Originally published at djchuang.com. Please leave any comments there.

The full title of my presentation at the pastors & ministry leaders gathering today was “Revitalizing Asian American Churches for New Generations”. I painted a big picture with statistics about Asian Americans in the United States, and shared about a random sampling of churches that are making notable progress in reaching the next generation. I believe it’s more helpful to think of new ways to reach people rather than only asking the question of how to keep people in church.

Here’s the slides and audio (download mp3, file size=23mb):

[astute listeners will notice that my slides here don’t exactly match the audio; sorry, version mix-up — had wanted to better explain my work with L2 Foundation and Leadership Network]

Other related resources mentioned:

• Crossing the Ethnic Divide: The Multiethnic Church on a Mission - a sociological book about how Evergreen LA is diversifying, great insider look
• Building a Healthy Multi-ethnic Church: Mandate, Commitments and Practices of a Diverse Congregation by Mark DeYmaz - new book to be released in October with great theological foundation and practical tips
• Asian American Church Report - free PDF download with registration
• List of Asian-led multi-Asian/multi-ethnic Church Plants (100+ less than 10 years old)
• Jumping the Sigmoid Curve (PDF) - article about the window of opportunity for churches/ organizations to grow
• video interview with Pastor Gideon Tsang of Vox Veniae (church in Austin, TX)
• NextGenerAsianChurch.com - blog about all kinds of issues related to Asian American churches; join its monthly conference call for lively discussions
• Rachelle Woo Chuang’s art portfolio (my dear wife’s)
• www.coast2coastmove.com - see how we moved cross country this summer

And, here are more helpful links for Asian American leaders:

• L² Foundation www.L2Foundation.org with resource center and calendar of events
• L² Foundation blog blog.L2Foundation.org - current news and insights
• Leadership Network www.leadnet.org - learn from effective church innovations and more

I crammed in a lot in 30 minutes, and included the interactive Q&A in the recorded audio that followed the presentation. I’ll debrief and unpack more of what I spoke about in future posts at the L2 Foundation blog. Really appreciated the prayer support from Tom Steers, Margaret Yu and others, as well as the personal support of many friends who showed up, including Larissa Lam, Philip Kim, Brent Wong, Victor Yap, Ray Chang, Daniel So (drove up from San Diego!), Steve Hong (drove down from San Francisco!), Daniel Eng, Ken Fong, and more. Thanks to Louis Lee, Tom Steers, Tommy Dyo, Ben Shin for pulling this event together, along with Evangelical Christian Credit Union and Evergreen LA for hosting!

Met many other good people there. I would enjoy getting to meet any of those who attended (or missed it) in Southern Cal. Please contact me by email or phone to set a date, time, and place to meetup!