Archives for category: hope

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

See, SportsCenter Is Good For You!

February 9, 2008 //

All those hours of hard work that I put into watching SportsCenter (often the same episode back-to-back) have paid off!

Last night they aired the story of Aaron Fotheringham, a teenager from Las Vegas who, despite being born with spina bifida, became the first person ever to land a wheelchair backflip — at a skatepark, of course.

Aaron seems like a remarkable kid — he has overcome so much in his life. And the story gets better: this feature told the story of how he has been inspiring other kids like him around the world. One 4-year old, Zach, had suffered a stroke at 18 months that left him a wheelchair as well. ESPN caught up with Zach as he got to spend a couple of days with his idol, Aaron:

Their connection is immediate and real, as Zach’s laughter echoes across the contours of the park, his eyes never leaving Aaron’s dashing chair. Watching it all in front of her, Linda Puddy wipes away her tears. “I didn’t know what to do until I saw Aaron, and then I knew,” she says. “It gives Zachary a direction to go.” “He’s a hero,” she says, watching the teenager pushing her son down a small slope. “Zach thinks that Aaron flies.”

Who needs those NBA commercials to make us cry when we’ve got inspirational stories like Aaron’s?

Categories community, health, hooray!, hope

They’re All Our Daughters

January 28, 2008 //

I still haven’t gotten my mind wrapped around all of things God was doing at the Passion::Los Angeles regional event from this past weekend. Perhaps I will be able to unpack some of these things soon but the thought of how closely worship and justice are knit together absolutely gripped my heart.

Although I am doing one thing he specifically requested we not do after hearing him speak in saying this, Francis Chan is everything you’d want a speaker to be — dynamic, funny, engaging. I mentioned to our youth group students this morning at church that if God zaps certain people with lightning bolts of communication ability, Francis Chan is definitely one of them. While I certainly appreciate his giftedness, it is the heart of God that comes through so passionately when I have heard him speak.

During one of his messages, he shared about an artist he knows from Thailand who had been teaching children. As she spent time with them, she discovered that child after child had been forced into prostitution. So she did what she knew was right. This artist would enter these brothels, find these children — each beloved, made in the image of God — and literally steal them away from this life of degradation and exploitation. Quickly, she was receiving imminent, credible death threats, so she took all of her children to safety. Today, she awakes every morning to a houseful of rescue, 120 children.

Francis went on to say that he loves college students because they will do crazy things. For example, if he told this gathering of over 3000 college students that he had chartered six planes to go to Thailand so that we could run into these dark places and rescue as many kids as we could, he knew that they would be filled. If those hypothetical planes had been waiting on the tarmac at LAX, even though my college days are distant memory, I would have left that night to go.

Even as I sit here and type these words, my heart rages against the sin, decay and brokenness of our world. How do we live in a world in which evil men and women would abuse children in such unspeakable ways? When Francis brought his oldest daughter out on the stage as he was speaking on this, I could not help but hold my own daughter close to my heart. If it were our daughters out there, we wouldn’t be sitting comfortably in our churches, critiquing the songs — Well, David Crowder shouldn’t have used that Guitar Hero Flying V during Neverending. I would have used the Gibson SG, and on and on — we would move heaven and earth and until they were safe.

They’re all our daughters. Each one of these children upon whom the worst depravity of humanity has been unleashed bears the indelible imprint of our Creator and is unimaginably loved by Him. I love my daughter more and more each year. Becoming a dad is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I would do anything for her, and it is overwhelming to imagine what God’s heart must feel like when He sees what is happening to His children around the world.

My heart felt like it was being crushed in a vice grip when Francis spoke of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 — they’re all our daughters, they are all created and loved by God and, in some barely comprehensible way, they are all Jesus. Who else could be more aptly described as the least of these? It is unbearable to imagine Jesus — Jesus — hungry, naked, thirsty, imprisoned, voiceless, oppressed and yet, when we choose to bring light into dark places, to come against such horror with redemption and rescue, to allow our worship to overflow into righteousness and justice, we have done it for Him.

To learn more or to find ways to get involved, here some organizations committed to bringing about justice in our broken world:

Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! – Amos 5:23-24

Categories college, communication, faith, family, hope, justice, prayer

Not With This Car

December 6, 2007 //

Today, our car battery died. More specifically, it died on three separate occasions — all within the course of an hour. The first time it went down for the count was, fortunately (or so I thought), at a gas station. We had just filled up our tank and were preparing to leave when the car wouldn’t start. It was the middle of the afternoon and there were plenty of people around so, even though we didn’t have jumper cables, I thought we’d be recharged and ready to leave in no time. Apparently, I was wrong.

First, I approached the employees and asked if they had jumper cables. They informed me that they did not, which seemed strange to me, but I figured there were plenty of other people there so it wouldn’t be a problem. After being told by three or four people that, sorry, they didn’t have cables I ran across the way to the drug store to pick up a set of cables. Now that we have our own cables, I thought, things would be much easier. Wrong again.

I ran back and started asking people for help: Sorry to bother you, but we’re stranded here at the gas station. Our car is right over there and I have these cables in my hand. Could you give us a jump? About four or five people said no (and a couple of others got into their cars and left as quickly as they could when they saw me walking around the gas station) when I approached a man in a Mercedes. When I asked for help, instead of replying with a simple “no” he scoffed and said, “Not with this car.” It’s not just that the effort of popping the hood and turning the key to start the engine is just too much to ask; it’s the very thought of contaminating his luxury import with my unworthy family sedan. I don’t even have my Junky Car Club sticker on my car — I guess he just has extrasensory perception about these kinds of things.

Eventually, one of the employees came out and gave me a jump. We drove off, dumbfounded. I can be pretty cynical, but that man’s hardcore condescension took me off guard. However, my faith in our fellow human beings was restored by the next person who helped us. I’ve had car batteries die before and, usually, after getting jumped and being driven for awhile things work out alright. However, after running a few errands (and leaving the car running, with someone inside, of course) the car decided to call it a day once again in a parking lot while it was still running. That, I’ve never experienced.

Dreading a repeat of the gas station incident, I went straight to the employees. I was pleasantly surprised when one employee, Elizabeth, offered to help right away. Because of the way the parking spaces were configured, our jumper cables would not reach her car. I began pushing the car out and Elizabeth started helping me push as well. She then explained to another customer who was angry that the car was blocking her way that our car battery had died and we needed a jump, and could she pull out of the parking in lot in the other direction? Once the cars were properly positioned, jumping it was a breeze. We thanked Elizabeth sincerely (I’m definitely writing a letter to her manager to let them know how helpful she was to us) and were on our way.

What a mess we all are. Even when we have good intentions, sometimes just having a bad day throws everything out the window. I think, in some providential way, God knew that I needed to both the beauty and depravity residing in all of us, and to remind me to help others in need — even if it inconveniences me a bit.

Categories boo!, communication, faith, frustration, hope

An Advent Uprising

November 26, 2007 //

The term “Black Friday” always reminds me of the Depeche Mode album, Black Celebration (but with less new wave flair) or the Black Plague. This has become an annual, morbid, spectacle as we watch shoppers stampede, fight and generally clog up the works at our favorite big box retailers to the tune of $475 billion this year.

As followers of Christ immersed in this culture of consumption, what are we to do? Yes, yes, “Jesus is the reason for the season” and we must certainly “Put ‘Christ’ back into Christmas” but fighting the temptation to go bust down some doors to get that half-priced plasma television is an uphill battle all the way. These days, every other television ad spends considerable effort making it seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to get into line at 3am to shop or that upgrading to that 52″ plasma screen will infuse your life with more meaning.

Eugene Cho and David Park have raised some really provocative thoughts recently about consumption and what it means to follow Christ. Maybe it’s the conspiracy-theorist in me, but I love the idea of subverting all of the marketing of these megacorporations and the greed in our hearts by turning some of this Christmas shopping season madness on its head.

Eugene writes about Buy Nothing Day and some of the reservations he has about this movement. In general, I think movements like Buy Nothing Day or that gross Feed The Pig commercial (where a man is about to buy a king-sized TV that he cannot afford until his grotesque half-man/half-pig companion smacks his hand) are good at raising awareness about our consumer habits. Greed, overconsumption, debt, keeping up with the neighbors — this is the air we breathe, and it can be extremely difficult to see life from another perspective.

However, it is far too easy to feel a sense of superior righteousness or to participate in things like BND as a one-time only, special engagement. As followers of Christ, we are called to a lifestyle of good stewardship and of genuine concern for others. To paraphrase Bonhoeffer, when Christ calls us to follow Him, He bids us to come and die — and the struggle to deny our impulse for the latest and greatest gadgets and stuff does require a certain kind of death.

The Advent Conspiracy invites us to restore “the scandal of Christmas by worshiping Jesus through compassion, not consumption.” [h/t: David Park]. Like any movement, I suppose the AC runs the risk of becoming faddish or trendy — but I think it is worth that risk. I love that this movement isn’t about not giving gifts or being cheap (“Um, I gave you two rolls of toilet paper out of the multi-pack because I wanted to be, like, a good steward. Right.”) but, rather, about giving better gifts — our time, our creativity, our hearts. Read through AC’s list of relational gift ideas and see if you don’t come across something that would really touch the heart of someone you love this Christmas.

May God change our hearts so that we enjoy giving and may He open our eyes to see the opportunities we have every day to love and serve. Prepare the way of the Lord!

Categories advertising, church, communication, community, faith, family, hope, stewardship