Director Jamie Moffett is making a film called The Ordinary Radicals which documents the Jesus for President tour, featuring authors Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw [h/t: Dan Ra]. Here is a brief description from their site:
Archives for category: faith
Congrats to Bruce Reyes-Chow, who was just elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA)! As with any institution, being on the leading edge of change can be difficult — and it’s good to see the PC(USA) take a proactive step in engaging culture 2.0 rather than waiting and then eventually reacting (and usually defensively by that point).
And, for a denomination that can sometimes feel like the same old boys’ network (despite rhetoric claiming otherwise), it feels nice to have a young, urban, Asian American pastor become its new face.
Check out Bruce’s personal blog for some great, witty insights into life, family, ministry, web 2.0 and the occasional baseball post.
Working with preschool and kindergarten-aged kids this week at VBS has been awesome! The three year olds that we just welcomed into the group are hilarious.
For example, I was telling the story of Jesus putting mud onto someone’s eyes to help him see, and I asked the kids what dirt is good for. The older kids (four and five year olds) knew that you can plant seeds in dirt or put it into the garden. The threes, however, were all confused.
So I asked them if I should use mud to brush my teeth. They all smiled and nodded enthusiastically. After giving them a quick personal hygiene lesson, I asked if I should use mud to wash my hair. Again, smiles and nods all around!
Seriously, it is such a joy to participate in telling Bible stories with them. When we told the story of Peter walking on the water, we had them make “waves” with a large blue cloth — so much fun! Maybe a more immersive, participatory approach will keep our adults awake during our Sunday gatherings :)
My wife and I are always very conscious of the fact that our daughter is a PK (pastor’s kid) twice over (we’re both pastors). Danger seems to be lurking on every side — some pastors are so immersed in their work that their families suffer, and their kids stray from the faith; other PKs have this strange sense that their pastor-parent is the “boss” of something, and act accordingly.
On top of all this, factor into the equation that my wife and I are both committed to children’s and youth ministry, and our daughter is well on her way to writing a best-selling, tell-all memoir one day…
This week, we are having VBS at church. It’s great — but also crazy, tiring, and hectic. I feel like I’m running on a constant deficit these days — sleep, attention, you name it. My body is kind of around, but my mind is always half an hour late.
It sounds corny and obvious, but we really want our kids to know and love Jesus more because of this crazy, crazy week we’re spending together at church. The last thing we want to do is create more consumers who crave churchy experiences. Rather, we want to create an environment where kids can encounter God’s love for themselves in the presence of caring, prayerful adults — with tons of singing and laughing together, of course.
My prayer is that more of our church families will take Jason Evans’ words to heart:
We, as parents, need to take back our right to be our children’s spiritual directors. We owe it to our children.
What an amazing thing it would be to see parents joyfully take responsibility for the spiritual growth and formation of their children — that this VBS week would be partnership in ministry to their kids, not the whole endeavor in and of itself.
Recently, our church community entered a new season of life and ministry as my wife and I began to serve as co-pastors. We became United — a nod to the heritage of our mother church, Korean United Presbyterian Church, while also symbolizing the new direction in which we believe God is leading us.
We have hope that God is building up a missional community of Christ-followers who will stand united with Christ as individuals, with one another as a diverse community and with God’s purposes in the world.
I designed the United logo, which you can view below.
headsparks* 