How we hear and interpret Scripture can’t be separated from our cultural context. A new book explores how ministers, preachers, and teachers can more effectively speak to Asian North Americans.
By Jerome Blanco
"A
ll readers of Scripture (including whites) interpret the text through their own cultural lenses,” write Matthew D. Kim and Daniel L. Wong in their book, Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching, recently released through Lexham Press.
While the Gospel’s boundless message reaches people across all history and all geographies, hearers of the Word inhabit particular cultures and contexts. When it comes to preaching the message of Jesus, Kim and Wong remind us that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. In North America in particular, assuming a universal default approach leads, more often than not, to reading the Bible through a white-majority lens. It’s how most of us have been trained and taught.
In a written interview with me, Kim explains the importance of affirming Asian North American cultural lenses when reading, interpreting, and preaching the Word, and he explains how this contextualization can be a powerful act of loving one’s neighbor.
Kim (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is the George F. Bennett chair in practical theology, director of the Haddon W. Robinson Center for Preaching, and director of mentored ministry at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is a past president of the Evangelical Homiletics Society. He has served as a youth pastor, college pastor, and senior pastor in Asian American congregations. And he is the author of several books, including Preaching with Cultural Intelligence: Understanding the People Who Hear Our Sermons.
Can you tell us about Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching, and what need you see the book filling for the American church today?
This is the first book written from an evangelical perspective that engages preaching to English-speaking second-, third-, fourth-, and future generations of Asian North American (ANA) listeners. It’s a book that I wanted to write because I saw a need for it growing up in the Korean American church context.
In the book, Daniel and I take our readers on a journey through the ANA experience, explore contextualization for ANA hermeneutics and theology, share the current landscape of ANA preaching, and provide a vision for the future of ANA preaching. The book is not only for ANA preachers and church leaders. It is also for American Christians of all racial/ethnic backgrounds to discuss more intentionally how we can better love the others in our midst. We wanted to provide a unique hermeneutic and homiletic that speaks to ANA hearers in a contextualized way akin to what our African American and Hispanic American ministry colleagues already do.
In your own personal journey, what experiences led you to recognize this need for yourself?
The book is a follow-up to my doctoral studies, where I wrote the first PhD dissertation on Asian American preaching focusing specifically on preaching to second-generation Korean Americans.
Here, in this book, we include other Asian Americans and Asian Canadians. Growing up in Chicago, I heard many generic sermons that rarely contextualized hermeneutics and theology for bicultural Korean Americans. I felt like I was listening to a white pastor preaching to a white congregation. Obviously, our youth pastors received excellent biblical/theological training from their white professors, but they weren’t taught how to contextualize their sermons for ethnic minorities. There was a disconnect.
I thought that, during my seminary training, I would be taught the art of contextualization for preaching, but that wasn't the case either. So, this led to intentional study of how to prepare sermons for bicultural and sometimes even multicultural listeners. Now, it’s something that I try to incorporate in each of my courses as a professor of preaching and ministry. And, of course, I still have so much to learn.
Dr. Matthew D. Kim
What would you say to those who raise the argument that since the Gospel is God’s good news for all people across all time and places, then distilling it through a particular cultural lens or context dilutes the truth of its universality?
Every person, regardless of race/ethnicity, reads and interprets the Bible through a cultural lens. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ: his perfect, sacrificial life, his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and return. Therefore, we must be able to preach gospel truth but help our listeners apply the sermon in their own ethnic/racial/cultural setting. This does not dilute the truth of who Jesus is nor does it dilute the message of the gospel.
When some people say, “Just preach the Bible,” they are not factoring into the equation that they are interpreting the Bible through their own racial/ethnic/cultural lens and experience. That statement also denies racial/ethnic/cultural diversity created by God.
We must try to get into the mindset of the original human author and his context. At the same time, we must admit that we can’t escape from who we are as embodied beings. Therefore, we need to take the extra steps to consider our listeners more fully in their racial/ethnic/cultural contexts. That’s what our book seeks to help us do more effectively.
Cultivating a new culturally aware hermeneutic for a preacher takes certain formation and training. At the same time, however, we as congregations also need to be trained in how we hear, receive, and listen to what is being proclaimed. How do churches as a whole become communities that undertake this shift together?
There needs to be buy-in from the church’s leadership and from the congregation. This may take some time. There also needs to be clear communication from the pulpit. I may, at times, point out that there will be certain sermons where I’m going to be preaching to various cultural contexts within our congregation. We need to remind our listeners that Jesus left the ninety-nine to find that one lost sheep. In the same way, I may preach in any given sermon to the one rather than to the ninety-nine (not all the time, of course). Even still, the ninety-nine can learn and grow from God’s Word.
Adopting a new hermeneutic and theological lens can be a great undertaking for many, especially those who have been steeped in a particular tradition for a long time. Such work, to some, may feel daunting and overwhelming. What encouragement would you offer to those in ministry who are beginning to undertake this shift?
This takes an attitude of putting ourselves in the shoes of our listeners. Take some time to pray about who in our congregations may be “minorities” in the broad sense of that word. Who’s looking in from the outside? Who’s sitting on the cultural margins? Do I take them into consideration in my preaching and teaching? Do I ask the same interpretive questions that they are asking when they read the Bible? Do I illustrate and apply the Word for their lives?
Don't get overwhelmed feeling like you have to now preach to everyone on the margins. I’ve made it a practice to write my entire sermon for one “minority” in the congregation. Countless times, I received feedback from others for whom I did not technically write the sermon how God spoke to them through the sermon.
God speaks. That’s the mystery of preaching. I hope that by putting some of the principles of the book into practice, you will get a feel for our vision for ANA preaching. All glory to God.
Jerome Blanco is an editor with Reclaim.