We are a predominantly Asian American Church. What does that mean? Was that our intention? What does the Bible teach about ethnicity?

I do believe the Bible teaches that the church should be diverse. All ethnicities will worship Jesus. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Every nation will bow before the Lord (Rev 7:9). Paul in many of his letters paints a picture of the church where the Gentiles and the Jews are United. They aren’t divided by ethnicity.

So then why isn’t this church multi-ethnic? The honest truth for that is because when we started the church, our social circles were primarily Asian American. And as a church that is primarily relational and word of mouth, mostly Asian Americans have come to our church. We could have intentionally pushed against that. We could have intentionally tried to invite our white, black, and Latino brothers and sisters to worship with us. Some of our core team wanted to go in that direction. But others did not.

The Baggage of Being Multi-Ethnic

While acknowledging that the end picture for the church is a multi-ethnic one, I think we also have to acknowledge some of the baggage around race and ethnicity today. We are located in the United States, in California, and in San Diego. So what I’m going to say may not apply outside of this context. You may or may not identify with what we’ve observed. Your experience may be similar or different depending on where you’re located or where you grew up.

Many Asian Americans grow up ashamed of their own race. Many Asian Americans carry internalized racism even though we’re unaware of it. Visiting primarily immigrant Asian churches like a Chinese church, Vietnamese church or other Asian church, you notice that the people who attend that church look and act different than the Asian Americans that attend multi-ethnic churches. Being accepted and being friends with white and black people give Asian Americans social validity in the eyes of some or even many. Those who are less “cool” are forced to socialize or hang out with other Asians only. Of course this is not everywhere at all times. This is just the experience of some of our members.

Not every Asian American would feel comfortable in a multi-ethnic church. Multi-ethnic churches often need to work every hard to invite and push toward other ethnic groups in order to intentionally become multi-ethnic. They need to cross barriers so of course it will be very difficult. And that’s a good thing. But for us, we realized that we would have to push very hard to focus on inviting and reaching out to white brothers and sisters. While that’s probably a good thing in many contexts, in a context where most of our society is pushing very hard to welcome white brothers and sisters, it felt like this didn’t fit us. Very few churches intentionally look to and push really hard to welcome specifically Asian American brothers and sisters. So if we, as Asian Americans pushed very hard to reach black and white brothers and sisters, this could be read as internalized racism yet again. White and black people are more “cool” and we need them in our church in order to validate our standing in society. I need to be friends with a bunch of white people in order to be a true American.

We’ve heard stories about Asian American churches that intentionally tried to become more multi-ethnic. One of the stories told was that people felt that the churched cared more about white people and being a cool multi-ethnic church. So the church ignored their less cool Asian American members. While this story may or may not have been accurate, it is the baggage that many Asian Americans carry.

While we definitely don’t think that that type of thinking is true, it’s baggage that many Asian Americans carry. That baggage is something we have to avoid. But even beyond that, it gives us an opportunity to address specifically Asian American issues.

Asian American Issues

One of the issues that Asian Americans face is being lumped together. Now because we’re specifically Asian American, the diversity within Asian American can be explored. What are the cultural differences and similarities between Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Chinese and Indians? Often we don’t realize some of the differences because they haven’t ever been explored. But by exploring these differences, not only do we understand each other better, we also understand ourselves and our own cultural background and identity.

Family dynamics, especially with parents is a big issue that is common among second generation Asian Americans. Issues like these can be directly addressed and modeled. Are we supposed to be friends with our parents or not? How are we supposed to treat them. How are they supposed to treat us? How do we heal? How do we understand our immigrant parents. In a multi-ethnic church, a lot less modeling and direct teaching can be done on this issue.

Other Types Of Diversity

It also gives us the opportunity to focus on other types of diversity. Ethnic diversity is not the only type of diversity that we want to have in our church. We desire a truly multi-generational church where older people, families and children can love and interact with and befriend students, seniors and young adults. In order to be a picture of God’s family, families are multigenerational. This issue was rarely specifically addressed in the New Testament because they had it. It didn’t need to be addressed. But today many churches are segmenting further and further. In fact, this is an issue with our society as a whole. Interest groups are more popular. Children are separated into grades. We really only interact with people our exact same age with our exact same interests. This is harmful to our character and spirituality. As a church we need to grow and develop diversity of friendships and relationships, mentorships, brotherhood, across ages.

Another type of diversity that Asian Americans experience is the diversity within their own immigrant experience. My wife Cindy is an immigrant from Hong Kong. I am a second generation Chinese American that was born in the United States. We’re actually very different because our backgrounds are different. In many ways I identify with my white friends more than even my wife. So my wife and I have to learn to get along, learn to understand cultural differences, and learn to communicate in different ways. There is tremendous diversity within Asian American communities and we need to acknowledge that and embrace that. Simply because we’re not pushing hard to cross the skin color diversity barrier, does not means we’re not crossing East vs West barriers, or cultural diversity barriers.

Not Exclusive to Asian Americans

We also don’t want to be exclusive to Asian Americans. While we are an Asian American Church, this is more of a descriptive rather than prescriptive label. That’s what we are right now. We have mostly Asian Americans. This doesn’t mean non-Asian American people cannot come to our church and belong and be accepted. We don’t say that we are intentionally trying to stay Asian American or continue down this path. That is just what God has given us at this moment. If within a few years the ethnic composition of our church has changed, we probably won’t use that label at all anymore. As it is, we rarely use that label because that label is not our primary goal. Our primary goal is to be a community of healing that connects people with Jesus. Does healing mean addressing Asian American issues? Yes. Does healing mean that we are sensitive to the baggage that many Asian Americans carry? Yes. But healing may eventually mean we do want to intentionally cross the skin color barriers.

Baby steps are ok

We have a puppy and we take our puppy to dog training class. One of the things that our dog training consistently says is, “baby steps.” Meaning the dog needs to learn in very incremental steps before he can learn the task. For example, if we want him to stay, we have to only take one small step away from him and tell him to stay. Then two steps. Then three. Then 5. Then 10. Then we can go around the corner and ask him to stay.

The same is true of our spirituality. I do believe that God wants us to be a multi-ethnic church at the end. But I also believe that he is very happy with baby steps. He doesn’t expect us to take the massive leap directly toward multi-ethnicity. That in itself could have problems. Maybe we’re not ready yet. Maybe there are things outside of our control in the culture at large that needs to change before we can have a real multi-ethnic church that doesn’t carry the baggage. But we can take baby steps. Maybe we’re not multi-ethnic yet, but maybe we can branch out from primarily Chinese to East Asian. Or we can branch out from East Asian to pan-Asian. Maybe we can cross the barriers of generations. Maybe we can just cross the barriers of talking to a brand new person we’ve never met.

If we force the final product without taking the whole step by step journey to get there, we’re jumping the gun. We don’t understand this as a culture, but we also don’t understand why Jesus didn’t eliminate slavery or misogyny or hunger, or war when he was here on earth. To be sure he will eliminate those things, but those things will be eliminated in his time. It’s his timing that we need to wait on. In the meantime we do need to take forceful steps in the right direction. I believe the right direction is diversity and I do believe our church is taking forceful steps in the correct direction. But we’re not forcing the end to come about in our time. Our people aren’t always ready for it. Even the people who think they’re ready for it, the people who think they want a multi-ethnic church do not fully understand what that means and all the implications of it. So we need to let God lead us in his timing. His plan, his timing, his direction, his goals, his vision for the church is the best.