training English-speaking Chinese leaders

Eugene Hor has been the pastor for English ministries at the Burwood Chinese Presbyterian Church in Sydney, Australia since 1999, involved in planting their evening congregation Burwood@Five, now known as GracePoint.

I’d recently found his blog and website, and learned of his work with Rev. Ying Yee as members of the English Task Force of Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelization (CCCOWE). They’ve been working on the development of the Ministry Apprentice Program (MAP) in Sydney, Australia. This apprentice program is a 2-year process that’s designed to provide on-the-job leadership and ministry training for next generation pastors, and even helps develop a ministry training culture in the church. It’s interesting to see this kind of development around the world among Chinese Christian leaders to better train up the English-speaking next generation.

View the Entrust Newsletter- January-March 2007 for stories of how the MAP (Ministry Apprentice Program) is working to raise up Gospel workers & ministry leaders, and the Entrust Newsletter- October-December 2006 for the vision of mentoring and raising up 1,000 ministry leaders in a decade.

China’s New Creative Class

The cover story of June 2007’s Fast Company featured the new generation of cultural creatives in China, The Next Cultural Revolution: The Chinese don’t get creativity, right? Sure, they can stamp out a widget, or knock off a DVD, but when it comes to imagination, they just don’t have the gene. Well, keep telling yourself that. This will be exciting to see unfold, just as cultural creatives emerge among next generation Asian Americans in the United States too. Here’s an excerpt:

… While a flurry of activity (and, yes, a government five-year plan) has stressed scientific and technological innovation, look a little closer and you’ll see that creativity in art and industry–in design, fashion, media, and the like–is fast becoming a driving national mission.

Look past the behemoth Three Gorges Dam, past a highway system that will be larger than America’s by 2020, and China is building a creative infrastructure, too, at breakneck speed. You can sense it in the trendy restaurants and slick boutiques popping up in major cities–and in the gritty ex-warehouse and factory districts where imagination-driven companies are joining the cafés and art galleries that first settled in.

… But does China have what it takes to become a creative superpower? At first glance, even the Chinese seem unsure. “We asked a thousand 15- to 35-year-olds in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to rank the 20 or 25 words that best describe China,” says P.T. Black, an American-born partner of Jigsaw International, a Shanghai-based trend-forecasting firm that counts major multinationals as clients. And “‘creative’ placed close to last.”

… “In Chinese society, it’s always the old people who have power,” says Ou, who’s dressed in a pair of pea-green Nikes to complement his austere eyewear and uniform of black. “We want to create a platform for young people to speak their own voice.”

… “The young generation in China is unbelievably strong,” says Stefano Boeri, who, as editor of the Italian design bible Domus (he’s now at Abitare), oversaw the launch of the magazine’s Chinese edition last year. Boeri is referring to China’s emerging architects, but his words resonate more broadly: “They still need to metabolize,” he continues, “but in a few years, they’ll produce something new. Of this I’m absolutely sure.”

… Not that China doesn’t have some work to do. Overall, its education system still does little to inspire. And then there’s the weight of government censorship (a heavily redacted Internet, for example), red tape, and all that nagging piracy–though Beijing is working on a national design policy that promises, officially at least, to better protect intellectual property rights while promoting new education initiatives. What’s more, while the country has spectacularly leapfrogged into contemporaneity, the flip side, many Chinese will tell you, is that there’s not much of a pop- or sub-culture foundation to build on.

Read the full article >>

United States has more than 100 million minorities

from DiversityInc.com’s New Census Data Proves Changing Demographics: People of Color Top 100M
By Aysha Hussain and Barbara Frankel

In 2000, corporate America had a wake-up call when the Census Bureau announced the rapid growth of the Latino population in the United States. The Census Bureau’s predictions of changing demographics are coming true and are exceeding original expectations. It’s clear that by 2050, if not sooner, white people will be a minority in this country. As of 2006, one in three people in this country was a person of color.

“To put this into perspective, there are more minorities in this country today than there were people in the United States in 1910. In fact, the minority population in the U.S. is larger than the total population of all but 11 countries,” Census Bureau Director Louis Kincannon said in a statement.

Why is this so critical to business? Companies are in a war for talent — and increasingly that talent is found in people of color. The 2007 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity — already are cornering the market on that talent.

Consider these facts:

The Top 50 hire 42 percent people of color; the U.S. work force is 29 percent people of color, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

• Although Top 50 companies employ only 5 percent of the U.S. work force, they employ 17 percent of the college-educated people of color, according to data from the BLS and National Education Statistics
• Twenty-five percent of Top 50 companies’ management are people of color, compared with 15 percent people of color in management nationwide, according to the BLS

Companies also are recognizing that, increasingly, people of color are their consumers. And as household income of people of color rises dramatically (it’s increased at more than twice the rate of white households since 1990, according to Census Bureau data), those customers are vitally important. Companies that have the cultural competence to reach those customers will be there in the long run.

In 1990, people of color had 15.6 percent of U.S. buying power but are projected to possess 25 percent by 2011, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. Latino buying power is up 566 percent in that period, compared with a 532 percent rise for Asians, 346 percent for blacks and only 275 percent for whites.

Here are more facts from the newest Census Bureau data, which covers July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, that make the business case for diversity:

People of color now account for 100.7 million of the population, with Latinos as the largest group. A year ago, people of color totaled 98.3 million

• The nation’s black population surpassed 40 million, accounting for 13.4 percent of the population
• Latinos were the largest minority group, with 44.3 million, 14.8 percent of the population
• Latinos were the fastest-growing group, with a 3.4 percent increase during the periods. Asians were the second fastest-growing group, with a 3.2 percent increase. The black population increased by 1.3 percent
• Four states — California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas — as well as the District of Columbia, now have people of color as the majority.
• People of color on average are younger than white people. The median age for Latinos was 27.4, compared with 36.4 for the population as a whole. The median age for the black population was 30.1 and the median age for the Asian population was 33.5.
• According to USA Today, immigration accounts for more than 40 percent of the U.S. population growth since 2000.

growing Asian American university ministries

San Francisco Chronicle featured this article about UC BERKELEY, “Evangelicals build flock on campus: At Cal, Christian groups find eager adherents among Asian American students” [ht: Peter Ong] –

… They weren’t celebrating their culture, though. They were celebrating Christ.

… Asian Americans dominate evangelical Christian groups at UC Berkeley, far outstripping their share of enrollment, even as the number of Asian Americans on campus has grown markedly. The trend is visible to varying degrees at several of the nation’s elite universities.

With this shift has come the realization by college ministries that faith is not always colorblind — no matter the Christian ideal — and that they should tailor their outreach to different communities instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.

… The magazine Christianity Today dubbed the trend “the tiger in the academy,” saying “Asian students are more likely to show Christian commitment” than other ethnic groups, including white students. [cf. cached CT article]

… Evangelical groups have consistently appealed to Asian Americans because Asians often share common values, despite coming from different ethnicities, said Russell Jeung, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

“Because Asians have a hard work ethic, they need to work to experience grace,” he said. “They try to earn God’s favor, just like they earn a parent’s approval.”

Asian Americans may also be drawn to evangelical groups because they are more accustomed than other students to identifying with a group rather than seeing themselves foremost as individuals, said Tommy Dyo, former leader of the Asian American Christian Fellowship, a national evangelical organization. He now heads the Asian American ministry for Campus Crusade for Christ.

“A lot of what we are taught in general society is that it’s very individual, that it’s all you,” Dyo said. “But Asian Americans are attached to the greater whole.”

That collective sense often stems from Asian Americans’ relationship with their parents, leaders said. Christie Heller De Leon explained the pressure of parental expectations in a speech at InterVarsity’s most recent Asian American conference, held the same weekend as ethnic-specific get-togethers for black, Latino, multiracial and white students in Northern California.

“Our parents have been dreaming about us since we were in the womb,” said De Leon, a Filipina and a staff leader at UC Davis. “Dreams full of blessings and happiness. Yet sometimes the dream is so specific it feels like a script, handed down, ready for us, already written and ready for us to step into the role.”

God’s love is different, they say.

“You receive the blessing before you’ve done anything good,” De Leon said. “Despite anything bad that you have done.”

Read the full article >>

developing next gen Korean UMC churches

A Task Force on Korean American Ministries was called for by General Conference of the United Methodist Church denomination. In their report from March/April 2000, their findings are consistent with what L² Foundation has noticed among many ethnic Asian immigrant churches:

A main concern among both laypeople and clergy is that the traditional styles of leadership that worked well for first-generation congregations may not serve the second generation equally well. The Korean American United Methodist community has experienced tensions within its membership over such issues as the role of clergywomen, the role of the laity, the need to develop either Korean-language resources or bilingual and English-language resources, and the need to develop leaders who can minister effectively to the next generation of Korean Americans.

The Korean American National Plan was established by the United Methodist General Conference of 2000 to strengthen Korean ministries. Since I don’t read Korean, I was not able to readily learn about how this National Plan at the Korean-language UMC.org website proceeds to empowers new styles of leadership for the second generation Korean/Asian Americans and English-language resources.

I did learn of a conference called the TG Convocation on August 1-5, 2007, hosted by the English Ministry at Arcola Korean United Methodist Church in New Jersey. Its theme this year is missions, both in the local context and overseas. The keynote speaker is Reverend Dr. Minho Song, senior pastor of Young Nak Presbyterian Church of Toronto. He is an experienced English ministry pastor with a passion for teaching and missions.

I’ve contacted the conference organizers to learn more about how the UMC is developing leadership for next generation Korean/ Asian Americans. Will report here what I find.