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Asian American Christians See More Work for the Church to Do to Stop AAPI Hate

Then she came to Life on the Vine, where she began pastoring in 2014.

“It was really at Life on the Vine that I first saw women preach regularly. I witnessed how their sermons, their lives, their ministry, their personalities, not only helped the women in our congregation, but really drew the men and the women together into the kingdom,” she said.

The congregation at Life on the Vine Church in Long Grove, Illinois, on May 15, 2022. RNS photo by Emily McFarlan Miller

The congregation at Life on the Vine Church in Long Grove, Illinois, on May 15, 2022. RNS photo by Emily McFarlan Miller

Being an Asian American female pastor doesn’t just come with challenges, Liu said, it also comes with “blessings” — the perspective and skills she brings to her role, how she invites others to participate in worship, the way she sees justice at the heart of the gospel message.

But, she told Religion News Service, “with the sharp increase in hostility towards Asians, trying to teach my congregation about that while at the same time being one of those people was more taxing on me than I anticipated that it would be.”

At the service earlier this month, Liu lamented the shooting in Dallas, as well as the shooting at a supermarket in a predominantly Black community in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 dead and three injured in what has been called one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history. By the end of the day, a gunman had opened fire in a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods, California, killing one and wounding five, in a shooting police said was motivated by political tensions between China and Taiwan.

She’s still trying to make sense of the racism she’s experienced in the last few years, and she gets discouraged. As far as her congregation has come, she said, that movement still has been slow.

But reconciliation — with God and with each other — is at the heart of the gospel, she said. She sees it as part of her call to ministry in this moment.

“Our calling as Christians is to live out that ministry of reconciliation that God makes possible,” Liu said.

This article originally appeared here