by Executive Editor John Yoder

Can I share with you why second-generation immigrants are key to the future of American Christianity?

When most Americans hear the word immigrant, they immediately think of first-generation immigrants who were born in other countries and came here as adults.  First-generation immigrants from any country have certain commonalities: different citizenship, different cultures, different systems, different worldviews and typically different mother tongues.  They have deep love for their homelands that never fades, no matter how deeply they also love America.

Their children are a completely different breed.  By definition, the second generation are born in the U.S. to parents who were born overseas.  Please notice I’m referring to them as “the second generation” or “second gen” and not “second generation immigrants”.  Because they were born here, they are legally 100% as American as I am.  Many dislike being referred to as immigrants at all, preferring to be called “second generation Americans” or simply “Americans”. 

The second gen have the unique situation of being caught between two very different cultures: their parents’ and their surrounding community’s.  Last month I interviewed Ebenezer Endiryas, second-gen Ethiopian founding pastor of Perazim Church in Bloomington, MN.  Here’s how he described his experience:

I often say I was never Ethiopian enough for Ethiopians and I was never American enough for Americans. And so I would come home and I'd have all this lingo my parents didn't understand, and I'd have all these cultural references, and our jokes didn't match. And so my parents are cracking jokes that I'm not laughing at.  I'm cracking jokes that they're not laughing at. And then I go to school, or I go to hang out with my friends in the neighborhood and I smell like onions. I'm smelling like whatever my mom is cooking for dinner. And they're like, “Why do you smell like that?” There’s no understanding of what our food is.  They had no context for injera, which is our dish in Ethiopia. And so I never felt like I fit there. I never felt like I fit in one particular place. I always felt like an outsider. And I resented that for a very long time.

The downside of living between two different cultures is that the second gen often don’t feel completely accepted by either.  But there is a huge advantage.  The second gen adapt to both their parents’ culture and American culture.  Depending on whether they are at home or at school, they switch back and forth between cultures.  It’s a process called codeswitching, and the second gen do it instinctively.

At the beginning of this blog I said I would tell you why the second gen are key to the future of American Christianity.  It’s because they fluidly move back and forth between cultures and generations, and often languages as well.  First-generation immigrants and those of us whose ancestors have lived in the U.S. for generations have to work hard to relate to people of other cultures.  Our churches have styles of worship we love, and few of us are ready to significantly change them to reach others.  But since childhood, the second gen have had to relate well to people across cultures and ethnicities.  Because American Christianity becomes more multiethnic every year, they are the kind of spiritual leaders we need to guide the church into the future.

But there are two barriers to them entering spiritual leadership.  The first is that they are rarely discipled in English as children.  The second is that they are usually not empowered for ministry leadership as young adults.

How should we respond to this?  We’ll discuss this further in upcoming blogs.  Or you can learn more in our free digital course Empowering the Second Generation, which you can explore at https://www.immigrantministry.com/secondgen.