Last Spring, Pastor Stanley presented a talk on the “State of the Chinese Church in Our Region.” In that report Pastor Stanley found that within New York/New Jersey were:

• A total of 124 Chinese churches
• Of these 124 Chinese churches, 102 are located in NYC, 22 in NJ
• Of these124 churches, 73 had an English Service (including Joint & Bi-lingual)
• But, only 37 of the 73 had a separate English Congregation/Service
• Of these 37 English congregations, 28 are in located NYC, 9 in NJ
• Additionally, he found that 90% of our churches in NYC are not growing/declining
• And at least half of our churches in NYC are struggling financially

Needless to say, the findings of that report were discouraging. In light of the fact that the Chinese have been immigrating to these shores for more than 100 years…

• Why do we find ourselves in this situation?
• Why haven’t our churches been more effective and productive?
• Why aren’t our numbers growing? Why are so many of us struggling?

Before we look for some answers, let me share with you some statistics about the Chinese population that I found on The City of New York, Department of City Planning website site. Regrettably equivalent data is not available for NJ.

• The Department of City Planning of NYC reports that NYC has “the largest Chinese population of any city outside of Asia.”
• In 2009 the number of Chinese found be living in NYC was 471,355.
• Of the 471,355 Chinese people living in NYC, the Department of City Planning tells us that 317,015 were born overseas.
• Assuming that their findings are correct, that would mean that the remaining 154,340 Chinese are ABCs or American Born Chinese.

When we combine what Pastor Stanley found with what the NYC Department of Planning found, we find that….

• In NYC, there is one Chinese church for every 3,108 overseas born Chinese (317,015/102)
• In NYC, there is one English service for every 5,512 ABCs (154,340/28)

What these statistics tell us THEORETICALLY is that our churches should be overflowing and overcrowded. What these stats tell us FACTUALLY is that we don’t have enough churches in place to effectively minister to the size of the Chinese population in NYC.

So, why don’t we have more churches? Well, I suppose there are many reasons why we don’t have more churches. But, those are yesterday’s reasons. This morning, I would like to share with you four things that you and I do today to change this picture of the Chinese church for tomorrow.

1. One thing that you and I can do today is to look outside our church walls and observe the “big picture.” God’s kingdom consists of more than just our own church. Instead, God’s kingdom’s consists of every church within our NY/NJ region. We need to ALSO pay attention to, and plan for, God’s work as a region. Up until now, most of us have only concerned ourselves with the needs and concerns of our own church and/or our own denomination. We need to look beyond our four walls…we need to see the “big picture.”
2. A second thing that you and I can do today is to become a mentor. One reason we don’t have more churches is because we don’t have the workers to serve in them. And the reason we don’t have the workers to serve in them is because too few of us are taking the time and making the effort to identify and mentor the next generation of workers from within our congregations. We can’t expect people to “discover” opportunities to serve God on their own. We need to be heavily involved in the process by investing our time and energy in the next generation and helping to raise the next group of servants for God.
3. A third thing that you and I can do today is support the planting of ABC churches. Over the last 100 years, the Chinese church has lost 95% of its young people and she continues to lose that many young people today. If we are to stem the tide of defecting ABCs to other churches we need to plant ABC churches/ congregations. For until we do so, until we give our children a reason to stay within the Chinese church…they will continue to leave us. If we continue to force them to choose between staying at an immigrant church and going elsewhere, I guarantee you that the vast majority will continue to choose to go elsewhere.
4. A fourth thing that you and I can do today is begin to work together. Up until now, each of us has done our own thing, in our own way. And where has that gotten us? The statistics that I shared in beginning suggests that we are all on a sinking ship, in danger of going under. But that doesn’t have to happen. The churches that we serve can remain afloat and one day thrive. But, it won’t happen unless and until we begin working together. That is one of the purposes of this conference. It is to help both ABCs and OBCs to better understand and appreciate one another. And in understanding and appreciating one another, to work together for the sake of the kingdom.

The road before us is difficult. But, I am hopeful and optimistic that our future can be vastly different from our past if you and I would abide by Paul’s exhortation to the Christians at Corinth…..

I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. I Corinthians 1:10

PaLM will be hosting a fundraiser on Saturday, Nov 6, 12 to 4 pm to honor Roy and Mary Eng. Roy and Mary are two lay people who have given much of their lives in service to God and the New York/New Jersey Chinese church community. Both, each, have touched many people's lives over the years. If you have a story to share of how one, or both, touched your lives, please share it with me (to do so, click on our "Events" link on the left, then click on PaLM Fundraiser Honoring Roy and Mary Eng). On our events page you will find a link that will take you to a place where you can tell your story. I will choose several of the stories to share at our luncheon.

On our events page, you will also find more information about our luncheon. And if you would like to join us that day, you will find our online registration link there as well.

If you have been thinking about joining our short-term missions trip this year but neglected to apply and had imagined you were too late because our application deadline had passed, I have some great news! The PaLM Short-Term Missions Committee has extended this year's application deadline to April 23!

So, if you've been praying for a "second chance" to apply for our trip, it has just arrived! Don't delay any longer....apply today!

For those who may not know...

If you are a minister and a resident of New York State AND you own property within New York State, you may be eligible for a reduction in your property tax.

The application deadline for this reduction is March 15, which if approved, will be applied to your taxes effective July of the same year.

To obtain an application for this reduction, you need to get in touch with your local government (e.g. township, village) for an application.

For New York City residences, you can find more information about the clergy tax reduction (as well as other tax reduction programs) and the application to apply for the clergy reduction here:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/property/property_tax_reduc_taxreductions.shtml

Almost all of us are aware of the fact that in the past contemporary music has divided many church congregations as they struggled over the adoption and use of contemporary music in their Sunday worship services. This is NOT what this article is about. That is to say, I am not writing about what has happened, or is happening, in our INDIVIDUAL churches. Instead, what I am writing about is a bigger, but less obvious division of THE church - all of God's churches as a whole - due to the adoption and use of contemporary music as our primary means of corporate worship at our Sunday worship services.

First, let me establish the fact that there is nothing wrong with contemporary Christian songs per se. In essence, they are no different than hymns in their purpose, to glorify God; however, they seek to do it in a different way (e.g. via a different style, beat, etc.) To be honest, I can't say that I love singing contemporary songs every Sunday but neither do I say that I "hate it." But, what I can say is this, "too much of ANYTHING (no matter what that thing is) is never good." And that, may I suggest, is where the problem lies! Or, to put it another way, I believe that our only singing, or mostly only singing contemporary songs is hurting our unity as Christians and will increasingly do so if we fail to see this as a problem and do something about it.

What, you may ask, am I talking about? As you may or may not know, I serve our region as an itinerant pastor, helping to fill the pulpit of our Asian American churches that have no pastor; or if they have a pastor, to give that pastor a one week break from preparing a sermon. The vast majority of us do not travel from church to church as I do. In general, most of us worship and serve our Lord at one church and one church only. Some of us may attend a second service for different reasons but mostly we worship and serve the one church we attend/are a member of. Thus, the vast majority of us worship with the same people, at the same location week after week except for the one, or two times a year, that we might attend an interchurch service, or parachurch conference where Christians from a number of different churches come together to worship.

I, on the other hand, am in a different church almost every Sunday. Thus, I am unable to worship with “the same group of people” every week as most of you do. This gives me a perspective that most of us don’t have….a much wider and bigger picture of what is taking place in our church worship services.

Based on the observations that I have made in the last five years as an itinerant pastor, I am beginning to wonder if our always, and often only, singing of contemporary Christian worship songs isn’t hurting the kingdom of God without our even realizing it! How, you ask? As I see it, it has hurt us in at least two different ways and the damage is growing deeper and wider by the year!

One way contemporary Christian music has hurt "the kingdom" is in the way that it has devalued Christmas, and other Christian holidays! To see how Christmas has been "devalued" read a previous commentary entitled "Why Don't Chinese Churches Celebrate Christmas?"

A second way contemporary Christian music is hurting "the kingdom" is that it is making it more and more difficult for us, as a diverse body, to feel that we are one. This happens to me every week as I enter different church worship services. Rare is the Sunday that I am able to sing every song in any particular Sunday Worship Service. Why? It is because in all likelihood I won't know some, and at times any, of the songs being sung that particular Sunday. More often than not, I/we (the church congregation) needs to learn a new song, or two or three….

The main reason for this is because our Christian song writers and publishers are, in my opinion, too prolific in their writing and introduction of new songs. Naturally, we assume their motives are good and pure (e.g. they are giving us new songs to help us worship God more meaningfully). And no doubt, most of them do have "pure" (or as pure as they can be) motives. But, when a vast array of new songs are constantly being introduced and worship leaders are constantly looking for new songs to sing or risk being seen as anachronistic, our worship services consists of a steady diet of new songs, few of which is widely adopted and fewer still are those that endure, leaving our congregations the unenviable task of learning new songs in almost every worship service. I wonder if some of our song writers and/or publishers are not more interested in producing the “next big hit” and/or making a killing in the market place. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against creativity. And I am not against new songs per se. But, the ceaseless flood of new songs being introduced each year keeps growing with no apparent end in sight.

In the secular world, this works fine because people buy songs for the purpose of listening and self enjoyment. Thus, hundreds of artist can produce hundreds of songs for the secular market place and no problem exists, or will arise.

Worship songs on the other hand, are ultimately, written for corporate singing. And that is the way it should be. But, when hundreds (and those numbers are constantly increasing) of Christian song writers are constantly introducing new songs, they present two problems. First, many of the songs written are mostly “mediocrity warmed over.” I know that that sounds harsh. But, it’s true. Just because a song can be found on a CD doesn’t make that song a quality song. Publishers of CDs can’t afford to give you only “the best of the best.” Instead, they can only give you two or three songs that fall into that category. But, they also have to give you "your money's worth." And how do they do that? By giving you the ten-twelve songs you expect when you buy a CD. That is to say, the music publishers add "fill-ins" in order to give you "all that you paid for." Most of these "fill-ins" are okay but the publishers know that, in general, these songs will soon be forgotten. The need to offer fill-ins in a CD is going the way of the dinosaurs thanks to new technologies which allows us to download only those songs that we truly want and thus free us from paying for that which we never wanted to begin with.

But, even when we have the option to download only the songs that we want, the problem remains. It remains because whenever new songs come out, every worship leader chooses what he/she likes which will likely be different from what your worship leader might like and choose and what my church worshiper leader might like and choose. As a result, next Sunday each of our churches will be learning three different sets of new songs to worship God. That's fine for each of our churches as a "stand-alone" church. But, what happens when we come together for a Christian community event (e.g. ordination service, special recognition service), or an interchurch worship service? Invariable, a portion of the people who come will know the some or many of songs being sung, but for the rest of us it's something that we never heard of before and will have to learn.

Have you ever tried worshipping God in song when you don't know the song? It's tough to get into it isn't it? But, that is exactly what is happening in our churches every Sunday. In 2008 I attended the ordination of a pastor friend. I went to the service expecting to celebrate this joyous occasion with exuberant singing. What happened ultimately was much different than what I had anticipated. Of the six songs sung that evening, I knew only one...the rest I didn't know at all. I wasn't alone. Many of those around me struggled with the songs as well. Could the ordination service I attended be considered a community worship service if more than half the time, more than half the people at the service could not worship in song because the songs chosen were unfamiliar to the vast majority of us?

I personally find this situation unacceptable. For centuries and for a good portion of my early Christian life, every church sang the same hymns that everyone else knew. Thus, I could attend ANY church service and worship God with everything within me because we all worshipped with the same songs. And that would remain true if the service I was in were an Hispanic service or Korean service, or etc. Yes, the language would be different. But, I could still join in the singing in my own language while everyone else sang in their language. Today, I struggle almost every Sunday in an ENGLISH worship service as I strive to learn the never-ceasing flood of new songs that enter the marketplace and finds its way into our churches.

There's got to be a better way. Don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying that we have to go back to hymns...although I do love them for their words and their harmonies. But, the Christian church has a problem which needs to be addressed and unless we do, churches/congregations in the future will never feel united. Don't believe that? Wait and see if I am wrong. I hope and pray that I am wrong. But, what I fear most is that I will be right. What do you think?