Russell Yee New Life Chrisitan Fellowship, Castro Valley Fuller/Northern California *************************************** Review of _Pursuing the Pearl: A Comprehensive Resource for Multi-Asian Ministry_ by Ken Uyeda Fong, (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1999, 224 pp. + appendix and notes, paperback, $18) What do the following all have in common? Fish, the Meiji Restoration, postmodernism, emergent multi-Asian culture, and a passion for effective Christian evangelism and discipleship. Answer: they’re all part of the view Ken provides us of the needs and opportunities facing Asian American churches in the 21st century. For years, Evergreen Baptist Church and Ken have been vanguards in developing both theory and practice in Asian American ministry. And for years, church leaders have sought out scarce and bootleg copies of Ken’s 1991 D.Min. dissertation, _Insights for growing Asian-American Ministries_ and its later revision. Now at last his work is available in book form, fully updated and revised. The most notable difference between Ken’s earlier and present work is the shift from his earlier Americanized Asian American (AAA) focus to his present, broader, multi-Asian/multi-ethnic focus (and more multigenerational and multisocioeconomic to boot). These shifts came from Ken’ s own inner development as well as Evergreen's actual experience of becoming more diverse in the intervening years, especially after the 1996-7 "hive" into two churches (EBC-LA, where Ken is now; and EBC-San Gabriel Valley, led by Ken’s former senior pastor, Cory Ishida). Nevertheless, his book is quite relevant to settings focused on only one or only a few Asian groups. "Comprehensive" is in the subtitle, and Ken indeed covers a very wide range of topics including: * A sociological profile of Asian America’s past, present, and possible future * A well-nuanced affirmation and critique of the homogeneous unit principle and its application to Asian American ministry * Why Japanese-American churches are specially positioned to provide leadership to the Asian American church movement * The implications of postmodernism for evangelism, preaching, leadership, and discipleship * General reflections and ideas on approaches to Asian American ministry--everything from interior decorating to evangelism styles * Specific challenges for established churches if they are to thrive into the future * Specific challenges to each different generation of Asian Americans in its position and calling Underlying the book is Ken’s great Flow of Generations metaphor. In brief: immigration begins an inexorable flow from the "River of Dreamers" inhabited by freshwater bass (the immigrant 1st-generation), to the "Bay of Transitions" traversed by anadromous salmon (the transitioning 2nd-generation), to the "Sea of Inevitability" and its saltwater cod (the acculturated 3rd+ generations). The thing to note is that in order to thrive each generation needs conditions specially suited to it. Cod suffocate and die in freshwater streams, bass can’t bear saltwater, and salmon need both. (Ken demurs from using the metaphor to further comment on where the "salmon" go to spawn.) The problem is when churches act as "dams," trying to stop the flow and keep everyone together under the same conditions. In particular, the first generation often neither intended nor anticipated its offspring would lose their ancestral culture and become so westernized. So it experiences those offspring’s search for a different worship service or different church as both cultural and personal rejection. (The irony of course is that it was the 1st-generation’s decision to emigrate that started this whole inexorable flow.) Midway through the book are three wonderfully on-target letters Ken writes to the three generations in his model. These letters eloquently summarize much of the book’s message and express Ken’s heartfelt, godly hopes for each of the generations. These three letters alone are worth the price of the book. (But, hey Ken, would you be willing to reprint them here for CAC?) Ken’s own life and ministry vision has been carried along this flow. He was raised in a bilingual Chinese-American church; married a Hawaiian of Japanese ancestry; joined a historically-Japanese-American church under a Japanese-American senior pastor; helped the church embrace Americanized Asian American ministry as it brought in more Chinese- and Korean-Americans; and is now forging ahead to a broadly multi-Asian/multi-ethnic future. Throughout the book Ken’s use of his own journey and that of Evergreen is highly interesting, instructive, and inspiring. What the flow metaphor wouldn’t have predicted is EBCLA’s experience in recent years of attracting a large, growing number of 1st-generation folks from across the spectrum of Asian groups. Rather than staying in freshwater enclaves or even transitional estuaries, they jump right into the acculturated saltwater. Perhaps these folks are simply cut out to assimilate quickly. They are the outliers who DO buy into the flow of generations up front, and they have little appetite for backward-looking immigrant enclaves. Perhaps, if I may add to Ken’s metaphor, these folks are like seabirds, hatched on land but able to fly freely between all three generations in the flow, and preferring to stay out at sea as much as possible. Largely because the growing presence of these "seabirds" at EBCLA, Ken now prefers the more broad term "multi-Asian" over "Asian-American" to describe the majority of people at his church. As he points out, this also avoids some of the ambiguity around "Asian-American"--is it a catch-all phrase for all people of Asian ancestry no matter how close or far removed, and no matter how disparate their individual cultures? Or does it describe the particular emergent culture that is blending Asian ancestry with American and world culture to bring about an identifiable tertium quid? Using the full descriptor "multi-Asian/multi-ethnic," EBCLA is attempting to be descriptive about its current make-up and be precise about the particular emergent culture it wants to help develop and embrace. For this (3rd/4th-gen. ABC) reviewer, the most newly enlightening section was Ken’s retelling of the Japanese American story and why it uniquely shapes the JA community to be leaders in the Asian American / multi-Asian / multi-ethnic church movement. For instance, Ken explains that 19th-century Japanese emigration took place during the Meiji Restoration, a time of extraordinary Japanese openness to the west. Contrast this with Chinese xenophobia during the same period and you have one reason (among many) why Japanese-Americans have acculturated to a much larger degree than other Asian groups. Three themes carried me through the book. First, WE ARE THE PRODUCT OF MANY CHOICES MADE LONG BEFORE WE CAME ALONG. Ken traces much of EBC’s success in recent decades back to a single strategic decision made half a century ago: the decision by LA’s Nissei Baptist Church to cut loose its English-language ministry and let it chart its own course under its own name. (Evergreen took its name from the street where the new work was located.) Likewise, for better or worse, so much of each of our ministry settings and we ourselves are the product of choices we did not make. On one hand, this absolves us of feeling responsible for everything in our circumstances--we shouldn’t take all the blame for our problems nor all the credit for our successes. On the other hand, this reminds us that choices we make now will affect future generations in untold ways. We shouldn’t despair if our ministry doesn’t bear the fruit we wish it would right now; maybe God’s plan is to use our work for purposes that will not work themselves out until long after we’re gone. But that depends to some degree on our ability to make forward-looking choices now. Second, THE FUTURE IS NOT PREDICTABLE. (Tough to swallow for us high-control types!) The first generation largely does not predict how Americanized its progeny eventually become. EBC did not predict it would "hive" to form EBCLA and EBC-SGV--two churches with now-diverging ministry emphases. EBCLA did not predict it would become as multi-Asian/multi-cultural as it has, nor that it would become a haven for a certain variety of 1st-generation immigrant Asians. Perhaps the lesson here is to generally favor plans that leave an openness to future developments (as Nissei Baptist Church did in the ‘50s). Third, THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ASIAN-AMERICAN / MULTI-ASIAN / MULTI-CULTURAL MINISTRY ARE WIDE OPEN--AND ONLY EXPANDING. But you all knew that already! We all lament how much catch-up Asian American church development has to do, so much of it barely or not even begun. How do we even talk about the issues? What are the real questions? How do we get beyond the battles of the past? Where are the new leaders going to come from? What’s the future shaping up to look like? The problems often seem endless. Thank you, Ken, for your life, your ministry, and now this book to help us all be part of the solutions. You’ ve certainly helped equip me further and renewed my resolve to pursue the pearl. O.K., I’m hesitant to float my wish list for the book, not wanting to do anything as un-Asian as to even seem at all ungrateful. But here it goes, perhaps it will help us all take Ken’s work even further: 1. Good use of Census statistics but unfortunately it’s from the 1990 count--getting painfully stale, especially with an intervening decade of continued sky-high rates of Asian immigration. 2. Statistics for Asian outmarriage in LA County are dramatic but are they representative of the rest of the country? (Also, the graph on p. 46 doesn’t seem to match the discussion--is it misdrawn?) In general, I wonder if the "Sea of Inevitability" in LA County and SoCA is really quite different from elsewhere. LA County has well over a million Asian Americans by now--no other metropolitan area even comes close. Plus SoCA has Monterey Park (the "first suburban Chinatown"); UC Irvine (the only UC campus where Asian Americans are a numerical majority); etc. etc. Are Ken’s present realities still quite-distant or even quite-iffy outside of SoCA? 3. More detail and analysis of why Chinese/Japanese/Korean tend to cluster more than other Asian groups would be helpful (there’s a brief, anecdotal discussion on p. 71). Is there a shared Confucian influence? Geography? Physical features? Political and military history? American immigration history? 4. I would have liked a whole chapter specifically on Asian American values and personality characteristics and their implications. In general, Ken leaves the question pretty open: what DO Asian Americans/Multi-Asians have in common? What’s the glue? What’s the CULTURAL justification for investing in this ministry specialty? What’s the "flavor" of worship, ministry, leadership, and spirituality we can uniquely develop and uniquely contribute to the wider church? What special callings might emerge from our particular social position? But at least Ken is willing to float the generalizations he does, e. g., Asian Americans typically having overdeveloped heads and underdeveloped hearts (p. 125). (Take this review, for example!) 5. More on the whole huge and vital subject of music would have been nice (Ken’s only extended passage is one footnote to ch. 10). The problem of course is that there is little or no Asian American worship music to write about. (By that I mean a genre of worship music that both musically and lyrically expresses the Asian American journey and encounter with the Gospel. Has anyone published a hymn that speaks to the internment camp experience? To AsAm takes on shame and grace? To AsAm idolatry of financial invincibility? To AsAm filial piety good and bad?) But at least we might do some casting about in trying to figure out why that is, what it costs us, and what we can do about it. (What would black worship be without gospel music? What would the Reformation have been without its hymns? What would American megachurch worship be without praise & worship music? How far can Asian American churches get borrowing the mellow end of p&w as a staple genre?) 6. A great start on trying to find some freshly Asian American metaphors and approaches to the Gospel (the title’s allusion to the Pearl of Great Price is inspired--thank you, Mikimoto Corporation for linking Asians and pearls in the popular mind! Also see Ken’s discussion in ch. 7 on an Asian-flavored Gospel presentation that emphasizes a filial response to God rather than the usual "wretched sinner" approach). But we all need to work on multiplying these examples manyfold, creating images, stories, songs, and perhaps a central metaphor to express the Asian American encounter with the Gospel (akin to what the Exodus and Promised Land provide black churches as a defining metaphor for their spiritual journey). 7. No index unfortunately. (Presumably Judson Press’ fault, not Ken’s. Ditto for the cover: an attempt at AsAm styling, but the results are debatable.) An excellent companion to Ken’s book is Lan Cao and Himilce Novas’ _Everything You Need To Know About Asian American History_ (Plume/Penguin, 1996, 338 pp., paperback, $12.95). Gives historical and cultural details on all the big groups, all arranged in an easily accessible question-answer format written at a popular level. Thus fills-in many details of what the Flow of Generations has actually looked like for different groups. (Of course, this is "Asian American" in the lump-together sense. If we all do our work, someday it’ ll need a new chapter on multi-Asian/multi-ethnic history.)