February 24, 2009
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Mea Culpa
So this is the quintessential example of why I should not be blogging my thoughts—shotgun style—in the middle of the night and in the midst of angrily doing office-work.
I am sorry if I offended or hurt anyone with what I said in that post. The “disappointments” I felt and the things I wrote of were not directed at those whom I count as friends at CCCNJ. Those friends, and especially my mentors there: we will continue to be friends and hopefully can keep in touch for many, many years. We will miss them dearly in not being able to worship together on Sundays.
The “disappointments,” however, are a generational issue. What I wrote about is probably typical of most immigrant-based churches (English Ministry (E.M.) of Korean churches, for example) and the issues of the English generation that comes out of the main congregation. There is an inherent disconnect between the two generations and congregations, and while we seek to worship God in the same place of worship, the various physical and spiritual needs are different. So long as the English congregation is considered the subordinate congregation, the needs—most importantly, the spiritual needs—will not be met adequately.
Comments (6)
i kno what you mean about EM being ‘subordinate’ congregation, and in reality, it is more of an afterthought that the EM even exists, b/c the main focus of the church was the azn part and EM is usually started to minister to the youths of the azn families. After all, for many of us that do speak english, we have many choices of places to worship, within these azn churches w/ EMs as well as any other church that speaks English (like most of them in NJ). It is rare in an azn church to see that EM is critical to the growth of the azn church as well, b/c then the church is meeting the needs of the entire family, not just to one generation of the family. The thing i love about our azn church is that my parents’ needs can be met in chinese congregation while my needs for english ministry can be met also. To me, they (EM and CM) should be equal, meeting the needs of the whole family.
i have spoken to ppl who have left and asked them why they left…and like you said, the reasons varied, sometimes personal, sometimes church-related. and sometimes, ppl probably do not want to say the ‘real’ reason either for not wanting to hurt or offend the person who is asking. But once we do see that there are ppl leaving for church-related reasons, then we need to analyze the things that are going on, how can we improve, how can we change, how can we avoid ‘driving’ ppl away? Any thoughts you have about this would be greatly appreciated by the leadership within our EM.
Do you feel that CCCNJ treats EM as a subordinate congregation, and and are there things we can change? Maybe in CCCNJ the more basic problem is that EM is not really a subordinate congregation, but that there are 3 congregations merely sharing the same space, w/ 3 different visions, 3 different approaches to ministry. Perhaps this is where a senior pastor would be able to draw everything together and make things more cohesive, i don’t know, maybe not. But when there are 3 mini-churches sharing the same space, then there’s bound to be issues and needs that are not met, are not expressed, etc. For the most part, i am very happy that cccnj recognizes the importance of youth, as reflected by the willingness to hire two youth pastors. At least that shows me that they don’t consider youth ministry to be merely a babysitting service, but truly a ministry of worth and value, where the leadership puts out the money to show that.
can you elaborate on how spiritual needs of EM cannot be met adequately?
thanks for sharing your thoughts and verbalizing them. sometimes i think these things too, but i struggle with expressing and verbalizing the thoughts and feelings behind them.
I am afraid I can’t offer much of an intelligent response on this, but I did stop by to thank you for your support of me, and to thank you for your friendship!
Trust all is well with your “new addition”, although it’s not so new anymore, is it! LOL! Time flies!!!
Sorry to hear about the church change and need for it. We can definitely relate, although at a different church. This is something Ken Fong writes about in his book, Pursuing the Pearl, about multigenerational churches. Where do you worship now?
@lshorng — Since Isabelle’s birth, we’ve been at CCCNJ 8:30 service 80% of the time, CCCNJ 11:30 for 10% and Grace Redeemer 11:15 for 10%. It’s not all about convenience. Case in point, we’ve not found comparably Biblical teaching outside of Pastor Andy in several places. So as long as P. Andy is preaching the 8:30 service, we’ll be sure to still be there.
I haven’t been to CCCNJ in a while (since I’m still in Syr), but the church I’ve been going to here in NY recently had a lot of people leaving too. I guess it’s pretty common, but it does make it harder to keep in touch with people you know.
Really useful info, lots of thanks for your post.
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