinese heritage churches to create enclaves of safety and hopefully discipleship, too, but there’s definitely a cultural dynamic that they were also trying to preserve because they wanted that in this country, as they felt alienated and wanted something of their home. So they may feel it’s more difficult because it’s really acknowledging and humbly admitting that the culture is evolving.
There’s a Chineseness that’s different now. That’s actually very difficult for people to acknowledge. For me, if I’m still in ministry hopefully and 60, 70, 80 years old, if I’m passing it to another generation, it will be different and it will be hard. I can empathize at least a little bit thinking about that into the future. But that has to happen. Otherwise, we will lose that generation regardless of if it is a Chinese heritage church. Power dynamics, thinking about blessing and empowering the next generation earlier than we would think — most of us here are in our 30s-40s. I think Ben has like three kids, right? If you are talking to a Chinese 60-year-old, you’re still a little kid to them.
Ben Pun: I would not be doing what I’m doing if it wasn’t for my senior pastor. He empowered me and he championed our church plant because he wanted to see the next generation reached for the gospel. He was the one who led the charge in helping me to communicate this to be the first generation and get more people on board. He didn’t just allow it. He supported it and championed that. And I think that’s what it takes.
Like Joey said, I’ve seen so many younger English-speaking pastors leave the Chinese church, and it breaks my heart. If they’re good leaders, they’re just going to find they’re going to go to a multi-ethnic church, majority-White church, or Asian American church, where they can spread their wings. Oftentimes, they’ll bring other young people with them. So if the older generation won’t be willing to at least listen and allow younger leaders to try new things, then they’ll just leave, which I think is sad.
Casey Young: In closing, what do you see as the future at the Chinese American church or Chinese heritage church? Just give us a kind of quick take of where you’re at. What is the climate and the future of where we’re taking the Chinese from here and where it’s going?
Joey Chen: If I can answer this two ways: institutionally and the people. Chinese American Christians will continue to grow in number, and they’ll intersect not only within institutional Chinese heritage churches but elsewhere. People have said that Tim Keller, when he was the pastor of Redeemer, had the largest Chinese church in New York. So he was leading a Chinese heritage church in a sense.
I think we will see greater integration into other church contexts. That’s just going to be the way it is. Because Ben is right: that trajectory that was mentioned by Steve Chin in the past is not any better today. There are still very few Chinese American pastors and people pursuing ministry. So if that’s the case, more and more Chinese Americans will be in the larger cultural dynamic, which I think is still a good thing.
I think the Chinese heritage church will pass the baton in some of the urban centers because they have some more numbers there. But I do think it’s leaning towards greater integration into the larger culture.
I don’t mean that to be negative. But I just feel like that’s just generally the case because we have not done enough to see the value and invest in future leaders. So there will be pockets of that that are really good that will maintain that, but in the current trajectory, that won’t be the common outcome of the Chinese Christian in this country. It will be more integration into the larger culture. So maybe I’ll start with a negative view; some of you will be more optimistic.
Hanley Liu: So I’m speaking culturally and not about specific models of church because I think there’s no one model that we’re certain is going to be effective for the future of Chinese heritage churches. I think culturally, we need to see a Chinese congregation, the immigrant leadership, or the founding generation willing to pass the baton. At the same time, you need an emerging generation that’s willing to take the baton.
That takes time and relationship-building. Relational trust is built over time. If that can happen, then those churches will thrive going forward. Churches who aren’t able to do that will see their English congregation members or their youth eventually grow up and assimilate into other churches.
There’s a global aspect as well. As we see the global impact of Asia continue to increase in the wider culture, there is a possibility that in the future, Chinese heritage churches with a very strong English ministry may become multi-ethnic.
One thing about the Chinese heritage church is that we’re not working through the same baggage of what we see today of Black versus White, some of the racial tension that we see, and the history of White evangelicals and that whole discussion. We’ve always been navigating what it means to assimilate, so in many ways, we’ve always been in the middle of trying to figure out who we are.
Some have said, and I don’t know who to quote, that maybe if we continue down this route, we may be the peacemaker — someone who’s neutral and able to navigate from the middle. So culturally and globally, there is a future for the Chinese heritage church in North America.
Ben Pun: One thing to add is to note that immigration patterns are different. When we were growing up, it was mostly Taiwan and Hong Kong (my parents were from Hong Kong). it was Yeah, my parents were from Hong Kong, it was like, mostly like Taiwan and Hong Kong. And now, all the Chinese immigrants are from Mainland China, and you see differences. Even in the second generation of kids from Mainland China, they’re different. So it’s hard to know how that generation will take the baton. What kind of ministries will they start?
I would hope that there will be more young leaders who would be experimenting with things like I’m doing, and I do think that English ministry in a Chinese church can thrive, like you guys. I definitely don’t think that my model is the only model that can survive in the future. But I do think that the key is: Will they be given space to be creative, to express themselves, and to do ministry in a way that makes sense to them? And we’ll see.
Casey Young: All right. Thanks, guys, for your time, and just thanks for joining us.