God is Good

As 2011 comes to a close it is good to reflect and see the faithfulness of a good God. Since the last time I posted a blog our family has seen loss as well as the joy of a new son. We lost my Father in law on October 23rd of 2011 and then our new son Noah Xavier entered the world October 25 of 2011 having just missed his Grandpa. I am reminded of the comfort of King David in 2 Samuel where he declares his confidence that he will meet his son who passed away one day. We look forward to that day when Noah will meet his grand parents who have gone before him. I am thankful for my family, my wife who just turns out to be the best mom in the whole world to Noah, and a son who has no off button, except to sleep.

I am grateful for all the great saints here at Park Street Church to whom I get to journey with, minister to, and whom I learn so much from. God is good and I am grateful for his faithfulness.

Another Boston Pastor- Enoch Liao

John Piper on Ephesians 3

John touched upon an issue that is always front and central at a gathering like this. We are the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. That word “Evangelization” takes on so many different meanings to so many different people.

A summary of what he said about this issue: Those who do not care about the eternal suffering from not knowing Jesus have a defective view of hell and those who do not care about earthly suffering have a defective heart. Both are equally important but the priority needs to be to deal with the eternal suffering as that is infinitely longer and infinitely worse.

Check out his sermon when they post it on line here

Indian Cousins to the Rescue

Press Release from Cape Town 2010

CYBER ATTACK HITS GLOBAL CHURCH GATHERING

Malicious hits from multiple locations crash system SOUTH AFRICA 20 OCTOBER 2010 Organizers of Cape Town 2010, the widest gathering of Christians in the history of the Church, today announced that their internet communication to the outside world had been hacked. ‘We have 700 GlobaLink sites in 95 countries extending the Congress to 100,000 people’, said Victor Nakah, GlobaLink Chair for the Congress. ‘Finally, after two rough days, they are being served as planned.’ The sophisticated computer network developed for sharing Congress content with the world was compromised for the first two days of the Congress. ‘We have tracked malicious attacks by millions of external hits coming from several locations’, said Joseph Vijayam, IT Chair of The Lausanne Movement, sponsor of the gathering. ‘Added to this was a virus brought into the centre on a mobile phone.’ Asked if he could confirm where the hacking came from, he replied, ‘We have a pretty strong indication, but one can never be absolutely certain, so we prefer not to share our suspicions.’ The Congress has drawn carefully-selected participants from 198 nations representing many of the best minds and the most courageous practitioners in the Church. Joseph Vijayam explained that two cousins from Bangalore had largely been responsible for solving the difficulties, due to their unique expertise in the exact problems the Congress was experiencing. Vijay Kumar, an employee of Unisys Global Services, and Daniel Singh, a pastor with a doctorate in computational biology, came forward to help when they learned of the situation. They had come to the Congress as volunteers to help hook up printers and other basic IT tasks. ‘I believe God in his sovereignty brought them to us,’ Mr Vijayam said.

Jesus is himself our peace - Ephesians 2:15

Joseph Cummings once said “Most Christians are completely unaware that there is a titanic struggle taking place. It is not between Muslims and Christians, not between Muslims and the West, but rather within ‘Christianity’ itself – a struggle for the soul of the Christian faith”

Our relationships with Muslims, reveals this struggle for the soul. We have to ask ourselves what is the priority of our faith? Is our faith primarily a tribal identity or is costly discipleship to Jesus. If it is about tribal identity, then we have to be about the business of defending our Christian civilization against a Muslim civilization. It’s our Christian society and God against their Allah and their culture. BUT if it is about costly discipleship, then doesn’t Jesus give us the example of laying down our lives in love for Muslims so that they might come to see and know the good news of salvation.

Each day as I get inundated with forwarded emails by well meaning Christians, that are alarmist in nature, warning of the encroaching Muslims, it frustrates me that these messages create a phobia which can only lead to hate when we should be about the business of thinking and working on how to love them and share the good news with them, not simply how to stop them.

An example of this was some public correspondence between two Christian Mission Leaders several years ago, who we will call Will and David. After David had written negatively about Muslims, Will wrote:

David, you were able to minister well with tribal's because you lived among them and loved them. I wonder how many Muslims you know well and really love and how many your approach has attracted to Christ. I hope that on that Final Day we can stand together with the Muslims that we and those we have influenced have led to the Throne.

Will responded:
Here is how I illustrate our differences: Imagine that an avalanche has buried hikers in the High Sierras. Mr. Christian Church, a trainer of St. Bernard rescue dogs, orders two trainees—David and Will—to search for and rescue as many lost hikers as possible. David and Will charge off, sniffing the snow for a scent of buried hikers. But Will catches a different scent—mountain lion! David looks back and sees a large cougar stalking Mr. Church! Will is suddenly one very conflicted rescue dog. He still wants to rescue hikers, but decides his priority must be to defend Mr. Church…David prioritizes lost hikers.

As followers of Jesus, who is himself is Peace, what does he say?

If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. (Mt 18:12-13)
If anyone wants to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever would save their life will lose it; and whoever loses their life for my sake and the Gospel’s will save it. (Mk 8:34-35)

Should we be concerned about protecting our society against Muslim encroachment or should we be more concerned that 1.3 billion Muslims don’t know that Jesus loves them and have never talked to a Christian who has told or demonstrated that?

Cape Town Speaker Videos

To see videos of some of the main sessions and speakers you can click here

Are we apologizing for being American?

We had our US regional gathering on Monday. We talked about the fact that the US has more representation on every level of this Congress than any other nation. Six leaders were invited to share briefly about issues that face the American church. Several spoke on the need to repent of racism and embrace the God given opportunity of the other cultures coming to America through immigration. We were also reminded of our need to be humble and listen to the rest of the world. There was a sentiment that we need to step back and listen and that we need to let others lead internationally and in the local context let those who are immigrants to the land step up and lead. At the end of the time, a brother asked me an incredibly honest and vulnerable question.

Is there an Anti Americanism that we perpetuate as Americans when we are so apologetic for who we are and what we have done?

I wanted to formulate some of my reflections on that question. First Americans are not the only ones with cultural blinders. Every nation and culture has their own blinders. Americans are not the only ones who need to be apologetic and humble but we can only start with checking our own attitudes and trust that others will see for themselves their own blinders. I want respond to that question with five factors that I think, we, as American need to consider every time we gather in international gatherings with brothers and sisters from around the world and even in our own country. (1) We live with the baggage of our cultures sin both past and current. Our country was built on a racist past of slavery and of cultural destruction of native peoples living in the land. We also live with the current hypocrisy that we as a nation of immigrants has a growing anti immigrant sentiment often with the undercurrent of xenophobia. I do not think we need to beat ourselves up over this but we need to realize we have to be honest with the fact that these are challenges we need to work out as a church according to God’s call to us in scripture. (2) We also live with the burden of our foreign policy whether we feel we have supported it or not. Americans have the burden of breaking through the assumptions that people have about our ideology or perceived imperialism. (3) We by nature are problem solvers and have always been leaders. We need to remember that people and nations are not problems to be solved and that the rest of the world does not “need” us to lead because we are Americans. Americans are known for speaking first and speaking loudest and too often end up shutting out other voices that need to be and wait to be heard. (4)We need to realize that we control resources as those who are generally wealthier and resource laden than most of the rest of the world. Without checking our attitudes carefully this too often leads to a patronizing attitude towards those we wish to serve and those we wish to work with. (5) There is a changing world and we live in a changing America. We can fight that inevitable change or we can see the opportunity that God may be giving us with these changes. Could these changes mean a greater mutual partnership with the church in other parts of the world as many of them step up to help lead? Could these changes mean a fresh revival of mission leaders for the church in America, leaders who might be bicultural?

America has a proud missions history. I am eternally grateful for American missionaries that brought the gospel to my homeland Korea and to those who sent them out. Americans believe in American exceptionalism as we would expect other nations to have a healthy sense of their own exceptionalism. But in this new season of churches growing all over the world, I think America should lead, and can lead but can we lead in the posture of being servant leaders.