revitalizing Asian American churches
September 27, 2007
Thanks to the AALC 2008 planning team for hosting the gathering of Asian American church and ministry leaders, and the kind invitation for me to present.
The title of my presentation was “Revitalizing Asian American Churches for New Generations”. I painted a big picture with statistics about Asian Americans in the United States, and shared about a random sampling of churches that are making notable progress in reaching the next generation. Here’s the slides and audio (download mp3, file size=23mb):
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[astute listeners will notice that my slides here don’t exactly match the audio; sorry, version mix-up; update — also see the Los Angeles Times article for coverage of this event]
Other related resources mentioned:
- Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a Mission - a sociological book about how Evergreen LA is diversifying, great insider look
- Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation by Mark DeYmaz - new book to be released in October with great theological foundation and practical tips
- Asian American Church Report - free PDF download with registration
- List of Asian-led multi-Asian/multi-ethnic Church Plants (100+ less than 10 years old)
- Jumping the Sigmoid Curve (PDF) - article about the window of opportunity for churches/ organizations to grow
I felt like we only barely scratched the surface on many important issues. Well, we did cover a lot of ground in less than 45 minutes. Stay tuned here for follow-up thoughts, insights, and ideas as I unpack and drill down on related issues. Please add a comment on what you’d like to see discussed further after hearing the presentation.
There’s also a great opportunity for me to more easily meet with more Asian American church and ministry leaders now that I live in Orange County. I’d enjoy getting to discuss these issues in person — contact me by phone at 949-870-5726 or email dj@L2Foundation.org .
Find more like this: Asian American, EM, L2 Blog, church, presentation.
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October 16th, 2007
unchurched Asian Americans
One of the statistics I cited during my 9/26 presentation on revitalizing Asian American churches was “56% Asian Americans unchurched”. This number came from The Barna Update, dated March 20, 2006, specifically, “People groups with ab…