Tag Archive - 2nd gen

The Perception of Contextualization – A Response to MissionShift

January 31, 2011 in Church Planting, Concepts, Culture, Faith, Leadership, Ministry with 4 Comments

I am part of a group of bloggers, who received a free copy of MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium, edited by David Hesselgrave and Ed Stetzer, in order to participate in a discussion on Ed Stetzer’s website.

I am responding to Paul Hiebert’s Essay entitled, “The Gospel in Human Contexts: Changing Perceptions of Contextualization.” Here is the summary of his thesis provided in MissionShift.

Thesis: The purpose of this essay is to offer some discussion of the state of “Contextualization” as a critical aspect of missions, and of the changing perceptions of contextualization among missionaries and missions scholars. Any analysis of the current status of the Christian mission in the world must take social, historical, personal, and other contexts into account, and examine the relationships between the different contexts in which the people we serve live. In this sense this essay addresses the PRESENT of what has traditionally been termed “missions.”

I am not monocultural – never was and never have been. I’m multicultural by birth: I am Canadian and I am also Korean – I’m Korean-Canadian. I agree with Hiebert when he suggests that individuals like me “are aware of cultural differences and have learned to negotiate between two worlds in daily living.” However, I disagree with him when he suggests that individuals like me “often do not stop to consciously examine these contexts, how they shape their thinking, or the deep differences between them.” Perhaps I’m different in that I am always constantly wrestling with my Korean and Canadian cultural differences – perhaps this is because I believe that I am a ligament in the Body of Christ.

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I am a ligament, what are you?

January 31, 2011 in Church Planting, Concepts, Culture, Faith, Leadership, Ministry, Strengths with 0 Comments

The image of a bridge, or a ligament (Eph 4:16) seems to be a good way of describing my past and the direction I sense God is leading me. Being Korean Canadian, I was born in Canada, but grew up as a Korean – eating Korean food, going to a Korean church, speaking Korean, visiting Korea – basically breathing Korean all throughout my life. In high school, God used me to be a bridge between the English and Korean speaking youth groups – I was involved with both and knew individuals in both groups. I was also involved in a city wide joint worship team, which had the purpose of uniting or bridging all the Korean speaking youth groups. I co-created a Christian club in my high school to unify all the Christians together. I also organized and ran a city-wide youth worship service when I was pastoring in Montreal. While pastoring in Korea, I co-created a network for English speaking youth pastors, where we would put on events together, pray together, plan together, and strategize together.

Currently, as the groups pastor at Beulah Alliance Church, I was part of a team that conducted a survey, which revealed the current and proposed areas of integration amongst the differing areas of ministry.  I am also leading a team that consists of several pastors, in order to bring greater unity to the group life in the church. There is now one front, instead of divided fronts.

When examining my future, I believe that there are three areas that God has ingrained on my heart: church planting, pastors, and multicultural ministry.

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The Immigrant Sacrifice

April 24, 2010 in Culture with 4 Comments

“Isn’t it ironic how after making such a huge sacrifice to immigrate to Canada, so that your children to have a better life, your son goes ahead and moves to Korea?”

While I was visiting Vancouver a few months ago, but still living in Korea, that was a statement I overheard someone tell my father. (I am now back living in Canada).

I was born and raised in Canada. My parents left absolutely everything in Korea over 30 years ago so that my sisters and I could have a better life. I even remember my father telling me how when he got off the airplane and landed in Canada, all he had was $10. And with that $10 he bought a watch and got a ride to his parent’s house, who also just recently immigrated.

When my parents moved to Canada, they had absolutely nothing…except family, love, hope for a better future, and God. They moved away from a country where they knew the language, the culture, the history, and the food, and they became aliens, mutes, and deafs in a foreign country called ‘Canada.’

They worked at grocery stores, saved every penny, and did whatever they could do in order to forge a better future for their children. They didn’t want their children to go through what they were going through. They sacrificed.

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Ministry and Life Transitions

October 26, 2008 in Faith, Ministry, Strengths with 4 Comments

3 days remain.

I only have 3 more days in Canada.

There are only 3 more days until my wife and I begin our new life in Seoul, Korea.

How did it get this way? How did we end up leaving our ministry and our life in Montreal to move to the other side of the world?  How were we so sure that this is where God was calling us? How did we know that this was God’s will for our lives?

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our calling in life…

August 22, 2008 in Culture, Faith, Strengths with 4 Comments

“Every assignment that God gives His people is His primary means of sanctifying His leader.”

These are the words of Crawford Loritts that have encouraged me today.  In a sermon entitled The Call to Courage from the 2008 Desiring God Pastor’s Conference, Loritts digs out an amazing insight from Joshua 1:1-9 regarding the calling that God has given us and how God uses it to sanctify us.

Here it is:

“Every assignment that God gives His people is His primary means of sanctifying His leader…some of us are getting burnt out because we are separating the sanctification process from our ministry. I understand boundaries, rest, variety in life, etc…

…but the very thing that God is using to draw you to Himself is the calling that He has given you.”

Wow.

The primary calling that God has given me is to love God and love others.  More specifically, he is calling me to do that through pastoral ministry.  Getting even more specific, God has given me a desire to minister to those who are intercultural (those people who are attempting to balance their different cultural backgrounds and upbringings).  And to really hone in on exactly what God is calling me to do – he has given me a calling to minister to 2nd generation Asians (those born and raised in a country that their parents immigrated to) and to those who minister to 2nd gen Asians.

Perhaps that is why I am so energized and have such a renewed sense of calling upon coming back from ministering to 2nd gens in Korea?

am i asian or am i western?

July 20, 2008 in Culture with 7 Comments

In many Asian cultures, false humility is rampant. Helen Lee, in Growing Healthy Asian American Churches, describes false humility to be “humility in the guise of deference.” For example, in a situation when a person is asked to perform a respectable task, many Asians will automatically reply with a humble “no,” even though they know that they are more than competent to do the task. In the same situation, a Westerner would typically jump at the opportunity to get ahead of the pack. Why is there such a difference? What’s the motivation?

Many Asians do this, Helen Lee states, “to avoid potential conflict or embarrassment.”

In other words, many Asians (mostly Confucian-based Asian Cultures) are influenced by the motto – “The nail that sticks up gets nailed down.” However, the motto in the West is – “The early bird gets the worm.

That’s all fine and good, but what about people like me? I’m neither Asian nor Western – I’m both! So how do I reconcile these seemingly contrary qualities?

Well, as a Korean-Canadian, the Asian side of me seems to be much more dominant than the Western side. In other words, my soul hates conflict and doesn’t like to stand out, but my brain knows that I need to put my foot forward if I want to thrive in this Western culture I live in. So is there a constant battle going on within myself? Is there this constant struggle between my Asian “ness” and my Western “ness”? Do I have symptoms of schizophrenia??

Haha…no’p!

Here is how I reconcile it: Instead of placing my foundational identity in my Asian “ness” or in my Western “ness”, I place the roots of my identity in Christ Jesus. I find my identity and my acceptance in Him. After that, I do whatever I need to do to thrive (notice that I’m saying thrive and not survive) and work in excellence.

Thus, although I hate conflict, when I know that someone or something needs to be confronted, I will suck it up, and I will do it. When I know that there is a significant opportunity to advance my knowledge or my experience, I will put my foot forward and volunteer myself. Is that because I am more Western than Asian? No, I don’t think so. I believe it’s because I’ve learned to mold the two cultures into one – a uniquely Korean-Canadian Daniel Sangi Im.

What about you?

the 21st century north american church (part 3)

July 11, 2008 in Culture, Faith, Leadership with 0 Comments

The New Testament and Multi-Ethnic Groups

When examining the incarnation, the apostles, the early church, and the eschatological vision in the New Testament, the ethnic picture is unambiguously multi-ethnic. This is best portrayed by looking at the very first multi-ethnic church.

The Church in Antioch as a Model for the Multi-Ethnic Church

The very first multi-ethnic church in the history of Christianity was not established by the Holy Apostles, but it was a handful of “Christians” (Acts 11:26) who, obeying Jesus’ words in the Great Commission and the Ascension, traveled to the “ends of the earth” – Antioch – to “make disciples of all nations.”

Antioch, the “religiously pluralistic and pleasure seeking” urban port city was “the provincial capital of Syria,” and “the third largest city in the Graeco-Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria.” As a result of the city’s multi-ethnic demographic, there was constant interaction between “Syrians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, Parthians, Cappadocians, and Jews,” which created a cultural ethos of “hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms.” Thus, in this global and urban port-city, the first multi-ethnic church was formed.

The church in Antioch was multi-ethnic because it was a community of faith that was composed of more than two different ethnicities, where not one ethnicity held a significant majority. For example, the leadership of the church consisted of one Jew from Jerusalem (Barnabas), another Jew from Tarsus that was also a Roman citizen (Paul), a black African (Simeon who is called Niger), a man from “the capital city of Libya in northern Africa” (Lucius of Cyrene), and the step-brother of Herod Antipas, a Roman tetrarch (Manaen).

Not only was the leadership of the church multi-ethnic, but so was the congregation. And not only was the congregation multi-ethnic, but so was the city.

Obviously, a multi-ethnic church isn’t something that can be realized everywhere, but should they not be much more evident in multi-ethnic metropolitan cities?

(Sources Cited: Ken Shigematsu, Thomas V. Brisco, Michelle Slee, Crutiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, Karen Chai Kim)

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