Soong-Chan Rah
A blog by Cyril Nishimoto
Stan and I had the great privilege of hearing Soong-Chan Rah speak at Fuller Theological Seminary in November. Dr. Rah—Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago—served as the featured speaker for Fuller’s Missiology Lectures 2012. He gave a timely series of talks on the topic of “Tools and Theology of the Multicultural Church.”
We were particularly interested in his talks because “the multicultural church” has not only been a hot topic at seminaries like Fuller, but has also been a highly relevant subject for Japanese- and other Asian American churches that are seeing more and more non-Asian people worshipping with them and joining as members.
Cultural Unintelligence
In the first of his three lectures--Cultural Intelligence and the Multicultural Church—Dr. Rah presented the idea that when we speak about “the multicultural church,” “cultural intelligence” must be central to the discussion. Unfortunately there is a lot of “cultural unintelligence” in churches these days.
To illustrate how “cultural unintelligence” is very present in our churches, Rah cited a book called Deadly Viper Character Assassin that used images of ninjas and kung fu martial arts as a “fun” way to present the subject matter of Christian leadership and lifestyle. It was only when Dr. Rah wrote a public letter that pointed out how offensive the images were that, for example, portrayed Asians as “sinister enemies,” that the principals involved became aware of their cultural unintelligence.
And it was when Dr. Rah along with other Asian American leaders, engaged in dialogues with the white 20-something year-old authors and the book’s publisher, Zondervan, that the publisher ended up writing a public letter of apology and pulled the book and the curriculum from its stores permanently. (Read more about the controversy here.)
Cultural Mandate
Rah contends that because we are all made in the image of God, who is creative, we have a cultural mandate to reflect God’s image in creating cultures and building civilizations. He believes that the “color blind approach”—where we check our culture at the door and take on “the culture of Jesus”—must give way to, and be replaced by the “social or racial justice approach”—where we acknowledge that we come with culture, and thus can’t ignore it, but instead must honor and express it because God gave it to us.
So from what I gathered from Dr. Rah’s talk, cultural intelligence is the ability to understand a culture different from our own and to navigate competently and adeptly with that understanding through various situations where cultural differences come into play. A culturally intelligent person would be one who, on a cultural intelligence scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), for example, moves from a 3 to a 7.
And it is not something that can be learned from reading books. It is learned through relationships. For example, it can be gained through sharing meals with people whose culture one has had little contact with. Or it can be absorbed through serving under the leadership of someone whose culture is vastly different from one’s own.
The Challenge of Going Multicultural
The dialogue that Dr. Rah and other Asian American leaders had with the authors and publisher of Deadly Viper Character Assassin obviously resulted in a cultural understanding that produced a result that they were all satisfied with in the end—the complete removal of the book from circulation. But it took two sides sitting down with each other and hashing things out before any progress in cultural intelligence could be made, and an acceptable resolution could be achieved.
And this controversy points out the tremendous challenge faced by local churches that are trying to go multicultural. People must be willing to make a significant investment of time to build the kind of relationships that will bring about cultural understanding. And this is no small task for churches where there are two or three cultures present.
Dr. Rah believes that local churches should go multicultural “where possible.” It sounds great theoretically, but practically speaking, how does that work?
The Difficulty of Making Cultural Adjustments
If it’s difficult for a church with just two or three cultures present, what about a church for example, that has various Asian cultures represented—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino—as well as non-Asian cultures—white American, black American, and Hispanic? How much understanding is needed for a person to be “competent” in each of those cultures? And how do they deal with situations where people understand culturally where others are coming from but just can’t make adjustments because they’re so locked into their own cultures?
For example, Dr. Rah gave the example of people from western cultures having no qualms about talking over other people while those others are already speaking (a la “The View” or the U.S. Presidential debates), while people from eastern cultures will politely wait until the others are finished before they commence sharing their own ideas.
I imagine that even if the Asian person knows he or she can cut off the conversation of the white person without any negative repercussions, that Asian person will be hard-pressed to do it because that person would still not want to be “rude”--something hard to get over when their mother’s voice is in their heads telling them not to be rude.
And I could see how a white person may be able to restrain him- or herself from cutting off an Asian person in the interest of cultural sensitivity for a time, but I wonder how long will it last when things are just taking so long, or when it seems “fair” to do things “the American way” once in a while because one side shouldn’t always have to make all the adjustments?
Culture is ingrained and hard to change. Is the sharing of stories really going to be enough to bring about the raising of cultural intelligence that will truly make a difference?
And what about a church that has 15 different cultures, as did the church that Dr. Rah served as the founding pastor—Cambridge Community Fellowship Church in Cambridge, MA? Will people forever be learning about other people’s cultures and trying to keep them all straight? At what point will people just give up because the task is simply too difficult and overwhelming? Dr. Rah admitted that people just can’t know that many different cultures. So at best they could just try to understand each other’s cultures. But is that really enough?
No Models
According to Dr. Rah, there are really no models of successful local multicultural churches at this time. So it may be decades before we see any concrete examples of what really works well, as well as what doesn’t.
In the meantime, I believe that perhaps the challenge will be for local churches to see and acknowledge what the Lord has been doing in their churches in bringing about greater cultural awareness and sensitivity, and increasing cultural intelligence, and to move in the cultural direction the Lord seems to be taking the church.
At the AAPIs Seeking Biblical Values and Social Justice conference in October, in their workshop on “Race, Culture, and the Asian American Church,” Pastors Kevin Doi and Erin Hamilton of Epic Church presented what they’re doing to follow the Lord’s lead in going multicultural. Calling their church an “Asian American multiethnic church,” they said they had to acknowledge just what the Lord had made it—a church whose dominant culture was Asian American (and Japanese American for that matter) with a smattering of people of various other non-Asian ethnic groups.
To be consistent with that, they consciously decided to designate the founding Japanese American pastor—Kevin--as the senior pastor. This designation was actually recommended by the white American pastor—Erin. And they run the church and operate their programs with the dominant culture in mind, not trying to cater to everyone. So it seems to be working because the leaders are intentional about what they’re doing as they fall into line with what they see the Lord doing.
The Future of Outreach to People of Japanese and Asian Ancestry
When I hear the idea that there is a mandate—biblical or otherwise—that all local churches should go multicultural, I wonder what that means for the reaching of Japanese- and Asian Americans with the gospel.
Churches are already having difficulty being effective in their evangelistic outreach efforts toward people of Japanese and Asian ancestry. To be effective, there are a lot of adjustments they need to make. For example, they need to understand Japanese and Asian culture, so their cultural intelligence needs to be increased. Then with that understanding, they need to change the approach they take in their outreach efforts, such as being less direct, confrontational, individualistic, and verbal, and more indirect, non-confrontational, group-oriented and non-verbal, and in general, being more relational. And they need to build the kind of relationships of trust and transparency that allow people to see and speak into each other’s lives. It all takes time. But few are doing this, and few are effective. And the process seems strangely similar to what needs to take place so that a church can go multicultural.
If churches are spending a great deal of their time learning how to be a multicultural church—people who know the Lord, sharing their culture and their stories with others in their churches who also already know the Lord--how are they going to have the time to build meaningful relationships with people outside the church who don’t know the Lord?
And when Japanese or Asian culture is just one of many cultures within the church, how can a church reach people of Japanese or Asian ancestry when it would need to focus on doing so to be effective?
Will a multicultural mandate for local churches sound the death knell for reaching Japanese- and Asian Americans with the gospel? Perhaps it could, if we let it. But perhaps, if the Lord leads us to, we can make a focused effort to make sure that it doesn’t. Perhaps the experience of Epic Church can be instructive in showing us how we might focus on outreach and ministry to people of Japanese or Asian ancestry and still go multicultural.
May we follow the Lord’s lead as we move toward the multicultural future He envisions for us.
Please leave any comments you may have on this blog and feel free to share it with others.
Stan and I had the great privilege of hearing Soong-Chan Rah speak at Fuller Theological Seminary in November. Dr. Rah—Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago—served as the featured speaker for Fuller’s Missiology Lectures 2012. He gave a timely series of talks on the topic of “Tools and Theology of the Multicultural Church.”
We were particularly interested in his talks because “the multicultural church” has not only been a hot topic at seminaries like Fuller, but has also been a highly relevant subject for Japanese- and other Asian American churches that are seeing more and more non-Asian people worshipping with them and joining as members.
Cultural Unintelligence
In the first of his three lectures--Cultural Intelligence and the Multicultural Church—Dr. Rah presented the idea that when we speak about “the multicultural church,” “cultural intelligence” must be central to the discussion. Unfortunately there is a lot of “cultural unintelligence” in churches these days.
To illustrate how “cultural unintelligence” is very present in our churches, Rah cited a book called Deadly Viper Character Assassin that used images of ninjas and kung fu martial arts as a “fun” way to present the subject matter of Christian leadership and lifestyle. It was only when Dr. Rah wrote a public letter that pointed out how offensive the images were that, for example, portrayed Asians as “sinister enemies,” that the principals involved became aware of their cultural unintelligence.
And it was when Dr. Rah along with other Asian American leaders, engaged in dialogues with the white 20-something year-old authors and the book’s publisher, Zondervan, that the publisher ended up writing a public letter of apology and pulled the book and the curriculum from its stores permanently. (Read more about the controversy here.)
Cultural Mandate
Rah contends that because we are all made in the image of God, who is creative, we have a cultural mandate to reflect God’s image in creating cultures and building civilizations. He believes that the “color blind approach”—where we check our culture at the door and take on “the culture of Jesus”—must give way to, and be replaced by the “social or racial justice approach”—where we acknowledge that we come with culture, and thus can’t ignore it, but instead must honor and express it because God gave it to us.
So from what I gathered from Dr. Rah’s talk, cultural intelligence is the ability to understand a culture different from our own and to navigate competently and adeptly with that understanding through various situations where cultural differences come into play. A culturally intelligent person would be one who, on a cultural intelligence scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), for example, moves from a 3 to a 7.
And it is not something that can be learned from reading books. It is learned through relationships. For example, it can be gained through sharing meals with people whose culture one has had little contact with. Or it can be absorbed through serving under the leadership of someone whose culture is vastly different from one’s own.
The Challenge of Going Multicultural
The dialogue that Dr. Rah and other Asian American leaders had with the authors and publisher of Deadly Viper Character Assassin obviously resulted in a cultural understanding that produced a result that they were all satisfied with in the end—the complete removal of the book from circulation. But it took two sides sitting down with each other and hashing things out before any progress in cultural intelligence could be made, and an acceptable resolution could be achieved.
And this controversy points out the tremendous challenge faced by local churches that are trying to go multicultural. People must be willing to make a significant investment of time to build the kind of relationships that will bring about cultural understanding. And this is no small task for churches where there are two or three cultures present.
Dr. Rah believes that local churches should go multicultural “where possible.” It sounds great theoretically, but practically speaking, how does that work?
The Difficulty of Making Cultural Adjustments
If it’s difficult for a church with just two or three cultures present, what about a church for example, that has various Asian cultures represented—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino—as well as non-Asian cultures—white American, black American, and Hispanic? How much understanding is needed for a person to be “competent” in each of those cultures? And how do they deal with situations where people understand culturally where others are coming from but just can’t make adjustments because they’re so locked into their own cultures?
For example, Dr. Rah gave the example of people from western cultures having no qualms about talking over other people while those others are already speaking (a la “The View” or the U.S. Presidential debates), while people from eastern cultures will politely wait until the others are finished before they commence sharing their own ideas.
I imagine that even if the Asian person knows he or she can cut off the conversation of the white person without any negative repercussions, that Asian person will be hard-pressed to do it because that person would still not want to be “rude”--something hard to get over when their mother’s voice is in their heads telling them not to be rude.
And I could see how a white person may be able to restrain him- or herself from cutting off an Asian person in the interest of cultural sensitivity for a time, but I wonder how long will it last when things are just taking so long, or when it seems “fair” to do things “the American way” once in a while because one side shouldn’t always have to make all the adjustments?
Culture is ingrained and hard to change. Is the sharing of stories really going to be enough to bring about the raising of cultural intelligence that will truly make a difference?
And what about a church that has 15 different cultures, as did the church that Dr. Rah served as the founding pastor—Cambridge Community Fellowship Church in Cambridge, MA? Will people forever be learning about other people’s cultures and trying to keep them all straight? At what point will people just give up because the task is simply too difficult and overwhelming? Dr. Rah admitted that people just can’t know that many different cultures. So at best they could just try to understand each other’s cultures. But is that really enough?
No Models
According to Dr. Rah, there are really no models of successful local multicultural churches at this time. So it may be decades before we see any concrete examples of what really works well, as well as what doesn’t.
In the meantime, I believe that perhaps the challenge will be for local churches to see and acknowledge what the Lord has been doing in their churches in bringing about greater cultural awareness and sensitivity, and increasing cultural intelligence, and to move in the cultural direction the Lord seems to be taking the church.
At the AAPIs Seeking Biblical Values and Social Justice conference in October, in their workshop on “Race, Culture, and the Asian American Church,” Pastors Kevin Doi and Erin Hamilton of Epic Church presented what they’re doing to follow the Lord’s lead in going multicultural. Calling their church an “Asian American multiethnic church,” they said they had to acknowledge just what the Lord had made it—a church whose dominant culture was Asian American (and Japanese American for that matter) with a smattering of people of various other non-Asian ethnic groups.
To be consistent with that, they consciously decided to designate the founding Japanese American pastor—Kevin--as the senior pastor. This designation was actually recommended by the white American pastor—Erin. And they run the church and operate their programs with the dominant culture in mind, not trying to cater to everyone. So it seems to be working because the leaders are intentional about what they’re doing as they fall into line with what they see the Lord doing.
The Future of Outreach to People of Japanese and Asian Ancestry
When I hear the idea that there is a mandate—biblical or otherwise—that all local churches should go multicultural, I wonder what that means for the reaching of Japanese- and Asian Americans with the gospel.
Churches are already having difficulty being effective in their evangelistic outreach efforts toward people of Japanese and Asian ancestry. To be effective, there are a lot of adjustments they need to make. For example, they need to understand Japanese and Asian culture, so their cultural intelligence needs to be increased. Then with that understanding, they need to change the approach they take in their outreach efforts, such as being less direct, confrontational, individualistic, and verbal, and more indirect, non-confrontational, group-oriented and non-verbal, and in general, being more relational. And they need to build the kind of relationships of trust and transparency that allow people to see and speak into each other’s lives. It all takes time. But few are doing this, and few are effective. And the process seems strangely similar to what needs to take place so that a church can go multicultural.
If churches are spending a great deal of their time learning how to be a multicultural church—people who know the Lord, sharing their culture and their stories with others in their churches who also already know the Lord--how are they going to have the time to build meaningful relationships with people outside the church who don’t know the Lord?
And when Japanese or Asian culture is just one of many cultures within the church, how can a church reach people of Japanese or Asian ancestry when it would need to focus on doing so to be effective?
Will a multicultural mandate for local churches sound the death knell for reaching Japanese- and Asian Americans with the gospel? Perhaps it could, if we let it. But perhaps, if the Lord leads us to, we can make a focused effort to make sure that it doesn’t. Perhaps the experience of Epic Church can be instructive in showing us how we might focus on outreach and ministry to people of Japanese or Asian ancestry and still go multicultural.
May we follow the Lord’s lead as we move toward the multicultural future He envisions for us.
Please leave any comments you may have on this blog and feel free to share it with others.
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