Fred Biby thought his congregation was missing an opportunity.
Dozens of Chinese immigrants were sending their children to Bridges Community Church’s preschool. But the Fremont, California, church wasn’t engaging the adults. So the associate pastor teamed up with the preschool to promote Bridges’ Sunday morning services and outreach events in Mandarin. A Mandarin-language small group formed, and 15 years later, Bridges is a congregation of about 100, with a Mandarin-language pastor on its payroll.
Biby’s initiative aligned with broader demographic trends: in 2013, China overtook Mexico as the No. 1 sender of legal immigrants to the United States.
When Latino immigration spiked in past decades, many Anglo congregations launched Spanish-language ministries. Should US churches now devote more resources to the Chinese? And will the bilingual ministry learning curve be faster this time?
Experts agree that churches won’t be able to cut and paste from their Spanish ministries.
For example, since two-thirds of Mexican immigrants live in poverty and half lack health insurance, many churches offer social services like food pantries and ESL classes. But only one-third of Chinese immigrants live in poverty, and more than half are college graduates (compared to 6 percent of Mexican immigrants), according to the Center for Immigration Studies. These demographic differences mean churches can’t rely on the same strategies to woo them.
A better fit for Chinese immigrants might be student ministries or afterschool academic programs, said Peter Wang, director of Overflow Ministries, an organization in the Bay Area that trains Asian American Christian leaders.
Shaolong Jiang pastors one of New Life Community Church’s 24 Chicago campuses. The multisite church launched a Spanish-language service in 1996; last year, it launched its first Mandarin-language service, specifically for students. Instead of typical offerings like ESL, Jiang has organized a film festival and monthly theological discussions over tea.
While America already has an estimated 1,700 Chinese churches (some partner with majority-Anglo denominations such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Southern Baptist Convention), there are still needs that non-Chinese churches can meet.
“The traditional Chinese church is not engaging students,” said Jiang. “They’re speaking with the [Chinatown] refugees or settled-down, high-achieving Chinese in the suburbs.”
Chinese churches also need help finding and training pastors. “Half of our churches that have Mandarin congregations don’t have pastors, so they are led by elders,” said Alejandro Mandes, national director of immigrant missions for the Evangelical Free Church of America. One reason: “Chinese immigrants want their kids to excel in education,” he said. “As a result, many of them do not want their kids to become pastors, because—in their minds—pastors don’t get paid as well as doctors, lawyers, and engineers.”
But before Anglo churches launch Mandarin (or Cantonese) language services, they should first partner with Chinese communities, said Jonathan Calvillo, a doctoral student at the University of California–Irvine studying assimilation and religious affiliation.
“A lot of churches … want to create something new so they can own it and control it,” he said. “But if there are churches, organizations, and nonprofits already serving that community, work with them.”
And statistics suggest it’s too early for churches to jettison Spanish-language ministries. Though immigration from Mexico has fallen below net-zero, the United States’ immigrant population from Latin America still grew 3 percent from 2010 to 2014.
Whether assimilating Mandarin- or Spanish-speaking immigrants, congregations need to be clear about their end goal: are we giving a helping hand or building a long-term relationship? So noted Debbie Berho, a George Fox University professor who studied 25 Spanish-speaking churches in Oregon.
One best practice from her research is a service in which people from each language group share testimonies through interpreters. “Slowly, people from each group begin to be known as individuals in whose lives God is actively working,” said Berho, “not as part of the nameless mass of the 11 a.m. service.”
Bridges’ church leaders have built cohesiveness between its Mandarin and English ministries, as well as its Cantonese, Filipino, Indian, and deaf ones. Examples include having all of the fellowships share children’s, youth, and outreach ministries; consolidating all finances; and giving no group first dibs on church facilities. At church events, Bridges offers hamburgers and hot dogs—and rice and chow mien.
“You can’t have a healthy church where it’s us and them,” said Biby. “It has to be seen as all [one church], and we can only be seen as healthy when we’re all healthy.”
