Adoption Update

We may have found a small hole in the brick wall between us and adoption. This summer we met with an adoption agency that is willing to work with us. The director thinks that we can work with a social worker licensed here in Korea (since this is our place of residence) and just get her credentials officially translated. If this works out, we will be able to adopt an American child once a birth mother chooses us.
Step 1: Get a Korean social worker to redo our home study.
Step 2: Get the US government to approve this is a legit home study for adopting a child from the US.
Step 3: Complete a "family book" which the adoption agency will show to birth mothers.
Step 4: Hopefully, a birth mother chooses us to adopt her child (still in the womb).
Step 5: When the child is born and after the two day waiting period, we make a sudden and urgent flight to the US to welcome our new baby into our family.
Step 6: We try to complete the official adoption paperwork as soon as possible, so that we can get a passport for the baby as soon as possible, so that we can return to Korea as soon as possible. We have no idea how long this will actually take.

Imitation (Ephesians 5:1-21)

(August 16, 2009 - KNU International English Church)

Some people say, “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.” In other words, if someone imitates you they are paying you a high compliment.

I guess I should feel pretty flattered, then. Sometimes, Emma tries very hard to be just like me. Sometimes, when we're sitting together reading a book, I'll notice that she has her legs crossed just like I do. Sometimes, I am shocked to hear her say the same words I say. (Usually, they are good words. But most parents know that they have to be really careful what they say around their kids because those kids are sure to say the same things later on!) Sometimes, Emma even gets dressed up in my clothes. [[picture]]

And she even learns quickly when we are wrestling and play boxing. [[video]]

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Imitation is also the highest form of worship. God has made us to be like him, and it pleases him when we are. Let's read Ephesians 5:1-21.

Imitating God – living like God – is best thing we can possibly do. If we follow through the passage, imitating God sounds pretty good:

• “Live a life full of love” (5:2).

• Be thankful (5:5).

• “Live as people of light” (5:8). Be radiant!

• Be “good and right and true” (5:9).

• Be wise (5:16).

• Make the most of your opportunities and time (5:17).

• Sing together and make music from your hearts (5:19). Go to Nore Bangs!

• Tell God, “Thank you,” all the time (5:20).

• Live together with respect and mutual submission (5:21).

I think we would all agree that this is a beautiful way to live.

But it is also difficult. As beautiful as the God-life is, it is still difficult to actually live it in our day to day lives.

To continue reading this post, click here.

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Strippers for Jesus (Ephesians 4:15 - 5:2)

(August 9, 2009 - KNU International English Church)
About five years ago, some of my friends started a new church in Gardner, Kansas. Gardner is a small but growing suburb in the center of the USA. Trinity Family Church is a lot like our church. They are progressive Nazarenes. They have a good band, and people wear casual clothes. They have a young pastor and mixed group of people. In many ways, they are very similar to us.

But Trinity Family has one thing we don’t have – a ministry to strippers. Yes, I said strippers – women who get paid to take off their clothes.

A few years ago, some of the women at Trinity Family felt called to love and to serve people who were never going to walk through the church door on their own, people who normally don’t feel comfortable or welcomed in church. Their attention focused on the two strip clubs in town, and they started a ministry called Love Wins.

In 2007, some of the church ladies went to the strip clubs with homemade cookies and gift bags. This scene was repeated again and again. The church ladies brought Christmas gift bags, chocolate covered strawberries, lotions, all kinds off stuff – again and again. They didn’t ask them to come to church. They didn’t tell the people at the strip club that they were a bunch of sinners on the fast track to hell. They just gave them gifts and talked to them and loved them.

To continue reading this sermon, click here.


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DEBT FREE!!!

Yesterday, I sent in our last check for our student loans. Once that check is received and processed, we will officially be debt free! After four degrees and over $50,000 in loans between the two of us, this is a VERY good feeling!

Emma's Birthday Party in 2008

Here's a fun picture of us doing the chicken dance at Emma's birthday party in 2008.

Poll on Nazarenes and Alcohol

While surfing www.naznet.com way too late tonight (this morning!), I found this interesting poll on Nazarenes' opinions on alcohol. Be sure to read comment #459 (about half way down - not actually the 459th comment on this strand) regarding how local churches respond to this issue.
Still no word on the rumored resolution to change the ban on alcohol to moderation. Maybe it was just a rumor.

Impressed with Our Leaders

As I watched General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene unfold and progress, I was impressed with our leaders on several points.

1. We elected Jennifer Brown (from Jamaica) as the president of Nazarene Missions International. She is an ordained elder serving as an associate pastor with her husband. She also teaches high school and administers an after school program for adults who dropped out of high school. She has wide support from the leaders of the Caribbean Region, and she is the first non-white and first non-American president of NMI. This is one important step of our communal understanding that the whole globe is a mission field and the global church is a missional church.

2. We elected Eugenio Duarte (from Cape Verde, an island nation off the west coast of Africa, and one of the first Nazarene "mission fields") as our 37th General Superintendent. Amazingly, it only required just seven ballots. This is really, really fast. The next day it took 22 ballots to elect David Graves. Eugenio Duarte (sounds like "dwart"), the first G.S. who is non-white, the room erupted in applause, shouts, praises to God, and tears. Duarte was swarmed by the African delegates, who joined in spontaneous song. Eventually, they literally lifted him off the ground and carried him to the stage en mass. Someone picked up the Cape Verde flag (from the flags representing all the countries where we have Nazarenes), and they waved it around the room. In his acceptance speech, he thanked the church in five different languages, and he is reportedly fluent in all five. I am so, so proud of our church for electing Duarte! (To see a video of his election and the subsequent celebration, click here.)
I had hoped for one more non-white, non-American, or female G.S.. Instead, we elected two more white American males. In all fairness, David Graves and Stan Toler are probably great guys who will do a good job. However, many of us were hoping for more diversity in our highest level of leadership. At several points, either a woman (Carla Sundberg) or a Latino (Gustavo Crocker) were leading the voting, but they could never reach the necessary 60% of votes to be elected. Nonetheless, in electing Jenifer Brown and Eugenio Duarte, we have made great strides toward having leaders who reflect our membership. (To get a sense of the drama and ups and downs involved in the election process, click here to see the record of all 51 ballots.)
(An unfortunate side note: I missed seeing Duarte's election in person. This is the day our family chose to go to Disney World. Arrggh!)

3. I was impressed with the action of the General Assembly on several resolutions. Let me list a few which seem most significant to me. (To see a longer list of highlights, click here.)

A) We authorized the Commission on the Nazarene Future to study Nazarene ecclesiology, polity, and missional strategy, with particular attention given to the role of the general superintendency in the international church. Conversations, blogs, forums, and chat rooms have been buzzing for years about the need to restructure our system and structure for General Superintendents. Many districts proposed resolutions with various changes to the role, election, or term of service for GS's. However, (I think) based on the recommendation of the Board of General Superintendents, the General Assembly wisely chose to reject discussion on any changes during the assembly time in favor of a longer, more studied, more considered, more comprehensive change to be proposed by this commission in four years at the next General Assembly.

B) We authorized the Global Manual Advisory Council to do a significant rewrite of the Manual, our rulebook for theology and policy. The portions of our current Manual which express our history, theology, and basic identity will be retained and streamlined. However, the other portions will be adjusted by world region to fit more closely the context of the cultures within those regions. This will include making church structures and expected ethical stances adjusted to the various cultures around the world.
Many people from nearly every corner of the Nazarene world (at least all which have had significant contact with people outside North America) have been calling for exactly this. Personally, I had slim hopes that we would take such a drastic step. The rewrite was proposed by the International Church Committee (a group formed at the last General Assembly to study how to help the structures of our church become more international in nature), and it passed quickly with almost no discussion or fanfare. I fully expected a standing ovation, and I was shocked that we simply quietly moved on to the next resolution. Maybe this was only new news to me, or maybe folks just don't realize how important this is. However, I believe this is one of the most significant and momentous events in recent Nazarene history.

C) The Board of General Superintendents suggested a mild rewrite of Article of Faith #10: Entire Sanctification. (If you aren't familiar with this doctrine, this is often called the "distinctive" Nazarene doctrine, even though other denominations also hold to it. However, recently, this doctrine - and particularly Article 10, our official statement explaining it - have been the center of widespread debate and discussion. I have heard some say, "Nobody likes the way Article 10 is written, but the problem is that we can't agree on how to change it.") Almost everyone in the assembly agreed that the rewrite suggested by the General Superintendents is significantly better than the current statement. (Sorry, but I don't have the text of their proposed rewrite now.)
However, Jim Bond, a retired General Superintendent, suggested that we postpone the changes in favor of a comprehensive study of Article 10 by Nazarene theologians and pastors around the world. After a brief discussion, this proposal was rejected, and the GS's suggested changes were adopted.
Several reasons were put forward for adopting the changes now: (1) This is clearly an improvement over the muddy statement we currently have, so why wait another four years with an unclear statement. (2) Considerable thought (even if only with USA leaders) has already gone into the proposed changes. (3) Accepting these changes does not preclude ongoing discussion and growth in our thoughts on Article 10.
I understand these reasons, and I think it was probably best to vote in the proposed changes. However, I think it would have been best to do both: accept these changes AND authorize a global commission to study Article 10. I think we missed a great opportunity by not choosing both.

D) We authorized a commission to study the difficulty of getting adequate representation from all regions at our General Assemblies. For a variety of reasons (including finances and visa limitations), some regions are unable to send as many as 40% of their elected delegates.
I expect that this commission will suggest a few possible solutions. We could hold the General Assembly in a nation which grants visas more liberally (which would be almost anywhere other than the USA). We could also hold the General Assembly via simulcast with regional groups gathering around the world and participating via video feeds over the internet. Nazarene Youth International held their global convention this way this time. I haven't heard a definite report yet, but I think this went well and enabled wider representation.
I would be in favor of either of these options. We desperately need to do something to enable more of our international delegates to attend General Assembly. For example, if all eligible delegates had attended this year's assembly, international delegates would have out numbered the USA delegates by a significant margin (I think). Instead, the USA held more than a 100 vote majority.

There were other resolutions relating to sabbaticals for local church pastors, maternity/paternity leave for church pastors, and (according to rumors) changing the ban on alcohol consumption to a statement in favor of moderation. I don't know the results of these resolutions.


All in all, I feel like this General Assembly (the first one for which I attended any of the business meetings) greatly strengthened my respect and my love for the Church of the Nazarene. I feel strongly that our leaders are honestly facing the most pressing challenges before us. We are not retreating or hiding or retrenching. Instead, as a whole, we are boldly leaning into the future and doing the hard work of reinventing ourselves while still faithfully pulling forward our essential traditions. More than ever, I am glad to be Nazarene.

Impressed with NPH and House

While I'm at it (and since I'm suffering from jet lag), let me go on and say that I'm also impressed with Nazarene Publishing House and The House Studio.
Here's why.
1. NPH is kind of a traditional denominational publishing house. They tend to publish a lot of the kind of stuff you might expect from a denominational publishing house, mostly Bible studies, program materials, and tip books for how to do the same stuff a little better. I was impressed with their launch a few years back of Barefoot Ministries, a pretty cool in-house yet vogue youth ministries resource group.
However, NPH recently did something which strikes me as completely radical. They launched a new publishing house (in a house across the street) called The House Studio. The idea is simple yet shocking. People want some non-institutional resources. These can't be produced in a big institution (and even if they could be, the people who want them wouldn't buy them).
So NPH put up some cold hard cash and set up three quality young leaders in The House Studio and turned them loose. No oversight. No control. No rules. They just said, "The world needs you, and the world needs you to be free. Go forth and make good stuff."
This is incredibly unselfish, uninstitutional, and very-very-very Kingdom-like. I love it. This is a beautiful example of dying to live, of actually living out the truth that it's not all about us and our group and our success. In a time when NPH is working hard to keep their own house afloat, I can hardly believe that they put up the seed cash to start something new with no direct benefit to themselves. Way to go NPH. You just earned some trust in my book.
2. The House Studio's first offering is a beautiful little book for small groups called The Kingdom Experiment. Between yesterday and this morning, I have already read it cover to cover. It's a group study-experiment on the beatitudes. The basic idea is that each beatitude gets a 1 page explanation. Then, the group talks about two well-formed questions. Next, each person in the group chooses one of eight experiments to try sometime during the week to actually live out that beatitude. When the group meets the next week, they talk about their experiments and repeat the cycle.
I bought a copy, and I hope that some of the small groups at our church will give it a try. Maybe it will even make it into a church wide sermon series and book study next year.
I'm pretty impressed with The House Studio's staff and their plans for publishing the conversations about renovation in the Church. I look forward to seeing where God leads them.

Impressed by NTS

I am here in Orlando, Florida at the 27th General Assembly for the Church of the Nazarene. Yesterday, I attended two workshops hosted by Nazarene Theological Seminary. N.T.S. recently won a US$ 500,000 grant to completely revision the entire seminary to become more thoroughly missional.

This impresses me for two reasons.

1) It takes great courage to revision EVERYTHING. Doing some curriculum review is normal for academic institutions, but NTS is putting everything on the table. They are saying, "We need to do everything differently. We aren't holding anything back. We need to be open to complete change and revision." This kind of innovation takes courage and deep seeded confidence. Such risk-taking is not common in large institutions, much less among academic or theological institutions (some of the most conservative folks out there).

2. This is exactly what N.T.S. needs to do. My good friend, David Brush, repeatedly says to me that the university/seminary as we now know it is a dying species. Centralized, entrenched, isolated education is quickly fading. According to Dave, the education of the future will be embedded in ministry and professional contexts. The academic side of lectures, evaluations, and dialog with the traditional centers of education will happen via the internet, short-term classes, professional mentors (acting as adjunct profs), and/or mobile professors (with the traditional academic qualifications). If Dave is right, and I think he probably is, then N.T.S. is right on track with this revisioning process. Also, they have the guts to take action internally on what many Christian leaders are seeing is happening in a handful of cutting edge churches who are faithfully responding to our radically changing culture. It was just beautiful to hear the leaders of NTS talk about what they are doing to make themselves more accessible to students (a.k.a. ministers) and more accountable (to themselves and to others). They are doing all they can to decentralize themselves, to get out of the way so that we can all learn together how to follow Christ more faithfully together. Beautiful!

So my props go out in a big way to the folks of N.T.S. This makes me glad to be Nazarene.

Adoption Update

We are running into a brick wall with our plans to adopt.
We had planned to adopt from Russia. We had even been assigned to a particular region in Russia.
However, we took a few steps back to pay off our school loans. (We've got the money now. We're just waiting for the exchange rate to go down a bit more. Yeahhh!!!)
In the meantime, Russia has tightened up their adoption rules. In addition to adding several hoops which adopting parents must jump through, it seems like we no longer qualify to adopt from Russia because we don't live in the country of our citizenship (USA).
In fact, this is a big problem for us for other countries as well (including Korea). Sarah and our adoption agencies are currently considering our options in a few other countries. We have a friend who is researching some things in Kazakhstan.
So, unfortunately, we've come to a wall. We are looking for some ways around this wall. Maybe there will be a way around. Maybe not. We might just have to wait, and we might have to wait a long time.

POST #300!: Did You Know?

Circles of Leadership

Over the past few months, I have been getting many questions about my new role as a full-time pastor. How do you like? What do you do with all your new time? How is the church going now? What difference does it make?
I usually answer that I love being full-time because now I can give my full attention to my calling and passions. Sometimes, I say that I'm sure glad I'm full-time now because I don't want to imagine doing this semester while being bivocational. Lately, I've been saying that one of the best things is that being full-time gives me the opportunity to move beyond maintenance issues (keeping things running) toward thinking into the future about how to make things better and how to do new things.
I am beginning to think that my primary job is to focus on developing circles of leadership. There are three basic circles of leadership under my care (with satellite circles working off of them): the pastoral staff, the Advisory Council, and the Circle of Leadership.
This semester we have made two changes as a pastoral team. We have reworked our staff meetings to once a month coffee with reports, sharing, and prayers for each other. We have also added tri-annual reviews. Every four months, we all conduct answer questions about whether we met our goals for that period, our goals for the next period, and other topics. I am hoping that these two changes will be the core of strengthen our leadership as a pastoral staff.
I am currently reading a book called Transforming Church Boards. It is built on the premise that board meetings tend to be tedious, tiring, and divisive, but that boards can change into life-giving, inspiring, and leadership-building communities. I am excited to think about how we can improve our Advisory Council, a key structure of our church's leadership.
The Circle of Leadership is a budding group. Right now we have only had a meeting of a few key leaders who are setting the structure for how to involve others. We envision this as a community of people who are either called to ministry or studying ministry, and we hope it will empower them as leaders who are learning, growing, and practicing. I am hoping that we can start meeting with a pilot group this fall. We have high hopes that this group will not only help the participants but also increase the quantity and quality of leadership within our church.

So as I said, lately, I'm feeling like the best thing I can do as a pastor is to invest in these circles of leadership. If I can help these circles flourish in the life-giving power of the Spirit, then our church and our world will never be the same!

Prayer - Review

I borrowed this book from our church's prayer team leader, Anne, during our Lenten series on prayer, but I've just now finished it. Granted, I've done quite a lot of reading on the side, personal reading and work related, but still I often felt like I would never finish.
Sometimes I loved the book, particularly the moving stories of people's struggles and experiences with prayer. But other times, I just trudged on. As Yancey often returned to the same themes again and again, I felt like the book could have been shortened by a third without losing much.
On the other hand, I love Yancey's approach to prayer. He is humble and honest about the difficulties of consistent and meaningful prayer. When his own experience is limited, he pulls on the writings and advices of others, and explains how he has tried to apply those teachings in his own life with mixed success.
This is a very good book on prayer. It's just a bit too long. Rating: jjjj.

Searching for God Knows What - Review

I picked up this book out of the Owens Building mini-library (a collection of books deposited by KNU profs). It's a fun read, pretty much continuing and sometimes rehashing Donald Miller's earlier name-making book Blue Like Jazz.
This 233 page book summarizes easily: The gospel is not a formula. It's a relationship. What God wants from us and promises to us cannot be defined in neat categories or lists of truths. The truth inherent in the gospel is necessarily embedded in the stories of the people who understand and experience the gospel (especially the first ones to do so).
Donald Miller is king of off-the-wall-yet-strangely-appropriate extended metaphors, and this book is packed with them. The earth is an overfilled lifeboat with the inhabitants taking sides and waging wars of value assessment like people on Survivor trying not to get kicked off the island. Original sin is like the fallout from Chernobyl. Getting an outside perspective is like sitting down with an alien to watch an NBA game. We're all in a big circus act trying to do something to win cheers from the crowd to prove our worth. The moment when we we see that our religious system isn't enough anymore is like the moment when we see the department store Santa taking a leak in the men's restroom.
Great images. Great stories. Same basic thoughts as Blue Like Jazz. Rating: jjjj.

Emerging Nazarenes "White Paper" to General Superintendants

I just read this "White Paper" to the Church of the Nazarene General Superintendents. It is written by a group of Emerging Nazarenes with the purpose of helping Nazarene leaders understand and appreciate the emerging church and those within the Church of the Nazarene who are also "emerging."
I highly recommend it for anyone interested in theology and church stuff.

House and Neruda

Two quick reviews.

1) House M.D. Season 4: We have enjoyed watching House over the past year or two. It is smart and funny, and each episode is like a Sherlock Holmes story. But the dysfunctionality of the characters is getting painfully predictable. Near the end of season 4, just when one of the characters was starting to show some positive change out of dysfunction, they killed off the catalyst. Argghh. The show seems to revolve around House's mantra that people don't change. That's getting a little frustrating, but not so much as to ruin the whole show. We tried to start season 5 last night, but couldn't get it to load.
Also, the writers did a surprisingly good job of incorporating the new set of characters into the story line.
However, here's a big downer. The show seemed to get a little more soap-opera-like. In one scene - in which House really jumped the shark for us - all of House's team gets paged to find their patient passed out in a hallway. It's so melodramatic. If the nurses saw that the patient had fallen and took the time to page House's team, why didn't they attend to the patient instead of waiting for Houses team to come running from various ends of the hospital???
Over all rating: jjj.
(If anyone has recomendations for good TV shows, Sarah and I are in the market for a new series. Korean shows are also welcome.)

2) Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda. (Thanks to my friend Sarah Gu for this loaner.) This is a short little book of love poems packed with images from nature. I'm not sure if they are all about the same woman or not, but poor Pablo seems to have his heart broken again and again. They are alternatingly beautifully sensual and oddly confusing. Sometimes I couldn't quite tell what he was talking about - possibly because they are translated from Spanish. Neruda is Chilean and won a Nobel Prize for his writings in 1971. Even though some of the poetry soared and raced, the confusing parts take it back to a basic rating of: jjj.
(I enjoyed reading poetry for a change, so if anyone has a good book of poetry, I'd be happy to make your shelf lighter for a month or so.)

Two Great Speeches

Yesterday and today, I read two great speeches by Barack Obama.
The first was given at Notre Dame amid a great flurry of conflict and protest regarding abortion.
The second was given in Cairo amid great interest in what Obama would say to the Muslim world.
Both are interesting and inspiring calls to multicultural community and common commitment to improve our world together. Please take the time to read them.

God Is an Atheist

-- This sermon is part of the ONE PRAYER SERIES. --

(( Before the sermon, we will watch this video.))


I am an atheist. Don't look so shocked! You are an atheist, too. So is God. We are all atheists.
If you don't believe in God, you are an atheist. If you do believe in God, you are atheist.
Huh?

The early Christians were called atheists because they rejected the gods of Rome. They had the audacity to say that Rome's long-honored gods were false and that there was only one true God. So people called them atheists – people who don't believe in the gods.
Good Christians are still atheists in this sense today. Stan Martin was a professor here several years ago. He was fond of saying, “So you're an atheist … OK, tell me about the God you don't believe in. I probably don't believe in him either.” ...

To continue reading this sermon, CLICK HERE.


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Acts 2 - The Holy Spirit Is PINK (?)

As I thought about Pentecost this year, I couldn't help thinking of the song by Pink, “I'm coming up, so you better get this party started.” This might be a stretch, but I wonder if Pink is a metaphor of the Holy Spirit? Listen to some of the words:

I'm comin' up so you better get this party started
I'm comin' up so you better get this party started
Get this party started on a Saturday night
Everybody's waiting for me to arrive
Sendin' out the message to all of my friends ...

Last week, Yoni read Jesus' words: “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised … you will receive power when the the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere ...” (Acts 1:4, 8).

Making my connection as I enter the room
Everybody's chilling as I set up the groove
Pumpin' up the volume with this brand new beat
Everybody's dancing and they're dancing for me
I'm your operator, you can call anytime
I'll be your connection to the party line

I'm comin' up so you better get this party started
I'm comin' up so you better get this party started

“Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit …” and people from all around town “heard the loud noise” and “came running” (Acts 2:2-6).

Pentecost was God's coming out party. ...

To continue reading this post, click here.

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56 Foreigners Quarantined for Swine Flu

Amazing, but true.
50 some odd teachers were at a week long training session, on their first week in Korea. After the training, everyone dispersed to their hakwons and new apartments all around Korea.
Then, uh oh ... big uh oh ... one of the weigooks (foreigners) was diagnosed with swine flu, for real!
Every last person in the training session was rounded up in ambulances by masked medical personal, and they were returned to the same hotel that hosted the training session. It was something like the movie Blindness without the blindness and total anarchy.
Actually, it was a perfect brew for culture shock for everyone concerned, as the Korean leaders barked stringent orders and the foreigners more or less ignored them at will. Not staying in rooms, going out onto the balconies, smuggling in contraban like alcohol and cigarettes, defying direct orders, holding sit-ins for internet service, etc.
There is a guy who is blogging about the whole ordeal. Yes, as of today, it is still ongoing. He is actually a good writer and sometimes I found myself laughing out loud at the hilarious absurdities involved in this difficult situation. It's a good read. Check it out. And yes, this is an actual picture of the swine-flu-blogging quarantine-ee, though he doesn't actually have it ... so far.