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Across the ELCA, a new movement is taking shape, one grounded not in a single voice but in the collective witness of a people. The ELCA’s Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Ministries has developed a strategic plan to guide the next half decade of ministry, leadership, justice work and theological reflection.
“The strategy is first and foremost not for the API community but for the wider church,” said Teresita “Tita” Valeriano, program director for Asian and Pacific Islander Ministries within the Ministries of Diverse Cultures and Communities team. “As a community, this represents our gifts that we offer and contribute, the challenges we face and address, and our hopes for and with the wider Lutheran community, the neighborhoods where leaders are planted to serve and the world.”
The strategic plan is rooted in multilingual listening sessions held throughout the ELCA in 2024 and 2025. These conversations revealed not only the breadth of API identity but also a shared desire: to belong fully in the ELCA without setting aside the cultures and lived experiences that shape faith.
Participants spoke from many vantage points, including Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities; East, South and Southeast Asian immigrants; multigenerational families; transracial adoptees; and refugees. They also named tensions within the API communities themselves, including generational, cultural and gender-based challenges that shape how belonging is experienced across different contexts. Together they articulated a vision of a church where API Lutherans are not simply included but are active contributors to leadership, theology and mission within the ELCA.
That vision is already reflected in the experiences, stories and connections API Lutherans bring to the church. Ryan Lun, pastor developer of Good Neighbor Chinese Lutheran Church in North Quincy, Mass., said API communities bring lived experiences, cultural wisdom and relationships that can help strengthen the church’s understanding of connection, community and shared ministry. These contributions, he added, have not always received the recognition they deserve.
That expansive vision is also reflected in the voices of lay leaders who contributed to the process. Kao Nou L. Moua, an assistant professor at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, emphasized that “API Lutherans bring multilingual, multigenerational, multicultural and interfaith perspectives that expand the church’s understanding of God’s mission in a pluralistic world.”
“The strategy is first and foremost not for the API community but for the wider church”
Among those who contributed perspective during the listening process was Imran M. Siddiqui, ELCA vice president. He noted both the challenge and opportunity of visibility within the church: “In our church … the amount of Asian folks is under 1% … you don’t run into a lot of Asian Lutherans that often.”
He also emphasized the importance of representation in leadership, adding, “I strongly believe … that symbols do matter … this is good that there’s someone that looks like me that’s in this role … maybe helping other folks realize that they can put their name in.”
A call for justice and belonging
The plan makes clear that justice is not an abstract value but a necessary response
to real and ongoing inequities. Participants named the historical and present realities of anti-Asian racism, both in society and within church structures, calling the ELCA toward repentance, repair, accountability and reform.
Rather than framing API communities as simply “unseen,” the plan identifies how systems and structures have contributed to marginalization, erasure and exclusion, including limiting access to leadership pathways, decision-making spaces, institutional support and equitable opportunities within the church.
Among its early action steps is a churchwide equity audit examining candidacy, call processes and mobility for API leaders, with reforms expected by September 2027. The plan also calls for a public confession and communal lament acknowledging the church’s complicity in anti-Asian racism as part of broader churchwide conversations leading into the 2028 Churchwide Assembly.
“Working for justice, though a source of great joy as a response of gratitude grounded in my baptismal call and covenant, is also the greatest challenge,” Valeriano said. “I also cry out [against] the marginalization and exclusion of API leaders, other people of color and the Indigenous community. Solidarity is not a noun but an active work and actions in God’s reign.”
“The younger generations of API Lutherans play a huge role in the future of API ministry.”
Echoing that call, Khader El-Yateem, executive director of the Service and Justice unit, emphasized the church’s responsibility to act collectively: “As the church, we are called to respond to injustice not only with compassion but with commitment—grounded in connectedness, walking alongside our neighbors, building relationships across cultures, and working together for a more just and reconciled world. The ELCA’s Asian and Pacific Islander strategic plan offers specific ways for our church to move in solidarity toward addressing that calling.”
Edmond Yee, professor emeritus of Asian study at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley, Calif., underscored the depth of that challenge. The plan, he said, will fall short “unless the ELCA is open and receptive to be educated in API cultures, values, customs, religions and intellectual history first.”
The church, he added, “needs to get rid of its institutional racism.” Still, he noted, “the plan can serve as a bridge.”
Raising leaders, building communities
Leadership development is one of the plan’s most urgent priorities, shaped by the recognition that API Lutherans already serve in significant ways across the church. Yet that service often occurs without proportional recognition or support, particularly among lay leaders whose contributions sustain communities but frequently are overlooked and lacking resources.
The plan calls for culturally informed candidacy processes, stronger mentorship networks and synod-level advocacy to address patterns that can lead to tokenism, burnout or exclusion. It also emphasizes the importance of intergenerational leadership, intentionally encouraging and supporting both elders and emerging leaders.
Samantha Ea, ELCA global personnel service and support manager, emphasized that “the younger generations of API Lutherans play a huge role in the future of API ministry. … As elders age and the identity and prominence of Asian Americans who were born and raised in the United States increase, the younger generations have a responsibility to honor tradition and history while being innovative and relatable in shaping future API generations.”
For Hannah Limbong, a Brown Fellow and public health honors student at the University of Louisville (Ky.), authentic leadership begins with trust. She describes it as “trusting in our gifts, our experiences, and the unique perspectives we bring to ministry,” embracing “their whole identity, their culture, language and faith, without feeling the need to conform to a single idea of what a Lutheran leader ‘should’ look like.”
That vision, she added, requires institutional accountability. The ELCA, she said, must be willing to not be “afraid to call out racism when it happens,” pointing to “stories of willing and well-qualified API candidates who struggled to receive calls.”
At the same time, she sees hope in younger generations who bring “creativity and courage to live out their faith in new spaces,” supported through mentorship that “pass[es] on wisdom, experience and encouragement across generations.”
Cultures and connections: A sacred shift
The plan also emphasizes cultures and connections, not as secondary elements but as essential foundations to the life of the church.
Participants consistently named culture as a source of theological insight, spiritual practice and communal strength. Culture isn’t something to set aside for the sake of belonging but is a sacred gift that shapes how faith is lived, expressed and understood.
Participants also acknowledged that cultural values such as humility, service and deference, while deeply meaningful, can also contribute to being overlooked within institutional structures.
The plan calls for the development of culturally grounded worship resources, expanded storytelling practices and intentional spaces where API Lutherans can connect across ethnic, linguistic and generational lines while strengthening relationships across the wider church.
The strategic plan offers both a pastoral vision and a prophetic call: a church transformed through the leadership, presence and cultural wisdom of API Lutherans.
Margrethe Kleiber, a retired ELCA pastor who facilitated an API listening team retreat in May 2025, said this section “envisions connections within the ELCA API community as well as with the wider church.” She pointed to the plan’s call for “intentional spaces that foster pan-API connections, where cultural pride is welcomed, celebrated and honored.”
Those connections, she added, are grounded in shared purpose, reflecting the plan’s emphasis on relationships “rooted in mutual respect, accompaniment and shared mission.” For Kleiber, the impact is tangible: “We can tell stories of changed lives.”
Kleiber said those relationships were not only theological but deeply personal. “Members of the API Lutheran community were there to support, mentor and advise me,” she said. “God put these people in my life. … I am so incredibly grateful.”
The plan also names an emerging area of work: the development of API Lutheran theology. This work reflects a broader understanding that theology is not separate from identity but formed through the intersection of culture, faith, lived experience, history and community.
API scholars and leaders are increasingly shaping theological conversations within the ELCA. The strategic plan calls for greater engagement with theological perspectives emerging from communities whose experiences have historically received less visibility within the church. Kleiber pointed to the biblical vision of “a great multitude … from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” as reflective of the diversity present within API ministries and the wider church.
A church transformed by its people
The strategic plan offers both a pastoral vision and a prophetic call: a church transformed through the leadership, presence and cultural wisdom of API Lutherans. Yet that transformation is not limited to API communities alone. The plan repeatedly points toward a wider church capable of deeper listening, greater accountability, and more faithful participation across cultures and communities.
Still, that transformation is not without challenge. Misunderstandings about API diversity, reliance on a limited circle of voices and the persistence of institutional racism continue to hinder deeper engagement.
For Kleiber, her call to the church is simple and direct: “Work the plan!”
As the strategic plan moves into its next phase, API leaders are inviting the whole church into deeper participation—not simply to read the document but to engage its call.
It is a vision for what the ELCA can become: a church that recognizes the fullness of its people, confronts the systems that limit that fullness, and embraces the cultural, theological and communal gifts already present within it.
“We cannot do this without destabilizing the ‘power over’ systems, enduring discomfort for the sake of justice and our message of grace for all,” Valeriano said, “embodying the words and Word we proclaim within the systems, communities and with our neighbors.”
Looking ahead, Kleiber reflected on the legacy of those who came before and the responsibility of those who follow. API leaders and communities, she said, “have labored faithfully in the work of justice.” The hope is that future generations will see that this moment was one in which the church chose to listen, to act and to be transformed.
