home title page Introduction Background church structures

CAMBODIANS IN CRISIS

A Study of the Cambodian Population
In Long Beach, CA

3. CHURCH STRUCTURES

In this section of the paper, we will examine the church structures which we have observed in the Cambodian community in Long Beach and make some comments as to the issues faced by people in those church communities. In the next section, we will then examine community resources available from other sources before making our missiological observations and recommendations.

A. Churched and Unchurched Population
Currently no reliable comprehensive list of churches exists in the Long Beach area. The best resources for church lists have been from people active in networking the Cambodian Christian community. A list compiled by Ken Kong, a Cambodian community leader, who has been actively networking the Long Beach church provided a list of twelve churches. These include churches from a wide spectrum of evangelical churches including Seventh-day-Adventist, Nazarene, Baptist, Lutheran, and a few independent churches. There are a few Cambodian congregations within denominational churches such as the First United Presbyterian Church in Long Beach. These churches with Cambodian departments are usually older churches in transitional neighborhoods (OCTN) and do not have ordained pastors from their denomination directly ministering to these specific cultural groups. 
The average Sunday attendance of all the churches listed is below one-hundred. Two congregations have youth groups over twenty and are considered large by people in the community. Most Cambodian community leaders estimate that ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of the community is unchurched. However, from data gathered from the Cambodian Association of America (CAA), they estimate thirteen percent of Cambodians indicated that they were “Christian.” The CAA felt the percentages of Christian in their survey seemed high compared to anecdotal evidence from the community. Further study and analysis is needed to understand the spiritual dynamics of the community. Even with some discrepancy as the percentage of Christians, we can safely say that the community is largely unchurched.

B. Generational Issues
Of the dozen Cambodian churches in Long Beach, all of their senior pastors were born in Cambodia and speak Khmer as their primary language. Through interviews, we can identify only two pastors that are full time; the rest are bi-vocational pastors. Educationally, none have received master’s level seminary training but some have attended Bible school or discipleship training courses provided by various denominations. There are no Cambodian churches that are pastored by American-born Cambodians. 
According to interviews with community leaders such as Ken Kong and Jenny Giles, this has been a source of tremendous tension as young adults struggle to be affirmed in ministry, and the traditional churches are resistant to change. This struggle is not unique to the Cambodian experience but as church leaders migrate to other ministries, due to the small pool of leadership, the effects are deeply felt. Scholars in the Asian American community have seen this isolationist mentality among “immigrant-oriented Asian American Christians who believe that the majority of Asians in this country will always identify most closely with cultural roots from the countries of their forebears” (Fong 1999:9). Young adults from twenty-three to thirty-three are practically non-existent in the Cambodian church. Those left in this age range are put in leadership positions, usually in charge of the youth group but have very little access or influence in the “adult” congregation. As over fifty-two percent of the Cambodian population is under nineteen years old (1990 US Census), more attention needs to be given to this age group.

 
C. Denominationalism and Comity
“Comity” is the old mission practice of creating ministry boundaries determined by geography, people group, congregation, etc. Comity still manifests in the Cambodian Christian community by the lack of inter-denominational or para-church co-operation or involvement. Denominational loyalty is fiercely guarded by many Cambodian pastors. Some of this loyalty can point back to the deep sense of obligation to many denominations due to the fact that many denominations acted as sponsors and agents for the rescue and exodus out of war-torn Cambodia. Cambodians are very relational and loyal and would find it dishonoring to turn their back on someone who has helped them so deeply. 
This loyalty also has a negative side that breeds a competitive and territorial attitude to inter-church involvement or co-operation. For example, in an evangelistic youth rally that brought nearly one hundred Cambodian youth together in the summer of 2002, several pastors openly rebuked their leaders and congregants for attending such an event. Pastors have also discouraged students from participating in campus ministries such as Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF), InterVarsity (IVCF), and Campus Crusade (CCC). Leaders stated that they did not want their members to be “influenced” by other denominations. Some have observed that this is often caused by the fear of loosing members. Ironically, this fear of loosing members to other congregations seems to have actually contributed to members leaving because they felt oppressed by their leadership. Churches with leadership which has the greater community in mind have absorbed many of the people who have left the other congregations. 

The style of worship and church governance of the churches is basically a Western form of Christianity that missionaries brought to Cambodia and which has now been re-exported to the Cambodians in American. This form may be ministering to and effective with first generation Cambodians, but appears to be largely irrelevant to the enculturated American born generations. Paul DeNeui in Chuck Kraft’s Appropriate Christianity (currently in manuscript form) elaborates on John Travis’ C-1 to C-6 Spectrum “to ascertain which type of Christ-centered communities may draw the most people from the target group to Christ and best fit in a given context” (Travis 1998:407). For example, a C-1 type church represents an “intentional transplant church using dominant national language, consciously alien to local culture and religion.” (i.e., a Cambodian church using the Khmer language and which is alien to the local US culture). A C-2 type church represents an “intentional transplant church using local language overtly alien to local culture and religion.” (i.e., a Cambodian church using English but which remains essentially alien to the local US culture). The casualties of the current form of the Cambodian church are the American-born Cambodians who are not being reached or affirmed in their leadership, language, or cultural context (Cambodian-American). Kraft calls this “reciprocal contextualization” in which the immigrant church imports a particular style (usually C-2) into the host country, in this case America. 

This is not unique to the Cambodian community but exists in most immigrant contexts such as churches from Latin America, Japan, Korea, China, etc. Kraft would encourage development of “meaning equivalence” churches that would meet specific issues to reach the people from a different context:
“We should encourage meaning equivalence churches. Many churches look in their contexts like literal translations look in their languages-imported…Meaning equivalence churches…would look and sound like they belong in the receiving society.”  (Kraft 1996:446-47). 

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