We don’t need sameness to connect

I have never had the privilege of a faith community catered to my cultural background.

Although born to a Taiwanese family, I was exposed to a Western education (at age 10); far too young to relate to local Taiwanese children. And yet with my dark hair and yellow skin, love for barbecued squid on a stick, and fluency in two Chinese languages, I was certainly a foreigner to American ways.

This means I have always had to reach across a large cultural divide to access any community of faith. Chinese churches saw me as foreign. American faith communities considered me a convert from the outside. There doesn’t exist a church tailor made for me, a Third-Cultured Kid.