About Us

From APG to AAPM to SEAPI (we're fond of acronyms!)

In 1999, CRC Home Missions staff (Al Mulder, Gary Teja, and Tong Park) organized what was then called the Asian Planning Group (APG) to function as a ministry consultation and leadership training group for the Asian churches.

In late 2003, the group applied as a peer learning group and was awarded a grant through the CRCNA-Lilly Endowment Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Program. Read "Asian Pastors Poised for Leadership, Church Growth" on the CRC-SPE website.

The group took on a new name, Asian-American Pastoral Ministry (AAPM), to reflect the changing demographic profiles of their communities and to direct its purpose towards pastoral excellence. In May 2006, AAPM membership included twelve Asian CRC pastors and with their wives, are all first generation couples from these ethnic groups: Cambodian (2), Chinese (1), Hmong (2), Laotian (2), Philippines (2), South Korean (1), and Vietnamese (2). Serving as Home Missions' consultant to the group is Dr. Gary Teja. Rev. Mike & Lois Vander Pol (retired missionaries in Taiwan and the Philippines) used to serve as advisors to the gorup for World Missions. They remain as close friends of the original AAPM members. .

For four years now, AAPM had developed into a self-managed and self-directed group whose members learned to take charge of its peer learning process. Read "Take charge of your learning" at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship website.

Rev. Jerry Dykstra, CRC Executive Director, concluded that the AAPM had become a viable model of peer group learning whose experiences are worth sharing to other Asian CRCs. Rev. Dykstra made this statement after he participated in the group's 4th Semiannual Meeting in Hayward, CA on February 27-March 2, 2006.

In line with the denominational emphasis on creating and sustaining healthy churches (read the Ministries Priorities Committee Report Phase III, February 2005 on the CRC website), AAPM affirms its commitment to be an active partner not only in the more than 10 classes its current members belong to, but everywhere in the US and Canada where Asian CRCs had been planted or are still being planned.

In its 2006 Annual Report to the Lilly Endowment, Inc., the CRC-SPE Project recognized the impact the peer learning process and promoting a culture of pastoral excellence had to the member pastors and spouses of AAPM.

With financial support from Home Missions and the SPE Continuing Education program, AAPM convened last June 2007 the first Leadership Summit among Southeast Asian & Pacific Islands (SEAPI) CRCs. Fifty pastors, women, and youth leaders met at Kuyper College in Grand Rapids. As a result of the Summit, AAPM changed its name to SEAPI.

As a voluntary group and in its own modest ways, SEAPI commits itself to promote interchurch collaboration and ministry partnerships within and beyond the CRC community. As a voluntary group and through its own modest means, SEAPI commits itself to promote interchurch fellowship and collaboration and as well as ministry partnerships within and outside the CRC.

To this, SEAPI humbly submits itself to the abundant grace and sovereign will of our Triune God for the SEAPI CRCs in the U.S. and Canada communities in close partnership with the Christian Reformed Church in North America. To God be the glory!