church renovating to serve its community

Vox Veniae, a church in Austin, Texas, that’s been described as “Asian fusion”, is featured in this Daily Texan (college newspaper of UT Austin) article, A vision for the future: Church revamps former club ::

Vox Veniae, an Austin church, signed a five-year lease for the East Austin property in November. Since then, volunteers have gathered on nights and weekends to transform the building into a positive place, said community Pastor Weylin Lee.

“The center itself is not necessarily a church; it’s actually going to be a community center building,” Lee said. “We’re kind of redoing the floor, kind of redoing the walls, making sure all the electrical is up to code. The main thing is just cosmetic, making the space a lot more open and inviting.”

… Lead Pastor Gideon Tsang said the church was launched two years ago and grew out of a college ministry set up by the Austin Chinese Church. Young professionals and college students comprise most of the church’s congregation, he said.

“Hopefully, I think [the center] will bring some healing to the community,” Tsang said. “Where it’s kind of a safe haven for the community to develop, whether its skills, education and whatever types of resources.”

Read the full article – be sure to click on “next page” to see page 2.

And, to get an inside look at the books that have been influential to shaping the ethos at Vox Veniae, see their Reading List I and Reading List II.

upcoming 3M conference for singles

I had a recent conversation with Lee Yih of Layman’s Foundation. He’s a part of hosting a unique conference called the “3M Christian Partnerships: Transforming the Marketplace, Ministry, and Marriage”, which will be at Lost Valley Ranch, Deckers, Colorado on February 14-17, 2008. Here’s what he had to say about this one-of-a-kind conference:

Q: What is the 3M conference?
Lee: A conference designed for Asian American singles that focuses on Career issues (Marketplace), having a personal ministry (Ministry), and finding a suitable partner (Marriage).

Q: What are your core values?
Lee: We have five: 1) A heart for obedience; 2) A heart for China; 3) Having an eternal perspective; 4) The Priesthood of the ordinary believer; 5) Retail Christianity

Q: What is unique about this conference?
Lee: The conference gathers a very homogeneous group of Asian Americans between the ages of 25-35 years old from all parts of the country and Hong Kong. Instead of workshops we will have small “huddles” of five attendees each meeting with outstanding practitioners of “Lay Ministry”. There will be 8 keynote sessions by 4 different speakers over the 3 day weekend. The conference venue is embarrassingly well appointed and the recreational activities of horseback riding, skeet shooting and square dancing are unique.

This conference’s teaching is especially encouraging to young adults who are are called of God to the marketplace, but not necessarily called to vocational Christian ministry. Read more information about the conference, details, speakers, schedule, etc. and view the conference flyer (links to a page with PDF).

Korean church crosses cultural lines

The NAMB (North American Mission Board) featured Berendo Street Baptist Church in Los Angeles in this article, Korean church crosses cultural lines::

Once considered the “mother church” of all Southern Baptist Korean congregations, today Berendo Street Baptist Church of Koreatown, Los Angeles, is reaching cross-culturally and building bridges for other people groups to come to know Christ.

Susumu Miyagawa, a native of Japan, started attending Berendo Street with his Korean-born wife. After he had been baptized, trained and ordained by Berendo Street, he started two Japanese churches in the Glendale, California, area before moving to Lake Elsinore and starting Gospel Siloam Church in connection with a hotel that includes bubbling hot springs. Bathhouses are very popular in Japan for their physical and spiritual healing. Miyagawa uses this to evangelize nonbelievers—the hot springs a metaphor to illustrate the need for spiritual renewal in Christ.

In addition to the Japanese church in Lake Elsinore, Berendo Street also sponsors on-site Hispanic and Chinese-Korean congregations as part of its global missions commitment.

… Located in what is still known as Koreatown, the area west of Interstate 5 and north of Interstate 10 has become increasingly multicultural. As Koreans acquired the means, many moved to suburbs. Berendo Street Baptist, however, has no plans to relocate though the church has outgrown its property—the equivalent of 17 city lots (77,000 square feet) on two sides of a residential street. About 2,000 people participate in Sunday morning worship.

As Berendo Street strengthened and matured, they found their place in God’s global plan, says former administrative pastor Yongjae “Christopher” Yim. Since its beginning in 1957, they’ve trained and sent out more than 100 people as pastors and career missionaries. Each summer Berendo Street sends out more than 100 members on short-term mission trips. The church financially supports 25 churches around the world and has adopted a Chinese-Muslim people group.

“By doing this mission work we are participants in the evangelizing of the whole world that God commanded,” Yim says. “Primarily our purpose is Korean but we bow to the people of the community.

“We have to try to understand and meet their culture for effective ministry,” Yim says. “God is a God of variety. They have their own characteristics and distinctives in culture, language and customs but even though we are different, in Christ we can be one family, like brothers and sisters in accord with each other so God is glorified by the cooperative effort.”

Read the full article >>

(also mirrored at onmission.com; plus, related 2003 article, Korean Baptists celebrate missions; 450 commit to overseas service

future of interracial families and churches

Excerpted from the book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne. These statistics give a preview of racial diversity within families (and potentially, churches) in the future::

According to Pew Research Center data from 2006, while the majority of interracial couples include a Hispanic, the most common type of interracial couple (at 14 percent) is a white man married to an Asian woman. Second, at 8 percent, is a black man married to a white woman. (Interestingly, white-Asian pairings are three times as likely to be white men with Asian women as the other way around; and black-white pairings are three times as likely to be black men with white women. Observers have commented on the lagging marriage prospects for black women and Asian men as a result — although those groups do not, as one might expect as a purely mathematical matter, seem to marry each other.)

Madison churches embrace immigrants

This article, Churches here embrace immigrants and their languages, was published in The Capital Times, a local newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin:

Moving to a new country and trying to fit in with the community can be difficult, and for some immigrant families in Madison, it’s a church that can provide a sense of home.

That’s been the experience of Sy Inthachak, who attends Bethany Evangelical Free Church on the city’s east side. Inthachak grew up in Laos but fled the country in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and spent 10 years in a Thai refugee camp before coming to the United States.

Along with another family of five, Inthachak and his family started attending Bethany Evangelical Free Church 10 years ago, and through word of mouth, the Lao Fellowship there has now blossomed to about 50 people.

“It’s our home church. It’s kind of our foundation,” Inthachak said. “We feel like family and we’re so happy to be a part of Bethany.”

While some alternate language churches in Madison have congregations large enough to support their own free-standing church, others are smaller offshoots that share space with English-speaking congregations. Services in Spanish are widespread, but French, Chinese, Korean, Lao and Hmong are among the other languages that are represented. Though many of the alternate language churchgoers speak English, participating in a religious service in their native language can feel more personal. Some churches plan special events around the Christmas holiday that incorporate elements of other cultures and traditions.

“People just generally seek out a congregation that has some kind of comfort level,” said Gordon Govier, editor of AllGodsPeople.com, a Christian community Internet portal based in Madison. “It could be ethnicity, it could be multi-ethnicity, it could be doctrine — people have a lot of choices.

“We have kind of a smorgasbord environment in terms of religion these days,” he said.

… The church offers a place where Hmong Americans can connect with one another, Xiong said. Still, he works to find a balance of services that will interest several different generations of people.

Services are offered in Hmong, which “folks from the old country” appreciate, Xiong said. For the benefit of children, there is a youth group in English and a rock band that plays contemporary Christian music during worship.

Read the full article >>