100 Things I Love About Korea: #91 - Annual Report 2007

Ladies Retreat 2007

Tonight our focus is on telling stories, so I want to start by telling a story.  This story begins a few years ago.  During my first year here, we said goodbye to leader after leader, as people moved back to their home countries.  After about a year, I began to realize that we need more stability, and I also began to realize that stability was only going to come by having more Korean leaders involved in our church.  

I remember praying one day when I was walking home.  I was thinking and praying about this problem of rotating leaders in our church.  I thanked God for Dr. Cho.  (Some of you might not remember Dr. Cho.  He no longer attends here because he is preaching regularly in the Sunday evening service of another church.)  I prayed, “God please give us 25 people like Dr. Cho.  Give us 25 committed and passionate Korean leaders.”  I figured that would be enough to give us a stable core group, year in and year out.   

This year, we have seen this prayer begin to be answered.  This year more than 60% of the Advisory Council was Korean.  We celebrated this with great joy, and rightly so.  It is right for an international church to have international leadership.  Also, this was a great answer to our prayers and a great step of progress toward becoming a stable, enduring church.

Well, like they say, be careful what you pray for.  Sometimes God answers our prayers in ways we don’t expect.  And sometimes God’s answers bring their own challenges.

After we elected the 2006-2007 Advisory Council, I felt like we were “off to the races.”  Our Vision Team had just finished establishing our mission and vision statements.  Our people seemed to agree that this is what God was calling us to do and to be.   I felt like everything was finally coming together.  

Within the first few months of the 2006-2007 year, we decided to become an official Church of the Nazarene on the Korea National District.  We also welcomed our first official church members, and we went on a Work and Witness Trip to Indonesia.  And as a great surprise to me, the Korea National District worked out the details for me to be ordained here in Korea.  We were also experiencing our highest attendance ever, with an all-time high of 139.

I was ready for our church to explode with growth and momentum.  I was pumped and read to go.  But I was probably a little too pumped.  

100 Things I Love About Korea: #88 - 2006 Annual Report

Across the Rubicon and Setting Up Camp

Annual Report 2005-2006

Pastor Josh Broward

In 49 BC Julius Caesar had a decision to make.  He had spent the last few years serving in Gaul and extending the Roman rule across Europe.  The Roman Senate now called him back to Rome, and they told him to come without his army.  If Caesar had gone to Rome without his army, he would have lost power and possibly lost his life.

One little river served as the boundary line for Julius Caesar’s choice.  It was the Rubicon.  By Roman law, no Roman general was allowed to bring his army past the Rubicon.  

If Julius Caesar crossed this stream, he would begin a civil war.  As Caesar stood on the banks of the Rubicon, he looked at his companions and said, “Still we can retreat! But once we pass this little bridge, nothing is left but to fight it out!”   This was the point of no return.  This was the deciding moment.

Caesar and his troops crossed the Rubicon.  Then, he tore his shirt off and gave a tearful speech.  (Don’t worry – I’m not going to tear my shirt off!)  Caesar’s speech included the famous words: “The die is cast.”  This is referring to a game of dice: “The dice are already thrown.”  In other words, the direction has been set.  The decision has been made.  There is no going back now.  Caesar quickly took control of Italy and eventually gained control of the entire Empire.  But all of this started with a few short steps across the Rubicon.

This year our church has “crossed the Rubicon.”  Two little decisions stand as our Rubicon.  The first decision was moving to Patch Hall in March of this year.  This move has provided us with space to grow, access to technology, consistent temperatures, much-needed storage space, and convenient classrooms.

The second decision was much more important than the first.  When we moved to Patch Hall, we also decided to change the time of our worship service from 9:00 am to 10:30 am.  This was a HUGE decision for our church.  There were two factors in our decision.  First, we decided that we wanted to be a primary church, not a secondary church (a place people go before their “real church”).  Second, we decided that we wanted to reach out to people who didn’t usually go to any church, and we felt they would be much more likely to join us at a later time.  (Really, 9am is like the crack of dawn for a lot of people around here!)  So in this one decision, we identified ourselves as a primary church deserving of primary commitment and as a church committed to outreach.

This was our Rubicon.  We have declared our course for the future.  In a sense, “The die is cast.”  We have followed the Spirit and rolled the dice.  

100 Things I Love About Korea: #77 - 2004 Annual Report (or Lack Thereof)

About a month after we arrived in Korea, it was time for the annual meeting.  I knew all about the nominations for the church board (or in our case Advisory Council), and I had that covered.

After we did the voting and reports from each outgoing board member, I was just about to close the meeting with prayer.  Then, Cathy Williams (bless her heart) said, "Um, Josh, aren't you going to give a pastoral report."
I said, "Oh, am I supposed to do that?"
"Well, traditionally speaking ..."
"Um ... well ... I just got here, so I don't know much of what happened over the past year, but I'll try to do better next year."

The Hard Part - We're Moving

[I shared this at our church's annual meeting October 21.  I announced our plans in the worship service today, October 28.  I'm posting it now so that anyone who missed the meeting can read the full explanation.]

I’ve saved the hard part of the meeting for the end.  There is no easy way to do this, so I’ll just get started.  After much prayer and consideration, our family has decided to move back to the USA.  I have accepted a position at a Nazarene church near Chicago.  I will be an associate pastor, with an emphasis on missions and missional communities.  We expect to leave in late February, and in the meantime, I’ll be helping our church here prepare for the transition.

After some of my teasing sermon illustrations in the past, I feel like I should take a moment now to say that this is not a joke or a clever lead-in for a point later.  This is real.  For the rest of this time, I want to talk about four basic points

• Why we are moving at this time
• Why we are moving to this place
• Some confirmations I’ve experienced
• What’s next for our KNU International English Church.

I hope these will answer most of your questions, but after I’m done we will take time for some questions as well.

Ending the Cover-Ups (2 Samuel 11)

Read 2 Samuel 11.

I wanted to preach a nice, fairly traditional sermon on temptation and how to avoid it.  That is a fair and relatively easy application of this text.  But I couldn’t do it.  I sat down at my computer to write, and I ended up just surfing the web or playing games.  For two days, I tried to write the nice sermon about avoiding temptation - the expected sermon when dealing with this passage, but I just couldn’t get the words to come out.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, I started digging into the passage again.  I went online and read every sermon or article I could find on this passage.  Danielle Shroyer, a pastor from Texas, knew the way to my heart when she asked: “Anybody brave enough to preach this one squarely?”

  What?  A controversial sermon on a difficult topic?  I never do those. OK, I’m in.

The David and Bathsheba story is famous because it deals with the big three: money, sex, and power.  It’s famous because it describes the messy fall of a hero.  It reads like a soap opera, and that’s why we like it.    

But this story isn’t just about the massive failure of one man and its many consequences - although that is the outline of the story.  If David and Bathsheba were simply about adultery, then - as Tim Elliot said at lunch on Thursday - this sermon could have one simple point: “Don’t do it.”  

This story is more complex and more painful than that.  We are not allowed to stand at a distance as people not concerned with this story - not when we really hear it.  This story is about the misconduct of a leader and the cover-up that followed.  And that, unfortunately, is something we know a lot about.  Just consider this very brief inventory of high profile abuse and cover-up in the past few years.