EmergingPhoenix


Meeting tonight, Tuesday March 27, 8-10pm

David Park and Peter Choi have arranged for us to meet at Cafe Mozart off of Venture Drive/Pleasant Hill Road in Duluth. David and Peter and others are beginning to imagine a post korean-church and the role of a 2 gen pan-asain church in america. It should be a good conversation, and worth the ride north to consider how our tradition biases and envigourates our faith practices.

Do not look Cafe Mozart up on Mapquest or Google...there are multiple locations of this Cafe Mozart in Atlanta, but they do not have this latest location listed.

Directions
85N to Exit 103 - Steve Reynolds
Take a left off the exit.
Turn right on Venture Drive.
Cafe Mozart will be on your left before you reach Pleasant Hill Rd. Next to BP gas station

Here's the General direction of conversation:
Faith, ethnicity, and culture

Here are some questions to get us started:

Diversity in church as a goal or a by-product? How might missional communities acknowledge cultural gifts without minimizing differences? What is the role of the mono-ethnic church?

emergent and 2 gen Asian American

David Park, and some friends are going to guide our discussion for the month around the experience of tradition, innovation, and culture. He is Korean American, been in the cohort for a couple years and blogs at nextgenerasianchurch.com

David has sent the following links to a couple post to get the ball rolling. We will meet on Buford Hwy at a resturant of his selection (more on this to come)

2 gen Asian American, is it that different?

in a recent conversation with a newly acquainted friend, we discussed the validity of the asian-american church, to which he said, “that’s not as interesting to me as the immigrant church.” when asked to elaborate, he said, “well, i don’t consider you asian-american, i just consider you american. you speak english like me, you know this american culture like i know, you don’t even have an accent, david. i mean, what makes you asian? what makes your church asian?”

my heart started to race a bit, “you think i’m american then? because i didn’t have the same experience as you did growing up, i can assure you that. and i certainly had plenty of reminders - whether it was the food i ate, the language my parents spoke, or the fact that there weren’t many other kids that looked like me growing up in Oklahoma...

read the rest of David's post here

Emerging Leadership Vacum: from March 5, L2 Foundations Blog:

This weekend, Los Angeles Times featured this article, Asian American churches face leadership gap: Pastors aren’t being prepared to handle congregational conflicts over cultural and generational issues, experts say. [registration required, ht: JoseonIllin, also mirrored at the ISAAC blog and asianamericanartistry and Step by Step and kitsapsun.com.]

A few article excerpts to highlight notable references with hyperlinks added:

A 2005 Duke Divinity School study, “Asian American Religious Leadership Today,” said the “most acute tensions” in Asian American churches revolved around two issues:

  • Continual clashes between the generations over cultural differences in the styles and philosophies of church leadership and control.
  • Young pastors’ view that immigrant churches are “dysfunctional and hypocritical religious institutions” that demonstrate a “negative expression” of Christian spirituality for the second generation.

… only 15% of Asian American seminarians attend seminaries affiliated with mainline denominations. The overwhelming majority — 80% — choose evangelical institutions.

Serving the complex Asian American Christian communities today requires “crossing boundaries between East and West, immigrant and native-born, and between various ethnic communities,” said the Rev. Tim Tseng, president of the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity.

A different church with different Issues?

Here's a third interesting post in Pulpit and Pew about the challenge of Asian American congregations integrating into mainstream american churches.

More to come, location TBA. Time: This Tuesday 8pm.

Open Air Art Market & Shane Claiborne

Tim and Trinity Honse sent this for us all:

Druid Hills Baptist Church will host "A Taste of Intown" on Saturday, May 12th from 10-5pm. This year's festival will include an Open Air Art Market, Tastings from local restaurants, children's activities and live music.

We are looking for artists to participate in our Open Air Art Market. More information and an application can be found here Questions: email tasteofintownartists@yahoo.com Feel free to pass this information onto anyone else who may also be interested in participating.

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Also, Saturday night, March 31 is part of DHBC's "Spiritual Renewal Week" and Shane Claiborne of Simple Way Community in Philadelphia is speaking at the Common Grounds worship gathering. Contact Tim Honse at DHBC for details.


About Us

You're a part of a bigger conversation, a bigger story of God's creation unfolding and realizing it's Creator's dreams in the clue of Jesus. Gather monthly to re-imagine how we can best participate locally in this conversation, story, dreams. This is an Emergent Cohort meeting to flesh out four commitments: to God in the way of Jesus, to the Church in all its Forms, to God's World, and to One Another. This is a theological conversation for any practitioners in the way of Jesus.

What is Emergent?

If you are interested in learning more about the larger movement we are a local expression of, visit Emergent Village.

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