Key leaders from seminaries recently explored how to increase effectiveness of seminary training at the ATS Asian/Asian North American seminary faculty consultation (reported at the ISAAC blog)::
Fifty Asian and Asian North American (AANA) seminary faculty gathered in Dallas, Texas on Dec. 7-9, 2007 to discuss how to make Theological Education more effective for AANA seminarians. The findings will be summarized in a report for the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) early in 2008. The ATS credentials seminaries in the United States and Canada, approves their degree programs, and sponsored this consultation. The Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity (ISAAC) facilitated the planning of the consultation and will draft the report.
… In 2006, AANAs made up 7.5% of the total ATS student body – which is a higher percentage than their overall population and slightly higher than their percentages in other graduate level programs (6.5%). This is equivalent to the percentage of Visa (or international) students, of whom a large number come from Asian nations. 13% of the total student body are African Americans/Canadians (which is equivalent to their population in North America) and only 3% are Hispanics (compared to their general population of 13%).
Among the AANA seminarians, only 35% are enrolled in M.Div. programs – an indicator that the traditional church ministry route is not as popular as it once was or that churches and ministry organizations are more open to hiring AANA graduates without M.Div. degrees. Approximately 4,000 AANA students attend evangelical seminaries (9% of the student body), 750 attend mainline Protestant seminaries (3.5%), and less than 500 attend Roman Catholic seminaries (6.7%). Interestingly, 6% of the faculty in evangelical seminaries are AANA, 4.7% in mainline Protestant seminaries, and 3% in Roman Catholic seminaries.
Read the entire report for detailed event summary >>
Categories: asian-american · theology
[also posted at Leadership Network Learnings blog]
To gain some perspective about church sizes and people’s preferences, this summary by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research sheds some light — taken from its Q&A section titled, “fast facts about church sizes“:
Q: What’s the size of U.S. churches?
A: The median church in the U.S. has 75 regular participants in worship on Sunday mornings, according to the National Congregations Study. Notice that researchers measured the median church size — the point at which half the churches are smaller and half the churches are larger — rather than the average (186 attenders reported by the USCLS survey), which is larger due to the influence of very large churches. But while the United States has a large number of very small churches, most people attend larger churches. The National Congregations Study estimated that the smaller churches draw only 11 percent of those who attend worship. Meanwhile, 50 percent of churchgoers attended the largest 10% of congregations (350 regular participants and up). [emphasis added]
Doing some quick calculations, these additional observations surfaced:
- 50% of attenders go to churches under 350 in size
- or, in other words, half of churchgoers like smaller churches, while another half of churchgoers like larger churches
- 4.7 million church attenders (8.4%) go to megachurches
- out of the approximate 300,000 Protestant churches, 1,210 (0.41%) are megachurches (over 2,000 weekly worship attendance)
- 16% of attenders go to churches under 100 in size
Also see the table titled “Approximate Distribution of U.S. Protestant and Other Christian Churches by size” for estimates of how many people attend churches of different sizes. (Note: the above statistics seems to be based on 2005 research.)
Categories: church · megachurch
In January 2007, Christianity Today reprinted its classic article dated November 23, 1973, titled “What Makes the Korean Church Grow? The simple secrets of its remarkable expansion.” This excerpt shows the magnitude of the Christianity’s growth in South Korea:
… But Korea has one of the fastest-growing churches in the world. Though it is situated squarely between China and Japan and far more recently opened to the Gospel (Protestants are ninety years old, Catholics a century older), Koreans have turned to Christ in unprecedented numbers. It is true that in North Korea Communists have wiped out the organized church, but in South Korea where there is freedom of worship some 10 to 13 percent of the population is now Christian. This makes Christianity the strongest and probably the largest organized religion in the country, outdrawing in fact, if not in dubious religious statistics, both Confucianism with its dwindling social influence and Buddhism with its more religious appeal.
Why has the church grown so spectacularly in Korea? The Christian community there just about doubles every ten years. There are now some three million Korean Christians, and if marginal semi-Christian sects were included, the total would be four million. The growth rate is approximately 9 percent a year, which is four times the rate of population growth in South Korea as a whole.
To answer the “why” question, the article’s author, Samuel H. Moffett, concludes with:
I can only point again to the foundations: the good news according to the Scriptures, the power of the Spirit, the enthusiasm of the witness, faithfulness in adversity, rootage in the national soil, and the providence of God in history.
In a recent conversation with a Korean church leader, we agreed that at its peak, South Korea was an estimated 25% Christian. However, he said that Christianity in South Korea had plateaued and is beginning to decline. One of the reasons cited for this decline was the church’s inability to reach the next generation.
While I do not have quantitative statistics to show this trend, this anecdotal comment does raise a notable concern.
Categories: church · korean
This is an FYI for our blog readers who are Americanized Asian Indians and/or interested in understanding Americanized Asian Indians.
Sam George, author of Understanding the Coconut Generation: Ministry to the Americanized Asian Indians, will be on a desi radio station based in Dallas next Sunday 12/9/07. You can listen to the show on 104.9 FM in the Dallas/Fort Worth area or go online to listen.
Radio Salaam Namaste (104.9 FM)
Program – Zindagi ka Safar with Girish Kallianpur
Listen online – http://www.radiosalaamnamaste.com/live.html
Date – Dec 9, 2007
Time – 8:00am – 10:00am (US Central Time)
Call in telephone # – 972-401-1049
This is a live program — you can call in with your questions or comments.
See the website www.CoconutGeneration.com for book excerpts, demographic overview, and more information about Americanized Asian Indians.
According to this Coconut Generation blog post, Indian Population in US – third highest,
India is among the top three countries sending people to the US. Indian ranked below Mexico and China, with Philipines a close fourth. Chinese twice as much Indians and Mexicans almost 8 times as much. Read a new report from Center for Immigration Studies. Indians continue to be largest ethnic student population in American universities (repeated again for the fourth time in Fall 07).
The nearly 2 million strong Indian community in United States is one of the most educated and wealthiest group. Nearly 39 per cent being US citizens. Highest number of PhD are held by Indian, largest real estate asset among immigrants, most enterprising, most politically active etc.
Categories: asian-american
