1) As an asian-american believer, do you believe you've been called to return to a chinese church (which I guess what your doing now) or does that not really matter?
I think the foundational question is where would you want to plant your membership? The reason why I point to this is because where you decide to plant roots and where you plan on committing, that's where you serve, find community and grow. I've grown up in an Asian-american context my whole life and have attended Chinese Baptist Church all my life. However, i have seen how a lot of churches run and attended all types of churches - multiethnic, dually ethnic, single ethnic, etc. And the thing is that they are all good churches....they preach solid gospel centered messages, a focus on the ordinances, and living out their philosophy of ministry in their context. There's only One church.
So why go back to an Asian church? I think for me personally, it was a matter of church membership over everything first. I felt like I needed to honor my membership until God has made it clear that i was supposed to serve somewhere else. Another reason why I decided to come back was because I saw how difficult ethnic churches were. I mean, growing up I followed a group of pastors that really did church well and their congregations were responding and then i would look at mine and go, "Uhh...what in the world is going on? Is this even a church?" And very gently, God convicted me to stop hoping for the next big thing. He went, "Hey...instead of knocking poor churches, why don't you invest and use whatever i have given you to serve?" That shut me up pretty quickly. I also saw a disturbing trend throughout undergrad and seminary. A lot of young seminarians and pastors would leave their churches to pastor the next big thing and would leave their home churches at their own folly. Nobody to teach. Nobody to discipline. The attitude was "Forget that...let them suffer"
So my plead is "Don't go...we need you" We need biblically trained, gospel focused, enduring pastors to come back and shepherd the ethnic churches. And for some reason, as detached as i was, there's a resemblance with the people you minister to. You have gone through what they are going through. You can relate to them (for the most part). And if i have already bypassed the first hurdle of appearing different...perhaps we can begin to minister. Yes it's our parents church...yes, asian people tend to be stuck in their ways...yes, lunch time smells a bit odd at church...but they still need the gospel preached to them and they still need a shepherd.
2) Do you feel called to Youth ministry? This question meaning do you picture yourself working with youth for awhile or has God also laid on your heart other things such as reaching the unreached (missionary work), etc.?
I thought i wanted to do youth ministry because it was fun and i could eat pizza for the rest of my life. I mean, how hard can youth ministry really be? Just have events and make sure you look cool and the kids will follow you all the days of their life...well at least till they graduate and drop out of church life. I went through 6 youth pastors as a youth. That's almost one a year. And when i did the research, the normal turnover rate for a pastor is 3 years. The turnover rate for a youth pastor is half that. Asian churches...the stats are more grim. So when God made it clear that I was going to serve him through ministry i had to rethink a lot of stuff...2 things stood out the most:
1. The thing that scared the mess out of me was this: a senior graduating the youth group and going "man, my last 7 years was so fun...i didn't learn anything and have no clue what i believe, but winter retreat was awesome! i'll try to be a better person for the rest of my life" NOOOOOOOOOOOO! So i sat out to change everything up with youth ministry - how we teach, what we teach, how we understand ecclesiology, sunday school, events, leadership, etc.
2. I realized that youth ministry was not going to be easy. Not only do you minister to the youth, but you have their parents, your youth leaders, and yourself. I needed a foundational theology that pushed my philosophy of ministry. I also had to come to terms that i wasn't the senior pastor and that i fit into a system (a broken one at that).
So yes, i feel led to youth ministry not because it's easy and not because it's only fun. I'm here because the youth at CBC and the people that they interact with need gospel-saturated lives. And if i can pastor here for the next 30 years and have my leaders run with me for that long...then i'm in. And so my job now is the be as equipped as i can so that i may teach the youth - that's why the MDiv and Dmin. I never wanted the youth to get the scraps of theological garbage that people just tossed at them. So until God clearly tells me it's time to go...i'm here for life. I pray that you continue to find your place and plant and run hard.
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