What is the current situation with the Chinese heritage church? What does its future look like? How can it grow more leaders and encourage its pastors?
While Asian American churches tend to get lumped together, they are actually important distinctions between them. To facilitate more dialogue about the needs and growth of ethnic-specific churches, the SOLA Network hosted a conversation with four Chinese American pastors about the Chinese heritage church.
A Chinese heritage church is ethnically Chinese with congregations that speak in Chinese dialects while also developing and growing in an Asian American context.
To this end, 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, moderated a discussion with three other Chinese pastors: 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. Look for part two tomorrow.
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: We’re here with the SOLA Network, and today we’re having a conversation on the Chinese heritage church. My name is Casey Young. I’m an English minister at First Chinese Baptist Church in Los Angeles.
Hanley Liu: Hi, my name is Hanley Liu and I’m the English pastor at First Chinese Baptist Church of Walnut in Southern California.
Ben Pun: My name is Ben Pun. I am the lead pastor at Anchor Community Church, which is a church plant in Walnut, also California.
Joey Chen: I’m Joey Chen. I am the lead English pastor at Sunset Church in San Francisco.
Casey Young: First question. What is the Chinese heritage church? What’s the difference between the Chinese heritage church or a Chinese American church compared to other Asian churches, for instance, the Korean American church or the Japanese American church? What would you say are the distinguishing characteristics of the Chinese heritage church?
Hanley Liu: This is not true of every Korean American church or every Asian heritage church that’s distinct from Chinese heritage churches. But one thing that comes to mind immediately is that oftentimes when I hear my Korean American brothers who serve in immigrant churches, sometimes their English ministry is independent, which means they have their own budgets.
They choose their own leaders, maybe they share the children’s ministry and youth ministry with the Korean Ministry. But in the Chinese church, the English ministry is often still part of the one church. So it’s one church, but maybe two or three languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. That’s one distinction: We don’t have as much independence as an English ministry.
Casey Young: Oftentimes, like Hanley said, there are shared youth and children’s ministries. The family is often seen as a unit and is going to the same church, oftentimes sharing the same name. But Ben, can you share a little bit about your context and how that it’s a little bit different than our Chinese heritage churches, the models that we have in this conversation here?
Ben Pun: So the church that I lead, Anchor, is an English-speaking church plant that was planted out of a traditional Chinese church. We decided, with their blessing, to take the entire English congregation and plant it as a separate church. It’s definitely different than most Chinese churches. But our desire is still to maintain that connection and the partnership with the Chinese church.
Another thing I would say about the differences between Chinese churches and other Asian churches is that there is a different history of immigration with Chinese churches than with other Asians in America. Chinese Americans have been around longer than Korean Americans, and that makes it a little bit different. For some Chinese immigrants, their English language skills are good, and that’s a difference for some of the other immigrant churches. There’s just a longer history too so you’ll have in some Chinese churches, an older generation of English-speaking Chinese Americans.
Joey Chen: I do think the faith history of Chinese heritage searchers is a little different than let’s just say a Korean American because Korean immigrants may have had greater exposure to Christianity while in Korea because of Presbyterian missionary work.
But for many of the Chinese churches in the United States, the people who started those churches became believers after they moved to this country. They probably rarely had any significant exposure to Christianity. It may be a little different with Taiwan and Hong Kong — you may have more of a historical faith background from in different countries.
But that also shows that “Chinese” is not a monolithic thing either because some Taiwanese people will identify themselves as Chinese, and then you have people in Hong Kong who have a different identity, and then the mainland. When you talk about Korean American, there are obviously differences in that too. But Chinese is a big umbrella, and you have to drill down a little bit further.
Hanley Liu: Something that’s interesting that we’ve talked about (and other Asian-heritage North Americans I’ve talked with about this as well), is that when you think about Asian American church plants, oftentimes they’re either Japanese American, which means their pan-Asian, because they’re Japanese American-led and they’re much older, or they’re Korean American-led churches that become Asian American.
I know some exist, but you don’t hear about too many Chinese heritage churches planting an independent English Chinese church, and I’ve always wondered why. Is that part of our culture? Is that part of we’re one family with different rooms under a house? That’s something that’s always been a question and really interesting.
Ben Pun: That’s a very interesting point. For instance, I’m planting the church out of the Chinese church, and when I was first doing it, I was looking all around to see if anyone else had done this. I honestly could find next to zero. I’m really the only person I could find all over the country who was doing what I was doing: Doing a church plant that was still connected to the immigrant church. But I found lots of examples of Korean Americans doing something like what I’m doing.
I do think there’s something to Chinese people and even the second generation where there’s more of a mindset of, “Let’s not rock the boat too much. Let’s just try to figure it out. Let’s stay together. Let’s not break apart.” A lot of Chinese American pastors, the English-speaking ones, might put up with more and just stick it out.
There’s also a plus and a minus to that. A plus is maybe we’re more patient. But I think for the minuses that maybe we’re less willing to take risks and to have the courage to do. That’s definitely a key difference between Chinese and other Asians.
Casey Young: With that answer, Ben, what was the pressure to stay [connected to the Chinese church]? What was your intention of staying? What is the benefit or intention of staying with them?
For the three of the four of us here, we all started as youth pastors or in youth ministry in some way, shape, or form, as the first pastorate out of seminary or as interns. What is the Chinese heritage church to do with the next generation, and what are some effective ways of ministering to them?
Ben Pun: I grew up in the Chinese church and had been ministering in Chinese churches before I planted the church for several years. I grew up in youth ministry in a Chinese church, and it was hugely impactful and formative for me. I was a youth pastor in the Chinese church.
I’ve always felt when like I’ve seen church plants come out of Asian churches, the most negative impact of that is on the youth ministry from the immigrant church because in Chinese churches, like other Asian churches, the youth ministry is usually run by the English-speaking young adults. So if you take all the young adults and they go plant a church, then you’re left with no youth workers — no big brothers, big sisters, and mentors. It’s just a youth pastor with parents who often are not comfortable with helping out with the youth ministry.
So I’ve always wondered: Is there a way that we could plant a church where we would have more flexibility to contextualize to our generation while still helping out with the youth ministry especially? There’s got to be a way that we could do that. I know this has been an ongoing conversation for the Korean churches, as well. But I felt if we could figure that out for the Chinese church, that would be ideal. That was really the heart behind our church plan to be independent.
We’ve been worshipping at another site, an elementary school down the street, to carve out our own identity, but we still support the youth ministry, we still send youth workers to their youth ministry, and the youth group come and worship with us once a month. We’ve been able to do that when we’re three and a half years old now, and we still send several youth workers. That’s part of the DNA of our church that we do care about the youth ministry; we do want to maintain that relationship. I would love to see more Chinese churches experiment with this model because I think that it could work.
Hanley Liu: I’m interested in what Joey is gonna say.
Joey Chen: I think different kinds of models are good because there are different contexts, different churches, different circumstances, and even different timings of leaders. Honestly, I was able to become the lead Chinese pastor because of circumstances, and that’s God’s sovereignty there. So there’s not a “one model.” Our church has a model where we could have a senior pastor, but we’ve chosen to go with co-lead pastors, Chinese and English, leading together underneath our eldership.
There’s a need for various models and not presuming that any model is absolute or unassailable — this must be the way it’s done. We must be freer to realize different timings and circumstances work differently and not be so critical about some other particular model.
I do like the idea of encouraging people to think creatively because there’s an Atlanta Chinese church that planted out their entire English congregation just because they were bleeding so significantly; they became a completely independent church. I don’t know if they shared the same building or not, but they realized they needed to do that. Actually, it was the Chinese pastor who was leading in that because he’s bilingual. That’s an incredible story. I forget the pastor’s name though.
Do you know why I stayed in the Chinese church? I really do think some of it was because I was still processing my own identity. I’m just giving away my generation and my age, but I don’t feel like I personally got a lot of thinking space to process my Chinese or Taiwanese American identity. I don’t think I actually came to grips with even thinking about those categories until I was pressed to think about other people’s ethnic identities — as I interacted with Korean Americans and realized I don’t fit there. Before ministry, I was primarily in a majority White culture context and not really processing my Chinese identity.
Staying in the Chinese church was a journey. I had a season where I didn’t want to serve in it. I didn’t know why — it was more just practicality. If you’re listening to this, you know Chinese churches can be difficult, hard places to serve. But if we make that judgment call, everywhere has that experience. So for me, I realize I can’t leave [state of mind] that until I come to grips with my identity as a Chinese Taiwanese American.
I felt a distinct, unique calling to it because I wanted to look at my given identity as something good from the Lord and something God would use. Granted you don’t have to stay in the church to do that, but having been around the Chinese church, knowing the need there, seeing the challenges there, knowing that I needed to understand my identity — that was part of my personal journey.
So this isn’t an encouragement to follow this necessarily. But for me, I had not ever processed my identity till college seminary. My rejection of my Chinese heritage church was just out of wanting to be accepted in the majority White culture or just wanting things to be better than what I saw it to be versus actually trying to think about serving in the church faithfully or even thinking through my identity. It sounds a little bit like rambling, but a lot of it had to do with my personal journey, and that’s something I still wrestle with.
A lot of it was my personal insecurity of wanting to be accepted by the majority culture. Once I got over that, I realized, “Well, what do I want to choose? Do I want to choose to serve in this church because I love this church, and I want to be part of this, and I’m processing my identity carefully underneath my bigger identity as a Christian?” Those are things I’m still processing even now. Because I didn’t have a place to frame all this, I feel like I’m still on that journey.
Hanley Liu: To build off what both of you are saying, I do believe that for our generation and probably two generations after us, we’re still a bridge generation for the Chinese heritage church. This means there could be a point where immigration stops and everyone is assimilated into English, and then then the question becomes, “Are we ethnocentric?”
But as long as there’s immigration and as long as there’s a need for people to learn and hear the gospel and the Bible in their native tongue, then you’re always going to need English ministry for the children and youth. But if youth pastors and the young adults keep leaving, then none of the youth are going to stay.
So like what Ben said, one of the reasons we stay is because we see that the English ministry is essential for the health of the Chinese heritage church because it’s essential that we have a bridge generation right now.
The other thing is that there’s hope based on culture. Chinese parents (and this is probably true for other Asian heritage parents too) work their tails off; they immigrate here and they do everything for their kids. If they’re willing to hand off their business to their kids and if they work their tail off to send their kids to college and everything, then why won’t they give the keys of the church to the next generation?
I don’t think there’s an easy solution, but if there’s a way where enough of us are willing to stick around and play the long game — exercise patience, learn humility — and if we can raise up one or two generations of youth and young adults who are humble, want to take the baton, and are willing to work with the older generation, and if you have an older generation or immigrant culture that’s willing to work together (sometimes that’s not possible), then I don’t think we have to go off and start our own churches. We could actually become an integral part of the church. The English congregation can become a mature English congregation that works either leading or side-by-side with the Chinese. I would like to see that. That’s our heart: to see us bridge the generations. At the end of the day, I think that’s possible, but maybe not in every context.
For Part 2 of the conversation, the pastors talk about how their Chinese heritage has helped shape their identity, whether Chinese churches should become multiethnic, and the future of the Chinese Heritage church.