America's Growing Asian Churches
A new book offers ministry insights for their unique challenges.
Reviewed by Mark Noll | posted 6/01/2006 12:00AM
The United States is rapidly becoming the most multicultural Christian country in the world, and one of the main reasons is the growth of Asian American congregations. This timely volume is a spiritually sensitive introduction to these rapidly growing churches. It features dynamic congregations on both coasts and a few places in between.
Different chapters (and different authors) take up many of the pressing issues that bear with special force on Asian Americans, including leadership, the use of Scripture, intergenerational tension, evangelism, gender, social justice, and ancestral concepts of shame.
Treatment of these concerns draws on deep wells of congregational experience as well as careful attention to biblical precepts. The result is a series of exceedingly thoughtful guidelines for negotiating the shoals of multiethnic, multigenerational, and multicultural Christian life.
As an Anglo reader, I was most struck by the collaborative nature of this book (with 10 authors contributing chapters and many others thanked for active collaboration), and also by the consistent reference to local congregations as "households." In these instances—and more—insight into the singular perils and potential of Asian American church life quickly became instructive Christian wisdom for believers of any ethnicity.
Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
Growing Healthy Asian American Churches is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.
More information is available from InterVarsity Press.
Christianity Today recently covered the growth of Asian American Christians at elite colleges.
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