How can the first and second generations have unity in the body of Christ? How should we address the challenges faced by immigrant churches and help them have a healthy partnership with the next generations?
In this important interview, SOLA editorial board member Daniel K. Eng interviews Dr. Peter Cha, a faculty member at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and director of the Thriving Immigrant Congregations Initiative (TICI). The TICI aims to help immigrant congregations reshape their congregational culture and ministries so that they can help first-generation and second-generation leaders build strong partnerships.
During their conversation, Daniel K. Eng and Dr. Peter Cha touch upon several crucial topics:
- The genesis and purpose of the TICI
- The changing dynamics of second-generation Christians returning to their ethnic congregations
- A case study church, Open Door Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia, and its 25-year journey towards intergenerational reconciliation
- The diverse representation within TICI cohorts, encompassing churches of various ethnic backgrounds and traditions
- The application process for churches interested in joining the TICI program, with a deadline in September
- Dr. Peter Cha’s hopes and prayers for TICI, which revolve around strengthening generational reconciliation in immigrant churches, ultimately enabling them to be vibrant witnesses both locally and globally.
This interview provides valuable insights into the Thriving Immigrant Church Initiative and the critical work being done to bridge generational gaps within immigrant congregations, ultimately contributing to the growth and vitality of these churches. (Note: If you are interested in the TICI program and its application, please visit their website).
Watch their interview below, on our YouTube page, or via Podcast.
Editor’s Note: Below is a transcription of their conversation. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Please note there may be typos or grammatical errors.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, hello, everyone, this is Daniel here at the SOLA Network. And here I am with Dr. Peter Cha, and I’m gonna have you introduce yourself in a bit. And I’m also going to ask you about the Thriving Immigrant Church Initiative.
So let’s start with you and tell me what you do, and how you serve in the kingdom.
Dr. Peter Cha: Yes, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Peter Cha, and I’m a faculty member at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And I am teaching in a Pastoral Theology Department. And I’ve been here now for 28 years. So it’s been a wonderful opportunity for me to just shape next generations, leaders, for United States and globally, since Trinity attracts students also from different continents.
But also at the same time, I often have opportunity to serve a broader church. And initiative that I’m working on, called Thriving Immigrant Congregations Initiative is a one way to particularly serve immigrant churches that have been really struggling with this perennial challenge of how to bring first and second and now third generation leaders and members so that they might be able to have a common vision of the ministry for their congregations. So I’ve been working on the last two, three years.
Before my teaching at Trinity. I was a pastor at Korean American and Asian American churches. So I was also, for about seven years, staff worker for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship serving on college campuses.
And I come from a Korean American background. My dad was an immigrant church pastor serving in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington DC. And, in many ways, my leading TICI Initiative is, bring me back to that earlier years of immigrant congregational experiences.
Daniel K. Eng: Okay, well, you’ve been everywhere, and you’re serving the church in different capacities. And now you are a seminary instructor, but you are very much connected to the church. I’d like to ask you more about TICI. Can you tell me more about how that started? And what goal?
Dr. Peter Cha: Yes. So on behalf of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I submitted a proposal to Lilly Endowment for a large grant that would enable me to work with other colleagues in serving immigrant churches to internally develop a healthy first and second gen collaborative partnership within a church, so that they might be more effectively working together in doing the ministry of the gospel in their surrounding communities locally. And then global overseas missions. So it’s really two, it has a two-fold purpose, how to bring first and second generation together so that they would create a healthier partnership and culture within the church so that they might be more effective in their ministry of outreach broadly.
Daniel K. Eng: Why do you feel like this is a needed initiative or this effort?
Dr. Peter Cha: Yeah, so, you know, for at least when I was doing a second gen ministry during 1980s and ‘90s, we had assumed that second generation will all leave their immigrant churches. That’s why there was terms like Silent Exodus and so forth. But then I don’t know about in a West Coast, but in the Midwest then the East Coast, we began to see about last ten, fifteen years or so many of the second gen families now whose children, third gen are in adolescent years, seeking to come back to ethnic immigrant churches, as their own children are now wrestling with the identity issues and so forth. And also now their aging parents are no longer able to drive so the second gen have to drive their parents to their first gen congregation, and then they will go to some other churches.
Anyway, for a number of reasons. I believe many of the second gen families have returned to their ethnic immigrant churches. Now the question mark is, they’re constantly looking for a church, where they will be received, welcomed and empowered to exercise their spiritual gifts as equal members and leaders of the church and not be treated as children. So I think that changing needs and a context of immigrant church makes it important and necessary for these immigrant congregations learn how to make that space for the second gen adults now, who can have an effective partnership with a first gen, immigrant pastors and leaders and so forth.
And thankfully, there have been a number of churches that have been doing this quite well, actually. And we are using one particular church as a case study for these other eleven, twelve churches to enter into that space. So that they can learn from their mistakes, as well as their insights and reflections over this church’s 25 year journey to do this first and second gen ministry well together.
So we have about 12 churches that are part of this first cohort, that are engaged in two year learning journey experience. And that comes to an end this fall. And we’re right now in the application process for the second cohort, that will again be in the two year learning journey next spring.
Daniel K. Eng: So it sounds like one of the main things you’re doing is having these representatives from these churches come together and journey through this together.
You mentioned a bit about a case study church as well. Can you talk more about what you do during these meetings? What’s going on? What are you trying to accomplish?
Dr. Peter Cha: Yes, thank you. Well, let me first introduce the case study church. It’s a church actually, my father planted in Northern Virginia, in 1984. And then, and the current senior pastor is a classmate of mine from Trinity days in 1980s. And he’s a 1.5 generation, went there. It’s called Open Door Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia. And Paul Kim, that’s a senior pastor’s name, began his first ministry, I believe in 1992 and ‘93. He’s now bilingual, bicultural, 1.5. And the young pastor is my younger brother named John Cha. And he grew up in that church. And he’s been doing that EM ministry with Paul Kim, last 25 plus years.
And those two pastors in particular made a deep commitment to share this ministry journey together, and treat each other equally, and trying to empower the next generation to step up to be leaders for their congregation. It’s not a perfect church. But I’ve been involved in consulting that church over the last 25 years, partly because it’s my home church. But also I want to so desperately to, if you will, help this congregation to be a source of hope for many immigrant churches, where this intergenerational conflict are basically destroying from within, the fabrics of the church.
And so, again, we’re not using this church as a case study because it is a perfect church. But it’s been on this journey for 25 years. And these two pastors have been very open about sharing both their mistakes about some moments of God’s sheer grace that that they did not work for, as well as certain circumstances that they had to navigate through.
So now these 12 churches, we get together twice each year, or three days at a time. And our very first gathering is on the campus of Open Door Church. So we get to meet their elders, we get to see their facilities interact with their staff, as well as these two pastors sharing their journey story.
And then the other three times we meet in Chicago, both on Trinity campus, as well as in one of our TICI churches. But these two pastors Paul Kim, and John Cha, they come to these settings. And one of the sessions that we have all the time is to continually hearing their story. And because these 12 church leaders and members have been to Open Door, they are able to, if you will, visualize when these pastors tell their stories, what had happened and so forth.
So, in many ways, we are hoping to use this case study, not to say there is only one model or one approach to do healthy immigrant church ministry, but to have, as you know, case studies is an effective teaching tool, in which students can enter into this space and able to imagine and visualize their own context in light of this story that they, they hear about that case story, case study. And so that’s one of the methods that we have used in this to your learning journey.
Daniel K. Eng: This sounds like one of the big things that you’re doing is to really make, is to really move immigrant churches towards greater health. By really having good relationships between the generations. You have mentioned EM. For those of you who don’t know, EM stands for English Ministry. And that’s when we have in the church also that the church also has a mother tongue ministry, and an English Ministry as well. Because then you talk about immigrant churches. So that’s a pretty wide net. Right? Can you tell me more about that, that dynamic, and then what you have observed with the group of churches.
Dr. Peter Cha: So we decided to publicize and invite the applications from all immigrant churches. Not only restricting it to Korean, Japanese, or whatever. But, and so for this first cohort, we have Nigerians, we have Chinese and Korean. We decided to target cluster groups of immigrant congregations. Because they’re first generation as you can tell, I mean, they do not speak English, that’s not their mother tongue, they have to have a certain level of proficiency in English to come to our gathering, since everything is done in English. However, having said that, by having clusters, there will be some chance of a fellowship among co-ethnics, particularly among first generation. So we have a group of a Nigerian churches, Chinese and Korean.
And then for the next cohort, it looks like we’ll have even more diversity. We already have Indian churches that have applied, Nigerians as well as a Hispanic, and then Korean and Chinese. So I think next group is going to be a far more diverse.
And as you have mentioned, because their histories are quite different. And also, the church traditions are somewhat different. It’s been really interesting experience for our Korean pastors to learn from Chinese, and Chinese pastors to look at what Nigerian churches are working with, and learn from them.
So one of the Chinese American pastors told me, you know, Dr. Cha, one of the profound learning experience for me and his congregation, the Chinese congregation, is that when they hear Nigerian churches having this intergenerational conflict, even when they use English as their worship language, and the ministry language. That the language is not the the main barrier or factor that is causing intergenerational conflict. He said, for us Chinese churches, we often blame the language difference as the main source of conflicts in the church. And we we realize it’s far more than that. So I remember this, a young Chinese American pastor said that it was very impactful for him to listen to Nigerian church brothers and sisters having their conversation about the source of their conflict.
Daniel K. Eng: You’ve already mentioned some of the fruit that you’ve seen from this, from these cohorts. What else have you seen in terms of things that are going to serve the church at large?
Dr. Peter Cha: Yeah, first of all, there is no one magic bullet that’s going to apply to all churches. And the context matters deeply. So even among, let’s say, they’re two Korean American churches. Their contexts could be quite different. Particularly in that, what kind of first and second generation relational history that church had in the past will be very critical in determining what might be a way forward. So the context matters, and therefore, I think church leaders need to think contextually about finding an approach that would work well for their church. And so that’s one.
I think, the second one, is that right information, or right idea itself does not work. You know, I think when I was a young pastor, there were some immigrant church conferences where the pastors come together, and we hear about some brilliant ideas and walk away thinking, okay, fine, do that at work. But we often run into a wall because a lot of these issues are quite complex, that you cannot by yourself, do it. Even if you’re a pastor. It really requires a long term collaborative partnership together to solve these issues biblically, pastorally, and with wisdom and perseverance. Right?
And that requires a long term commitment. That requires a collaboration. And that means, first of all that really requires God’s grace. Secondly, that requires a long term commitment toward the same direction.
And I think after two years, these churches are realizing that we finally got things moving. And we cannot stop after two years. We have to continue to meet, continue to pray, continue to work toward, kind of Christ centered unity, the Scripture lifts up that we need to be able to practice that together. Despite of our language and cultural barriers.
So I think that sense of a journey, and this is only the beginning, is I think, what these churches are understanding, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. And many of the, so in order to participate in our two year journey, each church needs to put together a team of five people to meet together monthly as a team, and then come to these meetings that we’ve been having. And each team must have a first gen senior leader, senior pastor, and then second gen pastor, and then first gen elder, second gen elder, and then one of the women members of the church.
And they’ve been meeting together for two years now, each month to pray, and to work on those projects that we asked them to work on. And many of these churches are deciding to continue that meeting, even after this two year program. And and I think that kind of perseverance and commitment is needed.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, you mentioned several times that you are in the application process. Can you talk more about what the qualifications are for a church that might be interested in doing something like this? And, you know, what’s the process? And how do they start?
Dr. Peter Cha: Well, so for a number of reasons, we decided to limit this application parameter to immigrant churches in the Midwest, and the East Coast. And so that covers anywhere from Texas, to Minneapolis, and then East. And the application deadline would be end of September. And if you go to hiebertcenter.org, it’s our Paul Hiebert Center for World Christianity on our campus is the organization that’s hosting this program. So it’s hiebertcenter.org. They could find TICI, website, and then there is the application form for it.
Otherwise, if you like to receive more information, my personal email address is pcha@tiu.edu, and I’ll be happy to send the application. It’s an online form. And the deadline is on September 30. And we’ve been already receiving many applications for the next journey.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, good. It sounds like it’s this has been fruitful. And you’re looking forward to engaging with more churches, and really trying to figure out how to serve the rest of the rest of the church at large together.
Dr. Peter Cha: Yes, and we really hope and pray that the Lord would raise more churches, where reconciliation between parents and children, that generational reconciliation will really strengthen many immigrant churches, so that they might have more vibrant witnessing ability, both locally and globally. And that is our hope.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, that sounds fantastic. Well, Dr. Peter Cha, everyone, thank you for your time. This has been encouraging to me. And I’m glad that you’re doing this. And this would be of interest to many of our readers and listeners.
Dr. Peter Cha: Thank you for this invitation and this opportunity, Daniel.
Daniel K. Eng: All right. Take care. Goodbye.
Dr. Peter Cha: Bye now.