Big questions for a young church

From scheduling facilities to doctrinal clashes, the pitfalls of communication can cause a host of challenges. For Pastor Ryan Chau and the staff of three congregations at Edmonton Chinese Baptist Church (ECBC), these challenges are written in triplicate for their trilingual church community.

“Complex theological concepts can be really hard to communicate,” Chau explains, noting that even for fluent speakers, concepts like sin, atonement and redemption can be hard to communicate across language barriers. As ECBC’s English pastor, Chau works alongside the church’s Cantonese, Mandarin and children’s pastors to minister to Edmonton’s Chinese population. With three separate services, each in a different language, and a children’s ministry in English, every Sunday is a cacophony of vocabulary.

Everything in three

Logistically, there are challenges. “Staff meetings are in English, mostly for my sake,” Chau admits. “Most of the staff, including the church administrator, are fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, except for me.” Raised in the church by Hong Kong immigrant parents, Chau’s first language is Cantonese but, like many second-generation Chinese Canadians, his Chinese reading and writing skills are nearly nonexistent. He’s far more comfortable using English, especially in the workplace, which is an asset for the rest of the staff – when complex administrative and legal paperwork comes up, Chau is often brought in to decipher it. Dealing in three languages multiplies other operational tasks as well. There are three separate websites, multiple hymn books, and quarterly ministry reports times three.

New faces and long memories

Along with having separate languages, the three congregations are also divided by other demographics. The Cantonese congregation is mostly from Hong Kong and middle-aged or senior, which correlates with the mass exodus of Hong Kong citizens to Canada that happened in the early and mid-nineties. Since Cantonese is a minority language within China, the Cantonese congregation at ECBC focuses a lot of effort on language instruction and utilization. The Mandarin congregation is mostly built of newer immigrants, and does a lot of outreach to university students. There can be tension there, especially when the political conflicts between Hong Kong and mainland China are taken into account.

And the English congregation? “Basically, if a Chinese visitor shows up to the church, they pretty quickly get absorbed into the Mandarin or Cantonese congregations, but if someone isn’t Chinese, they immediately are directed to me,” says Chau. ECBC’s inner city residential location attracts visitors of every age and ethnicity – from curious members of the area’s prominent East African population to a Caucasian couple in their nineties who live in the neighbourhood. The majority of English-speaking attendees are the children of Chinese church members who, like Chau, were raised in the church and attended the Cantonese or Mandarin services, but chose to worship in English as they aged. The congregation is eclectic and tends to undergo many overhauls as young members move in and out of the city, but Chau is encouraged by the constant stream of new faces that God has brought in over the years.

Trouble with small talk

While church activities are not intentionally divided along congregational lines, there is a tendency for events to be attended by only one language group. It’s understandable, since something as simple as small talk during a Bible study can be almost impossible due to the language barrier. “It really depends on who spearheads something,” Chau explains. “If it’s started by English, then it’s mostly English who participate. If it’s Canto who initiates, then it’s mostly Canto.” This can be further subdivided into ethnic groups; while the majority of ECBC’s members immigrated from Mainland China and Hong Kong, they also have groups from Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam. Like any church, there are some cliques, and the language and cultural differences can further cement divisions.

This is not to say that the individual congregations never mix. Annual mission trips and Vacation Bible School include volunteers across all languages, and other outreach events like Trunk or Treat or Lunar New Year celebrations utilize the entire church family. There is intentional mixing in the church calendar as well, with five special joint services each year, usually surrounding holidays or transition periods, where all three congregations worship together. The joint services are as beautiful as they are chaotic, with multilingual worship powerpoint, sermons with live translation, and scripture readings in unison “in your chosen language.” Equally chaotic, though perhaps not as enjoyable, are the church’s membership meetings, where budgetary and operational decisions, opinions and reports are discussed through cyclic layers of translation, like a particularly confusing game of telephone.

Big questions

“The Chinese church is very young,” says Chau. “It reminds me of the early church in Acts. There’s a huge focus on evangelism, but less focus for now on the quality and development of that faith. The push is for conformation but less so on transformation.” So while the church is definitely evangelizing (with the Mandarin congregation in particular baptizing many new believers each year), the congregations at ECBC may be coming to a crossroads that other immigrant churches in Canada have faced before them, asking: how do we allow our faith to shape us beyond our culture of birth? And is a church’s focus on cultural and language preservation ultimately beneficial or exclusionary?

With ECBC celebrating its fiftieth anniversary next year, some of these questions may have to be addressed sooner than others. The Cantonese congregation, the founding group of the church, is struggling with their aging membership. With fewer immigrants coming from Hong Kong and very few new mainland Chinese immigrants who speak Cantonese, the once-dominant population at ECBC is sadly diminishing. It’s a pattern followed by most immigrant congregations and denominations, including the Christian Reformed Church, where services in the mother tongue slowly lose their audience until they are discontinued in favour of worshipping only in English. Is it inevitable? Pastor Chau isn’t sure. For now, the joyous confusions of trilingual joint services continue.