Asian American churches face leadership gap

Asian American churches are going through a "crisis of leadership" because seminaries are not preparing a new generation of pastors to work in multi-generational and multicultural settings, Asian American Christian leaders say.

The problem, the leaders say, affects churches throughout the country but is particularly pronounced in California.

At a time when Christian immigrants from Asia and Asian converts in the United States are fueling what a study calls "the most dynamic changes in American Christianity," few U.S. seminaries offer courses designed to prepare pastoral leaders for the linguistic and cultural needs of Asian American congregations. That was the view expressed by experts who gathered last month at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena for a national summit of directors of seminary-based Asian American Christian centers.

One result is decreasing enrollment of Asian Americans in seminaries.

Recruiting Asian American seminarians is "a major challenge," said Fumitaka Matsuoka, former dean of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. "We have generous financial aid, but even with that, it's hard."

Matsuoka said only three or four Asian American students are enrolled at his seminary, a stone's throw from UC Berkeley, where 43% of students are Asian American. "The discrepancy is incredible," he said.

At Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey, Asian American students number about 50 -- down from more than 100 in the 1990s, according to the Rev. Sang Hyun Lee, a professor of systematic theology and director of the seminary's Asian American program.

Pastors, seminary professors and lay leaders said at the session and in later interviews that generational schisms in Asian American churches are causing clergy attrition and turnover among pastors born or reared in the United States. Some young pastors experience so much frustration that they start their own English-speaking, pan-Asian churches. Others become so disillusioned that they leave the ministry, experts said.

A 2005 Duke Divinity School study, "Asian American Religious Leadership Today," said the "most acute tensions" in Asian American churches revolved around two issues:

* Continual clashes between the generations over cultural differences in the styles and philosophies of church leadership and control.