Customer Reviews

Growing Healthy Asian American Churches

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I found myself pulled in immediately from the first chapter. The truth captured in each chapter is not meant only for Asian Christians but can shed light upon struggles that Christians from all backgrounds can relate to.

Real life examples and illustrations in each chapter allow the readers to become fully engaged in the book, and I found myself relating to many of these stories.

This is the type of a "handbook" that can help any leader, be it pastors or elders or deacons as they search for God's truth and purpose with each challenge they face in building up the body of Christ. After having read it once, it will be included as one of my reference books that I will turn to as I did with The Purpose Driven Church, The Masterplan of Evangelism and others.

The book is rich, meaningful, and insightful--it puts words and heartfelt stories to many issues encountered in the faith journey of so many Asian Americans.

I admire the adept skill of the editors and contributors to pulled together such a volume, acknowledging the complexities and differences among the broad-stroke that often painted on Asian Americans, yet finding strong similiarities and themes that resonate for most of us in this social location. We as Asian American Christians have so much more in common and much to learn from one another, than to be siloed behind histories and labels of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and dozens of other Asian American ethnicities.

I believe this is a seminal book not only for Asian Americans, but for its attempt to wrestle with the church's orthodoxy and orthopraxy in an ethnic context. Too often theology is done with unstated ethnic-cultural assumptions from a Euro-centric perspective, and I think there's great value unearthed by this book to take a look at theology not only in an intellectual abstract, but also in the very human ethnic-cultural context.

All the contributors come from mainline churches or liberal churches. Possibly some are moderate at best. While it majors in Asian American sociological and anthropological trends and findings, it is extremely light in theology and ecclesiology.

This book devalues and marginalizes Gospel theology in favor of Asian American sociology to shape the ministries of the church. While it realizes that in many Asian American churches, a discontinuity exists between doctrinal orthodoxy and practical orthopraxy, this book suggests that in order to have continuity, it is doctrinal orthodoxy that must "be biblically and critically reassessed" to meet sociological and anthropological orthopraxy rather than reassessing the sociological and anthropological orthopraxy to meet doctrinal orthodoxy.

It is heavy on arguments of methodological comparison (Asian Americans methodology vs. Western American methodology) and personal testimonies of "what works" and "what doesn't work." But what few biblical Gospel references are given, they are interpreted through liberal or moderate theologies. The book is biased toward the Egalitarian view of role of women in ministry, as it is hailed as biblical while the Complamentarian view of role of women in ministry is mocked as sexist.

As a 2nd-Generation Asian American myself and a Reformed Baptist pastor, I found this book of little help in leading the church to become and understanding how the church can become biblically healthy. But, hopefully, this book will spark more theologically and biblically robust works to follow.

My full review of this book is available at http://thoughtsactions.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/review-growing-healthy-asian-american-churches.

This book is very informative and is a must read for anyone who desires to work among Asian Americans in the area of ministry. The book is written by a group of Asian American authors and pastors from the view of their first hand experiences as both Christians and ministers struggling with both real and perceived problems that are present in the Asian American communities and churches. This text helps bring a greater understanding and awareness of potential barriers that exist when it comes to creating a healthy church environment among Asian Americans in the United States. It deals with historical problems, current problems and issues, and potential future problems as seen through the eyes of the contributing authors. This book also can help build cultural sensitivity as one looks at a culture within our American culture that has often been overlooked and misunderstood.