What are church models unique to the Asian American Church? SOLA Editorial Board member Daniel K. Eng interviewed two lead pastors who serve at “townhouse” churches. Michael Lee leads All Nations Community Church, an English-speaking congregation on the same campus as a Korean immigrant church. David D. Lee pastors Ekklesia Atlanta Christian fellowship, an English-speaking congregation that shares a campus with a Chinese immigrant church.
Listen in as the two pastors share their stories with Daniel K. Eng guiding their discussion. Topics they discuss include:
- How their congregations formed and their relationships with their mother churches
- Pros and cons of being on the same campus as their mother churches
- Encouragements for pastors with English-speaking congregations
You can watch their conversation below, or on our YouTube Page. You can also listen to it via Podcasts. We have also provided a transcript below. Please note that it may contain spelling and grammatical errors.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, hello, everyone. This is Daniel here from the SOLA Network. And today we’re going to be talking about a very unique church model. And I have with me, Michael Lee and David Lee—no relation. But we actually just found out that they went to the same high school. But before we talk with them, I want to share a bit about how we got here and why we are having this conversation.
So I’m going to share with you the way that a lot of Asian American churches start, especially those started by immigrants. This is what we call the room-for-rent model. And a lot of times immigrants come. And they start a Bible study or a church, and they realize that, oh, we need to have something for it. That’s English speaking, maybe it’s a children’s ministry, maybe it’s a youth ministry.
And they say, Okay, we have a room where they can have, they can worship and meet. And they can, the primary language is English. And this is actually true for many different immigrant church models, it’s not just Asians. It could be Latino, it could be other immigrants as well. So we, a lot of times they start like this, and some of you are even in a church that’s like this right now. This is the room-for-rent model.
After a while, what happens is that the people who are English-speaking are more comfortable worshiping in English, and they start deciding, hey, we need to have a worship service, a worship service for the English-speaking. And so that we’ve a lot of times that moves to sometimes what we call the duplex model. And this is just an example. It can be Chinese and English, but that also could be Korean or English. It could be Spanish and English, and so on. You have a duplex model. And what you’re seeing is that you have two parallel congregations under the same roof under the same leadership. And this is actually a lot of immigrant churches or bilingual churches and so to speak.
And for the Chinese churches, we sometimes have something related to this called the triplex model, where we have Cantonese, Mandarin, and English—three different congregations worshiping under the same roof. And that roof represents leadership that’s talking about like a senior pastor and a board and sharing a budget. Does that make sense? Everybody? So this is what this is what’s going on with the duplex and the triplex model
Along the way, whether it’s EM and KM, or Cantonese, Mandarin English, a lot of times what happens is that there’s a thought about whether or not the English ministry should plant their own church. And one of the things that they decide is to have two churches under one campus but with different leaderships, and that is what some people call the townhouse model.
This is KM and EM— two different churches. Notice the roof is different, right? Two different churches. And this could be Chinese Ministry, English ministry or something else. But this is just an example we’ve seen KM and EM, where it’s one campus, but two distinct independent churches with different leadership. And that’s what we call townhouse. And this is rare. This doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it’s usually something that’s very interesting to people who are, who are in immigrant churches, and they because they want to learn about it, because they think that it could be something that they could pursue.
Now, if you want to learn more about these Asian American church models, this is a great book. It’s called Tapestry of Grace. And this is by Ben Shin and Sheryl Takagi Silzer, and you can actually read about it in this book.
Today, we’re gonna be talking about the townhouse model. And I have two church leaders, two pastors who are in these models. I’m going to ask each of you to introduce yourselves first and just tell us a little bit about your church model. And then and then we’re going to talk about how did it come to be and so on. So I’m going to start with Michael Lee. Just tell us a bit about your church model and your church. You’re with All Nations Community Church. Tell us about that.
Michael Lee: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Daniel. And yeah, my name is Michael Lee. I serve as the lead pastor at All Nations Community Church. I’m in my eighth year here. And, yeah, we partner with a large Korean church called ANC Onnuri. And that church has about over 2000 members, very large and very healthy.
One thing that really drew me to this church was that in its 25+ years of ministry in existence, it had never experienced church splits. And they had previously stayed under one senior pastor. The current senior pastor is a good friend and mentor of mine, Reverend Tae Kim, he’s only the second senior pastor in the history of the church. And so that’s kind of something that first kind of attracted me to coming to All Nations and serving here.
We started off as an English ministry very much in that room for rent, financially dependent, not really giving back besides areas of service and volunteering for children’s and youth ministry and whatnot. And over the years, yeah, God gave us a bigger vision, a more fuller and robust vision for interdependence. And so our church motto is: “One family, two churches, with one Great Commission.” And so that’s kind of like the shared kind of narrative of why we’re doing interdependence, what we’re hoping for, what we’re aiming for, and we stay together as a family unit of God. We’re bound, and really focused in on the gospel in the Great Commission. And at the same time, we understand that we need, you know, we need independent governance, and leadership and things like that. And so it’s been a really good journey, and I’m looking forward to sharing a little bit more of our story.
Daniel K. Eng: Right, thank you. Thank you, Pastor Michael. We’re going to move to Pastor David Lee. He’s with Ekklesia Atlanta Christian Fellowship. And so I’m going to leave it up to you to share more about your church as well as we move forward.
David D. Lee: Thank you, Daniel, for allowing me to participate in this conversation. So I am a Korean David Lee, not a Chinese David Lee. But growing up in Atlanta, went to Korean churches, went away for college, went away for seminary and came back eventually made my way over to Ekklesia Atlanta, which is the English church English speaking congregation attached to the Atlanta Chinese Christian church. And I’ve only been here for about four and a half, about five years. And so I’m kind of jumping in midstream with this narrative that’s already been going on.
But interestingly, my wife and I have a long history with this church as friends of the church because we had our wedding here 19 years ago. I knew the pastor at the time, and over the years have been invited to guest preach. And then when the pastor position was open, they asked me to help with preaching, and then invited me to take on the lead pastor position.
So coming as a Korean American working having worked primarily in Korean American contexts into the Chinese church, it’s been interesting trying to trace the history of what’s going on here. Atlanta Chinese Christian Church was organized about 42 years ago. And as is typical with the narrative of a lot of our immigrant churches, primarily international students here in the Atlanta area at Emory and Georgia Tech, they had their student fellowship groups and decided to settle in Atlanta, so they organized the church.
The migration within the Atlanta community meant that this particular congregation ended up planting two daughter churches and the further suburbs where the school systems were considered stronger. So as families continued to settle in the Atlanta area, they decided that they wanted to strategically target those areas and send out people.
But when the English congregation was also interested in having a church plant, that actually was not supported fully by the Chinese congregation. So they decided instead of doing that, there are a few other things that happened in the course of that. And over the years, you know, some of the members who were part of the English congregation have gone to other churches. Atlanta and Dallas take turns holding the title of the metropolitan area with the most number of megachurches. so there are lots of options here in Atlanta for Asian Americans to go to. So there has been a slow exodus of people who felt like their needs weren’t being met within this model of the room-for-rent.
So when it came time to figure out well, what can be done if a full church plant wasn’t going to actually happen is they decided to pursue this dual church model or the townhome model, which has been in place for about eight or nine years now. I come in for just the last half of that time, but it’s been interesting trying to plug in and be part of the conversation in the present and going into the future.
Daniel K. Eng: So my opening question for you guys is, and you may have been there when you started this model or you may not have been, but what were the reasons why your church, or the at least the mother church, decided to do this? And my follow up question will be, what was the process to get there? So either one of you can start. So why, and how?
David Lee: Well just continue with what I was saying. So when the Chinese congregation at my church, the Atlanta Chinese Christian Church, planted the two other churches, those churches have actually still been under different models—so they have English congregations. Now one of them has actually the largest of the three churches now, then the other is the smallest of the three.
So the one that’s the largest is still in the duplex model. So in their organizational chart, they have a senior pastor, then they have two assistant or associate pastors, one for each congregation, Mandarin and English, and then the other ministries as well. The third church is still pretty much the room-for-rent model.
So ours is the only one that developed this townhome model or this dual church model. And again, with the history of, you know what had happened with the church plant being sent out not being supported, understanding that there were some needs that were leading to that initiative, but then finding that it wasn’t fully supported—so they needed to do something different. The guy who was the pastor for the English congregation at that time and the leadership of English congregation still felt this need to have some sense of autonomy and independence. And so I think this proposal is what came up.
I was told by one of the former members that it took a while to have all these conversations about what that was going to look like. Daniel, like you said, this is not something that is common to see. And so they drafted a document called the “dual church covenant.” And both sides reviewed it, and they decided to adopt that as their guiding principles for how to do this, this dual church relationship. So in that construction, what they did was, they took children’s ministry, and they put it under the auspices and the administration of the Chinese Ministry, and they took youth ministry, and they slotted that under the English congregation.
Daniel K. Eng: So it’s not shared in terms of leadership.
David Lee: To a certain extent, it’s supposed to be according to the stipulations of the church covenant. And I’ll talk about the follow-through or lack of follow-through on that in a little bit. But, the idea was to still have a collaborative relationship. And the language within the adult church covenant is actually kind of neat because they talk this sense of ownership that’s meant to be shared by both congregations over those ministries, although the administration somewhat resides with one of the congregations in principle. So the opportunities to be interdependent is there and I actually appreciate it.
When I was in seminary in St. Louis, I went to Covenant Seminary, and my senior pastor at the Korean Presbyterian church there, John Suh, used to say that there’s really three stages that we’re supposed to experience. The first is dependence, the second is independence, and the third is interdependence.
I think a lot of times we end up idealizing and idolizing independence, which when you compare what an English congregation looks like with just the life stage that they’re in—if we’re talking about people who are in their 20s 30s, and 40s, we’re in the mindset of, of independence. You know, it’s not until we get to our 50s, and 60s, and our parents start to need us again, that we realize, Oh, we’re actually supposed to be interdependent. So that third stage is really what we’re supposed to be looking at.
And it’s scriptural, right, it’s biblical. We see that with the way that the churches relate to one another after Paul goes on his missionary journeys. But sometimes we just don’t see that because we’re still on the mindset of independence, independence, independence. And I think that that still bears out sometimes in the way that our members are navigating this. So I appreciate that dual church covenant, some of the language that’s written in there, that fosters a sense of this, this fuller relationship that we’re meant to continue to share and appreciate this question of how well are we following through and how well are we continuing to cast that vision.
Daniel K. Eng: So again, let’s recap. You were saying administratively, the children’s ministry is under Chinese Mandarin. And then the youth ministry is under is under the English ministry in the church. What about the building?
David Lee: So that is largely taken care of by the Chinese congregation, and we pay a portion based on average attendance, and that’s calculated every three years.
Daniel K. Eng: So they do that proportionally. Okay, interesting. Thanks, David. Thank you for the insightful word about interdependence. Appreciate that.
Michael, can you tell us about how and why did your church do this? And what was the process to get there?
Michael Lee: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. David, that was so good. Such a great story and really encouraged by your model in your church. For us: Why? It was because we asked. Yeah, I think that was one of the things.
When I first came in 2014, I came in as the executive pastor under the English ministry pastor, Tae Kim, and then he became the KM senior pastor. So he’s a rare breed, a true 1.5, bilingual. He was serving as the executive pastor overseeing the English ministry doing a lot of Korean church stuff.
And then, yeah, when the founding pastor transitioned out, he became the KM senior pastor. And then in 2017, I received the call then to become the lead pastor of the English ministry, and by God’s grace over those three years, God really allowed us to grow in healthy ways in our church size, our budget, our ministry, development, staffing, things like that. And so when we started to really think about membership, when we started to think about leadership, and office with deacons and elders—so it wasn’t just a financial decision.
I think a lot of times, English ministries, they want independence because they want to be able to make their own financial decisions. That actually wasn’t the driving issue for us. For us, we were really trying to ask ourselves, what does it mean to be a church to lead and be part of a church? And we just ran into these just kind of like troublesome issues, like, you know, where does membership really reside? Can you just be a member of a department, the English ministry department, or are we called to be members of a fully organized body of Christ?
And so when the Korean church was having votes and elections and things like that for their officers, none of our members were participating in that polity. And if we were to ordain any deacons and elders, you know, under what church? Is it under the Korean church? Does that mean that their members are voting on our officers when they have no knowledge and experience of them?
And so we kind of came to this realization that, not just because we were growing. And this is very important in the language that we use with our church and with the Korean church: We didn’t want independence because we were growing numerically. We wanted them to understand that we were maturing. I think this actually benefits the Asian American kind of family unit mentality to really say, “Hey, we are a family together.” And I would ask the elders and the leaders of the Korean church, “What’s your vision for your children? Do you want them to just be living in your room, under your household, dependent on you the whole time? Or do you actually have a bigger vision for them to flourish as young adults, adults who get married, have their own kids, you know, purchase their own homes and whatnot?”
And so I really kind of pressed into that image, that very familiar image of a family and maturing, as we were communicating interdependence. And so that was the why.
The how: It was about a three to four year journey. It was a three to four year journey and a lot of communication, a lot of submission. And so I know that there where members and leaders in our congregation that wanted to particularize, which is kind of like the formal word for becoming independent, and wanted to push that faster. They’re like what’s taking so long, but, you know, for me and our council, we realized that this is going to be a slow process.
And so it started with a joint task force of some of our leaders. We only had deacons at that time. So some of our senior deacons and KM elders along with me and the senior pastor, we created a kind of interdependent task force, where we just we will just start to talk and come to the table to cast vision, to communicate, and whatnot. And so that happened in 2018. Then when we felt like the conversation was gaining enough momentum 2019, our council made a formal proposal for interdependence. We submitted that to their council for review, they gave some back and fourth feedback. Ultimately, they blessed it. And so we kind of approved it on our end, we asked them to review and approve, they did that as well.
And then, then it was to take it to our congregations. And so we both presented to our respective congregations. And we actually made sure that the KM blessed first, yeah, so we didn’t want our congregation to vote on something, and then possibly have it be turned down by the mother church. And so we actually asked them to review and bless first before we took action as well.
And so you know, I think we that was just kind of an important posture and a rhythm that we took on, very similar to David’s church, we did establish a covenant, the legal term is a memorandum of understanding. But you know, that was just a little formal for our mother church leaders. And so they said, “Hey, do we need to have like contract language?” And we said, like, yes and no. And so it feels like a covenant is a good way to describe it. And so in that it does talk about our respective responsibilities, our commitment to one another.
We don’t own property on this campus. But we do pay rent. And so our commitment is no less than 10% of our annual budget. Our goal is to exceed that. But yeah, so that’s something we adjust every year. And then, you know, knowing that we’re in LA, I always joke we get it on the cheap. Facilities are crazy. So if we’re only doing 10%, towards facilities, that’s that’s a steal for us. Yeah.
And then we had to draft bylaws and all of that stuff. But the main work took place over the first like two years or so of just building that taskforce, bringing the leaders together and casting vision for it. And then submitting that to our respective councils, leaders, members, congregations, X, Y, and Z and so that all in all was about three and a half year process.
Daniel K. Eng: Michael, you mentioned the building. How does what does it look like in terms of children’s ministry and youth ministry?
Michael Lee: Yeah. And so I mean, one big thing for us is on our end with interdependence, you know, just if you read through the Psalms, especially Psalm 145, there’s that commission for one generation to declare the works of God and to another. And so I really do want our church members, second generation, Korean American members to believe and blessing the younger generations and the older generations with the gospel of Christ.
And so, you know, as far as like how that breaks down, we actually only take college and above, so All Nations Community Church is a college and above ministry, even though we have so many families who have their children plugged into the children’s ministry as well. But as far as staffing and all of that, that’s under the KM, and then we take college and up. And so I know sometimes, EM pastors, they want to oversee education—I’ve never desired that. And so I just root them on. We support financially big events like VBS, and whatnot. And then we bring manpower and and everything we can to come alongside these education ministries.
Daniel K. Eng: So it sounds like then, if I’m putting two and two together, you have families where you have the the parents who are attending your church, but their kids are at the Korean church for children’s ministry. Is that correct?
Michael Lee: Yes. Yes.
Daniel K. Eng: So there are two different churches, but together.
Michael Lee: Yeah, we’re probably gonna talk about, you know, where does it get sticky and tricky? That, especially for us, you know we do hold to covenant theology, and so we’ve had some of our families ask, Hey, where does you know, to whom do these children belong and who is responsible for them? And I definitely get that, you know, for those who are strong, strongly committed to, you know, covenant theology, you know, education models, that does get a little troublesome and tricky, little muddy in that sense.
But our thing is, you know, we just believe we just kind of defer back to the one family model. And we just say that these children are all of our children, and we want to raise them up in the Lord. We want to serve them. A KM teacher who speaks English or an EM teacher who’s serving in that ministry—we’re all doing this together, you know, to make disciples of our children and vast majority of our families are okay with that. Yeah, they appreciate that. But there’s a little bit of code switching going on.
Daniel K. Eng: Yeah, sure. So it sounds like some of your members are actually serving at the other church then.
Michael Lee: Yes, absolutely.
Daniel K. Eng: Interesting. Okay, well, brothers, we’re gonna talk about some of the wins, some of the challenges, and all those things.
So let’s start with some of the benefits you see from this model. What are the what are some of the blessings, and you don’t have to take turns. You can we just have a nice conversation, then we’ll talk about the challenges. And then I want to kind of talk about: If you would encourage somebody who’s thinking about this, what would you do? So let’s, let’s go with first, the blessings.
Michael Lee: I mean, for one, facilities is huge. Just having this campus having space. Especially during COVID, we had so many, so many of my friends were doing mobile church, renting and schools and auditoriums and whatnot. So when everything was shut down, it was really trying for them. But for us to have facilities where we can go in and record and still do things, that was a huge advantage. And so we’re really grateful, we’re really grateful for the space, the hospitality and the support that the KM affords us.
I think the second is, I think, just resources, shared resources between two churches. And, you know, I think we’re better together in that sense. So I know that with youth and children’s serving, there’s, there’s some subtle, there’s some different cultures and some different dynamics at play. But nonetheless, you know, I do think overall, we’re a better, more robust, healthy church together than we are apart. And that’s actually been one of the areas where our church has grown the most.
Our growth hasn’t been just from retaining graduating high school seniors. Actually, we’re really not in a good college town, in the north LA area. But the majority of our growth has come from families, who are looking for a place where they can grow and their children can grow, and to be part of a youth group or a children’s ministry that will offer some of the Christian education, discipleship and programming opportunities that together we can we can afford our families and members. And so, yeah, I think those are, those are big things.
And then just to chuckle and joke, whenever you’re in this model, and something goes awry, you can just blame the other church as a like, little scapegoat. And everyone’s like, “Oh, yeah, okay. We can’t do that right now because, you know, Korean church has these things going on,” and everyone’s like, okay, okay. And so little bit of a light scapegoat, but don’t use it too much, because then you’ll build up angst. Yeah.
David Lee: Well, and you have to realize that they may be doing the same thing in the opposite direction,
Michael Lee: Obviously, so I’ll take that, I’ll take it.
David K. Eng: Yeah, just like a house.
David Lee: It’s funny because there are times when I feel like the development of an English-speaking congregation within the Asian immigrant church is like how individuals develop. So we go through adolescence, we go through young adult years, and sometimes in those stages, we don’t appreciate the roof over our heads very easily. We don’t appreciate some of the benefits that we get that just happen; we don’t really acknowledge them.
So the fact that, you know, the facility is here for us, and most of the maintenance, we don’t have to think about. We do contribute to financially, but we don’t actually have to think about, and that’s something that, you know, we do want to honor and we do want to be thankful for and foster that appreciation for, you know.
Where you are, Michael in the LA area, yeah, I can understand how the rents would make you really appreciate that. But I do think just in the development of us, in our maturity, that that’s something that we have to be cognizant of. And it’s funny, because the ways that that comes out may be different. Like the Chinese congregation, the first generation will take care of the facility differently than we might, because they want to do a lot of stuff by themselves. They don’t want to hire out, you know, certain tasks. But there’s a certain sense where we just have to understand that and appreciate that. So to see like all the elderly people of our Chinese-speaking congregation coming out to pull weeds in the parking lot—it’s a beautiful expression of, hey, you know, it’s not the way we might do it, but it’s a beautiful expression of faith.
And that leads me to the second thing that I think is really advantageous to us is having a multi-generational church. Like our English congregation, our oldest people now is in their late 40s, early 50s, mid 50s, and we don’t have the benefit in our English congregation at this point of people in their 70s and 80s. So when we see the example of faith by the saints, who established this church, that is something that we should appreciate and should learn from.
And then the third thing is when I still hear their heart for the community, and their mission for their church is they still have a heart to evangelize the Atlanta Chinese community. And, you know, that’s really beautiful to see because it is actually a sacrificial mission that they’re engaged in, you know. This may not have a great return for them personally, but they understand that for the kingdom, that is something that they’re committed to doing.
And those are the things that we want to celebrate, we want to support even just as interdependent churches if we weren’t sharing a facility, we would want to support that, right. And so the fact that they’re right next door to us that we’re sharing the same spaces, that means that there’s a richness of faith there that we want to highlight, and we want to appreciate we want to learn from and grow from. And that’s just some of the practical things.
I do think that if we do have that posture, Michael used that word earlier, that posture of humility and teachability, that there is so much that we can learn from the older generation. So I think that English congregations tend to not have that multigenerational dynamic, that still being connected to a first generation congregation allows us to experience some of that and to appreciate that.
The last thing I’ll say is that, you know, a lot of our growth, and it’s slow growth, but we still have people coming in new to our church, who are new to Atlanta, and what they search in the Google search bar is Atlanta Chinese Church, which means that they value something about this being a Chinese church. And even though I’m not Chinese, I can understand and appreciate that, that cultural heritage, that cultural tie, and the contextualization to our own identity groups, is important for some people to still retain, and God works within that. There are other churches that meet other needs, and that will help other people on that assimilation spectrum. But in this particular space, that there is something that God can uniquely do within this.
Daniel K. Eng: Are there any blessings that you have encountered that you didn’t expect?
David Lee: I’ll share a funny one. A lot of us who have experienced Korean churches know that Korean churches do a good job of multiplying by dividing. One of the KM pastors told me there are over 400 Korean churches in the Atlanta area, and that was actually a conversation I had about 15 years ago. So I don’t know what the number is nowadays, but there are a ton, and we don’t need that many.
Among the Chinese churches, I mean, there are a lot fewer. But the culture is different, and in the Chinese culture, while there is a reluctance to confront issues, it’s a very non-confrontational culture. The value of maintaining peace is a good value. You know, it is a good value of pursuing peace, as long as it’s not a false peace or a peace that is constructed on ignoring the issues and not dealing with the ones that God wants us to deal with. So that’s something that I’ve come to appreciate, you know, that desire to maintain relationships, that desire to have peace in our relationships, to experience that, to be a blessing to the other person, to be a positive, you know, presence in our relationships with others. And that’s a good thing.
You know, and I think for some of us who have grown up in Korean churches, where we’ve experienced some difficult circumstances, and maybe have stories of battles that have gone on that, in some ways, it’s kind of refreshing, you know, to say that, maybe there are times when the most important thing isn’t winning the argument, but it is actually winning the relationship.
Michael Lee: Absolutely, absolutely. To dovetail off of that, probably the most important thing that just was a surprise blessing for me serving as a lead pastor in this interdependent model is learning how to lose as a lead pastor. And I think that that’s a lesson we all have to learn whether you’re an independent department or whatever it might be.
I found that a lot of us as leaders, we do struggle when we don’t get our way, when we put in a lot of thought, energy, prayer, you know, putting our best for this, this event, or this direction, or this vision or whatever might be, and just not getting our way. I think a lot of pastors actually don’t handle that well now. And there were definitely seasons where that created a lot of discontent and discord in my heart, but by God’s grace, through this model, and through the years, God has just taught me how to lose well.
And to know just very similarly that that in doing so you can gain relationships, you build trust, and that’s a beautiful, you know, that’s a beautiful thing. And that’s worth way more than launching your one little thing, you know, that you think is going to, you know, revolutionize everything or whatnot. But yeah, so I think that was an unexpected blessing in my own formation and leadership.
And then number two, I think it was just to see so many older families starting to come out to our church. And so I’m 40 years old, I’m not the oldest person in my church; we have four other elders, three of whom are in their mid 50s. And so I feel like I’m maybe at the 60th percentile of age in our church. And so it’s been very humbling.
And I constantly ask, why are you guys here? You know, isn’t there a stigma, you know, wasn’t there a stigma with our generation that like, being part of the Korean churches is kind of lame? And you know, the cool thing to do is to go to the majority culture church with better resources, facilities program, preaching music, or to go to the independent Asian American church, where you don’t have to worry about your parents, and you can do whatever you want. But there are so many families who have actually come to our church from those contexts, and they’ve really enjoyed the interdependence. They’ve come to really appreciate and plug into our ministries. And so just that was an unexpected blessing. Because, you know, with the whole 20, like, 20 years ago, silent Exodus, we just thought we were gonna get worked—everyone’s gonna leave. But lo and behold, I really think we’re in a very special moment for Asian American ministries.
Daniel K. Eng: Love it. Okay, let’s talk about some challenges. Some areas of growth—maybe some that you expected and some that you didn’t expect?
Michael Lee: I’d say facilities are a blessing. And facilities are a challenge. Yeah. And so literally, there’s a month in the year where it’s a reservation time for all of the rooms. And we have a system and it feels like back when you were in college, trying to register for classes. You know, it’s competitive, and it’s crazy, and whatnot. And so I definitely think for growing churches for ambitious churches that want to do a good amount of ministry programming on Sundays and midweek. Yeah, just working out the facilities is really challenging as well.
And I do want to share like one little kind of note and personal thought I had. I do think the interdependent model with the two townhouses, it does work more smoothly when the campus actually has the space to hold two churches and campuses. And so if your campus doesn’t have multiple worship facilities and multiple rooms and fellowship areas to simultaneously accommodate two churches, it’s really challenging.
If the English speaking congregation gets slotted with that 2pm worship slot in the main sanctuary, you’re always going to feel, regardless of your financial independence and polity, like you’re getting the short end of the stick. And so not to discourage any pastors on a smaller campus, I just think that there’s some built-in advantages if your campus actually has the facilities to make simultaneous worship gatherings and whatnot occur so that you’re not like given up prime location and time. So,
David Lee: If you don’t have adequate facilities, then it goes from being a townhome model to a timeshare model.
Daniel K. Eng: I like it. I like it.
David Lee: Whatever week you’re assigned, it’s like, well, I guess that’s it. So I do think that that points to one of the other dangers or risks when it comes to developing. I think a lot of us who have been leaders in these types of immigrants or spaces, feel that there are times when if it defaults to standard operating procedure or just the way things have always been done, then that ends up prioritizing the first-generation congregation or the larger congregation.
So there are times, even more recently, when when it comes to something with children’s ministry, and you can relate it to the families that, that it orients naturally because of the history towards the Mandarin worship service, and then the needs of the children’s ministry for the English worship service then becomes secondary or overlooked. So that’s, that’s one thing. And you know, maybe Michael, because your senior pastor was the English Ministry pastor in the past, then that can be very, very helpful because he is aware and can help make the Korean Ministry leadership aware of those needs, and will maybe be able to highlight those as necessary.
But along with that, is just continuing those conversations where we can help the leaders of the Chinese speaking congregation, just to understand how the needs of the English congregation are different. They haven’t experienced the things that we’ve experienced. We haven’t experienced the things that they have experienced, but the second generation—or now, the second and third generation, because my kids are third generation, right—that what they’re growing up with is just very, very different. And the first generation just doesn’t have opportunities to experience that. So we have to continually have those conversations to expose them to those needs, because they’re not naturally going to be become aware of them.
And then along with that, is the just the fact that it’s still a Chinese church, where Michael is, it’s still a Korean church, especially if your kids and your youth are going to the ministries that are led by the Korean-speaking congregation. Like for us, you know, when people put in that search bar on the internet, Atlanta Chinese Church, they’re valuing it being a Chinese church. But that also means that for people who are not Chinese, it may be difficult to be in the space.
So I’ve described it to our members that maybe our English congregation will always be a, what I call a one-off church, where either you fit the primary identity, which is, you know, Chinese American, or you’re one degree removed from that, and you have some sort of stake in that whether your spouse is Chinese American, or you lived in China, or Taiwan, or God’s given you an affinity or a special interest in that group. But many of our friends are not Asian at all. And if we invite them to our church, even though the service is in English, they just they may not fit, you know, and it may not be a good fit for them, they may not be comfortable with it.
The children’s ministry, if it’s ministering to the needs of the immigrant families in the youth ministry as well, you know, if 80% of our youth are from immigrant first generation households, then their needs are going to take precedence. And oftentimes, there’s going to be some tension with the differences in culture and the differences in needs for the families with their English congregation. So so we have to have that understanding of what we’re dealing with for both congregations. And we have to continually have those conversations to make sure that we’re building an understanding and awareness as as we try to go forward. So that’s one of the challenges that are out there.
Michael Lee: I would say another challenge that we’ve seen is with education ministry since our youth group and our children’s ministry is under the Korean church. There have been discussions about the curriculum and the programming, and where some of our families are not that happy with some of the content and curriculum there. And this is where I do believe, theological unity is very helpful for both churches to share.
And so for us, the KM is part of the CRC, Christian Reformed Church. We aligned with the CRC, and we’re in process to transfer and as well. So in the CRC there’s three forms of unity: Canons of Dort, Belgic Confession, and Heidelberg Catechism. I think it’s very important for our churches to share in our doctrinal distinctives together so that we can have a commitment to teach and practice from the same theological tribe.
I’ve heard stories of Southern Baptists working at Presbyterian churches and then causing a lot of, you know, theological friction in that sense. And so if you’re leading in a ministry, and you’re willing to submit, if you can’t subscribe yet, but submit, I really think that that’s an important part of interdependence shared ministry. And so yeah, just being in the same theological space, whether it’s a denomination or an affiliation network, those are really helpful tiebreakers in that sense where if there is division and there is contention, it’s not just going to be who’s more powerful, who’s got more buy in, ownership or where it might be. You can both kind of refer to denominational polity and governance and kind of forms of unity there. That’s been an area where we can work out some of the kinks because we have had curriculum education tension in the past.
Daniel K. Eng: Are the two churches on your campus denominational?
Michael Lee: So our English ministry is CRC aligned, and we’re in process of joining the CRC, but all of our policy, everything that we do is reflective of CRC. I just need to transfer my ordination.
Daniel K. Eng: Okay. All right, Pastor David, your denomination?
David Lee: So it’s nondenominational.
Daniel K. Eng: Both churches?
David Lee: And as is typical in these types of situations—congregationalist, baptsitic—but the added layer of it being Chinese, I think, complicates it, and that a lot of times, they don’t talk about issues. There may be, you know, theological diversity in the evangelical Christian landscape, then it’s possible for people to land in different places and still be here. And I’ve heard different stories of how that’s actually happening, as the theology continues to develop and evolve in Taiwan. So it’s interesting to see the different influences that we see in the background of some of our members in both congregations.
So it’s funny because, you know, sometimes I tell my church members that, well, you hired a Korean guy, so I’m going to talk about things you know. So we’ll talk about different issues, and, you know, just trying to start with scripture, and then allow scripture to inform our beliefs. So sometimes it can be challenging, but it also helps us to understand that within our Christian landscape, unity in the essentials and liberty in the non-essentials, grace to all that we do need to continue to have that attitude when it comes to talking through these issues.
I’ll say one of the other wrinkles to that is both our congregations have elders. Not every congregationalist or baptistic church is reformed. But the cultural understanding of what that means may be different. Like, in our Chinese congregation for a long time, the way that they would make decisions was they would have a joint board of elders and deacons together. But for a long while, every major vote had to be unanimous.
That actually was a sticking point for a lot of things over the years. It was difficult just within the Chinese congregation sometimes to move forward on some issues. And that actually created some difficulties between the two congregations before EACF became more autonomous because there could be just one deacon in the Chinese congregation that may not have a lot of information experience or knowledge about some of the needs, or some of the differences, or just some of the situations, but would still be able to kind of scuttle the vote. But that was very cultural, wanting that apparent unity. Eventually, they changed the policy understanding that that wasn’t necessary to still pursue unity and have that sense of unified leadership but, but that was a cultural aspect to the church polity.
Daniel K. Eng: This is something I’ve been dying to ask both of you, but what would your word of encouragement be? For anyone who’s thinking about doing something like this at their church?
David Lee: Well, I’ll say, even in the four and a half years that I’ve been here, we’ve dealt with challenges. We’ve had conversations within our leadership in EACF and then conversations across the aisle with the Chinese congregation and their leadership about different needs, about children’s ministry, about youth ministry. The idea of church planting still comes up from time to time. But when we’ve prayed about what we’re supposed to do when we encounter these challenges and differences, our leadership has consistently felt God telling us, You just haven’t tried hard enough.
And that’s interesting because sometimes that’s not what we want to hear. There are times when it feels easier just to separate, and I think about some of the other models. I’ve had conversations with brothers and sisters, mostly through email, at Chinese churches up in the northeast, in Texas, Midwest, out in California. And then some of these issues are common to all of us. And sometimes it does feel like it might be easier just to separate, you know. But when the Holy Spirit’s telling us that, No, there’s something that I want to do here, there’s something that is valuable here, for these two congregations to continue to pursue, I believe it—I do believe it.
And I’m thankful. There are a couple of churches, like there’s a Korean church I know in the mid-Atlantic region where they’ve really committed to this, to really pursue this and to invest in that. It does create those limitations because they are a Korean church, but there is something that is really beautiful in that. So, I think that’s just that word of encouragement that I would say is that, that it does reflect something that we all hope for, which is that there may be differences, but when we’re idealizing interdependence, then by the grace of God—and by his wisdom and his administration—it is possible. It is possible for this model to work and to flourish in the ways in which God wants it to flourish.
Michael Lee: Yeah, so good. My word of encouragement for any leader who’s in this model, thinking about this is to know yourself—self-assessment, self-awareness. What are your desires? What’s your vision, and what’s your wiring?
I really do believe there are some deep differences between a church planter and a church revitalizer, somebody who wants to kind of imagine and create something from scratch versus people who are willing to do the hard work of or different work—planting is hard; I can never plant— distinct work of revitalizing, of mediating, of bringing renewal to a church with a long history.
You know, when I came to my church, I realized that so many of our members have been through so many different, you know, youth pastors, college pastors, English ministry, pastors, and I just knew that I needed to really build their trust. And I couldn’t just come in expecting everyone to do what I say because I’m the expert, and I’m the executive pastor or whatever might be. Because, you know, for a lot of them who have been hurt, and experienced a lot of loss and transition in their church experience, their thought might be, “Hey, I was here before you came. And I’ll be here after you leave, and so, you know, who are you?” And so I just really knew that I needed to come in and mend a lot of hearts and build.
I think really highly of our church, but I think in terms of like our second generation and the English ministry that we walked into, there just was very low morale and low church esteem. They’re like, Oh, yeah, all these other churches, the independent churches, the big majority culture, churches, they have it all together, we are just like the room for rent under the shell of the big Korean church. And we’re not that much. They felt very insignificant in that sense.
And so I just really wanted them to, you know, see that, that God was with us working in our church and that we could become a church where you would love to your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers to come and worship with us here. And so, over the years, God’s really built that up, and now a lot of people love our church and are very proud of the work that God has done and invited us into in this ministry model. And so that’s meant a lot.
Daniel K. Eng: Well, gentlemen, it has been really edifying for me to just sit under both of you right now. I just I can tell both of you are seasoned ministry practitioners who love the church and love your congregations and so grateful to sit with you. God is not done with the Asian American church model yet. We’re seeing how God is working, and we are excited to see what God’s gonna do next. Thanks, guys for this conversation. May God bless both your ministries.