The L² Foundation blog has moved to L2Foundation.org/blog — please update your bookmark and stay up-to-date.

Here are the links to the current version of the top 10 posts::

• largest Korean churches in North America
• largest Chinese churches in North America
• United States has more than 100 million minorities
• Asian Americans largest minority in Plano Texas
• definition of leadership
• seminary scholarship funds
• okay not to be a senior pastor
• talking about church salary
• Asian American leadership styles
• alarming statistics about American Born Chinese

The original content from this L² Foundation blog since 2007 has been migrated at the new blog location for on-going discussion in the comment threads, but we weren’t able to keep the original permalinks.

Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted an online discussion last month on the future of religious charities. These 3 panelists fielded questions:

• William O’Keefe, the senior director of advocacy for Catholic Relief Services, in Baltimore, an organization that receives federal money to provide overseas development aid.
• Paul Lichterman, an associate professor of sociology and religion at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, and co-editor of the book Civic Life in American Religion.
• Joshua Hale, executive director of the Big Shoulders Fund, in Chicago. The fund has raised more than $155-million to help defray tuition and operating costs for 93 of Chicago’s most-needy inner-city Catholic schools.

Read the chat transcript online.

From the Project Contempo blog::

Project Contempo is doing a national online survey of the English-speaking congregations of the Canadian Chinese churches. This national survey is not primarily a survey of churches but a survey of individuals. These include all who attend the English service of a Canadian Chinese church, irrespective of their age, employment and ethnicity. All responses will be kept anonymous and the results will be tabulated and analyzed nationally.

… The deadline of the survey is May 31st 2008. It will only take 15 minutes to complete. Simply go to http://projectcontempo.ca and follow the link provided.

They need you to respond to the survey — and please spread the word to Canadian worshipers too.

I just got word of this special event from Pastor Ken Fong of Evergreen LA . This conversation is especially for Southern California Asian American evangelical churches and they are making a short film about this for release in the coming year.

Saturday, May 10, 7:00 p.m. @ Sanctuary of Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles www.ebcla.org

WE NEED TO TALK: A Conversation about Homosexuality & the Asian American Christian Church. Sponsored by the Christian Social Issues (CSI) group, an informal gathering of Asian American Christians who discuss wide-ranging social issues and how they relate to our Christian faith. Join three old friends – two straight and one gay – who will engage in a conversation that needs to happen more often in order to dispel ignorance, quell fear and hatred, and foster greater understanding. Debate about scriptural interpretation or scientific evidence is not within the scope of this dialogue. It is not our intent to resolve this highly complex issue. Though we may ultimately arrive at different conclusions, at the very least, we need to break the awful silence in our churches surrounding this subject. We really need to talk.

If you have a friend or loved one who is gay, or you are gay yourself, or you are a Christian who is concerned about this issue, please join us in this much needed and long-awaited dialogue.

Jaeson Ma is a part of the oneTHING conference in Los Angeles, this weekend April 17-19, 2008, particularly for mobilizing Asian Americans to prayer and worship:

Registration is FREE! onething is a part of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri (IHOP–KC).

If you can get to Atlanta on next Saturday, this lecture looks very relevant to ministering in the Korean American context:

History, Identity, & Destiny of Korean Americans: from generation to generation at Columbia Theological Seminary, near Atlanta, Georgia. April 12th, 2008 from 2pm – 6pm. Special guest Dr. Daniel D. Pak. More info >>

This blog will go into a deep freeze for a week or two, while we get all the content is migrated into a newly redesigned L2 Foundation website, where the website and blog will be seamlessly integrated. You can take a sneak peek here — note: the redesign website is using a temporary web address, do not bookmark; and, we’re working on getting the permalinks from here to migrate over, but that’s not a cake walk. props to Tim Bednar of Turtle Interactive for the redesign.

Would love your feedback about the redesign – add a comment below.

Russell Jeung (Associate Professor of Asian Studies at San Francisco State University) gave 4 talks at the first Asian American conference hosted by Bread of Life Church in Torrance, California, March 7-9. We recorded the first talk from Friday night. (Videos from all the talks may be made available later, but no guarantees.)

With permission from Russell Jeung, we are grateful for being able to post the first talk online. Here’s the audio (mp3, running time = 75:41) and slides from his March 7th presentation titled, “Daniel 2: Asian American Values of Wisdom, Community, and Humility” >>

Sat in parts of the Symposium on Religion in Los Angeles, a 2-day event jointly hosted by Cal State University Los Angeles and Claremont School of Theology. Fascinating conversations and presentations that exemplified the growing interest in the sociology of religion, and most of the presentations explored the inter-relationship of religions and ethnicities.

Russell Jeung, Associate Professor of Asian Studies at San Francisco State University, made an insightful presentation titled “Religiosity in Asian America: Spiritual Vitality, Secularism, and Racialization.”

With permission from Russell Jeung, we are grateful for being able to post yesterday’s talk online. Here’s the audio (mp3 – run time = 42:17) and slides from his March 6th presentation about Asian American religious affiliation >>

I thought slides #3 and #4 were most interesting, charting out the religious affiliation of Asian Americans, with respondents identifying as Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, other, none, or refused. These charts are very timely, as the major survey results by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life was just released last week, and has been highlighted in 300+ news articles. Several other conversations at the symposium responded and interacted with these Pew Forum’s extensive survey results. (also, see video overview about the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey)

Russell would very much like to get your feedback and thoughts about this presentation — please add a comment below.

Just got word of this lecture series from Russell Jeung, Associate Professor of Asian Studies at San Francisco State University. Via the Yahoo Group for Asian American Christians for Justice::

Hi all:

If you’re in Los Angeles, I’m speaking at CSU LA and at Bread of Life Church in Torrance this week. You’re welcome to come.

CSU LA is hosting a symposium, “Religion in Los Angeles, in the Americas, in the Era of Globalization” on Thursday 3/6. I’ll present a paper on the latest poll data on Asian American religious affiliation and changes in the last two decades.

Bread of Life is hosting me to present a series, “Asian Americans in the Lions’ Den: A Study of Daniel” in which I compare the Jews in exile to Asian American Christians. The series discusses how being Asian American relates to our faith. The titles are:

Fri 3/7 @ 7:30pm: “Exam of Death: Daniel 2 and Asian American Values of Wisdom, Community and Humility“
Sat 3/8 @ 9:00am: “Saving Face and Asian American Achievement: Daniel 4 and 5″
Sun 3/9 @ 9:00am: “Confessions of a Boba-Bobo: Daniel 1, Asian Americans and Culinary Resolve”
Sun 3/9 @ 11:15am: “Resident Aliens: Asian Americans in Bobo-land Daniel 3 and 6″

I’d be happy to share the paper or the talks if you’re interested.

Peace,
Russell Jeung

[update 3/6] times for talks at Bread of Life added – hope to see you there!

[update 3/7] view and hear Russell Jeung’s presentation here >>