talk ethnicity and church this Sunday 9/2 night

I know it’s Labor Day weekend. I’m scrambling for something fun for the family to close out the summer, even tho’ the weather here in the OC won’t actually change at all. Maybe a Saturday Fun Roll or Greek Festival or the Orange Intl Street Fair, who knows, but no road trips away.

For 60 minutes, join NextGenerAsianChurch.com as we talk over Skype about this burning question: “What role could / should / does ethnicity play in the Asian American church?” This isn’t like Cramer’s Lightning Round or Rush’s Open Line Friday or Hannity’s Insanity to Trash the Lines. We’ll have a moderated conversation where everyone participates, and who knows, it may just get a bit lively and exciting.

[update 9/04] Skypecast didn’t work, so we improvised and used a free conference call service and brought 4 of us together (David Park, Josh Deng, Joshua Settles, and myself) for an hour discussion. Listen to it below or download the MP3 (27 MB) — it took me a bit of rambling to get the conversation rolling, and it gets good towards the 2nd half.

[mp3]http://djchuang.podomatic.com/enclosure/2007-09-03T17_19_33-07_00.mp3[/mp3]

Use the free software Skype to join the skypecast on Sun 9/2 at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific. [update] Skypecast isn’t working; we’re using a free conference call — dial-in to 218-486-1300, conference bridge # is 890537 (long distance charges may apply, or use SkypeOut, or better, use your free weekend minutes on your cell phone).

Here’s 4 sound-bite kindlings to get your mind revved up::

August 31, 2007 | Filed Under dialogue, internet | Comments 

multiethnic churches saying and doing different things

Mark DeYmaz pastors Mosaic Church over in Little Rock, Arkansas, and it’s very ethnically diverse. Goes to show — your church doesn’t have to be in a cosmopolitan top 10 population density center to be diverse. His new book, Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church : Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation, is being published as we speak, and it’ll be released in October 2007 or so. I was invited to endorse it, and they’re using my quote on the back cover and at amazon.com too:

This book unpacks theological and practical principles for local churches interested in truly serving their neighboring communities in an increasingly diverse America. It paves the way for the future of the local church and the next generations of its leaders.

And just in time for the book release, Mark DeYmaz is blogging now at www.markdeymaz.com . Mark is a part of the Mosaix Global Network, which has 4 regional conferences this October and November chock-full of inspiring speakers and workshops to explain and show how to build a multiethnic church. Details for the Northeast regional conference in Pennsylvania is online at mosaixglobalnetworkne.blogspot.com.

David Park and the Atlanta Emergent cohort had some very intense conversations about racism that lasted for hours, even past closing time of where they were chatting.

Racism and the church isn’t supposed to be an easy topic. So while I was pleasantly surprised to see 9 Marks Ministries dedicate its entire Sept/Oct 2007 issue of its eJournal to discuss issues related to the problem of racism. The 13 articles and book reviews are organized under 3 headings: Is there a race problem? Reflections on the problem, and Overcoming the problem.

I found most of their articles to barely scratch the surface of the embedded problem of race within the American church. While upholding the imperative to think theologically about all things, and perhaps due to the limited space of addressing such a complex and multi-layered problem, all the energy gets spent on theological abstractions and doctrinal priorities with little consideration for strategic moves to make long overdue systemic and structural changes. So let’s get to the fresh thinking about racism already, rather than concluding with the same song to get more theological and get more thinking about the racism problem. And let’s really dig deeper and recognize how culture shapes theology, and the lens by which theological constructs were put together may need re-examination and itself re-considered in a more multicultural context.

Note the 3 Asian voices in the mix: Sam Lam wrote about 10 lessons he got from reading Frank Wu’s Yellow, and Jeremy Yong & Geoffrey Chang both wrote book reviews on Growing Healthy Asian American Churches.

What I’d like to see: someone from the “gold-standard” Reformed theological camp write a book that does articulate how a Reformed kind of Asian American church would look like and address that cultural milieu. And, why is it that just thinking rightly about theology, the Gospel, and the cross, and supposedly living out of that faith, has not resulted in Reformed churches being any more ethnically-diverse than non-Reformed churches.

[update 8/31] Good grades means less friends for Blacks and Latinos. cf. The Fryer-Torelli paper, An Empirical Analysis of Acting White (PDF), has gained much attention and buzzworthiness among scholars in The Academy as of late, which found an inverse relationship between good grades and popularity among Blacks and Latinos. [ht: 8asians.com]

[update 9/4] The Baptist Standard weighs in race issues in the church too:

And, Ed Stetzer has a good discussion going at his blog post titled Racism and 9 Marks.

August 30, 2007 | Filed Under dialogue, internet | Comments 

ALL South Korean hostages are now released!

Good news, hallelujah!!!!!!!!!!!!

[update 8/30/07 15:56:02 GMT] According to Reuters, witnesses have confirmed Afghan Taliban free 4 more Korean hostages and TALIBAN FREE THE THREE REMAINING KOREAN HOSTAGES IN AFGHANISTAN! AP wire reports Final South Korean Hostages Freed.

[8/29/07] 12 South Korean hostages have been released! 41 days of captivity. Sigh. This excerpt from CNN, quoting the AP wire:

Taliban militants have released 12 out of 19 South Korean hostages held in captivity in Afghanistan for more than a month.

The hostages were released into the care of officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross at three separate locations in central Afghanistan close to the city of Ghazni, according to The Associated Press .

The first group of three women were released in the village of Qala-e-Kazi. Several hours later, four women and one man were released in a desert close to Shah Baz. As dusk approached, four more hostages were freed on a main road around 31 miles from Ghazni.

Go right to the source and check the AP wire for the latest >>

According to this video, all the hostages will be released in the next 2 to 3 days. Also see this video from AP about the 12 hostages’ release.

August 29, 2007 | Filed Under internet | Comments 

dining with Daniel Eng

Good meetup with Daniel Eng this afternoon over coffee and spilling over into dinner. (We went for the bottomless fries at Red Robin.)

DJ and Daniel

Daniel made an impression on me for his active pursuit of interviews with Asian American ministry leaders during the past year, and lived to tell about it on his blog. He’s very open to learning and soaking things up like a sponge. Good guy.

And he gave me a green light to grab a couple of free mugs from Talbot’s welcome table. :)
2 free mugs

August 28, 2007 | Filed Under journal | Comments 

church planting. logo design. low cost.

There seems to be a huge surge of church planting activities since my seminary days a decade ago. Sometimes I wish I could be a church planter, sorta like I’ve long wished to be a comedian, or tried to be a pastor. But in the real world, I just gotta be me.

Aaron Flores has been forming a church community in Santa Ana, more organic and missional, rather than the high-risk low-success-rate of typically organization-driven church plants. Aaron writes in Church Planting on a Dime about how to plant a church on the cheap — low risk because of low cost, covering topics like facilities, communications + marketing, finances, legal, staff, office, etc.

What about old church buildings? Donate Church Group has some great ideas and possibilities for older churches and older church buildings — instead of cashing them out into residential units, banks, or offices, it’d be such a better legacy to have the building gifted to bless a new church plant.

What about logo design, for church plants or whatever business or organization startups? Here’s a bunch of ways I quickly found for getting one done with a set price-point rather than custom design (note: this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, since everyone has their own terms and limitations) ::

Another helpful list of tips from SEOish experts — How to market a website on $100, answering the question, “What would you do if you only had 100 dollars to market your website?”

[update] Get free web hosting from Dreamhost if your church (or nonprofit) has a 501c3 IRS determination letter. ht: superhua and GeekandGod

August 28, 2007 | Filed Under internet | Comments 

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