We’re starting today with something we haven’t done in a while: audience participation time. I’m tired of doing all the talking, so I want you folks to get more involved. Here’s your question: What did you pack when you came to Cheonan? (If you happen to be one of the few people here born in Cheonan, then maybe you can answer: “What did you pack on your last big trip?”) First, turn to someone nearby and tell them a few things you packed.
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OK. Now shout out some of your answers. What did you pack when you came to Cheonan?
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Today is our fourth week in our series on personal health, and we’re talking about emotional baggage. Emotional baggage is all deep down hidden stuff that we rarely see but really affects our lives. It’s like an American Express card. We “don’t leave home without it.” ...
This fall we are 15 years old. (So how old are we in Korean years?) To get a feeling for how much we've grown, I thought it might be fun for us to look at some of our previous “firsts.”
The first baby born in our church (Jenny Mitchel's daughter 2001). (The next baby was Esther Kim in 2006.)
The first Advisory Council was elected in 2003. For our first 8 years before that, we were just a hodge-podge group that worshiped together.
Our first mission trip (Indonesia, 2004). We are now planning our fourth, and we're hoping to do one every year.
Our first year with regular heat in the winter (2005). That may not seem like such a big deal, but it's easier to worship when you don't have to wear gloves and a hat just to stay warm!
Our first store room – a tiny janitors closet, which we were forced to get because we bought a drum set (2005).
Our first assistant pastor - Hoom Jeong (2005)
Our first big attendance day: 79 (2005). We were really excited about 79 people back then!
More than 50% of our regular attenders from outside the KNU community (2005)
First after church snack time – started just once a month (2005). I remember our fellowship team feeling really concerned about trying to do it every week.
First website – a free blog that Susan Kim set up for us (2005)
First church members to get married (Mark and Naomi, 2005)
First baptisms (2006)
First time to have organized children and youth activities (2006)
First time worshiping in Patch Hall and at a “normal” time (2006). Before this, our worship services began bright and early at 9 a.m.
First time to have more than one Korean on the Advisory Council (2006)
First time to have more than one returning Advisory Council member (2007)
First time to take in members and to be an official Church of the Nazarene (2007)
First church soccer team (2007) ...
Everyone gets culture shock. It's normal. It's healthy. It's unavoidable. It's also funny and annoying and depressing and depleting and confusing and sneaky. (Sometimes you are having culture shock even when you don't realize it.) Here in this church, we are blessed or cursed with more culture shock than the average community.
The Bible often deals with themes of culture shock. When the Israelites left Egypt, they complained, “We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted. But now our appetites are gone. All we ever see is this manna!” (Numbers 11:5-6). One of my friends is an engineering executive at a Korean company here in Cheonan. He told me when he sends his Korean engineers to England for training, they pack one suitcase with clothes and one suitcase with ramyeon! Food has always been part of culture shock.
When the leaders of Israel were captured and taken into exile in Babylon, they wrested with culture shock, and they were tempted toward isolation. But God sent them a message through Jeremiah: “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. Marry and have children. ... Multiply! Do not dwindle away! And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).
But culture shock isn't always pretty. ...
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For example, in cultures around the world, one of the most common methods of treating insanity has been trepanation. The basic theory is that people go insane because there are demons or evil spirits trapped in their heads. How do you get the demons out? Well, you drill a nice little hole as an escape route. Unfortunately, the people tend to loose a lot of blood and maybe some brains along with the “demons.”
And, you all know Charles Darwin, the guy who made the theory of evolution famous. Well, his grandfather believed that sleep could cure all kinds of diseases. Not able to get to sleep? No problem, the cure for insomnia is simple: spinning, lots of spinning. Apparently, Grandpa Darwin would put people on a chair on wheels or something and just spin them round and round until they passed out. Unfortunately, it didn’t cure any diseases, but on the upside, it might have given birth to some great carnival rides.
One of the oldest medical remedies is bloodletting. The theory was that, sometimes, we just have too much blood or too much blood in the wrong places. For the body to regain balance, we have to let that blood get out. So the doctor would cut you and let you bleed out all that bad blood. It turns out that we actually need our blood, so letting it bleed out is generally a bad thing.
Here’s my favorite. 3-4,000 years ago Egypt had the best medicine of anyone around. They really knew their stuff, but even they came up with some crazy ideas. Here is their cure for skin sores or lesions: “After the scab has fallen off, put on it scribe’s excrement, mix in fresh milk and apply as a poultice.” Let’s see: scribe poo + milk = skin cream. Any takers? Maybe we could sell the idea to Skin Food or Bath and Body. It makes you soft as a baby’s bottom!
Finally, however, the gods won out. They sentenced Sisyphus to one of the most famous punishments in the history of the world. Every day, he pushed a huge round stone to the top of a high hill. After struggling all day to reach the top, the stone rolled back down to the bottom of the hill. Sisyphus punishment was meaningless work, forever. He was cursed with an unsolvable problem that he just had to fix.
When we hear the statistics of global poverty, we can feel a lot like Sisyphus. 3 billion people living on less than 2,500 won a day. 25,000 children die every day because of poverty. 2.6 billion people lack decent toilets or clean water. 1.8 million children die every year diarrhea.
When we talk in millions and billions, the problem of global poverty seems like an impossible mountain. We look at the pictures of the starving children, and our heart knows that we must do something. But our brain reminds us that we can’t feed billions. If we give 1 or 1,000 or even 100,000 kids enough medicine to prevent diarrhea, there will still be 1.7 million who die from it this year.
After a while, it all feels like rolling that stone up the hill, day after day. We can work hard. We can give our lives to helping others. Yet, it can still feel meaningless because of the millions and billions we didn’t help. Sometimes, it seems as if the whole world has the curse of Sisyphus. Sometimes, it feels like we’re cursed with an unsolvable problem we just have to fix.
So what do we do? Well, some of us keep pushing that stone up the hill. But others of us, give up on that all together. We just quit trying. Some of us even quote Jesus as support for giving up on the fight against poverty, “The poor will always be among you.” We forget that he also said, “Whatever you do to the least of these you to do to me.” But when there are 1 billion “least of these” who need our help, the problem just seems too large.
But we have special powers that Sisyphus didn’t have. In fact, we have three special powers that completely change the game. ...
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Our world is fractured, separated, segregated, split, divided. And this cuts to the core of our hearts, for deep down our souls know our world and our hearts are designed for wholeness and harmony.
Globalization pushes us together and forces the essential fragmentation of humanity into eyes. We see this theme emerge again and again in our movies and stories. Consider just a few examples:
· Shakespeare's classic story of Romeo and Juliet. The tragic lovers from two divided families shine a light on the brokenness of their world.
· The Lord of the Rings series is asking the question of whether we can overcome our differences to make the world safe and whole.
· Remember the Titans tells the story of a championship football team when the black high school suddenly merges with the white high school. The fundamental question is whether we really can get along.
· Beauty and the Beast challenges the cultural fragmentation that happens when we place too high a value on external beauty.
· The Little Mermaid – amid all its cuteness and fun songs – deals with the serious theme of cross-cultural marriages.
In his book, Sex God, Rob Bell argues that our world is designed to be whole, one … diverse – yes! - but sharing a fundamental unity, soaked with loving relationships. But
So when we see people who come together out of brokenness and find wholeness and peace, it touches something deep in our souls. It connects with our deepest longings and our deepest hopes. We need peace. We need wholeness. We need community amid our diversity. It is a deep, deep craving of our soul, and without it we will forever be malnourished. ...
KNU International English Church
(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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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.
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.)
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.
