CAC Asian Ministry Conference 2026

Friday, 31 July — Saturday, 1 August 2026
Sydney Missionary & Bible College, Robert–Dale Campus

How do we move beyond abstract theology to ministry that actually thrives in the Asian-Australian context? The Centre for Asian Christianity invites you to the 2026 Asian Ministry Conference at SMBC.

Register Now!

Designed for second-generation pastors, lay leaders, and ministry workers, this year’s conference tackles the contextuality of our work. We will be looking at both recent scholarship as well as addressing the practical cultural nuances of leadership, governance, and the unique challenges of the migrant church structure. Whether you are navigating pastoral-elder relations or serving international students, join us as we bridge the gap between academic scholarship and the challenges daily ministry.

For the first time, we are also introducing the CAC Colloquium. This gathering will feature recent scholarly work in Asian and Australian Christianity whilst bringing their voices and insights in discussion with ministry practitioners. Don’t miss it!

$ 60

Keynote Plenary
Workshops
Food & Fellowship

$ 80

Plenary & Workshops
Academia & Theology
Food & Fellowship

$ 25

Academic Presentations
Theological Reflections
Food & Fellowship

Guest Speaker

Dr. Daniel Lee

Daniel D. Lee is the founding Academic Dean of Fuller’s Asian American Center. Serving in various leadership roles since 2010, he has been the key force behind the Center and the Asian American Initiative before that. He has also taught theology and Asian American studies at Fuller since 2015.

More about Daniel

Dr. Lee’s research areas focus on the Reformed tradition and theological contextuality, and he brings broad ministry experience to his work. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), he has served in pastoral roles in both New Jersey and Southern California. He was previously a chaplain and, for several years, a campus ministry staff member for Servants Ministry in Virginia. He currently serves as a theologian in residence at Citizens Church in Los Angeles.

Lee is author of Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice (2022) and Double Particularity: Karl Barth, Contextuality, and Asian American Theology (2017), as well as the editor of The Theology of Asian Americans and Pacific Peoples: A Reader, 1976, compiled by Roy Sano (2023). He is a member of the Association for Asian American Studies, Asian American Psychological Association, American Academy of Religion, and Karl Barth Society of North America.

Conference (Friday)

Time	Session
9:00 am	Arrival & Registration
9:30 am	Plenary #1: *All of ourselves for Christ: the gospel for Asian Australians*
10:30 am	Morning Tea
11:00 am	Plenary Workshop: *Knowing ourselves and our community*
12:30 pm	Lunch
1:30 pm	Workshop #1
2:15 pm	Workshop #2
3:00 pm	Plenary #2: *Joy, desire, and the beautiful gospel*
3:30 pm	Afternoon Tea

Colloqium (Saturday)

Time	Session
9:00 am	Arrival & Registration
9:30 am	Welcome
9:45 am	Presentation #1
10:15 am	Presentation #2
10:45 am	Morning Tea
11:15 am	Presentation #3
11:45 am	Presentation #4
12:15 pm	Presentation #5
12:45 pm	Review & Close

Local Ministries

Leadership in the migrant church

Presented by Michael Leong (CrossLife Church, Asquith) and Simon Chiu (Hebron Chinese Alliance Church)

Intercultural challenges in the migrant church

Presented by Ying Yee (Chinese Christian Church, Milsons Point) and Kevin Jin (Carlingford Baptist Church)

Ying Yee

Ying is married to Ivy—proof that God is gracious. He became a Christian in high school and joined Chinese Christian Church (CCC) in 1972, back when flares were cool and people still used transparencies. After studying Engineering at UNSW and working at the ATO (yes, really), he made the holy pivot to Moore Theological College. He returned to CCC in 1992 as English Pastor and has been serving ever since. Passionate about raising up future Gospel workers, he’s recently turned his energy to inspiring those in their “second season” of life to leave a legacy that outlasts their reading glasses.

Missional Ministries

Women in Asian ministry: challenges, pathways and the future

Facilitated by Grace Lung (Centre for Asian Christianity)

From Bible women to the modern day, Asian heritage women have always been incredibly involved in ministry serving alongside men. However, women often face distinct challenges, such as gender role stereotypes, societal / familial expectations, racism and patriarchy etc. These disempower and prevent them from truly flourishing where they are called. This is an opportunity to discuss our stories and see how we can pave the way for women to persevere, flourish and to see more women serving God vocationally.

Understanding changing Indonesian religiosity & mission opportunities

Presented by Kian Holik (Epping Indonesian Congregation)

Indonesia is often seen as one of the most religious nations in the world. Yet recent sociological research suggests a quieter and more complex reality: while religious identity remains strong, personal belief and spiritual conviction may be weakening—especially among younger generations and within diaspora communities. This seminar explores the changing landscape of Indonesian religiosity and reflects on its implications for gospel ministry and mission.

Campus Ministries

Bridging the Gap

Presented by Jason Cheng (St. Barnabas Broadway), Ash Wilson (Power to Change)

Collaborative Ecosystems for Reaching Asian International Young Adults.

Jason Cheng

Jason came to faith in Christ in 2000 and completed a Master of Divinity at Sydney Missionary and Bible College (SMBC) in 2013. He currently serves at St Barnabas Broadway, leading the international ministry, and is also actively involved in campus ministry at the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney, partnering with fellowships such as Mandarin Bible Study (MBS), International Christian Fellowship (ICF), and Chopstix Christian Fellowship. Passionate about raising up the next generation of gospel workers and leaders, he also serves as a trainer with the Chinese MTS Training curriculum. Jason lives in Sydney with his wife Lisa and their three children.

From Campus to Kingdom

Cultivating Contextualised Discipleship and a Sending Pipeline Through Local Church Partnerships

“Translate please”: the unintelligible γλῶσσα of 1 Corinthians 12–14 in patristic and Chinese reception history

Presented by William Chong and Joshua Chan

1 Corinthians 14,2 and 14 are key verses often cited against interpreting Corinthian tongues as human languages due to their apparent unintelligibility. Early Christian interpreters resolved this tension by reading “no one understands” (v.2) contextually as “no one in the congregation,” and interpreting “mysteries” as the content of uninterpreted foreign speech. For v.14, some saw the “unfruitful mind” as a lack of edification, while others invoked linguistic hierarchies where languages like Greek or Hebrew were used liturgically despite audience incomprehension. Greek patristic commentators typically understood “spirit” not as the human or Holy Spirit per se, but as a synecdoche for the spiritual gift of tongues given by the Spirit.

In light of the diasporic and multilingual reality of both the church in first-century Corinth and the diasporic Asian Australian church today, understanding Paul’s use of γλῶσσα/方言 as known languages becomes a hermeneutical key to pursuing the mutual edification of Christians who worship in similar cross-cultural settings today. Our reading, while not rejecting the possibility of an “angelic language”, offers a more fruitful application for those who shape and participate in the gathered worship of Asian Australian Christians.

William Chong

William Chong is a PhD candidate in the Theology Programme at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and author of “How to Speak in Tongues: A Historical–Contextual Reading of Paul’s Use of γλῶσσα/方言 in 1 Corinthians 12–14” in Religions (MDPI, 2024). He is currently investigating the delimitation history of Ephesians in the earliest Greek New Testament manuscripts containing Ephesians (under the supervision of Professor Paul Trebilco and Dr Katie Marcar). A graduate of Sydney Missionary and Bible College (MDiv, Australian University of Theology), William’s other research interests include understanding the early New Testament church from a diaspora lens, Bible translation and reception history, and wisdom literature. In his spare time, he enjoys cycling and running with his family, and learning to converse more fluently with church members, neighbours and strangers in their heart language.

Joshua Chan

Joshua Chan is Postgraduate Student in New Testament Studies at the University of Oxford, UK. He trained in theology in the States for full-time ministry, not knowing that he would one day return to a question once asked by his late mother and others—one he believes still matters deeply for the global church: What is speaking in tongues? His doctoral research examines New Testament tongues through the lens of early reception history, combining close exegesis with historical theology. His work on tongues has been published in Journal of Biblical Literature and is forthcoming in New Testament Studies and Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft.

Integrating Biblical Soul Care in an Indonesian Congregation: Barriers, Opportunities, and a Pastoral Model

Presented by Rev. Christian Tirtha

Indonesian diaspora churches in Australia function as vital centres of spiritual formation, community belonging, and pastoral care. Yet within these congregations, integrating biblical soul care remains both a pressing need and a complex challenge. Drawing on more than two decades of ministry experience within Indonesian Australian churches, including over a decade of pastoral ministry in one congregation, this paper offers a practitioner’s reflective account of the barriers and opportunities encountered in applying biblical soul care principles in this context.

Ministry experience within this congregational context has revealed several barriers including stigma around mental health, the prioritisation of communal harmony over individual disclosure, and hierarchical leadership patterns that can discourage vulnerability. Two further tensions emerge: a tendency to overlook ordinary means of pastoral care, in favour of extraordinary divine interventions, and a persistent conviction that counselling belongs exclusively to trained ministers or professionals, never lay leaders.

Alongside these barriers, the paper highlights ecclesial opportunities: the church as extended family, high relational trust, and the centrality of Scripture in shaping conduct and addressing life’s struggles. This paper argues that biblical soul care is an ordinary expression of the ministry of the Word, exercised through discipleship, pastoral care, and the mutual care among believers. It proposes an integrated pastoral model combining biblical soul care principles with culturally attuned practices, such as care structures, relational discipleship, and the equipping of lay leaders.

The paper offers a practical theological framework that may help diaspora churches develop a more biblically grounded culture of shared soul care.

Intergenerational Resources For Faithful Contextualisation

Presented by Kamal Weerakoon

Theological orthodoxy is transcultural and transtemporal. But ministry practices, being located in a particular time and place, inevitably contextualise themselves to their particular social environment.

Every culture presents both opportunities for commendation of the faith and challenges against it. Faithful contextualisation requires adequate response to both. It avoids both syncretistic over-identification which validates secular culture and under-identificative withdrawal into irrelevance.

This contextualisation becomes an element of the church’s culture which is passed on to future generations.

First-generation migrants experience the alienative and attachmentive effects of migratory dislocation and relocation differently to those of later generations, including different attitudes to traditional ministry practices. These differences often lead to conflict expressed through phenomena like the ‘silent exodus’ out of Asian churches.

This paper will draw on the author’s human subject doctoral research to suggest ways to express features which often become authoritatively traditioned within Asian ministries—e.g. the final authority of the Bible; a particular liturgy; elder-honour—in ways characterised by ‘Western’ low power-distance and high participation. Such collaborative discipleship will hopefully make the cultural differences between first and later-generation Asian migrant Christians a matter of mutual joy instead of conflict, which in turn facilitates faithful contextualisation.

Witness Through Dependence: Disability Theology, Chinese Ecclesiology, and Newbigin’s Missional Vision

Presented by Dr. Elliot Ku

As Chinese Christian communities continue to expand globally and gain increasing institutional stability, they face growing pressure to adopt ecclesiological and missional models shaped by efficiency, leadership capacity, and measurable success. This paper argues that disability theology is not merely a marginal or corrective discourse for Chinese churches, but a theologically necessary partner for sustaining a faithful ecclesial self-understanding amid such pressures. Bringing Lesslie Newbigin’s missional ecclesiology into dialogue with disability theology, the paper contends that the church’s witness is grounded not in mastery or autonomy, but in shared dependence and embodied participation.

Newbigin’s critique of Enlightenment rationality and his vision of the church as a communal bearer of truth provide a framework for reimagining ecclesial identity beyond individual competence or performative agency. Disability theology deepens this vision by exposing the ableist assumptions that often shape ecclesiology, missiology, and practices of participation. The paper further argues that many Chinese Christian communities—particularly in diasporic contexts—operate within cultural frameworks that already normalise relational personhood, interdependence, and moral obligation. These cultural logics render disability theology especially intelligible, not as an external critique, but as a constructive articulation of ecclesial instincts already embedded in lived practice.

At the same time, disability theology strengthens Chinese ecclesiology by protecting it from instrumentalisation as churches grow and globalise. By reframing dependence as a constitutive mark of faithful witness rather than a deficit to be overcome, the paper argues that Chinese churches are uniquely positioned to embody and theologically clarify Newbigin’s vision of the church as a sign, instrument, and foretaste of God’s reign in a pluralist world. In doing so, the paper suggests that Chinese ecclesiological insights, sharpened through disability theology, offer a vital contribution to wider conversations in ecclesiology and World Christianity.

Chinese Bible Woman meets Australian Christianity

Presented by Grace Lung

Chinese Australian women in Christian ministry often inhabit a contested space between inherited Chinese cultural expectations and the theological debates of Australian evangelicalism. Their experiences cannot be reduced to an opposition between patriarchal Chinese tradition and Western gender equality. Rather, they are shaped by intersecting histories and systems: Confucian familial norms, the legacy of Chinese Bible Women and female church leadership, migration and generational change, racialised stereotypes of Asian women, and the complementarian–egalitarian conflict within Australian Christianity.

Drawing on interviews with Chinese Australian church leaders, this paper examines how these dynamics affect women serving in Chinese heritage churches. It argues that Western complementarian and egalitarian categories, when applied without attention to Chinese Christian history and migrant realities, can intensify intergenerational conflict and render Chinese Australian women collateral damage in theological disputes not originally their own.

Yet these women are not merely passive victims of marginalisation. Like the Bible Women who sustained and expanded Christian communities in China, and biblical figures such as Esther, Ruth, and Bathsheba, they exercise agency through faithfulness, discernment, relationship-building, and strategic action.

The paper proposes “in-between-ness,” informed by Sang Hyun Lee’s theology of liminality, as a constructive framework for understanding Chinese Australian female leaders. Rather than asking which theological or cultural side women should occupy, this framework attends to their social location and the creative possibilities of marginality. It concludes by suggesting that solidarity across generations, cultures, and theological difference may offer pathways toward healing, integration, and recognition of women’s leadership in Chinese heritage churches.