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The Epic Movement Conference 2009 Live Stream
I’ve been having a great time in ministry speak with various leaders and students here at the second day of The East Coast Epic Movement Conference 2009. You can catch a live stream of the conference via ustream.tv courtesy of Herman Yung (aka doobybrain), his macbook and the Crown Plaza free wifi service.
You can catch tonight’s session from 7-9pm to hear Kenji Adachi.
The cam will probably still remain on afterward. Worth watching if you want to see college kids goof off.
The rest of the schedule looks like this:
Sunday Morning Session 9-11:30am with Tommy Dyo (who’s speaking at the West Coast Conference today!)
Sunday Night Session 7pm-9pm
Monday Morning Session 9-11:30amEpic Movement Conference
The Epic Movement Conference starts today on the West Coast in San Francisco and the East Coast right here in Philly. If you haven’t heard of the Epic Movement yet start paying attention. Birthed out of Campus Crusade for Christ, Epic is a contextualized response to reach the increasing numbers of Asian American students on college campuses across the country. National Dir, Tommy Dyo is a great guy to follow around (esp if you’re on twitter – @tommydyo – c’mon Tommy get tweeting!).
I’ll be giving a seminar RE:Church honestly addressing the experience of church and the post-college transition. The Asian American collegiate experience of church is very interesting phenomenon. Often new graduates and young professionals find themselves in church limbo after they college particularly if they’ve become a believer while in college. Many are looking for that same experience that they had in college and can become very disappointed and disillusioned with what they find in the many local expressions of the body of Christ. Hope to have some vibrant dialogue.
the fortune cookie chronicles
Are Chinese restaurants more American than apple pie?
Jennifer 8 Lee thinks so in her new book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the world of Chinese Food. Here’s a quick review.Did you know that there are twice as many Chinese restaurants as there are McDonald franchises. Somewhere around 40,000 in the United States there are more of these than the number of McDonalds, BKs and KFCs combined. How about fortune cookies? Are they Chinese or Japanese? I guess that depends on who you ask. Whowouldathunkit?
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is a fun and insightful read. A must-read in the ABC curriculum. If you thought Chinese food and what goes on in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants were a mystery before….
ABCs and Church
The L2 Foundation blog posted today about the alarming percentage of ABCs that attend church, less than 2% according to the recent Render Conference near Houston. [link:"Alarming Statistics About American Born Chinese"]
Less than 2% doesn’t surprise me as if any number would be comforting or satisfactory. If I have my numbers correct, there are roughly 3.5million Chinese in America and out of that number we have somewhere around 1.1million ABCs. So you do the math. 2% of 1.1million. You’d probably find many of these church going ABCs on the coasts.
The Chinese have been in America a long time (since the 1840s). So you have Chinese churches in practically every state. A Chinese church over 50 years old would typically have lots of ABCs in it and probably close to half of those churches would be found in California. However the fact of the matter is that these churches have been losing generation after generation of ABCs. Since the U.S. Immigration Act of 1965 those statistics would dwindle further since there would be a growing number of first generation immigrant churches/congregations under 20 years old. These congregations will have ABC children and eventually English speaking ministries. The ABC population will only continue to grow (approx. 30-40k a year). The need to reach them will also grow.
It’s easy to be complacent with who comes to our services. We need to ask how many “new” Christians or seekers actually come? Why don’t they? I believe most of the growth in our English Speaking Ministries is not new growth by conversion but from transplanted Christians. We have young mostly single ABC Christians coming and going. It’s a cultural phenomenon. The hard truth is that there are many Chinese or ABCs outside of our walls (over 95%). There’s so much work to be done.
Events
"HERO" An EPIC MOVEMENT EAST COAST Conference January 15-18, 2010, Philadelphia
Verge Missional Community Conference,
February 4-6, Austin, Texas
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