Multilingual: The Chinese-English Difference
One Worship Service for the Entire Family
Before coming to Friendship Agape Church, my wife and I attended many Chinese Christian churches; however, we attended different services offered by these churches. She would attend the Mandarin speaking service while I attended the English speaking one. Although some Chinese Churches have English service geared for multilingual adults, most are aimed for the youths. Therefore, the sermon would be focus on youth’s issues as it should be. Because she speaks Mandarin/English and I speak Cantonese/English, we speak to each other in English. We really wanted to worship and praise God together side by side but there weren’t many choices other than attending an English Christian church.
Because of our background, we felt the need to connect with other Asians in Christ, so we continued to look for a church with Bilingual service. This was not an easy task. For 5 years after we moved to the Silicon Valley from Ventura, we went to numerous churches and searched on the World Wide Web but found none that met our needs. That is, until we found Friendship Agape Church.
Friendship Agape Church was different from other churches in the Silicon Valley. They offered a bilingual service. I am not wearing a headphone either. There is a person who is at the podium with the Pastor and translates the message in sequence and coordination with the Pastor. During the rest of the service, the praise team speaks both Mandarin and English. Some of the older Youths are also attending the service with their parents with the ultimate goal of allowing the whole family to listen, share and perhaps discuss afterwards the sermon of the day. I think that the congregations have also benefited. Like me, they are listening to both Mandarin and English and in the process have improved their understanding of Mandarin or English.
We have been at Friendship Agape Church since the summer of 2002. The brothers and sisters are loving and caring. The Church facility is expansive. Pastor Vilay is multi-lingual. He and his family have been a blessing to our church. We have English and Chinese Sunday Bible Schools before the service. My wife and I study the bible with the English Growth Group offered by our Church every Saturday night. My daughter of 9 has enjoyed going to Friendship Agape church with us because she has friends of her own age, some of them bilingual while others are English speaking only.
All in all, my experiences at Friendship Agape have been a great one and I truly recommend it for those who are like our family that understands either Mandarin or English but not quite or at all fluent in both.
- JY