Archives for category: books

Childcare Second Assistant Volunteer

April 8, 2008 //

While I wish I could have heard the messages from David Gibbons, Peter Cha and Ken Fong from this past weekend’s San Diego Asian American Leadership Conference (by all accounts, they delivered fantastic messages), my responsibilities there precluded my ability to sit in on the main sessions there. While I didn’t have an official title, I think Childcare Second Assistant Volunteer would pretty much summarize my role.

Much love to James, Dora and Steve for putting in so much hard work & prayerful effort into this amazing conference. When my wife and I came on board to help out in whatever ways we could, we realized that one of the most important things we could offer would be childcare — thus freeing the post-college family set to attend. It was really great to hear during a dinner chat with Joon Han that, for some people there, SDAALC was the first conference they had attended in years — specifically because childcare was available. My wife did a wonderful job preparing a great kids’ program with limited resources, and we had some really wonderful volunteers help out. I was there to provide box-moving and audio/visual tech support (and to hold multiple crying infants simultaneously).

I recorded my seminar, Asian American Identity + Postmodern Culture, on my little MP3 player. If I figure out how to upload it (and if it seems worthwhile), then maybe I will get around to posting it here. I was humbled that anyone showed up at all, and I sincerely hope that it was beneficial in some way for those who were there.

Another SDAALC note: it was great to see that True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In, by James Choung, was not only available but was sold out by the end of the conference. Check out The Big Story and The Big Story, Part 2 videos James made based on ideas from this book — they are great resources for postmoderns who struggle with sharing their faith in Jesus in a concise, compelling way with others. These short clips (each one is only about three minutes) are also powerful for those of us who were raised in the church believing in the Western, individualistic, consumer-mindset, fire-insurance Jesus who died just for me (and that’s about it) instead of the Christ whose life, death and resurrection make the story of redemption, restoration, healing and rescue possible — in our individual lives, our relationships, families, communities and for the nations and the world.

Categories asian american, books, church, college, evangelism, faith, family, postmodern

National Pastors Convention: Day Four

March 1, 2008 //

Today was the fourth, and final, day of NPC 2008. Because of the fairly rigorous theological engagement throughout this week, my sense that there is a point of being a pastor has been renewed. The last thing I want to do is become a program director or events manager and this week at NPC has been good for my soul.

During this morning’s seminar with Richard Twiss — Tonto and the Lone Ranger Revisited: Avoiding the “Ethnocentric Impulse” in Creating Diverse, Mutually Embracing Communities of Believers (quite a mouthful, but an even better seminar) — I remarked at the end how much I appreciated that my greatest take-away from his sessions was his emphasis on theology. We seek diversity in community not because it is the thing to do or as an evangelistic, church-growth tool, but out of our understanding of God Himself.

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Categories asian american, books, church, communication, community, faith, family, hope, ministry, missional, postmodern, race, reconciliation

National Pastors Convention: Day Three

February 29, 2008 //

I have experienced a refreshing lack of takeaways and best practices over the last couple of days here at NPC. Refreshing, because I would have to filter any of those take-homes through another lens or two anyways, and I find myself moving further and further away from an industrialized notion of church as structures, programs or practices. We are the Church, and I have experienced a strong narrative thread throughout NPC to redefine, refocus and reimagine who we are as the called out people of God.

In the morning session, John Ortberg drew heavily from the wisdom of Dallas Willard to share several principles, or “treasures,” that we all need to thrive in ministry. Ortberg quoted Willard as a sort of refrain throughout the session:

God’s aim in history is an inclusive community of loving persons with God as the primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.

As we think of moving forward in the journey ahead of us, we long to see God at the center. As Richard Twiss said during the afternoon panel session (with Tony Jones, Danielle Shroyer and Dan Kimball) on the missional church, it is the Missio Dei (the “mission of God”) that forms the basis for our understanding of community and mission as a church. God, Himself a perfect community of mutually submissive love in the Trinity, reveals what it means to be the people of God in community and what it means to be sent out as the people of God. Tall Skinny Kiwi has some more insight into the Missio Dei here.

Richard Twiss is a native American theologian, pastor and author. My wife and I went to speak with him briefly after the session — his vast life experience and gracious wisdom spoke deeply to us. His words about the inherent postmodernity of the Native American experience — in particular, the circular versus linear way of thinking — has a particular resonance with us as Asian Americans. We shared with him about the lack of people further along the Way in our Korean American communities and how his story gave us insight and guidance. He told us about a gathering at which he spoke in Toronto, hosted by a Korean Canadian congregation for First Nation believers, that it was the Korean people who were weeping at his words about discovering identity in Christ. Jesus doesn’t wipe out our ethnicity, but shows us a new way to be human — in Christ, I can become truly Korean American, truly human. It is difficult for me to express the freedom I found in today’s brief encounter, and I believe this has such powerful implications for the future of our little congregation and the greater Asian American church.

In the evening, NT Wright brought to the convention a massive Gospel that joins together a beautiful vision of heaven and earth. It will probably take me weeks to wrap my head around everything he shared, but I experienced a serendipitous convergence of ideas once again through his words — the idea of participating in the mission of God in the world He so loves. He reminded us that, as the people of God, we must re-embody the great story of God in the world, not retreat back into Enlightenment subjugation or be crushed under postmodern nihilism. We must live in a world where new things are possible.

Wright’s exposition of Ephesians was marvelous — we are God’s workmanship and we are His poem (as we read the Greek in this passage). Sometimes it is art that brings the message home more clearly — and we are called to do “good works” that will amaze the world and reveal to the world the coming together of heaven and earth, that show the principalities and powers of the world that Jesus is Lord and they are not.

Categories asian american, books, church, communication, community, faith, justice, ministry, missional, postmodern, race, reconciliation

National Pastors Convention: Day Two

February 28, 2008 //

Once again, just a couple of brief late-night insights from my second day at NPC (I’m not really cut out for liveblogging as it always takes me awhile to take in and process things).

It was interesting, to say the least, to have Shane Claiborne on the main stage in the morning followed by Chuck Colson. Shane’s new book is provocatively titled Jesus for President and Colson is well-known for his political affiliations. And yet, despite their marked political and theological differences, both communicated their conclusion that personal, individualized transformation lacks lasting power without addressing the systemic issues that create the individual brokenness in the first place.

My wife and I attended another seminar with Tony Jones in the afternoon, this one co-led by Phylis Tickle called, “The Great Emergence: The Church’s 500-Year Rummage Sale.” We attended this seminar on Marko’s recommendation of her talk from the youthworker’s convention in Atlanta and it was every bit as thought-provoking and powerful as advertised. Plus, we got to see some minor fireworks during the Q+A afterwards ;)

Actually, the frustrated questions after this seminar illustrated a greater theme I have sensed throughout the convention: the struggle of those with modern, liner and presuppositional thinking (e.g., “What is your foundation? How do you protect the boundaries? It seems to me you’re well on your way to heresy, etc.”) to deal with some more postmodern, convergent thought processes. Simply to guard the gates and shoot down anything that remotely stinks of “emergent heresy” is to miss out on so much of what God is doing.

Though it remains to be seen if they will actually use the footage, I reluctantly agreed to a twenty-second taped answer to the question, “What have you liked most about NPC so far?” My response was that I appreciated the diversity of opinions and experiences presented from the main stage, even the disagreements between different perspectives because even in our small congregation we have a wide range of thoughts, opinions and perspectives and it helps me to engage and pastor our people to gain a broader spectrum of insights. Or something like that :) After Shane Claiborne’s afternoon seminar, my daughter and I had our picture taken together by one of the NPC photographers. I’m secretly hoping that this will lead to a Gap Kids deal for her.

I also sat in on a “lunch and learn” seminar with Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss — How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth. Although I was totally bummed to have missed out on the freebie (a TNIV study Bible!) it was a very interesting presentation about understanding the place of formal and dynamic equivalence translations of the Bible and the spectrum of English translations available. I was particularly touched when Dr. Fee spoke about his reason for joining the TNIV translation committee. During the course of teaching seminary classes on the Pauline epistles he pointed out on several occasions where “the NIV has got it wrong.” However, he came under heavy conviction when he realized that his students had been raised on the NIV and, in his words, “I was taking the Bible out of their hands.” He shared this tearfully and explained that, despite the controversy about TNIV’s gender-inclusive language, he joined the translation committee in order to help provide more accurate exegetical and translation work in the Pauline epistles instead of simply criticizing the old version.

I’m looking forward to hearing from John Ortberg and NT Wright tomorrow…

Categories books, church, communication, controversy, emerging church, faith, family, ministry, postmodern

National Pastors Convention: Day One

February 27, 2008 //

Today, my wife and I attended the first day of the National Pastors Convention here in San Diego – the first conference we’ve been able to attend together in several years. I’m sure I’ll be processing everything from NPC for awhile, but for now I’ll just share a couple of initial impressions.

Erwin McManus, author, pastor and cultural architect of Mosaic in Los Angeles, opened NPC with a talk about Soul Cravings — the deep things all people have in common despite increasing globalization and rapid change. I appreciated his sensitivity and depth in understanding how much it would cost for different people to begin following Christ — e.g., a Buddhist would dishonor his ancestors or a Muslim might put herself or her family at risk. I’m guessing that the NPC crowd skews a bit older than his usual audience. It was interesting to watch the younger folks in the crowd track so easily with his timing, rhythm and cultural references while for others the cues were perhaps not as clear.

In the afternoon, my wife and I attended Tony Jones‘ seminar on The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. While Tony shared about some of the verbal fireworks from his pre-conference critical concerns course, this particular seminar was quite tame. Tony gave a great presentation and engaged the Q+A thoughtfully. We had a chance to speak with Tony for just a quick moment afterwards about some of the points of intersection and commonality between the Emergent community and what is happening in next-gen Asian American churches. I’ll be engaging these ideas in much more depth over the next several weeks as I’m scheduled to give a seminar on the Asian American church and post-modernism at SDAALC in April.

We’re also really glad to be hosting DJ Chuang for a couple of nights while he is in town checking out NPC. It has been fun to pick his brain and get his insights into a variety of topics. Maybe we’ll test his Guitar Hero skills at some point.

Categories asian american, books, emerging church, family, ministry