Wednesday Reflection Week 10

God always has a way of getting to us the right thing, at the right time and at the right place. This is something I have really experienced begin at Fuller. When I first began serving the youth group at my church, I ended up taking Chap Clark’s foundation for youth ministry. It was when I began to preach for adults that I ended up taking homiletics (and begin tremendously helped by the readings). Now that I began to plan a church, I came across this class. Some might say it is a coincident but I know there is no “coincidence” in our lives. I truly felt the guidance of God throughout my ministry and my seminary education. This class was really helpful in expanding my ideas of church planting and what the mission of the church should be. The church is to be part of the great mission of God, which has started from the beginning of the world and is still in the process. It is the expanding and living out the kingdom of God with justice, peace and joy.

Monday Reflection Week 10

It is true, as discussed in class, that churches have adopted the market economy model where as the Kingdom should take the gift exchange model. I think this is the influence from modernity as Fetch has pointed out in his book. It is the give and take model. This brings me to the text we read in the preaching class yesterday: “whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and however welcomes me welcomes to one who sent me. For he who is least among you all – he is the greatest.” (Lk 9:48). The person who was preaching, Beth, said that welcoming children means accepting other not for what they can give us back but for who they are. She said children can not benefit us in any ways but slow us down. I totally agree with her and with the idea that we must give without expecting a return. We must love not so we can be loved back but because that is what Jesus have told us to and showed us to. As Chap Clark said: “I am not here to be a professor but to follow Jesus.” Amen to that!

Wednesday Reflection Week 9

I think the steps discussed in class really helped me to put my vision of Kingdom of God in realistic terms. Throughout the project, I had hard time putting into practice the vision I had for the church. The key element I realized was “time.” Nothing will come easy or as quick as we desire to. Just as the sewer must wait patiently for the time of the harvest, anything we plan in our church must wait for God’s time. The process of awareness, understanding, evaluation, experimentation and action plan was really helpful in planning the process of the church planting. I think our church will take more than 6 month for each process which would make the project into a 2 or 3 year plan. It might take longer, who knows? But the important thing I realized is it will take time. Only God knows how long but as long as we keep planting I believe there will a time of harvest.

Monday Reflection Week 9

We have all experienced that social place is not limited to physical place (anymore). As I have mentioned at the beginning of the class (first post) I really had negative views of cyber space since it has been misused in so many ways (popularizing pornography, promoting individualism, piracy and many more). Of course there are good aspects to it (instant communication to anywhere in the world, sharing of ideas trading of good [yeh~ ebay] and etc…). I guess in any issue there will always be the positives and the negatives. Either way the fact is that cyberspace, the idea discussed in class: “more and more our lives will be influenced by people we haven’t met face to face,” is a reality to us. It is something we can not just avoid it or disregard. It was good that in class we reflected on it and how it would relate to the mission of the Church. I don’t just want to jump in conclusion and say “oh, then we could use the internet as tools.” I believe there is something deeper into in then that. The cyberspace is not just another tool but a whole new way of seeing society and interaction with other human beings. I am sure things are going to start changing even faster as the technology progresses. I just hope I will ready for it.

Wednesday Reflection Week 8

The idea of “lifestyle as evangelism” (an idea discussed at class) seems to cut both ways. I am a strong believer of evangelizing through our lifestyle. Instead of forcing a shallow acceptance prayer from the non-believers (which will supposedly get them into heaven in few second), we should evangelize by creating and being part of a Kingdom like Community; and by inviting people into it. Yet at the same time, it would be too idealistic to expect people to just come and desire to be part of our community by just seeing our lifestyle; because our lifestyle can not be perfect. Our community on earth is only a process towards the true community in the eternal Kingdom of God. Therefore we must proclaim the gospel as well as living it out. It is not a “one or the other” issue but to incorporate both aspect of proclaiming and living it out.

Monday Reflection Week 8

The idea of reading each others rough draft and commenting on them was a great idea. Honestly, I didn’t expect much from it but ended up getting a lot of great feedbacks. The direction of the final paper was further understood and explored by the discussion. One of them was with the idea of being very specific in terms of the action plan. Since I know my context and I have the idea in my mind, I realized that I failed to be more detailed in describing the steps. One of them was to help the congregation of my church become less individualized and be more communal. The question that was raised was “how?” what are some specific steps the church need to take in order to accomplish that. This really challenges me to further reflect and think on the future action plans for the church. I realize that many times in our churches, we have great idea and plans but fail to narrow them down and come up with specific action plans. It is good to dream and idealize a concept but it is nothing if it is not taken into the real life.

Missional Church Transformation Paper (rough 01 – 500 words)

In this paper I will be working in my current church planting project. The challenge will be to go beyond the influences of modernity and truly emulate the Kingdom of God.

The church I am part of, Amazing Grace Church in Long Beach have begun a church planting project in which I will be the pastor. The new church, called Walnut Amazing Grace Church was planted in the city of Walnut. It has been two months since we started and we are currently praying for the vision of the church. The target audience is 1.5 generation (Korean speaking) young adults. The challenge for the new church begins with the language. Since it is a Korean speaking group it is very hard for us to connect with the neighborhood and with people of other ethnicity. That, plus the exclusive tendency of Korean Churches (we have had not much success in the area social justice) would be a great challenge in forming a Kingdom like community where inclusiveness is a big characteristic.

If Jesus were to be part of the founding members, He would challenge us to rethink the purpose and the mission of the church. He would begin by shifting our inward focus to an outwardly form; our individual focus life to a communal form. The question he would ask would not be: “how can we bring new people to church” but “how can we be the church in this place, in our community and in the specific context of being a Korean American Church.” This does not mean that he would encourage us to be only Korean American church but to think beyond our race and ethnicity. Jesus would really push us to connect with the American church we are renting the facility from and to connect with people in the neighborhood, instead of trying to create a commuting church composed only by Korean.

The first idea we need to work on is that the church is a community. Not just community in the sense that there is more than one person but a community which shares in the vision and the mission of God. We would begin by learning that God has a plan for the community before he has plans for each individual. It is only then, when we recognize and value the idea of community, how we will be able to go beyond our ethnicity, our tradition and our comfort zone in the church. The first barrier we must break is the individualism of the people. We will begin to see a new way of doing church and a new way of communicating with other ethnicity only when we realize that the Kingdom of God calls for an egalitarian form of community.

The new church, which will be mainly composed by Korean speaking congregation must work in reaching and cooperating with other ethnicity. Only then we will be able to see creation and church in a new light; in the light of the Kingdom of God.

Wednesday Reflection Week 7

At first I didn’t quiet get the difference between the Trinity view of the mission and the Kingdom perspective on the mission. I can’t say that I do but I started seeing subtle differences. One thing I have noticed is that the former could be exclusive in certain aspects. It is in fact inclusive towards the outside (or secular) but it still seems to define the outside and the inside (it is us who are in the inside who gives/shares to the outside). Where as for the latter, it is more inclusive in the way how it considers all creation as part of (or at least as subject) to the Kingdom of God. I, personally do not believe all creation is part of the Kingdom of God since there is clear distinction between the good and bad (i.e. the parable of the weed) but I believe the church must be less exclusive and be more open to the outside world. After all, the parable of the weed also teaches us that we are not the harvesters; we are not the ones who sort the good and bad. That is God’s job at the end of time. For now we must try to reach out to all areas of our lives without concerning too much on who is “in” and who is “out.”

Monday Reflection Week 7

Wow, already week 7? Times does fly. I am starting to see a clearer picture in terms of our final case study; and more importantly regarding the church planting I am involved in. The readings really challenged me (especially the last two) in terms of seeing a new way of doing church without completely abandoning the traditional ways. The good thing about the structure of the final paper is that we could work both on the idealistic/theoretical aspect of the church and the realistic aspect that is present in my current context. As many have noted, it is not about doing the church in certain x, y, z way but to be faithful to the Lord “in” the context we are put into.

Wednesday Reflection Week 6

Synagogue 3000 is the emerging movement of the Jewish community. There are a lot of similarities with the Emerging church movement that seeks to be relevant to its community and its culture. The question some times boils down to “how do we keep the young people?” But as mentioned in the lecture, that is not the core question for the people in the emerging movement. It is more like “how do we become the true church of Christ?” I see a value in the emerging movement in that it is not only a movement to keep the young people in the church but to seek the heart of Jesus Christ for His church. Because once the church becomes the true church of God (I am not implying there is “one” way to do it, I believe this could take many forms) then the issue of young people and generational gap will not a big problem since I believe God will be at work with every generation. This idea truly challenges me with the idea of my church planting project. I pray that God will show us His vision for our church and that all members will be able to seek the heart of Jesus as He has sought us.