Asian American Church Consulting

Over the course of a church’s life, as it goes through seasons of changes, transitions, opportunities, or challenges, a person or a team of people external to a local church can bring valuable insights, perspectives, and expertise to help the church. While some churches rely on faith only for whatever situation they’re facing as a … Read more

What do next gen Asian Americans need?

The recurring themes that I (DJ Chuang) hear from next generation Asian American pastors since I started networking and connecting with my peers in the late 1990s has remained the same: a desire to have role models and mentors. One of the challenges for leaders and pastors in any sphere is the isolation that comes … Read more

Indian American Church Planting, the Next Generation

The 3 largest Asian American populations are Chinese, Filipino, and Asian Indian. As the children of Indian immigrants grew up or are born here in the USA, some of the second-generation Indian Americans are beginning to develop a next generation of churches that reach English-speaking Indian Americans and multiethnic communities, or as we like to … Read more

What is the Chinese Heritage Church?

Chinese churches in America trace its history back to over 100 years ago, and many churches today continue to reach people in the Chinese language dialects—Mandarin, Chinese, and Taiwanese, and there are a few less common dialects in use too. Different terms are used to refer to the Chinese American church, including immigrant Chinese church, … Read more

Asian American Pastors and Pornography

Too many pastors struggle secretly with porn addiction. Research says 57% of pastors have struggled with porn and Asian pastors and Asian American ones are no exception. This ugly struggle is true for many men, and some women, regardless of ethnic background, whether Korean American, Chinese American, Japanese American, Indian American, and the many other … Read more

Churches for Indian American Second Generation Christians

This article reports on the issue of “silent exodus” among second-generation Desi South Asian Americans and provides a comprehensive analysis of the issue. Thanks to Dr. Sam George for sharing it. Ethnic Indian churches struggle to retain young Indian American Christians within the fold (by Suman Guha Mozumder, India Abroad) Next week when tens of … Read more

Discussing Current Trends about Asian American Churches

When there are online discussions about topics related to what MultiAsian.Church has presented, that is quite noticeable. There are not yet many voices from Asian American pastors and church leaders on the web, the public web, that are discussing very important and urgent issues pertaining to the churches where Asian Americans find belonging. Encouraging to … Read more

Webinar: Asian American Churches in a Multiethnic World

Thanks to Healthy Church Leaders Initiative’s Pathway to Ministry and Dr. Timothy Tseng for the opportunity to participate in this webinar on September 17, 2017. Description: Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States, projected to double in population by 2050. While many ethnic Asian churches are reaching an immigrant generation by … Read more

What is the definition of a MultiAsian.Church?

One very frequently asked question is how does the author define this newly-coined term, “MultiAsian.Church?” What do I really mean by MultiAsian.Church, exactly? Even someone who’s read the entire book still asked this question, though my definition is clearly printed in Chapter 5 of the MultiAsian.Church book, as follows:

Next generation multi-Asian churches are loosely defined as: autonomous English-speaking churches that are intentionally or incidentally reaching next generation Asian Americans and other non-Asians too and led by an Asian American pastor.

As it was written, “MultiAsian.Church” is a fluid and dynamic definition because this term is descriptive, not prescriptive, of a new kind and different category of churches that I as the author believes is worth noticing, and even calling out, for its unique contribution to contextualizing church ministries in the 21st century. And as a soft definition, there may be churches that don’t want to be identified with anything else but being a “biblical church” or a “New Testament church,” whatever they mean by that. There may also be a few churches that want to be identified as a “MultiAsian.Church” but don’t yet have the basic ingredients to be obviously MultiAsian just yet, though we can give them room to grow into it and applaud them for their vision and aspiration to be “MultiAsian” instead of a narrower categorization.

As I reconsider the question, let me try it from another perspective, and this time I’m going to drop the “next generation” portion of the term, and just focus on defining “MultiAsian.Church”—again, this is a fluid, dynamic, and evolving work, so as God and His people do the work of churching in the 21st century, I’ll do what I can to call attention to what we can be paying attention to. Here we go:

What is the definition of a MultiAsian.Church?

a. an ethnic Asian American church that’s reaching multiple generations of Asian Americans, with worship services in both Asian and English languages (e.g. could be a Korean-American church, Chinese-American church, or a Chinese-American church with Vietnamese-language ministries)
b. multi-ethnic church with Asian American pastoral leadership (at least 20%) and Asian Americans in the congregation (at least 20%)
c. multi-ethnic church with Asian Americans in the congregation but no Asian pastoral staff
d. multi-lingual & multi-cultural church with over 20% Asian Americans
e. all of the above

Want to take a guess before I make the big reveal? Go ahead and add a comment with your thoughts for the definition that holds the most meaning to you. This is a collaborative effort and your voice counts when you use it.

Read more