Adaptive Leadership and Chin Immigrant Congregations in the United States (Draft)

Note: Blog hawile, mah ka paper hi draft lawng a si. Introduction le conclusion zong a um rih lo. Cun a chung tial mi zong tlam a tling rih lo (edit tuah rih lo). Nain, a zuam mi rel chung awk le comment/feedback tuah awk ah ka thlah mi a si. Biapi in langhter ka duh mi cu: part 5 nak i "leadership tools for Chin church leaders" khi a si (leadership theory le concept deuh a si i a hawngkheh chom a herh lai). Lungsau in nan ka rel piak ca ah kaa lawm.

1. The Chin People of Myanmar

The Chin people, speaking several dozen related dialects, live in the rugged hills area of western Myanmar. The total population of the Chin people both inside and outside of Myanmar is estimated at about two million. Scholars such as Lian H. Sakhong believe that the Chin people descended originally from western China and eastern Tibet into the present Myanmar via the Hukong Valley.[1] It is also believed that the Chin people were the first group who settled in the Chindwin Valley. Sakhong suggests that the Chin settlement in the Chindwin Valley began in the middle of the eight century.[2] According to the Pagan inscriptions, the Chin people were known as the Chin of the Chindwin Valley. It is believed that they moved over to Upper Chindwin and were dispersed in different parts of the Chindwin River, after the Chindwin Valley was destroyed by the flood. The Chin people gradually moved from the Chindwin Valley to the present area (western part of Myanmar), after the founding of the Shan’s Fortress City of Kale-myo in 1395.[3] In fact, the Chin people had no political relationship with the Burmans until Burma got her independence from the British in 1948.[4]

Accept it or not, the British colonial power paved the way for the coming of Christianity among the Chin people. Western missionaries, with the help of British colonial power, had easy access to remote areas such as the Chin Hills. Eventually, American Baptist missionaries came to the Chin Hills in 1899, right after the British invaded Upper Burma.[5] A large majority of the Chin people, since then, began to embrace Christianity through the untiring effort of American Baptist missionaries. But because of this, the socio-political and religious identity of the Chin people have changed, and apparently they also have faced negative political consequences for it.

2. Burmanization and Ethnic Minorities

The Chin people, along with other ethnic minorities in Myanmar, are socially and politically discriminated against, oppressed, and even persecuted by the military regime mainly because of their faith. Apparently, the regime had made systematic efforts to eliminate the Christian literature, culture, and traditions of the ethnic people in order to assimilate them into mainstream Burmese culture.

Donald E. Smith called this process a “cultural Burmanization” of the ethnic minorities.[6] The term “Burmanization” usually goes along with a slogan: a-myo, ba-thar, thar-tha-na, which literally means one race, one language, and one religion. Directly related to this slogan is a famous Burmese phrase: “To be a Burman is to be a Buddhist.”[7] The political implication of this concept is a belief that Myanmar should be a country of only one race (Burman), one language (Burmese), and only one religion (Buddhism). The regime’s government has been upholding this concept as an unwritten domestic policy. Based on this policy, ethnic minorities, including Chin, are denied their rights to teach their own language in public schools. Moreover, they are denied their rights to freely practice their Christian faith, build religious buildings, and or freely preach the gospel.

There have been instances of oppressions, persecutions, and discriminations against ethnic minorities perpetrated by the regime, just because of the above policy. These serious abuses include “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and mistreatment, forced labor, . . . and religious freedom, abusive military conscription policies, and extortion and confiscation of property.”[8] A Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) survey shows that 91.9% of the Chin people have been forced to porter military supplies, sweep for landmines, be servants, build roads, and do other hard labor.[9] Thousands of Chin people, because of these atrocities induced by the regime armies, have left their homeland. The estimated numbers of Chin refugees in India and Malaysia have reached respectively 75,000 and 50,000.[10]

3. Three Waves of Burmese Migration

The primary reasons for many people of Myanmar, especially ethnic minorities, leaving their homeland is because of poverty induced by the regime, lack of religious and political freedom. More importantly, many have left their homeland because of human rights violations such as forced labor, oppression, persecution, torture, rape, social discrimination, and hope for a better future.

In his article, “The Function of Ethnicity in the Adaptation of Burmese Religious Practices,” Joseph Cheah divides the flow of Burmese immigrants in the U.S. into three different waves.[11] These include: (1) the post-1967 anti-Chinese riots in Burma to the military crackdown on the 1988 pro-democracy movement, (2) after the 1988 prodemocracy movement until 2006, and (3) the resettlement of Karen[12] and Chin refugees, including other ethnic groups from Myanmar since 2006 to the present. 

There were only a very small number of Burmese immigrants in the U.S., as Cheah notes, in the early 1960s. The majority of these immigrants from the first wave were Chinese descents and educated Burmese citizens who later “re-ethnicized” their identity as Chinese rather than as Burmese on the U.S. census form. Cheah has rightly described that they “were the kinds of immigrants sought by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Acts.”[13] A majority of Burmese immigrants from the first wave live mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area, and most of them have assimilated into the mainstream U.S. society.  

The second major wave of Burmese immigrants to the U.S. was more diverse. Many came to the U.S., after the military crackdown in the 1988 prodemocracy movements in Burma, either as students or visitors[14] mainly through India and Thailand. A number of Chin, and other ethnic groups have left their home country and begun to resettle in the U.S. since the late 1990s. Many of them entered into the U.S. after spending years in refugee camps in Malaysia or elsewhere. For example, a number of Chin and other ethnic people were stuck in Guam Island before they were allowed to enter into the mainland in the late 1990s and early 2000s.            

The third wave began with the influx of Karen refugees in the U.S. in 2006 when the State Department issued waivers of the “material support” provisions in the State Department’s Patriot and Real ID Act, which had effectively barred most ethnic insurgent groups, including Karen, from entering into the U.S.[15] Thousands of Karen refugees, including other ethnic groups such as Chin and Kachin, have since then entered into the U.S. and have formed their own ethnic congregations in many parts of the country.

There are currently more than fifty Chin immigrant congregations within the Chin Baptist Churches, USA (CBC-USA) alone.[16] Apparently, these immigrant congregations are in their early transition period in which they need to go through adaptive leadership challenges and structural adaptations.

4. Leadership Challenge

Many of us have shared the strong inner conviction that as church leaders in times of change, we must find ways of regaining control over our increasingly unclear church environment. When we sense that our inner maps of church leadership are becoming less and less effective and the images of leadership in which we were trained are not robust enough to encompass our current reality, another inner map tells us that we have to find a way of taking control in order to make things work again.[17]

Chin immigrants from Myanmar are in their early period of forming their ethnic congregations in the U.S. Being in a new context, as Roxburgh has stated above, their “inner maps of church leadership” tend to become less and less effective. Moreover, it seems that the images of leadership in which their leaders were trained no longer fit in the new social and cultural context where they now live. Put differently, things do not seem to work the way they used to work. Also, many of these immigrants, as they live in this new context, tend to have changed their worldviews, values, and behaviors. Thus, Chin immigrant congregations in the U.S. are faced with adaptive challenges that call for leadership experiments and ministry adjustments. The question, here, is how have leaders of these congregations defined leadership in a way that is effective and meaningful in their new context?   

According to Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, adaptive challenges require “experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in organization or community.”[18] The challenge for leaders of Chin congregations, in this case, is to recognize the reality of adaptive challenges existing within their own congregations. Recognizing this reality will help them to find leadership meanings in their leadership experiments and ministry adjustments. It will also keep them from being tempted to do ministry with a business as usual mentality.

It is no doubt that Chin immigrant congregations in the U.S. are challenged to explore new leadership mappings in their formation of new congregations. In such a context, leaders of these congregations are challenged to engage in adaptive leadership experiments within their new social context and cultural environment. Exploring such new leadership mappings and adaptive leadership experiments is not an easy task, but it is essential for the formation of these congregations. The question is in what ways these congregations have engaged in their adaptive leadership experiments and ministry adjustments. The following is some adaptive leadership tools for Chin church leaders.   

5. Sensitizing Concepts: Leadership Tools for Chin Church Leaders

American sociologist, Herbert G. Blumer first coined the term “sensitizing concepts” to bridge the gap between theories and the empirical world. Blumer contrasted sensitizing concepts with “definitive concepts.” Definitive concepts, according to him, “provide prescriptions of what to see,” whereas sensitizing concepts “merely suggest directions along which to look” in the research field.[19] Will C. van den Hoonaard draws insights from Blumer and defines sensitizing concepts as “constructs that are derived from the research participants’ perspectives, using their language or expressions, and that sensitize the researcher to possible line of inquiry.”[20] He says that sensitizing concepts give the researcher a “general sense of reference and guidance in approaching empirical instances, suggesting helpful directions along which to look.”[21] Charmaz defines sensitizing concepts as “tentative tools” that provide ideas to pursue and sensitize the researcher to ask particular kinds of questions related to the research topic.[22] Glenn M. Bowen also views sensitizing concepts as “interpretive devices” and “starting points for building analysis to produce a grounded theory.”[23]

Keeping the above definitions in mind, this paper proposes the following five sensitizing concepts as conceptual frameworks for the Chin church leaders to look into the lifeworld of their people. These sensitizing concepts include: adaptive leadership, interpretive leadership, missional ecclesiology, religion and ethnicity, and open systems theory.

5.1: Adaptive Leadership

In his book, Leadership without Easy Answers, Ronald Heifetz views leadership in terms of “adaptive work,” which “consists of the learning required to address conflicts in the values people hold, or to diminish the gap between the values people stand for and the reality they face.”[24] Heifetz and Linsky state that “the deeper the change and the greater the amount of new learning required, the more resistance there will be and, thus, the greater the danger to those who lead.”[25] The adaptive work, in this sense, is not an easy work. It calls for a leader to be both “active and reflective,” which means a leader needs to have the ability to “alternate between participating and observing.” Heifetz explains this by using a dance metaphor. He states: “To discern the larger patterns on the dance floor—to see who is dancing with whom, in what groups, in what location, and who is sitting out which kind of dance—we have to stop moving and get to the balcony.”[26] Heifetz and Linsky further develop the dance metaphor in their co-authored book, Leadership on the Line. They state that the challenge for a leader is “to move back and forth between the dance floor and the balcony” in order to be familiar with both situations simultaneously.[27]

Using adaptive leadership as a sensitizing lens, the following questions need to be asked: How do leaders of Chin immigrant congregations get on the balcony, so that they know what is going on among their members and in their communities? How have they addressed the leadership challenges within their new social and cultural context that calls for adaptive changes? How have they dealt with the social and cultural factors that have brought conflicts among their members, especially among their young people?

5.2: Interpretive Leadership

Closely related to adaptive leadership is interpretive leadership. In his book, Making Spiritual Sense, Scott Cormode states, “Christian leadership is fundamentally an act of theological interpretation.” He further argues that the “purpose of Christian leadership is to make spiritual meaning.”[28] Similarly, Mark Lau Branson also defines interpretive leadership as “shaping meaning,” and it provides the “resources and guidance needed to shape a community of learners that pays attention to and interprets both texts and contexts.”[29] Interpretive leadership challenges leaders to observe and interpret the current life and ministry of the church. But, as Cormode puts it, leaders do not make meaning for others. Rather, he states, they “provide a theological framework that enables others to make their own spiritual meaning.”[30] 

Branson suggests that leaders can create an environment through their practices and words that makes innovation possible by giving the adaptive work to a larger group of participants.[31] This process requires an interpretive work that connects with the background, distributes leadership, and experimentally innovates a way into the new realities of different context.[32] Dwight Zscheile asserts that interpretive leadership is not simply a process of leaders interpreting reality on behalf of others. Rather, he argues, it “involves a deep, relational conversation of listening and speaking in which all parties risk learning as well as changing.”[33] 

Interpretive leadership takes seriously “the voices, hopes, fears, and dreams of those at all levels of the church and interpret them communally in light of the biblical narrative.”[34] Thus, one of the main challenges for Chin church leaders is whether they have taken seriously the voices, hopes, fears, and dreams of their members. Moreover, it is important how these leaders have interpreted the daily life struggles of their people in light of the biblical narrative. Also, it is essential to ask the question how these leaders have taken seriously the daily life struggles of their people and made spiritual meanings out of it.

5.3: Missional Ecclesiology

Darrel Guder and his colleagues introduced the missional church conversation into the academic setting in late 1990s by publishing the book, Missional Church.[35] The missional church conversation was initiated by the Gospel and Our Culture Network (GOCN)[36] in the late 1980s, as a response to the Gospel and Culture discussion in the Great Britain that originated with Lesslie Newbigin’s book The Other Side of 1984.[37] Newbigin defined mission in terms of missio Dei, the mission of God.[38] In a way, the Missional Church is a reflection of Newbigin’s mission theology. The central argument of the book is: “mission is not merely an activity of the church. Rather, mission is the result of God’s initiative.”[39] Thus, it is not the church that has a mission, but “it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.”[40] David Bosch appropriately defines mission as “being derived from the very nature of God.”[41] He writes, “The classical doctrine on the missio Dei as God the Father sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit was expanded to include another ‘movement’: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit sending the church into the world.”[42] George Hunsberger, reflecting on this, views missional church in terms of “a body of people sent on a mission,” which means the church is by its very nature missionary, and it represents God’s kingdom as a sign, agent, foretaste, and instrument.[43]  

Many churches, influenced by the false dichotomy between church and mission, view mission as something the church does, defining the church’s missional identity in terms of what it does on behalf of God in the world. This functional approach, according to Craig Van Gelder, shifts the “focus away from the agency of the Spirit” and “redirect it to the primacy of human agency and responsibility.”[44] Van Gelder argues that church and mission are not two distinct entities, but they are interrelated and complementary. Thus, he advocates for the need to integrate the two, saying that missiology and ecclesiology are “interrelated and complementary” and they start at the same point with the triune God in mission to all of God’s creation in the world.[45] The Willingen Conference in Germany in 1952 began to recognize this concept and provided the trinitarian basis for mission by stressing the idea that mission has its source in the triune God.[46] 

The implication of the triune God understanding of missional church is that the Trinity exists in relational community, and the leadership of missional church is called to reflect on the nature of the triune God and live as a relational community. In his book, The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann develops an understanding of the trinitarian history of God with the world emphasizing the mutual involvement of the triune God and the world.[47] This social doctrine of the Trinity focuses on “relationships and communities.”[48] The Scripture teaches that God is a passionate God whose love is directed towards the world by sending God’s Son, Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This God’s outreaching love of the world, according to Catherin M. LaCugna, makes God essentially relational, communal, and interdependent.[49]

The relational, communal, and interdependent nature of leadership is best expressed through a perichoretic[50] understanding of the Trinity. The perichoretic understanding of the triune God is similar to John Zizioulas’s “being as communion.”[51] For Zizioulas, there cannot be true being without communion, and he asserts that to be a person is to be in communion with and relation to the other.[52] Drawing from Zizioulas’s idea, Van Gelder and Zscheile view the Trinity in terms of a perichoretic community that is interdependent and relational. They write: “Relational trinitarian theology gives us a vision of God as a dynamic community of mutuality, openness, difference, and love that makes space for others to participate.”[53] This gives us the implication that mutuality, relationality, openness, and interdependence are essential elements in the leadership of the church. Now, the question is how leaders of Chin immigrant congregations have used the relational-communal concept as a sensitizing lens and approached the triune God from a relational-communal aspect. 

   

5.4: Religion and Ethnicity

Scholars in the field of sociology agree that religion has long been playing an important role in the lives of many immigrants in the U.S., while less attention has been paid to the role of ethnicity or race in new immigrants’ religious experiences.[54] Will Herberg was a pioneer scholar who argued that religion rather than ethnic origin “has become the differentiating element and the context of self-identification and social location” for the European immigrants.[55] Milton Gordon followed Herberg’s approach and argued that all persons should be treated equally without taking into consideration their racial background for any purpose.[56] Implicit in Gordon’s argument is that race or ethnicity should not be the determining factor for self-identification. Herberg and Gordon, along with many recent American scholars, tend to equate American society with the experience of European Americans.[57]  

Many Asian-American scholars have argued against the above approach. Antony W. Alumkal and Pyong Gap Min, among many Asian scholars, argue that religion and ethnicity are equally important in maintaining and preserving the cultural and ethnic identities of Asian ethnic immigrant congregations.[58] Alumkal insists that the religious institutions are not simply places where religious doctrines are taught, but also places where “ethnic and racial identities are preserved, reformulated, and mobilized and where relationships to the larger society are negotiated.”[59] He states: “an immigrant church is not only a source of close social ties with co-ethnics—an ethnic Gemeinschaft—but also a place that reproduces the society of origin on a small scale—in other words, an ethnic Gesellschaft.”[60]

Alumkal and Hurh and Kim use the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft without providing their definitions and making proper distinctions between the two. Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist first coined these two terms to distinguish between two social groupings—community and society— in which individual’s identity is formed.[61] Gemeinschaft is simply translated as “community” referring to social groupings based on “mutual bonds.” Whereas Gesellschaft is translated as “society” referring to individuals who are in relations with one another but remain independent and devoid of mutual relationships.[62] Embedded in the Gemeinschaft is mutual bonding, and a person’s identity is ascribed in such a community. Individualism plays a central role in the Gesellschaft and a person’s identity is achieved in such a society.

The Gesellschaft is best depicted by U.S. mainstream cultures that give priority to individuals as “potentially self-sufficient agents endowed with fundamental rights.”[63] McAdams uses the terms collectivism and individualism in line with Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft concepts. McAdams writes:

Many Americans see life in highly individualistic terms. We strive to live out fully our own individuality . . .. We may concede that parents, lovers, friends, teachers, and a few other important individuals have had some impact on us as we have developed over time. But we tend to be rather obtuse in sorting through how social institutions, for example, may have shaped our identities. Beyond making vague references to things like “my religious heritage” or “the American Dream,” we tend to have remarkably little insight into the ways our lives are framed by cultural categories, values, and norms.[64]

In contrast, the collectivist cultures give priority to the group and emphasize the values of group harmony, cooperation, solidarity, and interdependence.[65]

Juan F. Martinez draws insights from McAdams and asserts that the individualist seeks to be unique or to express the self, whereas the collectivist seeks to fit in or to find a place in the social order. As a result, he concludes, “individualist cultures seek to help a person to express him or herself, while collectivist cultures want the individual to learn to adjust and restrain the self to maintain shared benefits and social harmony.”[66] Self-definition, for individualists, does not come from who they are, but what they do. The self, for them, is the center of action, which “does not allow for recognition of social control and of the structures that limit the choices of many people, particularly those in ethnic or racial minority groups.”[67]

It is apparent that many Chin immigrants, especially their younger generations, are tempted to escape from their Gemeinschaft culture and attracted to the mainstream individualist cultures. Unfortunately, they are caught between two cultures—collectivist and individualist—which usually lead them into social identity conflict. Thus, the challenge for Chin church leaders is to discover how they teach their members (especially younger generations) about the importance of maintaining and preserving their ethnic Christian identities as they live in this individualistic society.

Rebecca Kim argues that ethnic immigrant churches can have a “stronger basis for meaning-construction and cohesion,” enabling “individuals to find community and construct a religious as well as an ethnic identity.”[68] She insists that ethnic churches serve as important spaces that offer emotional and social services that ease immigrants’ sense of loss. She adds that the “ethnic church is where immigrants find a sense of belonging, value, and shelter in the new land.”[69] Helen R. Ebaugh and Janet S. Chafetz also support this view, though their main emphasis is on religion. They state, “immigrant religious institutions provide the physical and social spaces in which those who share the same traditions, customs, and languages can reproduce many aspects of their native cultures for themselves and attempt to pass them on to their children.”[70]

Studies among immigrant congregations suggest that participation in ethnic immigrant churches contributes to maintaining ethnicity by increasing ethnic fellowship and social networks among church members.[71] The Chin people, in understanding the ethnic church as such, have formed their own ethnic congregations throughout the U.S. to provide spaces for their people in maintaining and reproducing their home cultures and ethnic Christian identities. In fact, Chin immigrant congregations serve as spaces for religious or spiritual (Christian) fellowship as well as social networking.

5.5: Open Systems Theory

Open systems theory is another sensitizing lens that is helpful to explore the adaptive leadership experiments among Chin immigrant congregations. The challenge for Chin church leaders is whether they are mindful of the nature of open systems theory and are able to use it as a sensitizing lens in order to look into how their congregations are affected and shaped by their social and cultural environments.

What is open systems theory? Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a German biologist, first introduced systems theory into the social science world through his work in biology and ecosystems, which later became known as General System Theory.[72] Open systems theory, which stems from this general system theory, views organizations as unique entities influenced by their immediate environment. This system was developed in reaction to the traditional theories of organizations that failed to take into account the environmental influences impacting the efficiency of organizations. The traditional theories usually treated the organization largely as a “self-contained” entity known as a “closed-system” theory.[73]

In open systems theory, the environment is conceptualized as an entity that lies outside the boundary of an organization, providing the organization with raw materials and other resources (inputs) and absorbing its products and services (outputs). In general, organizations in open systems theory have the ability to adapt to its environment by possessing permeable boundaries through which new information and ideas are readily absorbed.[74] Hence, the survival and growth of a congregation depends upon its relationship with and adaptability to the changing social context.   

Van Gelder, drawing from open systems perspective, argues that there is a dynamic relationship between a congregation and its local context. The more changes that occur in context, he explains, the more adaptive a congregation needs to be to stay in fit with its community.[75] Van Gelder, keeping this in mind, suggests that the missional church should not close itself off from its immediate context and changing community in order to survive and develop meaningful ministry. Rather, it should learn how to “adapt and recontextualize its ministry to address the challenges and opportunities that it faces with such changes—always forming and reforming.”[76] A congregation, looking from an open systems perspective, can shape and affect its environment as it engages in its local community, and it can in turn be affected and shaped by the people, resources, and other institutions in that environment.[77]

Drawing from “resource dependency theory,”[78] Van Gelder insists that there is always a flow of activity in a congregation interacting with its environment, people and resources are flowing in, and ministry is flowing out. In this process, he argues, it is essential for a missional congregation “to attend to the feedback loop of information regarding how these flows are functioning.”[79] He further suggests: “congregational leaders need to attend carefully to the dynamics of process when introducing change.”[80] In the same way, they need to “help a congregation develop capacity to respond to change taking place within its ministry and the community it seeks to serve.”[81] This is where an open system “provides a framework that can be utilized for addressing the dynamics of either guiding planned change, or responding to unanticipated change.”[82]

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[1] Lian H. Sakhong, Religion and Politics among the Chin People in Burma (1896-1949) (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala University, 2000), 72. Sakhong quotes from Gordon H. Luce, “Old Kyaukse and the Coming of Burman,” Journal of Burma Research Society, vol. xlii, no. 1 (June 1959): 75-112.

[2] Ibid., 73. Gordon H. Luce, “Old Kyaukse and the Coming of Burman.”

[3] Ibid., 77f.

[4] The British annexed the Chin Hills separately in 1896. Since then, the Chin Hills was under the direct administration of the British until 1948. See Sakhong, Religion and Politics among the Chin People in Burma.

[5] Shwe Wa, Burma Baptist Chronicle, 383f; Robert G. Johnson, History of American Baptist Chin Mission, vol. 1 (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1988), 29ff.

[6] Donald Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, 154.

[7] Ibid., 83.

[8] Human Rights Watch, “We are Like Forgotten People,” The Chin People of Burma: Unsafe in Burma and Unprotected in India (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2009), 4. See Za Uk Ling and Bawi Lian Mang, Religious Persecution: A Campaign of Genocide Against Chin Christians in Burma (Ottawa, Canada: Chin Human Rights Organization, 2004).

[9] Physicians for Human Rights, Life Under the Junta: Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity in Burma’s Chin State (Cambridge, MA: PHR, 2011), 10. PHR is an independent, non-profit organization that uses medical and scientific expertise to investigate human rights violations and advocate for justice, accountability, and the health and dignity of all people. Since 1986, PHR has conducted investigations in more than 40 countries around the world, including Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, the United States, the former Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe. See also at http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/about/.

[10] Physicians for Human Rights, Life Under the Junta, 10.

[11] Joseph Cheah, “The Function of Ethnicity in the Adaptation of Burmese Religious Practices,” in Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans, ed. Huping Ling (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008).

[12] Ibid., 200.

[13] Ibid., 201. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the natural origins quota system—American immigration policy since the 1920s—replacing it with a system that focused on skilled immigrants and family relationships. The 1965 INA marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past, which excluded Asians and Africans. See Jennifer Ludden, “1965 Immigration Law Changed Face of America” at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395 (a ccessed April 27, 2012). 

[14] Ibid., 202.

[15] Ibid., 202.

[16] Chin Baptist Churches, USA (CBC-USA) is a non-profit religious organization whose main goal is “to have fellowship to help support each of Chin Baptist churches and other Chin Christian churches in America to grow in body and spirit.” See http://cbfamission.org/index.html (accessed February 22, 2012).

[17] Alan J. Roxburgh, Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 4.

[18] Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 13. Heifetz views leadership as an adaptive work that requires a change in values, beliefs, or behavior. It consists of the learning required to address conflicts in values people hold, or to diminish the gap between the values people stand for and the reality they face. See Ronal Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 22, 30-31.

[19] Herbert G. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969), 148.

[20] Lisa M. Given, ed., The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, vol. 2. (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008), 812.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory, 16. See Charmaz, “Grounded Theory: Objectivist and Constructivist Methods,” in Strategies for Qualitative Inquiry, 2^nd ed. by N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).

[23] Glenn M. Bowen, “Grounded Theory and Sensitizing Concepts,” in International Journal of Qualitative Methods, vol. 5, no. 3 (September, 2006): 2, 7.

[24] Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers, 22, 31. Heifetz explains the process of adaptive work by using the doctor-patient analogy. He distinguishes adaptive from technical work. See more detail from Heifetz pages 73-84.

[25] Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, 14.

[26] Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers, 252-253.

[27] Heifetz writes: “Achieving a balcony perspective means taking yourself out of the dance, in your mind, even if only for a moment. The only way you can gain both a clear view of reality and some perspective on the bigger picture is by distancing yourself from the fray. Otherwise, you are likely to misperceive the situation and make the wrong diagnosis, leading you to misguided decision about where and how to intervene.” Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, 53-54.

[28] Scott Cormode, Making Spiritual Sense: Christian Leaders as Spiritual Interpreters (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), x-xi.

[29] Mark Lau Branson and Juan F. Martinez, Churches, Cultures and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 55, 212-215. See Mark Lau Branson, “Forming God’s People,” in Leadership in Congregations, ed., Richard Bass (Herndon, Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2007), 97-108; Mark Lau Branson, “Interpretive Leadership During Social Dislocation: Jeremiah and Social Imaginary,” Journal of Religious Leadership, vol. 8, no. 9 (Spring, 2009): 27-48.

[30] Cormode, Making Spiritual Sense, 47.

[31] Mark Lau Branson, “Interpretive Leadership During Social Dislocation,” 32. See Heifetz, Leadership without Easy Answers, 20.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Dwight Zscheile, “The Trinity, Leadership, and Power,” Journal of Religious Leadership, vol. 6., no. 2 (Fall 2007): 61.

[34] Ibid., 61-62.

[35] Darrel Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998). A number of follow-up books have been published since the publication of Missional Church. To mention among many, Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000); Lois Barrett, et. al., Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004); Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church: A Community Led by the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007); Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).

[36] GOCN is a “network of Christian leaders from a wide array of churches and organizations, who are working together on the frontier of the missionary encounter of the gospel with North American assumptions, perspectives, preferences, and practices.” See http://www.gocn.org/ (accessed March 12, 2012).

[37] Leeslie Newbigin, The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches (Geneva: WCC, 1983).

[38] Leeslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978/1995); Newbigin, Trinitarian Faith and Today’s Mission (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964).

[39] Darrel Guder, ed., Missional Church, 4, 77ff. See David J. Bosch, David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 390.

[40] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 390. Bosch quoted from Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, 1977), 64.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid., 390-92. The phrase missio Dei was the outcome of Willingen conference 1952, used by Karl Hartenstein his report on the meeting. Karl Barth first developed the missio Dei concept, though he did not use the exact phrase, in his paper read at the Brandenburg Missionary conference in 1932. Barth rejected the idea of mission as a human activity of God; for him, mission is not a matter of human goodwill and reparations, but it is a matter of divine purpose. Mission, for him, began with the divine sending of God’s self in the Holy Trinity. Reflecting on Barth’s idea, Hartenstein used the phrase missio Dei in his Willingen report. For him, to speak of mission is to participate in the sending of the Son, in the missio Dei, with an inclusive aim of establishing the lordship of Christ over the redeemed. See Norman E. Thomas, ed., Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), 104-105; Georg Vicedom, The Mission of God: An Introduction to a Theology of Mission, trans. Gilbert A. Thiele and Dennis Hilgendorf (St. Louis: Concordia Publication House, 1965); Darrel Guder, ed., Missional Church, 187; Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective; Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004/2005); John G. Flett, The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010).

[43] Darrel Guder, ed., Missional Church, 81, 101f.; David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 390. Hunsberger developed his missional church argument in his article: “Sizing up the Shape of the Church,” in The Church between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, ed. by Craig Van Gelder and George R. Hunsberger (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1996). 

[44] Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective, xvii. See Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church, 23f.

[45] Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church, 31. See Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective, 31, 103.

[46] Norman Goodall, Missions Under the Cross: Addresses Delivered at the Enlarged Meeting of the Committee of the International Missionary Council at Willingen, in Germany, 1952 (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1953), 189; Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective. The concept of trinitarian basis of mission emerged later. See a full discussion on this subject in John G. Flett, The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community. 

[47] Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960).

[48] Jürgen Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 19.

[49] Reflecting on LaCugna’s doctrine of the Trinity, Veli-Matti Karkainen states that the purpose of the doctrine of the Trinity is not the inner life of God, but rather the relationship between economy and inner life of God: “God for us.” Veli-Matti Karkainen, The Trinity: Global Perspectives (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 178f.; LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and the Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 22, 243; Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004).

[50] The term perichoresis has been explained in different ways. For example, Catherine Lacugna explains it “being-in-one-another, permeation without confusion.” Paul S. Fiddes uses “reciprocity” and “mutual indwelling” to explain it. Miroslav Volf uses “mutually internal” and “reciprocity interiority of the trinitarian persons.” See Catherine M. LaCugna, God for Us, 271; Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 71-72; Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 208-209; Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 150f.

[51] John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). See Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective, 105.   

[52] Ibid.,15. See Veli-Matti Karkkainen, The Trinity, 90-91.

[53] Van Gelder and Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective, 105, 108.

[54] See, for example, Stephen Warner and Judith Wittner, eds., Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities and the New Immigration (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1998); Helen R. Ebaugh and Janet S. Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations (New York: Atamira Press, 2000); Helen R. Ebaugh and Janet S. Chafetz, eds., Religion Across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks (New York: Altamira Press, 2002); Fred Kniss and Paul D. Numrich, Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America’s Newest Immigrants (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007).

[55] Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic and Jew (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1955), 35.

[56] Milton Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 251.

[57] See, for example, Andrew Greeley, Why Can’t They Be Like Us? (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1971); Andrew Greeley, Ethnicity in the United States: A Preliminary Reconnaisance (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974); Warner and Wittner, eds., Gatherings in Diaspora; Ebaugh and Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants.

[58] See Pyong Gap Min, Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations (New York: New University Press, 2010); Antony W. Alumkal, Asian American Evangelical Churches: Race, Ethnicity, and Assimilation in the Second Generation (New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2003); Pyong Gap Min and Jung Ha Kim, eds., Religions in Asian America: Building Faith Communities (New York: Altamira Press, 2002); Won M. Hurh and Kwang C. Kim, Korean Immigrants in America: A Structural Analysis of Ethnic Confinement and Adhesive Adaptation (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1984).

[59] Antony Alumkal, Asian American Evangelical Churches, 1.

[60] Ibid., 97. Alumkal quotes from Hurh and Kim, Korean Immigrants in America.

[61] See Ferdinand Tonnies, Community and Society, translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).

[62] Ibid., 37f, 76.

[63] Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 278.

[64] Ibid., 274.

[65] Ibid., 278.

[66] Branson and Martinez, Churches, Cultures and Leadership, 155. See Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self; Hazel Karkus and Shinobu Kitayama, “Culture and the Self: Implications, for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation,” Psychological Review, 98 (1991): 224-53.

[67] Ibid., 160.

[68] Rebecca Kim, “Religion and Ethnicity: Theoretical Connections,” Religions, vol. 2 (2011): (2011): 321.

[69] Ibid., 318, 320. See Michael W. Foley and Dean R. Hoge, Religion and the New Immigrants: How Faith Communities Form Our Newest Citizens (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007); Min and Kim, eds., Religions in Asian America.

[70] Ebaugh and Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants, 80. Ebaugh and Chafetz, “Structural Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations,” Sociology of Religion, vol. 6, no. 2 (2000): 135-153. In fact religion continues to be an important identity marker for new immigrants in the U.S. It provides a social space for expressing ethnic differences. See Fenggang Yang and Hellen Rose Ebaugh, “Religion and Ethnicity among New Immigrants: The Impact of Majority/Minority Status in Home and Host Countries,” Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 40, no. 3 (2001): 367.  

[71] Pyong Gap Min, Preserving Ethnicity through Religion in America, 77. See Hurh and Kim, Korean Immigrants in America; Hurh and Kim, “Religious Participation of Korean Immigrants in the United States,” Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 29 (1990): 19-34.

[72] Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications, rev. ed. (New York: George Braziller, 1968). See Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 134; Mary Jo Hatch, Organizational Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives, 2^nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 37ff.

[73] Craig Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 126ff. See Mary Hatch, Organizational Theory.

[74] Mary Hatch, Organizational Theory, 77ff. See Peter G. Northhouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2007).

[75] Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 127. Here, the concept of “adaptive change” is found in Heifetz’s work. See Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers, 22, 69f. Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line, 13-20, 119.

[76] Ibid., 122, 127.

[77] Nancy T. Ammerman, et. al., Studying Congregations: A New Handbook (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 14. See Nancy Ammerman and Carl S. Dudley, Congregations in Transition: A Guide for Analyzing, Assessing, and Adapting in Changing Communities (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2002).

[78] “Resource dependency theory” is simply a concept that is interested in how the external resources of organizations affect the behavior of the organization. Hence, the resource dependency theorists see the organization as adapting to the environment as dictated by its resource providers. This theory argues that an analysis of the inter-organizational network can help an organization’s managers understand the power/dependence relationships that exist between their organization and other network actors. See Mary Hatch, Organizational Theory, 80-81. 

[79] Van Gelder, The Ministry of the Missional Church, 145.

[80] Ibid.

[81] Ibid.

[82] Ibid.,154. Emphases original.