Written by and for Asian Americans, this study guide helps you discover and embrace Asian identity and learn to bridge the conflicting values of parents, culture and faith. Through accounts of humorous, frustrating and heartbreaking personal experiences, the authors offer support, encouragement and ideas for living out the Christian faith between two cultures.
The Asian American church is in transition. Congregations face the challenges of preserving ethnic culture and heritage while contextualizing their ministry to younger generations and the unchurched. Many Asian American church leaders struggle with issues like leadership development, community dynamics and intergenerational conflict. But often Asian American churches lack the resources and support they need to fulfill their callings. Peter Cha, Steve Kang and Helen Lee and a team of veteran Asian American pastors and church leaders offer eight key values for healthy Asian American churches. Drawing on years of expertise and filled with practical examples from landmark churches like Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, NewSong Church and Lighthouse Christian Church, the book provides soundly biblical perspectives for effective ministry that honors the Asian American cultural context. Insights from such pioneering leaders as Ken Fong, David Gibbons, Grace May, Wayne Ogimachi, Steve Wong, Nancy Sugikawa and Soong-Chan Rah make this an essential guide for Asian American church leaders wanting to help their congregations achieve health and growth. Produced in partnership with the Catalyst Leadership Center, a resource organization for Asian American church ministry.
In this new Urbana Onward minibook, Greg Jao addresses common myths that result in a passive engagement of our intellect with our faith. He provides key disciplines for Christian discipleship of the mind, how we can love God with our minds in community, obedience and humility.
Experiencing racial marginalization in society and pressures for success in family, Asian American Christian young adults must negotiate being socially underpowered, culturally dissonant, and politically marginal. To avoid misunderstandings and conflicts within and without their communities, more often than not they hide their true thoughts and emotions and hesitate to engage in authentic conversations outside their very close-knit circle of friends. In addition, these young adults might not find their church or Christian fellowship to be a safe and hospitable place to openly struggle with all of these sorts of questions, all the while lacking adequate vocabulary or resources to organize their thoughts. This book responds to these spiritual-moral struggles of Asian American young people by theologically addressing the issues that most intimately and immediately affect Asian American youths' sense of identity--God, race, family, sex, gender, friendship, money, vocation, the model minority myth, and community-- uniquely and consistently from the contexts of Asian American young adult life. Its goal is to help young Asian Americans develop a healthy, balanced, organic sense of identity grounded in a fresh and deeper understanding of the Christian faith.
Missionary Paul Borthwick and pastor Dave Ripper show how transformation through our personal pain enables us to minister faithfully to a hurting world. They candidly share about their own struggles and how they have seen God's kingdom advance through hardship and suffering. We can become powerful witnesses to Christ as a result of our brokenness.
Writing from his own rich experiences--both successes and failures, Paul Tokunaga addresses the needs, difficulties, gifts and abilities that Asian Americans struggle with in leadership.
Annotation Based on studies of two congregations in New York (the Chinese Community Church and the Korean Presbyterian Church), this analysis examines issues of racial formation, religious belief, and ethnic identity. The educational and economic values of the church members and the role their religious beliefs play in their gender and family values are also discussed. To carry out his research, Alumkal (sociology of religion, Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado) attended weekly services at the two churches for over a year in the mid-1990s, when he also interviewed c. 50 church members. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
No one preaches in a cultural vacuum. The message of what God has done in Christ is good news to all, but to have the greatest impact on its hearers--or even to be understood at all--it must be culturally contextualized. Finding Our Voice speaks clearly to an issue that has largely been ignored: preaching to Asian North American (ANA) contexts. In addition to reworking hermeneutics, theology, and homiletics for these overlooked contexts, Kim and Wong include examples of culturally-specific sermons and instructive questions for contextualizing one's own sermons. Finding Our Voice is essential reading for all who preach and teach in ANA contexts. But by examining this kind of contextualization in action, all who preach in their own unique contexts will benefit from this approach.
Find practical answers in this handy resource! Get an inside look at the practical insights from the perspective of practitioners, who collectively have over 100 years of experience in Asian American youth ministry, as they share about the intergenerational church, student leadership, and vital outreach.
This newly revised classic workbook features updated resources to help readers better understand the needs and growth of missions today. It also includes revised questions and suggestions for further reading for deeper reflection and understanding. Through God’s Eyes is an invaluable resource for those seeking to investigate God’s passion for His world. This study guide is designed to bring us into the Word personally, help us discover inductively what God is saying, and gain a better sense of His direction for our lives. Through God’s Eyes can function as a personal Bible study, or as part of an introduction to missions or a biblical theology of missions course for a small group, Sunday school, college or seminary class.
