heavy stuff

[3/18 - decided to put the original post back up. i wasn't sure how well it would be received... it's a lot to swallow. but i'm grateful for the feedback even after i took it down. it's encouraging to know that others have the desire to see our church step out of its comfort zone... starting with simply being able to acknowledge our brokenness and our need for healing and restoration... and that we need to be continually transformed and renewed by God so that we're able to love each other more and more each day.]

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my grandpa and i had a really good conversation in our kitchen the other day. he was having dinner and i dropped in to boil some water and make hot chocolate. i had no time for conversations with so many papers due, but i wanted to tell him about my retreat because it was held at a catholic retreat centre. (yes, my lolo is a catholic. and yes, i believe he has genuinely accepted Christ and is going to heaven.) a couple of weekends ago, he also went on a retreat with some of the men at his church, and he was sharing with me about it... some place in north york that used to be a hospital, but mike harris tried to make them do abortions and the sisters refused, so they shut down the hospital and turned it into a nursing home and used one of the adjacent buildings as a retreat centre. an order called Sisters of the Sacred Heart runs the place, if i remember correctly. anyway, i brought a pamphlet home from the retreat in case he was interested in knowing who ran the centre i stayed at (which was called Queen of Apostles Renewal Centre), so i showed it to him, and he was like, "ohh!! OMI, yes!!" and that took me by surprise. i guess it's like my grandpa travelling to australia and being invited to go to a church and then coming home and telling me the church was called hill-something. haha. anyway, the point is i'm not catholic so i don't know all too much about the different orders, but the Oblates of Mary Immaculate are apparently quite big. my mom's high school was run by OMI of the philippine province. and so we got to talking about orders, and how they work, stuff like that... i was genuinely interested in all he had to say. most of it was stuff i would never encounter or even bother to look up by virtue of my protestant upbringing. anyway, we somehow managed to steer the conversation to church history. all the stuff i learned just this year, he already knew! before seminary, i knew hardly anything about church history... and i still haven't taken a course on it, but i've heard enough summaries in other classes to be able to sketch a rough picture. oh, wait! now i remember how we got into church history. he mentioned how the centre he went to was ecumenical and i was surprised again. that he would know the term "ecumenical." i never even uttered that word in my life before this year. and so i responded, "my centre was, too!" obviously. i went with a tyndale class. they wouldn't have accepted a group like us, otherwise. so then he proceeded to share with me the passage that inspired them (the sisters? him and his church? the catholic church in general? i forget.) to be ecumenical. you know the one where the disciples go up to Jesus with the beef that other people who aren't a part of their "group" are casting out demons in His name? and Jesus responds with something like "whoever's not against us is for us." and i was surprised yet again. me, the outsider? of course! the possibility had never occurred to me. that's what a catholic who reads this passage would think. i'm sure that's what my grandpa had in mind. and i know he meant well... the emphasis of the passage is not that there's an in-group and an out-group, but whatever we do in the name of Christ is acceptable no matter who does the doing. that was his indirect way of saying that he accepts me. but STILL... i've encountered this passage before and it's always been the other way around. all in all, i'm glad to have experienced both sides as this has made me more aware of my own pre-conceived notions... one of them, anyway. i'm sure i have a lot more hidden inside me. but i wanna figure out what they all are and begin to break them down one by one.

i'm gonna digress. i just thought of something else. (i hope no one who goes to CECC gets hurt or offended by what i have to say.) i've always wondered why my maternal grandparents don't come to CECC. the rest of my household does. i mean, my mom gets them to come sometimes for easter or Christmas when there's potluck, but that's about it. and it's not simply cuz they're used to attending a catholic church, cuz they've attended evangelical churches in the past. my mom's a pretty 'convincing' person and usually she would try to get them to attend the (evangelical) church she goes to. and usually they'd go along. but not in this case. i think she did try, at the beginning... but then she stopped shortly after and allowed my grandpa to find a catholic home church and my grandma to stay home.

i think it's really sad. because i think i know why they didn't wanna come back, and i think i know why my mom stopped trying to make them. it's cuz they didn't feel accepted. not that the ushers didn't smile and greet them as they walked in, not that some people didn't try to say hi after service... i'm not talking about the motions of acceptance. i'm talking about the genuine sense of belonging and community that people are supposed to experience in the church, because that is what the church is supposed to be. i think they felt a big disconnect... during a couple of the potlucks, when i wasn't busy hanging out with the same people that i hang out with all the time, i'd glance in their direction and i would see their discomfort. but i didn't do anything about it. and no one really talked to them or associated with them other than my own family. everyone was like me, too busy being with the same people. i guess when new people come to our church, it's usually the one who brings them that introduces them to everyone. that's how people typically get to know one another in our church, when someone actively brings them into the group. but hardly anyone will go out of their way to go up to someone they don't know and take the time to have a meaningful conversation. heck, i'm so guilty of that myself. of course there are a few who go out of their way to do this, but they're soooo outnumbered by us passive ones. it's horrible, i think. anyway, i dunno if my mom ever tried to introduce them to people... maybe she didn't, and that's why they didn't feel welcome. or maybe she did. but even so... i think there's more to it. i think it's cuz they're not chinese.

there. i said it. but before go on any further, let me share how i got to thinking about this in the first place. i took a course called cross-cultural communication, and one of the topics we encountered was the intentionally multicultural church. i couldn't decide whether i was for it or against it. i looked at our church as an example. we are a chinese church, but not just any chinese... chinese from the philippines. pretty specific. if a chinese person from the philippines were to move to toronto, they ought to feel right at home at our church. they would find immediate community (ideally). in the past few years, we've gained a lot of mandarin members and added a mandarin service. and what we're doing is ok, right? i mean, if we were to try to cater to ALL kinds of nationalities, would we still be as strong-knit a community? but then i start to think... there is such a fine line between strong-knit and exclusive. and when it comes to church, i don't believe in exclusive. oh, but let's be realistic, now! look at all the churches around us. different denominations, different nationalities... those are the two big dividing factors. stuff like whether you're young or old, married or single, in school or working, prefer hymms or contemporary songs, whether you were born here or 'back home,' whether you prefer to worship in english or 'native tongue'... these 'lesser' diversities usually manage to be addressed and contained within a church. but korean and japanese?? chinese and filipino?? that's just asking for too much. well, maybe not... the tendency for 1.5 or 2nd generation, especially in canada, is to be more accepting of different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. it's the canadian way. the older ones are the ones that have a harder time assimilating. they're much more comfortable in a community and environment that's as close as possible to the one they had 'back home.' dare we rob them of this? are people wrong in taking pride in their roots and doing everything possible to make sure that the culture is not lost in a new country?

i'm going all over the place. but i can't help it... i'm really confused. the intentionally multicultural church seems like a good idea, but i get the feeling that it'll only work with people of different ethnicities who have moved here at a young age or were born here to begin with, because they not only carry their ethnic culture but at least they have the canadian culture as a common denominator, having been raised here and made friends in a multicultural setting. imagine taking a bunch of new immigrants to form a church. what language would the worship be in? let's say english. ok, everyone's different, but we ALL know that we're united in Christ, and so on and so forth... how long do you think people will put up with each other before they begin to feel that they're not receiving anything? that their spiritual growth (the kind that can only happen in community) is being stunted? that they're not being touched by the message because they can hardly understand what the pastor is saying? that they're not getting any support or encouragement or accountability from other members because they can't communicate with others, they can't relate, they can't open up, no one knows where they're coming from, no one understands... what kind of community is this??

so yah, i guess especially for the older generation, churches need to be divided by nationality so that they can continue to grow. but it sure makes it awkward for the next generation. these kids who grow up in the church feel a lot of pressure to stay. but the next generation is always wanting to do things a little different cuz they have a different worldview. but they're not fully detached from the worldview of their parents, and so there's a constant tug-of-war going on. oh, here's another spin on things... if someone can't find community in one church, surely there are enough churches around that he or she will be able to find community there, right? so is it ok (or even better) for a church to focus more energy on retaining/defending a particular stance or cultural identity instead of trying to be so inclusive?

and so i'm torn. i look at the demographic of our church over the past 8 or 9 years that i've been there. we are (were?) primarily chinese from the philippines, but the mandarin congregation is steadily growing. we've had the odd chinese-other (whether cantonese or another dialect or caucasian or mixed or filipino or whatever else i never noticed), but most of them end up leaving. the ones who stay have a reason (i.e. because of *someone*--be it family, significant other, or good friend). when that reason no longer exists as a reason... yah. somehow i am not surprised that people choose to stay or leave a church based on the sense of community they feel. but rightly so, non? the growth a person experiences is closely connected to the community that person's in. so now i wonder... should our efforts go towards re-enforcing the unique community that we have at the expense of excluding others, or should we try to be more inclusive, but at the expense of our own identity and sense of belonging that we have built up over the years? there could be a third question... how to do both? maybe i'm just being pessimistic, but i don't think it's possible. i mean, let's take an obvious example. language. a lot of 'regulars' at CECC find community in speaking fukien or tagalog. doing so in the presence of those who do understand AND those who do not will bring about both kinds of effect. you bond with the one who understands but you rub it in the face of the one who doesn't. say the person speaks english instead... now it includes everyone, but if people speak english all the time, they lose the bond that particular language and culture brings, and a sense of disconnect begins to set in, especially if people are used to communicating in a non-english language when they're in their comfort zone in a community.

did i mention i was torn? ok... back to the beginning. i would love for my grandparents to worship in the same church as me, but the way things stand, maybe it's better that they don't. and here's the extra twist: chinese from the philippines, filipinos from the philippines. our church numbers are growing primarily because of immigrants from china and the philippines--mainland chinese and philippine chinese. why not filipinos?? is the divide so great between the two cultures that nothing even needed to be said for my grandparents to feel it? yes, i think so. i know that there are still parents and elders in our church who discourage marrying into a filipino family. but you know what, every culture has its faults... we're none of us righteous. i guess my worldview is particularly affected because of this, and the older i get, the more i see it and feel it and am hurt by it.

growing pains, is all. everyone goes through them in one form or another. each person has a different take on things, a different story to tell. this is a bit of mine. and it's not often i'm this transparent. but that's a whole other story.

i think i should take the owl's ways more to heart:

there was an old owl who lived in an oak
the more he heard, the less he spoke
the less he spoke, the more he heard
why can't we be more like that wise old bird?