“Your church is not biblical.”
I grew up as an English-speaking worshipper in a Chinese-American church. When I went away to college, I started attending Boston Chinese Evangelical Church. I also started going to different Christian campus groups. The group I most identified with, was the Asian-American fellowship. More on this group in another post.
During my freshman year, I also attended (when I could) a predominantly white campus fellowship. I also befriended some other Christian students who attended another campus fellowship which was predominantly white. For some of them, I was the Asian-American Christian that they knew the best.
Upon talking about race and ethnicity in God’s kingdom, I started to learn about some of my white friends’ view of ethnic-specific ministries. “Your church is not biblical. Your (Asian) fellowship goes against what God desires.” I remember them appealing to the diverse and uncountable multitude in Revelation 7, telling me that God desires that races worship together. I heard the term “voluntary segregation”—referring to people of minority groups purposely spending time together. They communicated to me that their groups and churches were more biblical, and more pleasing to God. “Come to my church! Come and experience diversity.”
Imagine how I felt when my family, the people I cared about the most, the place where I experienced most of my spiritual growth, was accused of being displeasing to God. I felt like it was more than a little self-righteous.
It offended me greatly. In telling me to leave my church and join theirs, I felt like they were just telling me to be white. I felt belittled. I saw their mostly-white fellowships and asked myself what made them think that their groups were more biblical than my mostly-Asian-American groups. Perhaps it was because the groups I attended contained the word “Chinese” or “Asian” in their names. Even so, it’s not as if we would’ve discouraged non-Asians to come. We would’ve welcomed them—or at least I would’ve.
I would venture to suggest that everyone has experienced being a minority at some point in their life—some situation where they were not like most of the people. With it comes feelings of discomfort and self-consciousness. The truth is, as an Asian-American, I experience this everyday. Everyday I am bombarded with reminders that I am different. People treat me differently because of the way I look. I speak the same language, I wear the same clothes, eat the same food—yet because of my skin tone, hair color, and facial features, I am treated differently.
It can be tiring. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to be white in America. I know it would be easier. Sometimes I felt shame about who I was—why couldn’t I just look like everyone else? I’m thankful that God has taken me on a journey to embrace myself and the way He’s made me.
But I am still different, and I am reminded every day as I interact with society. You want diversity? I experience it everyday. I’d like my white brothers and sisters to try being an minority for an extended amount of time, and feel what ethnic minorities feel all the time in America, before condemning our ethnic-specific ministries.
It’s a lot easier for a white person to be a minority for a short amount of time. Come to my church, experience being a minority for three hours in a week. It might be a novel thing for a white person to do. But that would speak much louder than telling Asian-Americans to go to white churches.
I realize that I appreciated the times I was with others who are like me, to fit in and just be myself. It’s in the environments where I am not distracted my minority appearance that I have encountered God and been able to worship Him freely. There are others who attended my church and fellowship who would’ve been completely uncomfortable opening up to others if the group was predominantly white.
When a racial/cultural barrier is gone, it creates an environment where people could more readily experience and grow in Christ. Missionaries understand this.
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that groups that are ethnically diverse are not providing this environment. What I am saying is that I have had the majority of my spiritual growth happen in ethnic-specific ministries. I should not be condemned for that.
I believe that there should be and is diversity in the body of Christ. This goes beyond race—it’s culture, language, socioeconomic status. But the body of Christ is the entire church. We should be aiming for diversity and unity among THE body, not necessarily each INDIVIDUAL body.
Are people living God-pleasing lives? Are they loving God and loving others? Are they fulfilling the Great Commission? These are the questions we should be asking. There is already enough division within the Church. Condemning homogeneous groupings, no matter how well-meaning, adds to the division.
If you would like to worship with people of different races and others want to worship with you, that’s great! I am very pleased by that. There is definitely a prominent place for that in God’s kingdom. However, there is also a prominent place for people to worship with others like them.
Much of what you wrote resonated with me. In college in addition to attending a Chinese American fellowship group, I also went to a few meetings and retreats of a predominantly white fellowship group. Like you, I was told that monoethnic groups were displeasing to God. I wanted to point out to them that theirs too was a largely monoethnic group where the culture of Christianity practiced was white, notwithstanding the splattering of the occasional minority in the group. I also wanted to tell them that if they were so concerned about the monoethnic groups and felt that they should be multiethnic, then they were more than welcome to join.
Today, I don’t mince my words so much to my older contemporaries. When I hear the same thing being espoused, I tell them that there are plenty of churches in Chinatown where they can begin their ministry of multiethnicizing the monoethnic churches. But are we surprised when they never take up the challenge. Apparently not, because we’ve come to see that multiethnicizing has to occur on a decidedly monoethnic manner.
Personally, I feel a lot of white churches are more displeasing to God than non-white churches. White culture has the distinction of being the most self-reliant and individual, which is so anti body of Christ mentality. Actually, American culture is like that. I can’t speak for European countries.
Anyway, when I visited white campus ministries and even the “multi-ethnic” ones, I feel so out of place. And then only the white males talk to me. Not even my childhood friends will say hi, when I visited their white fellowship groups.
wow. I just felt my blood boil reading this post. It’s a self-defeating criticism to say, “your church is not Biblical for staying ethno-centric” because this is at large, what the white church has done / is doing. Man, that pisses me off.
Second, the need for ethno-centric churches is not only necessary, but essential. My Korean forbears would not have thrived in a spiritually white nor multiethnic environment. They needed an inherently “Korean faith”. Nothing wrong with that. To demand that they culturally divorce themselves is Western imperialism at its’ worst.
On top of that it’s shitty missiology (u can tell I feel strongly about this) because it prevents any indigenization of faith. Christianity IS NOT USA-centric, and it is certainly not exclusively anglo-centric.
I’m assuming the kid who said this to you was a college student back in the day. I can forgive his ignorance. But I hope he’s done some growing up since then.
Nice, Daniel. My own 2 years as a member if an African American church and nearly ten years in a Chinese American church were invaluable experiences. You do your thing!
Hello Pastor Steve! Thanks for dropping by. Hope you found it a worthwhile
read. Any thoughts?