Archives for category: church

And please, no Ponzi schemes! :)

This summer, our church will be sending a team of mostly college-aged people to Japan to partner with the ministry of a local church there. The prospect of raising $3000 each has been daunting for our team members.

As pastors, my wife and I have done our best to assure them that, in our experience, money is never the thing that prevents us from participating in God’s work around the world — but, at the same time, they must be willing to work really hard to raise the necessary support.

If you have any ideas that a small group of five or ten people can use for effective fundraising, please let me know. And, if you’d like to contribute, drop me a line!

If you’ve been part of the Christian subculture for long enough, you’ve probably noticed the staggering amount of oddball Jesus Junk we manage to produce. Take your pick: Testamints (a perennial favorite target of skeptics everywhere, and yet, strangely tasty), Jesus playing hockey figurines (but would He have brawled during the heyday of the Wings/Avs rivalry?), Bible snack bars or this must-have design statement for your home (magically painted in light, no less). If you’ve got some time on your hands, Marko has been handing out Jesus Junk awards for awhile now.

Most of the time, I can either enjoy or dismiss these Jesus junky items with ironic detachment — I mean, seriously, how can you not appreciate the irony of “armor of God” pajamas that look like Roman soldier outfits straight out of a Passion play?

However, what can we make of a board game called Missionary Conquest? It sounds like the derisive kind of satire that those outside the church use to criticize Christians:

The object of “Missionary Conquest” is to establish as many missions around the world as possible, while racking up blessing points. Along the way, you try to avoid temptation and bad stewardship. If you get kicked out of a country, you lose bonus points and if you’re martyred, you’re out of the game, but you gain 150 blessing points

While many followers of Christ seek to live out and participate in the mission of God in their everyday communities with humility, love and respect, a game like this painfully reinforces the misperception that our faith in Jesus is colonial, domineering and/or oppressive.

What would characterize a uniquely Asian American worship or preaching experience? Does such a thing even exist? asks David Park over at Next Gener.Asian Church.

It seems that, in order to answer this question, we must first begin with the primary issue of our identity, to know deeply what it means to be created as Asian Americans in the image of God. The “neither/nor” struggle — not being fully Asian nor fully American in our identity — has led to shame, rebellion and self-hatred. Because many of us have wandered through this fog for twenty, thirty, forty years, the quest to discover our God-given identity is not easily or quickly resolved. We need the Holy Spirit to repair, heal, restore and redeem the mess that we are.

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One postcard, in particular, stuck with me from the virtual mountain of freebies we received from the National Pastors Convention awhile back. The headline boldly declares:

STANDING ROOM ONLY:
Outreach events that draw a crowd

The postcard then goes on to detail a list of motivational speakers, musicians, comedians and other specialty acts a church could bring on board in order to attract a crowd — standing room only, in fact. Reminds me a bit of this old rasslin’ introduction — just plug in “speakers” or “comedians” for “tag team champions of the world.”

Sigh.

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…One is to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. — GK Chesterton

Samuel Kwon has written a great post, Poverty & Greed, about how we might, as the church, direct our anti-poverty movements. These are much needed words:

I wish the Christian movements would, in addition to calling us to fight poverty, call us to fight greed fearlessly, the love of money that tries to buy comfort in the form of nicer cars, bigger houses, newer kitchens, and (allegedly) better lives.

Of course, this is treading into dangerous territory — the realm of personal finances has become somewhat akin to the holy of holies into which others may only dare enter at great risk of bodily harm.

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