What Can We Learn From Immigrant Churches?

[0:00] Thank you very much, Bill. Obav has already repented of what he wrote because he's not here this morning. Time passes so quickly now.

[0:16] I don't know if it was one year or two years ago or ten years ago. One year ago. I went through part one of this presentation, which was an examination of what we can learn from immigrant churches.

[0:36] And the example that we looked at a year ago was the German church in South Vancouver. One of my graduate students had done a thesis that I supervised on this topic.

[0:49] And we looked at that together. Now, in the last year, we've moved along with a second part of that project, which is to look at contemporary Chinese and Korean churches in the greater Vancouver region.

[1:09] So this is not so much a historic church. The German church, which in the 60s and 70s was really at its high watermark. We now have been at a church that's at its high watermark today.

[1:23] The Chinese and Korean churches. But before we get to that, I want to do a couple of other things with you. I want to make a few points on our city as an immigrant city.

[1:38] And what that really means in terms of Christian witness. Then I want to talk about what we've learned from interviews that we've done with Chinese and Korean Christian churches in Vancouver.

[1:57] And then, in discussion, I hope we can reflect on the questions that are on the back page of a handout that I've distributed to you, which is really asking questions about implications and applications for us as a congregation.

[2:22] Now, it's always a good strategy by an instructor to ask his own questions, because they're not shielding for questions that others might want to ask. Obviously, I'd be very pleased for you to raise issues that are on your mind.

[2:39] But in addition to that, I think these questions might raise, I think, some interesting conversation for us this morning. All right. So, the first point, then, is to think a little bit about Vancouver as an immigrant city, and the whole issue of being an immigrant.

[3:04] I'm sure some of us, indeed, of course, me, I am an immigrant, though I've been here now a very long time. So, I want us just to start off by looking at a couple of these maps.

[3:18] Let's look at this 1971 map first. And I'm sure all of you have had the pleasure of getting a census form, every five years it is now, at least to be every ten years, from the government.

[3:33] Well, you've probably never seen any output from the census form. This map is derived from census information. So, when each Canadian House Court completes a census, it provides a huge dossier of information on the population at large.

[3:53] And this is one question that's raised, and we'll look at another question that's in the census shortly. So, this first map, then, is a map of the Lower Mainland in 1971.

[4:08] So, this is from the 1971 census. You can see that the map has broken up into a series of irregular shapes. Those are called census tracts, census tracts.

[4:22] And each one has got a population of approximately 4,000 to 5,000 people. So, we can break down the information we have to quite a small geographical unit, which, of course, makes it much more useful for us.

[4:36] So, what we see on the map in the top half of the page is the whole Lower Mainland out as far as Langley, which is the edge of the census metropolitan area of Vancouver.

[4:51] And then, on the bottom half of the page, I've blown up the, not literally, of course, the city of Vancouver. So, we've zoomed in on the city of Vancouver, and you can see the key there refers to the percentage of immigrants in each of those little units, those census tract units.

[5:12] And the pattern, as you can see, in 1971 was a very simple one. First of all, there are a lot of census tracts which are white, indicating that there was scarcely any immigrants living there.

[5:28] And those that are of a darker color, well, there's only one which is of the darkest shade, which is more than 50% immigrant, and that is the Chinatown area, just to the right or the east of the downtown commissure, Vancouver downtown commissure.

[5:45] Now, I'm sure some of you are wondering where St. John's is on this map, and it's pretty much in the center of the bottom half of the page.

[5:56] You can see in the middle of the bottom half of the page two census tracts in the middle of Vancouver that are white. One of them looks like it's a rather large nose in profile.

[6:08] That is the Arbutus railway line, which is the edge of the census tract. Now, if we move right into the other white census tract, the right-hand side of that tract, its right or eastern boundary, is Granville Street.

[6:24] So that north-south line there is Granville Street. And if you follow the tip of the nose to the right, you'll see an east-west street that appears, and that east-west street is 33rd Avenue.

[6:40] And then, so St. John's lies in the census tract that is immediately to the east of those two white tracts. In fact, its northern boundary is 16th Avenue, its southern boundary 33rd, so it's about two-thirds of the way down that census tract on Granville Street.

[7:00] So that's where St. John's is. There's a... I know if there is a... There's a few seats at the back there. That's a good help of some. So that's the 1971 picture.

[7:13] And the other thing to tell you is that in 1971, in Canada, 75% of the population said that they were of British or French origin.

[7:25] So this is the Canada that many of you here will remember from your childhood and really up into the 1960s.

[7:36] Now, if we move to the second map, we see really radical change which has taken place. And we're now looking at the immigrant population as a percentage of the total in 2001.

[7:52] And the first thing we note is how many more census tracts now have that darkest tone. That darkest tone, remember, over 50%, so over half of the population is immigrant.

[8:06] We can see that much of South Vancouver and East Vancouver now comprises census tracts with more than 50% of people born outside Canada.

[8:19] We also see that looking into the suburbs now, whereas in 1971, there were relatively few immigrants living in the suburbs, now there are a large number in Richmond, in Burnaby, in Coquitlam, in Surrey, and in parts of the North Shore.

[8:38] So it's a totally, totally different map that we see today. And it's really only when you get into South Surrey, Eastern Surrey, and Langley that we see those white census tracts reappearing, indicating populations with relatively small numbers.

[9:01] So it's a totally, totally different city. today, from 30 years ago. In fact, about 40%, four people out of ten, are immigrants now, in Greater Vancouver.

[9:15] That is, that whole area covered by this map. So that is the city we live in. And I think that needs to make us think a little bit about what being a witness to the city today means.

[9:33] Because there's something else to say about this population, and that is, as you all know, it is a much more diverse population today than the immigrant population was in 1971, when, by and large, the immigrants were people like me who had come from Europe, the largest group from Britain.

[9:54] today, there are very few immigrants coming from Western Europe. The reason is quite simple. Western Europe is also an importer of immigrants.

[10:08] Just as Canada is a large immigrant receiving country, largely because the birth rate here is so low that it does not replace the actual population.

[10:19] if we had no immigrants, today, the Canadian population would start to decline. So, Western Europe is in exactly the same place.

[10:30] In fact, their birth rate is even lower than the Canadian birth rate. So, the only way the population is sustained is by immigration. And that immigration, aside from a few outstanding people like Jim Packer, there are very few people who are coming from Europe, Western Europe, to North America anymore.

[10:54] There simply is not a surplus population there. And so, today, in British Columbia, 80% of the immigrants come from Asia.

[11:04] Well, there is a surplus population. And by and large, they are well-educated people. In fact, better educated than Canadians. This is something we don't often realize.

[11:18] And this is not by accident. This is because of the kind of immigration policy that the Canadian government has and it rewards applicants who have high levels of education.

[11:31] But it also means that this population is to a considerable degree not English-speaking. population. We have a very large part of the population today which is not an English-speaking population.

[11:48] So, the issue then is that we really need to understand immigrant experiences for the immigrant is our neighbor.

[12:00] And if you look at where St. John's is in 1981, 2001, so the 2001 map, the bottom half, look at that census tract where St. John's is and what is the immigrant population in this census tract.

[12:21] I think it's the second category, isn't it? It's 44 to 50%. So, the area around us, as we look at these houses around us, almost half of the people are immigrants to Canada.

[12:36] So, that is something that's in our immediate parish. And a large share of those would not speak English as their first language.

[12:47] Well, how do we love these neighbors? How do we love the immigrant in our midst? Well, one thing we need to do, first of all, is to understand the circumstances of the immigrant.

[13:04] And, as Bill said at the beginning, I've been involved in a research project now since 1996 called the Metropolis Project that has been looking at the circumstances of immigrants in Canada.

[13:20] We've done many interviews with immigrants, especially those for whom English is not their first language. And there are several things that are quite clear from these interviews.

[13:33] First of all, immigration is a time of great instability and anxiety. But in the process of immigration, everything is different.

[13:46] Everything we assume we can do in everyday life changes. Catching a bus becomes a big project to learn. Finding a doctor, learning about taxes, getting a driving license.

[14:03] These kind of annoying, some of them anyway, annoying details of everyday life are things we can accomplish. But for immigrants, and in particular, the large proportion of immigrants who do not speak English as their first language, these are very demanding projects.

[14:20] And so all the time, you have got these new projects to learn. And it's a time of anxiety, and this anxiety of course is compounded if English is not their first language.

[14:34] then it just becomes really difficult to come to terms with the new society. A third point is that for many immigrants, immigration represents downward mobility.

[14:50] It represents downward mobility. I mentioned that immigrants to Canada have a higher level of education than the Canadian average.

[15:02] people, they come often as professional and business people who have had some success in their own country. But for a variety of reasons, they rarely do as well here.

[15:18] One of these reasons we are all familiar with from the newspaper is that their overseas professional credentials are not recognized in Canada.

[15:29] people who have no skills. They lose their skills. Their skills don't exist when they come here. people who have professional jobs and middle class, even upper middle class jobs in their home countries are often in quite poor paying jobs here.

[15:54] To give you a couple of examples, we recently interviewed someone in Richmond who in his home country in Asia was a mechanical engineer.

[16:05] engineer. And here, he's a car dealer to perceive him. Another person we interviewed from Central America was a dentist in his home country, and here, he's a dental receptionist.

[16:22] So this kind of de-skilling means that people's socioeconomic status declines. And this creates a lot of tensions within the family.

[16:39] Another source of tension is the way in which children assume a very different role in Canada, because they learn English faster. And many immigrant families are quite traditional in their family responsibilities and patterns of all of life.

[17:01] They are, to put it rightly, patriarchal. And what happens here is that the father's role in the family is incredibly challenged.

[17:14] So this man who's a mechanical engineer from his home country, who's now a car dealer, his sense of himself, his ability to support his family, is obviously severely challenged.

[17:31] And then he sees his children are coping better than needed. His children actually have to tell him how to do things here. And you can begin to imagine the kinds of tensions that arise in families.

[17:48] It's interesting that immigration is a challenge particularly for the male. by and large women, the mothers, the wives, see Canada as a place that has more opportunities for them than their whole country.

[18:05] So there is a difference of opinion within the family about the wisdom of the movie. It is often the case that the father is inclined to return.

[18:16] The mother wants to stay. So there is a lot of tension immigrant families. Now, the third thing to mention here is the religious context that immigrants move into.

[18:32] And here we're on today. Third now. The percent, this is another question from the census, and we could spend a whole class talking about this one. You know, geographers can be abhorred when they see maps.

[18:47] There's a lot that we find of interest. This is a question in the census asking people about their religious affiliation. And so what we've done here is to map the answer to the question that says I have no religious affiliation.

[19:04] And the point to note here is that there are a number of census tracts in the city of Vancouver where more than 50% of the people say they have no religious affiliation.

[19:15] Now, this is a huge surprise to immigrants. They think they are moving to a Christian country. In fact, a number of them come here as Christian refugees.

[19:27] We find that there's a higher proportion, let's say, of Iraqi Christians in Canada than there are Christians in Iraq. There's a higher proportion even of Korean Christians in Canada than there are in Korea.

[19:42] Because they move here because they think they're moving to a Christian land. people who are moving to a Christian land. And so to confront the reality that lies behind a map like this also creates some challenges for them.

[19:57] So here in a nutshell is the immigrant experience. What is the role of the church here? How can the church help during the difficult settling in process?

[20:11] The church, of course, is charged by Christ to be a place where the full gospel is preached. The gospel of salvation and the gospel of helps, of loving our neighbor, of loving the least of these.

[20:29] And the good news here is that in terms of loving our neighbor, the church really is different. And I want this to be an encouragement to you as it is to me.

[20:42] the government undertook a very large survey at the end of the 1990s looking at people's volunteering behavior and also people's charitable donations.

[20:57] To what extent is the Canadian population giving its time and voluntary activity and also giving its money in charitable donations? And what emerged here is that there's a small group of Canadians who are really carrying the rest of the nation.

[21:15] 25% of Canadians provide 80% of charitable donations and volunteer hours. And in this government study, and I'm quoting from it here, this 25% of the population are people who, quote, have a strong religious component to their lives.

[21:38] children. So that's children. And you'll see on the fourth figure, I've included a page, which is part of the analysis of this survey, which shows this is looking at voluntary activity, specifically here, volunteers amongst parents who have children under 18.

[22:04] So you can see the heading of the table, volunteer rate of subpopulations of parents with children under A2. And if you just look at the top row on that table, you can see it's looking at total volunteering activity in terms of, at the top of those columns, frequency of attendance at religious services.

[22:29] And as you read across the columns, so the numbers decline. so that people who are weekly parents, who are weekly attenders at religious services, 59% of them are volunteers.

[22:42] Those who are monthly, 44%. Those who never or hardly ever go to a religious service, the figure drops to 31%.

[22:53] I don't want to take a huge amount of time over this, but the bottom line here is that indeed, overall, Christian people are making a contribution to loving our members, to loving the least of beings.

[23:13] Now, let's move on and think about the immigrant church. And here I'm going to refer you to the fifth illustration, which is a very complex table.

[23:28] This is, in fact, one of only a small piece of this table. There are six pages in this table. I've just given you one of them because it's got the key stuff we need.

[23:39] And this is looking at the religious status of people living in the Lower Mainland in 2001. It's in the 2001 census. And it's looking at their religious status according to their ethnicity.

[23:53] This is how we're going to get into the Chinese and Korean church, through this table. If we look, so just to help you out here, the left-hand column of various ethnicities is not all of them because, as I said, I haven't given you the whole table.

[24:10] But near the bottom of the page, you see Chinese and Korean. And then across the top, there are about two dozen different religious groups.

[24:21] We've only got the first half dozen of them here, which conveniently ends with Anglican in the last column. So what I'm interested in in this table is the total number of people who are Christian of the total amongst different ethnic groups.

[24:43] So this is the second column. You see Christian. And in fact, that figure of 559,685 is 46% of the total of the various ethnic groups.

[24:59] So 46% of people are identifying themselves as Christian. Now that means the whole range of Christianity. There's no nuance here.

[25:10] We get a bit more nuance when it's broken down into the different denominations, Catholic, Orthodox, and then there's Protestant denominations. We're not going there, though. Now follow that down to the bottom of the page, that Christian column, and see where it intersects with Chinese.

[25:30] So you see the Chinese row there. It's one, two, three, four, five rows up from the bottom of the page. There are 320,000 people who identify themselves as ethnically Chinese, and of these, just under 74,000 say they're Christian.

[25:46] That's 23%. So that's half of the overall population rate. And if you go over to the right-hand column for the Chinese, you see I've added in there no religion.

[26:02] There's a figure of 195,000. 61% of Chinese say they have no religion. So there's a very, very significant mission field amongst the Chinese.

[26:17] Koreans are totally different. Much smaller population, under 30,000, but nearly 20,000 of them say they're Christian. In fact, 72%.

[26:28] That's the highest percentage of any ethnic group. Very interesting group of Koreans. And moving over to the right-hand column, only 6,000 or so, 23% of them say they have no religion.

[26:44] So they are a very religious minority, and overwhelmingly a Christian minority. Now, what I want to do in the rest of our time is give you some information about the interviews we did in Korean and Chinese churches in the Lower Mainland, and then draw things to a close.

[27:11] I've got a fair bit to say on this, so I don't think I'm about to finish. Draw things to a close when we're looking for implications and applications in our own situation.

[27:22] Okay. So we start off then with this table, and we also need to know that the Korean and Chinese churches are conservative in every way.

[27:46] they are conservative culturally, and they are also conservative theologically. They are, by and large, gospel-proclaiming churches, and to a very high degree.

[28:03] So they are interested in working out the Great Commission. But they are also culturally conservative, and in fact, quite hierarchical, and patriarchal, especially the Korean churches.

[28:21] The strength of commitment in the Korean churches is quite noteworthy. In the United States, half of the Korean churches are Presbyterian, and ten years or so ago, the Presbyterians did a survey of the whole denomination of every church, including the Korean churches.

[28:41] And what they found in the Korean Presbyterians in churches, was a very high level of commitment. Respondents went to church regularly.

[28:53] Over a quarter of them, and this is ten years ago, over a quarter of them were giving more than $5,000 a year to the church. And they were highly focused on their involvement.

[29:06] So they were churches that were active, effective. Korean congregations and they were very much as the report put it, Koreans put all their energy and resources into their congregation.

[29:19] They are intensely committed to their in-group. And then it goes on to say, and we're going to get to this later, and genuinely indifferent to our groups. Korean congregations are small, they're numerous relative to the size of the population, and they're subject to quite a bit of turnover.

[29:42] turnover. So, there are differences, of course, in this city. The Chinese have been here a long time.

[29:53] Some Chinese churches are a hundred years old now. Though the, by far, the greatest amount of migration has come in the last 20 years.

[30:05] So you find there are some brand new Chinese churches, but there are also a number that have been here for a long time, which would include third, fourth generation Chinese Canadians, as well as new immigrants.

[30:20] We've seen, however, that less than a quarter of ethnic Chinese in Greater Vancouver actually say they are Christian. Fifteen percent actually say they're Buddhist.

[30:33] There are getting on to close to a hundred congregations of Chinese Canadians. with half of them less than ten years old reflecting the new immigration.

[30:52] When we look at the Koreans, we've seen almost three quarters say they're Christians. This is very similar to proportions that have been looked at in other parts of North America.

[31:04] And a surprisingly large number of congregations, over sixty, in fact, Korean congregations in the lower mainland, are a large number relative to the size of the population.

[31:16] Many of them are small, and we've only recently found them. So what are some of the characteristics? And as I go through this, I'll be quoting from time to time the voices of people that we spoke to in these churches.

[31:32] churches. The first thing we discovered is that the churches are not only spiritual centers, but community centers as well. Not all people who go to these churches necessarily share the fundamental religious values.

[31:51] They make use of community services, which the church provides. And often these community services are ways by which they hear the gospel.

[32:05] In the, this is the intent of those services, is to reach a larger population who then will hear the gospel and become church members.

[32:17] So the church, churches in a sense, operate as a community center as well as a spiritual center. The second thing is that the churches, by and large, are quite homogeneous.

[32:33] They are very much ethnic churches. They are Korean churches, and very few people who are not Korean. There's a little bit more diversity in some of the Chinese churches, but overwhelmingly.

[32:47] the population of these churches are Chinese. And as well as having similar demographic background, they also have very similar experiences as immigrants.

[33:03] And this came through very strongly in the interviews we did in the Korean churches. Let me quote to you from a Korean pastor. He said, and a number of these are themselves translated from Korean.

[33:19] When they first arrive in Canada, they feel very much alone and scared. The church offers a community that will embrace them where they are, Christian or not Christian.

[33:32] The church offers cooked meals, places to rest when looking for a new place to rent or buy a home, advice on education. The church becomes their home.

[33:44] This dichotomy of stress on the outside and peace on the inside, stress in the society because of its difficulty, but peace within the church, came through prominently in the interviews.

[34:02] The church, we were told, is a home away from home. Gets all of these quotes. A safe place to grow and feel accepted. A non-threatening place.

[34:14] A refuge. A place to establish confidence where, and I'm still quoting, many are lonely and stressed. So, the church then plays this role as a home, as a refuge, as a provider of services, and also as a place where Christ is worshipped and held high.

[34:42] Now, I want to go on and talk a little bit about some of these services that are offered. Because this is the government agency that supported this research financially was particularly interested in this angle.

[34:57] And we were particularly interested to let them know about it. And this is a story very similar to the story I gave you a year ago on the German churches, the German churches as immigrant churches in the 1960s and 1970s in South Africa.

[35:17] What we found is a tremendous sense of service to the whole person. As one pastor told us, the longer established immigrants tend to help a lot the recent immigrants.

[35:32] They show love and concern for the new immigrants. And one example of this that a person gave us was talking about their father.

[35:44] This is a woman. She said, my father, who was by then retired, used to go to the airport whenever he had time and would just wait for a plane to arrive from Korea and would see if someone might need a place to stay or help in going somewhere.

[36:00] So this kind of proactive reaching out happens. Someone else said, when our family first came to Canada, we wanted information on schools, neighborhoods, and opportunities for the children to learn extracurricular activities.

[36:20] The church helped us find a home and the mothers here are found and know a great deal about education. Also, I wanted to find a group that will help me emotionally adjust in Canada and find spiritual meaning in life.

[36:36] So here is the full gospel that we presented. Quite interesting in the Korean church is the emphasis on counseling, which brings us back to the issue of family stresses that I mentioned a few minutes ago.

[36:55] Quoting a pastor, the recent immigrants want to find support and a network to be connected into, as they are finding a new home here. They are in need of direction in the education system, job opportunities, how they should learn English.

[37:11] Some are in need of real help because they contemplate suicide and come from broken families. There are many cases in which the fathers are feeling depressed or stressed because they can no longer properly be the head of the family household due to the language barriers.

[37:31] Another church, we were told, we offer services like counseling, job opportunities, translation, and language training, and all other necessary information in your home.

[37:48] Now this counseling is very important. Again, in the third church, we were told, the church has been a place of healing for many who have been hurt emotionally from family members or others.

[38:04] Family stresses emerged as a significant problem. The elevated standing of the Korean or Chinese male is challenged in Canada.

[38:17] Their children frequently speak better English so that language competence reverses the family rate. While downward mobility from successful businessmen or professionals in Asia to a marginal small business in Canada is a cruel blow.

[38:38] We heard repeated reference to the suppression of conventional gender and parental roles that unsettled men in particular.

[38:52] Quote, There are many cases in our churches in which the fathers are feeling depressed or stressed because they can no longer properly be the head of the family council.

[39:06] Another level of stress, and this is particularly in the Chinese churches, is the phenomenon of the divided family, the astronaut family, where usually the father, the husband, is maintaining a business in East Asia, his family is here, the family is separated for long periods of time, and the mother effectively is a single parent in Canada, and has to cope with all of the challenges.

[39:35] So there are counselling services, but there's a lot more besides that. We were told in one Chinese-Canadian congregation that largely had poorer members.

[39:47] We helped them to find accommodation and a job, teach them to fill in application forms through their interpreter and a reference for them. And these practical helps are worked out often in fellowship groups, where new immigrants and longer-established church members share experiences together in a small group of contacts.

[40:13] Mentoring between longer-established and recent immigrants is encouraged, and the help is incredibly practical. one Chinese pastor told us, we are a walking yellow pages for them.

[40:34] Well, I've got many examples of this. I won't go through all of them. Some congregations are very active. There's a quite small church in the city with just about 100 members.

[40:44] Each week it offers 16 hours of English as a second language class, and a Chinese school also, that has over 200 children enrolled.

[40:57] It offers more specialized options that include a martial arts class, a painting class, a sewing class, and a group preparing for the citizenship test.

[41:13] So incredibly practical in terms of meeting people's needs. In another congregation in Burnaby, a retired man has helped over 50 new immigrants to gain a Canadian driver's license.

[41:30] Churches offer workshops on such issues as home maintenance, income tax completion, parenting in Canada, and winter driving. So, this is the gift of helps, which of course is one of the New Testament gifts that is talked about by Paul.

[41:49] Now, all of this is wonderful. It is wonderful. I don't want to minimize it. I think it's hugely challenging for me, for any of us, in terms of what a church can be. It's human, and there are some boundaries to this.

[42:05] The first boundary we noted, well, really the most important boundary, is that these services are very much to co-ethnic. They are people, they are services to people within the community.

[42:21] In fact, that the notion of serving a larger community was something that people really hadn't taken on board. There were a few exceptions of churches that give gifts and food to a food bank, for example.

[42:38] Usually, these were members of mainstream denominations, when there was a denominational policy that would obviously come into the pastor's office. But by and large, though there was no prejudice behind this, but these were very much co-ethnic churches.

[42:57] They served in their own ethnic communities. And of course, the very idea of the creation of a home away from home means that in providing, let us say, a Korean home in Canada, well, that is not a home in the same way from someone, or someone from Africa or India.

[43:19] It's a Korean home. It's the Korean or the Chinese festivals which are celebrated. So obviously, this ministry is ministry which is largely directed within an ethnic community.

[43:35] Now, there's an interesting follow-up to that, and that is that these are not usually neighbourhood churches. They find a building wherever it's available.

[43:49] People drive a long way to it. They are commuter churches. and it was interesting when we asked them questions about the neighbourhood.

[43:59] They knew very little often about the neighbourhood within which they're located. One pastor told us, we have people coming from all over the place. It doesn't matter the distance they travel, but they feel connected to this particular church.

[44:16] We asked about relations with the neighbourhood. He'd answer, not much. The Chinese congregation we spoke to, people come from Vancouver West Side, East Side, North Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond.

[44:28] We are not a local church. And we went on to say, the district around this church is a nice neighbourhood, but we don't have much contact with us. We do our own thing.

[44:39] The neighbourhood has no idea what's going on. A Korean pastor told us, it's only with the second generation that the church will become aware of and responsible to its immediate movement.

[44:57] Well, I'm going to summarise from here on in because part of the rest of the story, at least the next two things I want to say, are very similar to what I said about the German churches a year ago.

[45:12] One of the things that's really quite interesting is how similar the stories are. that when one looks at the Chinese and Korean churches today, we're hearing the same kinds of things as people remember from the German church during its glory days in the 1960s and 1970s.

[45:33] But what I want to just summarise is what happens, what breaks this kind of wonderful community sense.

[45:46] What are the challenges it faces? And there are two challenges in particular and they are both associated with the passage of time. The first challenge comes from within the church itself.

[46:00] With time, there is a new generation that's born, a Chinese or a Korean Canadian generation. And as they grow up, they do not share the same cultural values as their parents.

[46:16] They quite literally live in a different world. And there is a huge challenge of the second generation in these churches.

[46:28] What to do with the second generation? In churches, remember, which are patriarchal, traditional, conservative. And where children give reverence to parents.

[46:43] Wonderful model. Where children give reverence to parents. And now here are the children saying, this church does not reflect my experience.

[46:56] This church is not relevant. First of all, it's in Korean. It's in Mandarin. It's in Cantonese. That's not my first language. And tremendous difficulties arise in these churches.

[47:11] As we saw a year ago with the German and Canadian churches in dealing with the second generation. The Korean churches, the newest churches, are just getting into this.

[47:23] And there are some interesting things we were told. people. We were told in one church, the longer established immigrants keep a lot to the Korean culture, like respecting the elderly, honoring those who deserve respect in the hierarchy system.

[47:39] That was actually used, the hierarchy system, and so on. They desire their children to keep communicating to them in Korean, not in English. and then we have this very sad statement.

[47:53] Actually, a lot of the children of the longer established immigrants have left the church and are now attending a Canadian church or a church with a second generation only.

[48:04] what he didn't say is that there are some who are not the church altogether. So, as it were, this attempt to hold on to culture, to hold on to tradition, and not to recognize the different situation of the new Canadian generation leads to, and if we extrapolate from the case of the Germans that I talked about a year ago, now some of the German churches which have kept the German language to a very hierarchical model, they now are dying churches.

[48:43] They've got very old and small congregations. So, what happens eventually after a good deal of stress and strain is that an English language service is introduced for the second generation within the church itself.

[49:01] So, at another church we heard, first we hoped that our children would be able to adapt to the Korean language and tradition, but we were mistaken. We were expecting too much for them to be Korean.

[49:15] So now we want to give them complete support, and the struggle that must have lay behind those words in terms of dealing with their own cultural baggage.

[49:26] Now we want to give them complete support, people, even set up a program where English young pastors, i.e. non-Korean ethnic origin, where English young pastors can come and speak to them.

[49:39] A different style of fellowship and worship, but their needs are being met. More and more young people are now joining the church, whereas in the last few years many of them left the church.

[49:50] So here is some more heartening news. So this, as I say, is the same stories I brought to you a year ago. The second generation, the children, how does one minister to them in the context of traditional culture, traditional values, including, of course, a traditional language.

[50:13] One interesting, and this is the last example I'll give you of this, one interesting illustration here was a Korean church that in fact had moved into the building of a dying German church.

[50:28] And here took this account. We used to rent our church from a German congregation, and because they did not focus on their children, because they did not focus on their children, they started getting older and members died out.

[50:47] At the end, we became one English speaking congregation. So at the end, this Korean church had 200 members who were young and effective, and there were only 20 old Germans left.

[51:02] So they just gave us the church for free. two years to go. All right. So there are big questions there which have been addressed with varying success.

[51:18] The second point, I've almost finished now. The second point is what happens when the flow of migrants comes to them. This is the second point of challenge.

[51:32] The first is their own children. The second is when the migration source which is constantly replenishing the old world ways, when that ends.

[51:43] That's what happened in the German churches in the 1970s when immigration to Canada from Germany more or less ended. Of course, right now, there's still lots of immigrants coming from China, Taiwan, and also from Korea.

[52:00] But that's not going to go on forever. These churches will also face, eventually, the drying up or the limiting of the immigrants.

[52:13] Now, of course, that's also happened in terms of people coming from countries where the Anglican Church is common.

[52:23] Certainly coming from Britain, that immigration to Canada is also now very small. So there is no real replenishment in any number of certainly people from the UK coming to the immigrant churches.

[52:38] So what happens in this situation where, as it were, the old world culture is no longer being sustained by new immigrant groups? This is really quite interesting.

[52:51] While retaining their gospel focus, churches make further adjustments to the world in which they now live. They try to be more welcoming to the ethnic diversity in which they find themselves.

[53:12] And those that are very ambitious seek to become a multicultural church. So in a sense, they put further and further behind what is ethnic and cultural and they hold up that which is spiritual and permanent.

[53:33] And this has been the pattern of the successful former German Canadian churches. A church like Willingwood, for example, a very, very successful church in Birmingham, which began as a daughter church of, I think it was the first Mennonite church in Vancouver, a German-speaking Mennonite church.

[53:56] You wouldn't know today that there's anything German about Willingwood. It's the same that a smaller church, Kalani, Kalani Park, on the east side of Vancouver, again, one of the original German churches, but it has sort of become a multicultural church.

[54:14] In fact, I visited there, well, I was invited to come and see the pastors there not very long ago, and the associate pastor there is now Chinese Canadian because the neighborhood in which they live is dominant of Chinese Canadians.

[54:32] And that's the last point, is that as these multicultural churches form, they discover their neighborhoods and as, in a sense, their tried and true constituency of ethnic Canadians, of German Canadians, of Chinese Canadians, of Korean Canadians, as this constituency declines in terms of new immigrants coming, so they look in immediate neighborhood.

[55:08] The neighborhood becomes their issue here. And this is something that one's seen in a number of the churches today, the old German churches of South Vancouver.

[55:19] The Chinese and Korean churches aren't there yet. They've still got large numbers of new immigrants who don't have to go out looking for a constituency in their neighborhood. The German churches do.

[55:31] And there are some, I think, wonderful examples of Christian outreach in these churches. Churches like Ebenezer Baptist on Victoria Drive or the church of Calami Park on the east side of Vancouver, where the associate minister, the chap I told you is a Chinese Canadian, has recently had his title and his job description changed.

[55:59] Now, not as he called the associate minister, he is now called the minister for community development. And his primary mission is to reach out to the neighborhood, to the community, immediately around the church.

[56:15] And in that way, reach the Asian population living around the church building. Well, that's it.

[56:26] I've given you my 50 minutes plus, I think, I did. 50 minutes is the standard unit of university lectures. You had a bit of a bonus this morning. I hope you found a bonus.

[56:39] But I think our time is up. And I think we could now perhaps, we've got some ammunition to look at the final page where I've got some questions for discussion.

[56:54] but please feel free also if you wish to ask me anything you want from this. What has been a really wonderful project, looking at the immigrant church, it's wonderful for me in Vancouver.

[57:11] If the churches are community centers are producing all these volunteers and facilitating all of us in a big way for Canadians apart, what's the federal and religion government doing to help us to lose churches?

[57:28] That's an excellent question. In response to their spiritual church? Yes, that's an excellent question. In the United States and the United Kingdom in the last 10 years, there has been a significant movement towards providing funding for what are called faith-based organizations to become really service hubs in their community, to offer services.

[57:59] And the government is prepared to give themselves financial support for providing these services. There is no similar development in Canada.

[58:10] I think the Canadian government is aware of these developments. In the US, this is now a big program. I think about $2 billion a year go to faith-based organizations to provide community services.

[58:29] Interestingly, conservative churches make relatively little use of those funds because they want freedom in exercising programs for their own objectives.

[58:45] And usually, to get government money, there are some constraints on the ability, let's say, to preach the gospel as well as offer services.

[59:00] So, conservative churches have made some use, but not nearly as much use as the number of churches have of these funds. But that's the US.

[59:12] Similar program in the UK, but not in Canada, other than services like preschool, for example, can be, in certain circumstances, some government fund or preschool programs.

[59:31] I imagine, I don't know this, but possibly for ESL programs, I'm not certain about that, English as a second language program.

[59:43] How long do you have that value to respond to? Sorry? How long do you have always value to respond? What, this data that I talked about this morning? About four years.

[59:58] For the German, the German one, this other one is much more recent, it's really just in the last year. Yes, Harvey?

[60:09] Is an organization like the Salvation Army with these communities, are they moving into Chinese ministry, or are they, are they in a traditional pattern of ministry?

[60:22] Is there any common ministry? I'm not aware of any specialized ministries in this program.

[60:34] I think their constituencies of need are already so substantial that they're greater than, they have the capacity to serve.

[60:45] So I think it is much more the homeless, the people who live in really very deep problem neighborhoods, who have particular problems, whether or not they're in the room.

[61:01] I don't think there's any specificity that I'm aware of in the right Salvation Army. How does step Canada define non-pain print?

[61:16] It's simply by birth. By birth? Yeah. It's a learning whole. It's a little around. So these techniques that shows that the board in Canada is there now.

[61:32] That's right. I really want to thank you for inviting us.

[61:43] I just wonder the issues of immigration and participation in the churches is something that I'm particularly interested in.

[61:55] Could it be a good question to ask that traditional churches that are very conservative are not sensitive to the needs of the whole family and in particular you might find some comfort through women and children but really addressing the real issues of spirituality for them have been missed and maybe that is the key of the problem called struggle.

[62:26] Well I think one of the things that is quite encouraging is in the Korean churches and to a lesser degree the Chinese churches a real recognition of family stresses and really we didn't have to probe very much to get at the whole issue of counselling because of family stress.

[62:48] It came from every Korean church that we interviewed them. So I think within the immigrant church itself it is just a well recognized part of the tension of the the family and there is a need to address that issue in pastoral ministry.

[63:16] the question you were getting at? Yeah I just find that in general women are not that verbal in churches and youth are sort of teaching really in social activities to achieve acculturation of better settlers and therefore that is stabilizing the issue which is welcome but the real issues of women are not really taught into churches and I believe that even though they're key to the function of church that is a and that sort of transition between the old culture and the new country and the way the family sort of settled which is an economy of what the family is and yet they are together and far it's very complex and really

[64:18] I don't feel I work with women as a counselor I don't feel women really address those issues in church they address it somewhere else because that's not okay to speak well I think I don't really have helpful information to give you that some of the interviews we did with women but the pastor certainly in the Korean church is another case wasn't it yeah what about professional women that are in Europe yes yes yes there are a lot of nuances here in fact I mean something I always tell my students is there is no such thing as the average immigrant there is just enormous diversity the whole of humanity sense of all of the conditions associated with them so we can't really sort of put immigrants in a box there's just too much diversity there so professional immigrant women another story then anyone want to take up any of these questions so I've got on the back page here what about the first one yeah yeah

[65:43] I just wanted to bring it to Sean again the neighborhood that you perceive largely Asian our community would we be addressing the G-scale male or the restoring patriarchal family would we be offering languages in Seananee or is it a different male who comes to this community to this immediate neighborhood I think I think you'd find there's a variety the immigrants the recent immigrants in this area are Chinese origin from Hong Kong primarily with various abilities to speak English some better some not so well a number of them have come here as quite wealthy people obviously to buy into this neighborhood but a significant number of them are not working here they've taken early retirement in the case I interviewed the man just a few blocks from here who was in his late 40s and he's retired and made a huge amount of money in Hong Kong as a higher but was not able to practice here and he in fact is a Christian and is quite actively involved in Christians work unbaked Christians in fact the reason he agreed to be interviewed finally was when he said he could present the gospel to me we had an interesting conversation but I have done other projects with wealthy immigrants to this region and it is not at all unusual that he's still and he's part of that story and that's not visible because they come here with quite a lot of money and can buy expensive houses but they're actually not making much money here

[67:44] I don't know if you remember a tragic story a few years ago about a murder that appeared on Southwest Marine Drive just maybe five years ago a man who bought a house on Southwest Marine Drive his family was an emigrant from Asia and he was shot in his driveway early one morning going to work in his Mercedes and he was going to work with Min Pao Chinese language newspaper as a delivery board that was his job here that's why he was up and about very early before I think that's probably an extreme case but it is not at all common to find that people here are not making a lot of money at least going for professionals it's a common experience for business people very very few of them are as successful in business here as they were in Korea

[68:45] Hong Kong Hong Kong I did a study of this a couple of years ago we interviewed 90 people who came as wealthy immigrants to Canada we found that the average profit from their business was between zero and twenty thousand dollars a year and half of them sell by business because of the money so in this area there are a number of people who have a considerable amount of money made in other places but my guess is a good fraction of them are not making a lot of money which seems to be going to yes it would seem to me that St. John's might be a little slow to perhaps offer an Anglican

[69:46] Chinese service say on a Sunday afternoon because this is heavily Chinese around we ruin their mornings without parking and all that so I don't have to do that but would you say that I know that Tracy Lander has a great ministry going for all internationals but it wouldn't seem much of a step to get hold of an ordained Chinese Anglican minister that would come here to give a service that would serve this neighbor that would serve this neighbor in say Sunday afternoon that type of thing is where it starts and then younger generation would drink it sometimes starts even before that in providing a service that is helpful to those people so in other words as with these immigrant churches becoming a community center that has perhaps an

[71:03] English as a second language program this is of course what Trinity Baptist did down at 41st and Grandville 49th and Grandville some years ago in the Oak Ridge area you could see the neighborhood was changing and they began in English as a second language program it took several years before there was much feed through from that program to the church but now the church has a very large Chinese congregation it doesn't happen overnight it needs a commitment to move something along and language is a very definite need and through service in this kind of way one can then move to the gospel message and of course some will respond and some won't it's always that way but some will well this is really to gather in those that are used to

[72:07] English services do you think there are many Chinese who are used to English services there'll be a few from Hong Kong that would be about it not many in terms of actual numbers in this neighborhood there might be a few we don't know we don't try certainly a very easy thing to do would be to have a mailing in Chinese characters they call it a postal walk took a postal walk around the church just a mailing in Chinese characters said we are interested in serving you as our neighbors and they find what exactly that meant in the churches themselves when I say community centers they're churches but they operate in giving a whole range of different services they would be people from that ethnic group by and large and it's you know it's a friends of friends thing once something gets started other people learn about it who may look further away but if the services something that they regard is valuable they'll come to it

[73:30] I think it would be have pretty limited resources at this stage to minister to the neighbors in our neighborhood maybe something like supporting a local church like Trinity which is very far away because it sounds like they need a cultural community which we wouldn't handle I'm not saying we shouldn't offer anything but maybe when there's already a ministry available to get involved at that level for our community so that we would be sort of an offshoot of them the 20 people who come here aren't very comfortable in this issue that's what I think well I think that's another issue did I have that here yeah I've got the issue does language present any barriers here does anyone have any thoughts on that

[74:35] I mean I think what we have to remember is that we are now living in society an immigrant society where many people do not have the issues that first language so if we want to reach that population we've got to make some accommodations to that do you want to hear my view yeah yeah I think we need simple contemporary English to be able to for people for whom English is not their first language to hear the gospel today and we don't have simple contemporary English I think we have erected a language barrier to that population of to can hear is as Angela mentioned in the

[75:36] Util of E I think in score