Asian pastor leading Whites?

In years past, Korean pastors like myself were told that few white people would sit under a non-white pastor. This has largely proven true with only a few exceptions here and there. But a new generation is rising…one that not only is more tolerant of other (non-white) perspectives, but is actually seeking them out so as to enrich their own. What this means for us is that whereas in the past a truly multicultural church was mostly wishful thinking, the possibility of such a thing is much more likely now.

via https://www.facebook.com/Andante/posts/10154349529776763

Churches in Montgomergy County, Maryland aka MoCo

It took me hours to find interesting churches in the Rockville or Gaithersburg or Germantown area of Maryland during a recent visit. (I had to use creative Google searches and additional research to find all of these; #btw there’s a good church search at faithstreet.com) Here’s short list of MoCo churches in Maryland:

Journey’s Crossing http://journeyscrossing.org/ @ Germantown

GO Church http://mygochurch.com @ Germantown

Restoration Church http://www.restoration.church @ Gaithersburg #new

Connection Church connectionchurchmd.org @ Rockville

Streams of Hope Church streamsofhopechurch.org @ Gaithersburg

Northgate Community Church http://northgatecc.org @ Montgomery Village

Mosaic Community Church mosaicsilverspring.org @ Silver Spring

Lifechurch of Maryland www.l3church.com @ Germantown

Rock Creek Church http://www.rcreek.com

Cedar Creek http://www.cedarbrook.org/ @ Clarksburg

The Cause Church thecausechurch.org/ @ Elkridge

Seneca Creek Community Church senecacreek.org

MBC Montgomery County
https://www.mcleanbible.org/locations/montgomery-county

The Well Community Church thewellsilverspring.org @ Silver Spring

WASHINGTON DC

Grace Meridian Hill http://www.gracemeridianhill.org

3 Strands Community Church 3strandschurch.org

The District Church http://www.districtchurch.org/

Mosaic Church http://www.mosaicchurchdc.org/

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

DC Metro Church http://www.dcmetro.org/ @ Fairfax

Hillendale Baptist Church http://www.hillendalebaptist.org/ @ Dale City, CA

Since I can typically only attend one or two worship services on a weekend, I have to be selective in choosing the ones that are most interesting, in terms of music,  preaching, and multiethnic diversity.

I know there are many older traditional churches than newer contemporary churches. The older churches better served people who have already been part of that church for a long time, be it years or decades. Newer churches have better odds of being more creative and more conscientious of visitors and newcomers.

Just writing this blog post to save you time on your search. And, make some good churches easier to find.

Also see this list of the most popular churches in the metro DC area: djchuang.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/most-popular-churches-in-the-metro-washington-dc-area/

How to love and serve millennials and vice versa

I’m en route to Tampa for the Exponential East church planting conference exponential.org this week and have a few thoughts to share. This annual event, now bi-coastal and twice a year, has unarguably been instrumental in equipping and inspiring and mobilizing people and churches for the imminent future of churches in America and around the world.

For those privileged to be there in person, I’d love to connect with you in person: I have a workshop on Wed 4/29 morning, and a free lunch on Tues 4/28 hosted by ReGenerant Network + Ambassador Network + EFCA __ rsvp at http://expoeastaacp.splashthat.com

At Exponential, the Social Media team will be live-blogging and posting to exponential.org/sharedexperience with Great Congerencing Tips and the official hashtag is #exponential on Twitter and instagram.

Plus, Exponential will have a free livestream video of all main sessions live.exponential.org – and also a digital pass for archive access. Or, host a watch party for free http://www.exponential.org/proven-tips-for-hosting-the-exponential-east-15-webcast/ to expoentially multiply the value of the experience for your whole leadership team!

From recent conversations I’ve been a part of, there’s of chatter in the marketing world, business world, and church world about demographic shifts and what organizations must do to adjust for this new reality, specifically the different values of the next generation known as the millennials. Links: my list of churches reaching millennials, #20schurch book about the millennial church tour. And got to hear Dave Ferguson tell the back story of his new book, HPFTWBTG.

I found it quite amazing how these two books echoed parallel themes for engaging millennials with an authentic Christian faith. HPFTWBTG describes the 5 longings in people’s lives & hearts, particular millennials, and the 5 awakenings that are essential to loving & serving them and also for millennials to experience true love that’s more than enough, and connect them to the way that makes life fully authentic, meaningful, purposeful, valuable, and satisfying.

2 MVPs (most valuable publications) for real practical ways for spiritually engaging millennials. Hoping to meet & greet all the authors at Exponential for their good work.

A photo posted by Tommy "Urban D." Kyllonen (@urband813) on Apr 26, 2015 at 4:56am PDT

#aside

Yes, it’s 2015, blogging this via my mobile tablet, and finding it very hard to add links easily for references above. kinda bummed that in this increasing mobile world, that long-form written thoughts on blogs is so difficult to do, compared to photos on Instagram or tweets on Twitter… yes, short-form content has its place, but I sure want long-form content to have a place on mobile too.. trying to use this WordPress app on Android for months on my djchuang.com self-hosted blog, and it hasn’t worked for a long time.. at least it connects now.. so i’m doing what I can here on my alternate blog on wordpress.com to at least get my thoughts out to the world asap.. give Google and Bing a head start to crawl and index this.. then later will have to mirror it over to djchuang.com when I have time for a laptop connection to make the links pretty and so on..

Number of Asian Americans at Urbana 2009 Missions Conference

According to one report I’ve seen, here are some statistics about the Asian (and, by inference, Asian American and Asian North American) demographic in attendance at Urbana 2009 Student Missions Conference hosted by InterVarsity every 3 years:

… Of the 15,800 who attended Urbana 2009, 3,849 (24.4%) delegates were of Asian or South Asian descent.

… .Of the top 10 campus ministries represented, the majority of students came from InterVarsity, InterVarsity Canada, or didn’t represent a campus ministry. But the Asian ministries also were well represented:
#6. Chinese Christian Fellowship
#7. Asian American Christian Fellowship
#14. Korean Christian Fellowship

… of the top 10 countries represented at Urbana, five were from Asia:
#3. Japan
#4. South Korea
#5. China
#6. Hong Kong
#10. India

Sometimes statistics can be helpful, giving data for potentially meaningful conversations as a point of reference. Let’s see what’ll happen at Urbana 12 next week in St. Louis!! I’ll be live-blogging and connecting with as many people as I possibly can.

[update 28 Dec 2012] @UrbanaMissions Tweet:

#u12 ethnic demographics: 56% Caucasian, 30% East Asian, 7.7% African Am, 6.3% Hispanic/Latino, 6.1% Southeast Asian, 2.9% South Asian

[update April 2016] via Urbana 15 staffworker:

Urbana 15 attendance was ~16,000 and its multiethnic demographics was about 53% non-White and 47% White; ~40% Asian/Pacific Islander — inclusive of South Asian, ~7% SE Asian, 29% East Asian

Introducing the cultural mashup dictionary: Our first term, 1.5 generation | Multi-American

UC Irvine sociologist Rubén Rumbaut, a Cuban American who himself arrived in the United States as a child, wrote in 2004 that he first came cross the term “half-second” generation decades ago in an early twentieth-century volume on Polish immigrants, where it was used to describe foreign-born youths who came of age in the U.S.

“It made an impression on me,” Rumbaut told me by phone. “I came to this country on the eve of my twelfth birthday.” Starting in 1969 and through the 1970s, he used the term “one-and-a-half generation” to describe similar youths in Cuban immigrant families. In the 1980s, while writing about Southeast Asian youths, he switched to the decimal version, “1.5 generation.”

While the term was coined by a Latino, it had special resonance for Asian immigrants, particularly immigrants from Korea. Just as the Japanese have terms to describe first, second and third-generation immigrants, Koreans have a unique term for those in between the first and the second generation, which they refer to as ilchom ose. UCLA anthropologist Kyeyoung Park wrote about the term in 1999 for the Amerasia Journal:

More than three-quarters of Korean immigrants are post-1965, many immigrating on family reunification provisions. The Korean immigrant community includes many child immigrants who are often called 1.5ers, or what is called ilchom ose within the Korean American community, the term first used in the 1970s (of both Los Angeles and New York Korean American communities) and popularized by community leaders such as Professor Eui-young Yu and Bong Hwan Kim, former director of the Korean Youth and Community Center. In the early 1980s, It was K.W. Lee, the editor of the Korea Times English Edition, who first wrote about the 1.5 generation Korean Americans.

“1.5 generation” is used by most as a blanket term for those born abroad and raised here. But Rumbaut has sub-categories to describe who arrived at what age: Those who arrived before age five he considers “1.75 generation,” closer to the second, with little or no memory of their native country. Those who arrived between 13 and 17 would be generation 1.25, more likely to have an outlook similar to the first generation.

via Introducing the cultural mashup dictionary: Our first term, 1.5 generation | Multi-American.