[Rainer.]

I think I have a bit of a unique perspective on this situation. And pardon me if it's a bit of a novel, but (*cough*I'vewrittenitbeforeandpastedmostofithere*cough*) it might be interesting reading. There's a lot of important background that should be discussed before I get to the issues of leaving the home church that I get to at the end. It's an issue that has weighed on my mind a lot through the years, perhaps one of the main issues.


The new Vietnamese church in America started in 1975. It was the year Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, and people were fleeing the country by the boatload. The oldest church members might have remembered the French missionaries that came to Indochina earlier in the century, many remembered the Americans that would come through the 50s and 60s, spreading the Gospel, but almost more importantly, spreading basic healthcare, medicine, or just opening their homes to orphans and poor children. Regardless their origin, the West Coast of the USA soon housed refugees from Vietnam from all walks of life. Buddhists, Catholics, and Protestants.

My father came over to America when he was 21. My mom was 10. My generation started in 1975. This was the beginning of the "Vietnamese Americans". English was the language of America. Those who were younger, like my mom, could pick up English soon, but were still raised in a very traditional way, speaking Vietnamese as their first language.

But those were born in 1975 were born into a very different place. Those born after 1980 were often children of couples who had not met and married until after coming to the United States. Those born after 1985 started to be raised in households with parents born in Vietnam, but English as their first language.As of 2010, there's a generation, aged 0-35, born after the war ended, and the Vietnamese were transplanted to America. Raised in both Vietnamese and American culture, but almost completely English-speaking.

Now to speak of the church, this created an interesting dynamic. Vietnamese-language churches with kids that spoke English. When I was born, it was 1990, the Vietnamese-American subculture was 15 years old. The older kids would speak Vietnamese well enough, but the younger kids like me were not being taught Vietnamese. We were also surrounded by older kids whose first languages were English. We sat and listened to Vietnamese sermons we did not understand a word of, and that was the way it was.

I grew into my elementary years, 1996-2000. The Vietnamese-American subculture aged into its twenties. Those who spoke Viet fluently grew into their twenties as well, but more importantly, those who spoke English as their first language grew into their teens. This was when the Youth Groups started becoming "our church". Youth Pastors in their twenties were coming into the churches, teaching teenagers that have grown out of Nursery Rhyme Christian Education, and trying to turn the group into a complete spiritual feeding machine, as there wasn't much to be gained out of listening to a pastor we didn't understand on Sundays.

Around 2005, for the first real time, "kids" were disappearing from the Vietnamese churches. By this time, there were some embarking on careers and starting families by getting married. Their options were wearing thin: Stay in a church where the youth group activities are the only English-language option and everyone else who spoke English was younger than you, or move to another church with real, adult spiritual feeding.

So the difficult question became: Why a Vietnamese church at all? Or, more relevant to this thread, at what age does one start considering leaving the Vietnamese church? There were always more than a few tears of frustration that are shed whenever the issue of what we as a generation needed out of the church comes up. In our churches, young pastors still in seminary are teaching in full capacity as youth ministers, to small, but hungry groups. And as far as the question of what is keeping us in the church in the first place?

*TL;DR crowd start here*

The trend is clear, sometime between the ages of 20 and 25, Vietnamese-American kids have been leaving the church, with very few exceptions (the number of people over the age of 25 that were born in America that still attend my church is one, and over 22... two). It is still alarming when anyone leaves the church, even though they might have very good reason by getting more spiritual nourishment from another church. The reason for this is keeping the family together. Family is very important, and you don't break up the family into different churches. It's a difficult decision at all times, with parents frustrated when their children say that they need to leave the church, and children being frustrated by parents who won't let them.

The parents can't get anything out of an English-speaking church, but the kids don't think they get enough out of the Vietnamese church.

The answer, lately, that most Vietnamese churches has decided must be done is to change the Vietnamese church as much as possible in order to keep the young English-speaking Vietnamese adults in the church. Yes, the church has decided to change to fit the new changes in the congregation. Because it is never seen as ideal for children and their parents to go to different churches. Young, Vietnamese-American pastors are a hot commodity, and every church feels like they need to hire one in order to feed the new generation. The talk is always of the "next generation church", which will cater to both Vietnamese and American adults.

The median age of a Vietnamese American is 18. We now have as many college and career aged people as we do children (though it seems like far less in the church, considering how many have left the church). Our churches have "English Groups" from Jr. High schoolers to those in their mid-twenties. And it often still feels like a "Youth Group". For the churches lucky enough to have young pastors, they now teach a sub-congregation of 10-15 young adults every week, with teenagers mixed in.

But the question for the young adults is still: Is this enough? And they are still leaving the church all the time, as the numbers show. And is it okay for them to leave? Should all the families so sharply have their children leave the church at some point, leaving a growing and growing generation gap? Or does the church itself need to change?

Of course, many of you attend much, much larger churches, and few of you probably are going through the issues that I might be going through. But these thoughts are interesting, regardless.

[jthomas1600]

Jon, thanks for sharing that. I have to say though, the concept of segregated churches has always puzzled me. I can understand (taking you particular story as an example) having a Vietnamese Church in the late 60's and 70's because most new immigrants didn't speak the language. And I can understand the comfort that can be drawn from being with people that have shared your pain and struggles. But as you say, we're now coming up on the third generation as you and you're peers start to have families of your own. So is it a good thing/the preferable route for people of specific races to have churches primarily just for them? It has just always seemed to me that if there was one place where people of all different races could come together it would be church. Anyway, that's probably a topic for a different thread.

[Rainer.]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

I can understand (taking you particular story as an example) having a Vietnamese Church in the late 60's and 70's because most new immigrants didn't speak the language.

Two reasons.

1. Old immigrants don't speak the language either.
2. New immigrants are still coming, About half my church immigrated in the last 10-15 years.

Same issues still apply, as a child of an immigrant, should you leave the church that your parents go to? If so, when?

[OiBoyz]

Jon, I know you've touched on this before, and it's an interesting topic. You said "The trend is clear, sometime between the ages of 20 and 25, Vietnamese-American kids have been leaving the church, with very few exceptions (the number of people over the age of 25 that were born in America that still attend my church is one, and over 22... two)."

Are they leaving the church and going elsewhere? Or are they leaving the faith?

[jthomas1600]

I don't know how it is in ethnic churches, but in the white church's (that just sounds wrong) I've attended there's a serious lack of representation of folks in their 20's. I've talked to a few pastors about this and it seems a common problem. As this relates to the topic of this thread: A friend of mine is one of the fathers in our church that is allowing his kids (at about age 15/16) to go else where. For the most part I have looked less than favorably at this. I still do, for a number of reasons I won't get into here. But after a recent conversation I had with Burt about his daughter attending another church I see it in a slightly different light. Burt never drop away from church like so many young adults do. Church was very important to him post high school, through college etc. and he told me that he reached this same point when he was about 15 and his parents allowed him to find a church that suited him. He figures if his parents had towed a hard line on this he might have been frustrated enough and maybe embittered and would not have been in church through out his college and young adult period of life. So as a parent with kids entering their teen years, I will try to be perceptive and make wise decisions if this becomes an issue in my home. The last thing I want to do is be a part of the reason my kids aren't in church when they're in college and starting families, etc.

[thesteve]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

I don't know how it is in ethnic churches, but in the white church's (that just sounds wrong) I've attended there's a serious lack of representation of folks in their 20's. I've talked to a few pastors about this and it seems a common problem. As this relates to the topic of this thread: A friend of mine is one of the fathers in our church that is allowing his kids (at about age 15/16) to go else where. For the most part I have looked less than favorably at this. I still do, for a number of reasons I won't get into here. But after a recent conversation I had with Burt about his daughter attending another church I see it in a slightly different light. Burt never drop away from church like so many young adults do. Church was very important to him post high school, through college etc. and he told me that he reached this same point when he was about 15 and his parents allowed him to find a church that suited him. He figures if his parents had towed a hard line on this he might have been frustrated enough and maybe embittered and would not have been in church through out his college and young adult period of life. So as a parent with kids entering their teen years, I will try to be perceptive and make wise decisions if this becomes an issue in my home. The last thing I want to do is be a part of the reason my kids aren't in church when they're in college and starting families, etc.

The statistic I've heard from many youth pastors and college-aged pastors is that somewhere around 80-90% of people who are in the church at age 18 will go through a period when they do not attend church (permanently or long sabbatical) before they turn 28.

[Rainer.]

Originally Posted by OiBoyz

Jon, I know you've touched on this before, and it's an interesting topic. You said "The trend is clear, sometime between the ages of 20 and 25, Vietnamese-American kids have been leaving the church, with very few exceptions (the number of people over the age of 25 that were born in America that still attend my church is one, and over 22... two)."

Are they leaving the church and going elsewhere? Or are they leaving the faith?

Leaving the Vietnamese church. Attending an "American" church, mostly. Which relates directly to the issue of when is it the right age to choose to attend a different church.

[OiBoyz]

I was actually looking forward to talking about the multicultural church stuff that Jon was telling us about. Perhaps we could have a separate topic for it.

[Rainer.]

I used the copy post tool to branch this discussion off into its own little world, if there was interest in discussing these points, specifically, further.

[SteveDallman]

As a hippie from the 60's, I had envisioned then that the races would be so inter-married by this time in history, that it wouldn't matter what race anyone was.

Such was our unrealistic idealism. Things seem worse today.

I personally dislike the segregation that so many groups choose. I see no value in diversity. Our strength is in our UNITY, not our diversity. I long for a land of peace with no regard to anyones race or color. I'll have to wait until Heaven for that, I'm afraid.

But as long as Christ is preached and taught, and the message of Salvation through Jesus Christ is proclaimed, may God Bless every faithful church, ethnic or not so much.

[Rainer.]

It's not segregation. It's remaining within a familiar and supportive community.

Out of the people in my church, I'd say only 50% have any real fluency in English, 25% speak English as a native language (mostly people in their twenties and younger), and the other half of the church stumbles through English and are simply struggling to communicate with the world in which they find themselves 5 days out of the week. An English-speaking American pastor simply cannot provide support to this community like a Vietnamese pastor can. Unfortunately, Vietnam still is not a great place to live, and people have been steadily streaming over from Vietnam to America continuously since 1970, and my church is made up of people who came over in the 70s all the way to a family that just got to America last year. The non-English speaking Vietnamese community may seem like an artifact of a war that has been lost in the consciousness of American culture today, but immigration is always happening has has no end in the immediate future, as in Vietnam, the effects of the war are still strong and present. There is peace between our church and any other ethnic church, sure, but no one would deny that every church needs to minister to the unique needs of its congregation. And in a congregation who speaks English as a distant second language, merging into an "American" church has not yet been considered as a reasonable choice to minister to this particular group.

Now, you're right in the fact that assimilation is happening, not so much because of intermarriage (which is probably a entire huge different topic... interracial marriage is one tough cookie... even with two families who are good, God-loving people, there are real differences that are big hurdles for an interracial couple to jump over. My Caucasian girlfriend recently went to my recent-immigrant aunt's wedding, and that was a pretty big culture shock, one of many, that not everyone is prepared to undertake.) but because of the simple fact that the loss of the language from one generation to the next is the biggest catalyst to integration into American society at large.

At some point, it seems, the ethnic Vietnamese church really will not be relevant anymore, and in that direction, I believe that the trend that is occurring now might continue. The trend is this: There are young people who decide to stay in the Vietnamese church and young pastors who are returning to their home congregations to lead English-speaking groups who are now in their 20s and 30s. These groups are not only mostly Vietnamese, but are attracting participation of people of all races. The Vietnamese congregations are effectively going to become multi-ethnic congregations slowly over time, as I envision it, and these multi-ethnic congregations will be especially equipped to engage the continuously repopulating new-immigrant group that will always be coming in from Vietnam.