Pastoral management of a Chinese church.

摘要

This dissertation is a comprehensive and practical guidebook to help Chinese pastors become effective leaders in Chinese churches in the U.S.A. The American Chinese church has many problems. Pastors are often inadequate in use of a second language, preaching, and administration. They often lack understanding of the diverse cultural and denominational backgrounds of the congregation, falling prey to carnality and professionalism. Other church leaders often struggle with carnality and may be too immature to be effective leaders. The congregation as well is tempted by worldliness. Often strife creeps in due to tensions among the Chinese-speaking and English-speaking departments. In addition, the Chinese church often has difficulties with insufficient income, a temporary church building, poor facilities and lack of resources for Christian education.; In order for Chinese churches to solve their problems they need to strengthen themselves in several areas. Pastors must be developed and spiritually nurtured, a strong prayer ministry must be established, programs for training teachers and disciples should be implemented, outreach to American-born Chinese and the diverse cultural groups of overseas-born Chinese needs to occur, and a strong missions program should be developed.; The Chinese pastor is one of the keys to solving these problems and meeting these needs. To be a successful pastor-manager, he needs to develop qualifications which go hand in hand with solving the problems of the Chinese Church. These include spirituality, managing the family well, biblical and general knowledge, and the abilities to preach, counsel, protect the flock, speak a second language, adapt to a new culture, train leaders, and evangelize.; Besides the qualifications mentioned above, the Chinese pastor needs to have managerial skills. The pastor can learn and apply to God's work the managerial principles of planning, organizing, leading and overseeing as exemplified in the Bible by Moses, Nehemiah and Paul.; The pastor cannot do all the spiritual work alone. He needs fellow Christians to hold him accountable and to help him build a strong church. Thus, he should devote attention to training a healthy team ministry of assistant pastors, elders, deacons and teachers.