Asian-American pastors sought
By K. Connie Kang
Los Angeles Times
Asian-American churches are going through a "crisis of leadership" because seminaries are not preparing a new generation of pastors to work in multigenerational and multicultural settings, Asian-American Christian leaders say.
The problem, the leaders say, affects churches throughout the United States but is particularly pronounced in California.
At a time when Christian immigrants from Asia and Asian converts in the United States are fueling what a study calls "the most dynamic changes in American Christianity," few U.S. seminaries offer courses designed to prepare pastoral leaders for the linguistic and cultural needs of Asian-American congregations. That was the view expressed by experts who gathered last month at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., for a national summit of directors of seminary-based Asian-American Christian centers.
One result is decreasing enrollment of Asian-Americans in seminaries.
Recruiting Asian-American seminarians is "a major challenge," said Fumitaka Matsuoka, former dean of Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. "We have generous financial aid, but even with that, it's hard."
Matsuoka said only three or four Asian-American students are enrolled at his seminary, a stone's throw from the University of California-Berkeley, where 43 percent of students are Asian-Americans.
"The discrepancy is incredible," he said.
GENERATIONAL SCHISMS
At Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, Asian-American students number about 50 — down from more than 100 in the 1990s, according to the Rev. Sang Hyun Lee, a professor of systematic theology and director of the seminary's Asian-American program.
Pastors, seminary professors and lay leaders said at the session and in later interviews that generational schisms in Asian-American churches are causing clergy attrition and turnover among U.S.-born or -reared pastors. Some young pastors experience so much frustration that they start their own English-speaking, pan-Asian churches. Others become so disillusioned that they leave the ministry, experts said.
A 2005 Duke Divinity School study, "Asian American Religious Leadership Today," said the "most acute tensions" in Asian-American churches revolved around two issues:
For example, some American-born or -reared pastors consider the hierarchal structure of heavily immigrant churches and their emphasis on prosperity difficult to handle.
COMPLEX SITUATION
The situation is complex because many immigrants start on the lower rungs of the social ladder in America, and the church is one of the few social outlets where they can display trappings of success — whether it's their children's achievements or luxury cars.
Also, second-generation pastors, who often handle English-language ministries within Asian churches, say they have no influence on church policymaking because most English-language ministries are not financially self-sufficient and the big donors are often first-generation parishioners.
Seminaries affiliated with mainline denominations are experiencing the biggest loss in Asian-American enrollment.
Princeton's Lee said that only 15 percent of Asian-American seminarians attend seminaries affiliated with mainline denominations. The overwhelming majority — 80 percent — choose evangelical institutions.
CROSSING BOUNDARIES
Serving the complex Asian-American Christian communities today requires "crossing boundaries between East and West, immigrant and native-born, and between various ethnic communities," said the Rev. Tim Tseng, president of the Institute for the Study of Asian-American Christianity.
"Like Hiroshima, the fusion jazz band that blends Asian and Western instrumental and musical sensibilities, the formation of the next generation of Asian Pacific North America church leaders requires improvisation and a willingness to redefine what it means to be an Asian Christian in North America and the world," Tseng said.
For example, a young American-born pastor might have to balance his inclination to speak his mind with the assumptions of elders who expect deference from the young.
Tseng, who was born in Taiwan and reared in New York, and the Rev. Young Lee Hertig, a Korean American Presbyterian minister and lecturer at Azusa Pacific University, are co-founders of the institute.
