In the spirit of deconstructing the holidays (it’s not become a tradition, if you should think that I’ve gone that far, but it is one of the luxuries that we have since we are without children yet), my wife and I talk about how some of these vestiges of Christmas are not understood, and perhaps more importantly, how these cultural stories cloak the true celebration of the birth of Christ in an increasingly anti-Christian society.

We seem to free associate these notions of goodwill and cheer while withholding the fact that we needed and still need a Savior. In our conversations, my wife picked on Santa Claus as one of these such diversions from the birth of Jesus and made the point, “When children find out that Santa isn’t real, and they associate it with Christmas, how much more does that cloud up the notion of Jesus being real?” While Christ Mass is being relegated to one of the many religious holidays that take place at this time of year, I think it is important to bring out the case where we should make the case out of such pluralism, the original story of Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, directly reflects a person and faith of Jesus Christ, and is not American nor commercial. Here is where we can develop the narrative of Christmas and re-infuse it with meaning that speaks against the postmodern tendency to re-invent, re-create, and ultimately forget who we are and where we came from. The power of telling story comes from our ability as Christians to re-tell the story.

The notion that God empowered us with a memory is I believe the stake in Nietzsche’s heart, that we will never be satisfied as a vegetable or a cow. Our lives have profound meaning and we live desperately like it matters. I learned this important lesson under the pastorhood of Stephen Mansfield of the Mansfield Group. In his blog, he posts this story of the real Santa Claus. So enjoy the read, and put the “holy” back in holidays.

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Nicholas was born of wealthy parents in Patara of Lycia, in what is today the nation of

Turkey. He was converted to Christianity early in his life and during the persecutions under the Roman Emperor Diocletian he was imprisoned. Though thousands of believers were martyred, Nicholas was miraculously released. Following a trip to the Holy Land, Nicholas settled in Myra, a city near his native Patara, where he became a pastor and then the Bishop. He was probably involved in the Council of Nicea of 325 A.D. which gave the Church the Nicene Creed.

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I’m shamelessly stealing this from one of the posts from The Cutting Truth, as I believe that a ministry like this cannot get enough publicity. My heart is breaking so much in this Advent season. I preached last year a Christmas sermon that my wife reminded me of today as we ventured out to the mall for the first time in this season of commercial madness. She said, “You said, ‘To give when we fully expect to receive is no generosity at all. We are simply exchanging materials.’ I don’t want to play America’s version of Christmas anymore.” I had forgotten that I had said any such thing, but man, we wrestled with that today.

Indeed, may our hearts long for real giving like this…and I believe this worship song, “Open the Eyes of My Heart”…is sung by the children themselves. I too, want to see you Lord. I want to see you.

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I read this painful story today and here I feel the need to mix up the story (not in its entirety) a bit in order to diagnose what led up to the fire, in an order that I feel makes better sense of what is happening with this family. I can’t imagine what this has done to their faith, but I believe this story speaks to the brokenness that is in many of our Asian American homes. While this tragedy seems to have not ended yet for the Lee family, my hope and prayer is that we would able to heal the open wounds of our generation.

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Things were rough for the Lee family that summer of 1989.

Han Tak and his wife, Esther Lee, had lived apart seven years while he got his start in the United States. She and their two girls stayed in Seoul.

Now the family was together in New York City and tension was high.

There were long hours at the Lees’ clothing store on Seventh Avenue near Madison Square Garden, where all the family worked. And Han Tak was too strict with the girls — too traditional, too many rules, Esther recalls as she traces the journey of her troubled marriage.

Worst of all, Ji Yun, 20 and the oldest child, was ill again after a few years of calm.

Manic depression had surfaced a year or so after they immigrated. Medication had helped, so well that she got into a prestigious art college to paint, but things were unraveling again.

“She didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep. She couldn’t be still,” says Esther, sitting in her quiet apartment in Fort Lee, N.J. A painting by Ji Yun — flowers, a blur of purple, white and green — sits next to the lone couch. “I was exhausted.”

Their Pentecostal pastor thought prayer might help. It seemed like a respite: a trip out to the countryside, hours from the city, a quiet, cool retreat with preachers and prayer.

So Lee woke early on that summer Saturday and father and daughter set off. They drove across the bridges out of New York, out on the interstate to rural Pennsylvania, to the church camp and its small, wooden cabins. And they prayed, with one and then two pastors, until the wee hours of the morning.

That’s when everything went much, much worse.

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I love me some good preaching, I do. There is nothing like being inspired by Godly preaching. If you and I should ever get into a conversation about preachers, I’ll ask you who you like and what they preached on. I’ll take out my index cards and jot their names down hoping to find a sermon online. I write the church name and sermon titles like my wife would a recipe.

And it really did take a lot for me to sit quietly by, as though watching a tennis match, the debates swirl about Piper vs. Keller, Piper vs. Driscoll, or some other celebrity pastor deathmatch between John MacArthur and Zane Hodges. But lately, I am convinced as I do a few random searches on the Internet tonight, I’m sure I’ve never heard on this side of heaven, nor will I be able to find their tapes, the best preachers and teachers of the Word of God. The best preachers don’t preach in places where recording is a high priority and I suspect the pages of history will do them little justice.

Take this man kidnapped and killed in Mosul. Or these Christian leaders in the Phillippines. Also last week, it was discovered that these six Ethiopian believers were killed. You’ll probably never a hear a sermon from these Christians in North Korea. Nor this man in India. And you’ll never hear the testimony of his conversion from this man in Kashmir. But their sacrifice speaks volumes.

And those were only the sermons you missed since last week.

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When I see pictures of Steven Curtis Chapman holding his adopted Chinese daughter and hear the song that tells the story of the metaphor of God’s love expressed through her adoption and the process. I know what he’s getting at and I appreciate his heart, I just don’t know what to think. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he stands up for adoption and i believe he’s right — we, as privileged Americans should take up and care for orphans, but similar to what I’ve expressed with mixed-race children, I feel a sense of something being lost when it comes to my brothers and sisters who have been adopted and you don’t have to take my word for it.

I’ve known many adopted children from Asia — mostly Korean and Chinese. And as economist Steven Levitt (himself having adopted two Chinese daughters) makes a strong case for, in his bestselling book Freakonomics, children do surprisingly well despite many of the external circumstances surrounding them. Many of those who were adopted lead vibrant, successful lives here in America with new parents of a different race. But here’s the rub that I see, their adopted parents cannot inherently bequeath their children with a critical sense of who they are and where they are from, which at least this study shows can be a key ingredient to their self-esteem.

Furthermore, the ethnic church can contribute to this and should. In Minnesota, where a great number of Korean adoptees are, this ministry has the tagline: “Blood is thicker than water; Jesus’ love is thicker than blood!” That is so beautiful. I pray that many of our churches can do this type of work in empowering adoptees to have a sense that we love them, that they have a better understanding of being adopted as sons and daughters through Christ than many of us, and that Christ reigns from the East to the West. They should not lose the best of what their Asian heritage has to offer and nor should our voices be absent in the formation of who they are as a person and a believer.

Lastly, to call Asian American Christians out on the carpet, I challenge us to adopt children, both those who look like us and do not look like us, because we have been blessed. In many respects, Asian American are the wealthiest, best educated, and in many segments, some of the most churched demographic in America. How is that adoption is sung about by Steven Curtis Chapman and not by us? How is that we as Christians do not rush to rescue them? Do we not consider them brothers and sisters?

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“Na-ze oreo kirai nahn dah” ~ Japanese for: “Why do you hate me?”

I learned the phrase as a sophomore in college as my roommate was desperately seeking a way to earn some attention from a cute Japanese student. Her shyness was only magnified by the fact that English was her second language (something that may be banned in Nashville coincidentally). And so, thinking that sarcasm might be a good entry point, my roommate learned the above phrase to an uneventful end (for those taking notes, humor: good, sarcasm: bad when trying to attract those of the opposite sex in a foreign language).

Years later, while waiting tables at the sushi bar, I had gained a reputation for working hard (I sweat profusely which helps uphold that image) and for being friendly, always ready to joke with the customers (this was a welcome surprise to some, since the others on wait staff weren’t born here as I was). Friday nights in downtown Nashville were usually packed (our sushi chef was arguably the best in the city) and this particular night was no different — I was going to sweat even more than usual.

Of the many customers that I served that evening, a twenty-something-Asian American customer stopped me and asked, “Are you Korean?” His friends were talking among themselves and were not paying attention at all.

“Yes,” I responded, a little puzzled since that is not the common question for customers when ordering off the menu. “Are you Korean too?”

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It’s no longer dpark.wordpress.com anymore, so while you won’t have to change your bookmarks, this blog will be known as nextgenerasianchurch.com.

While it’s a terribly minor detail to do so, I think it is important to keep the perspective that this is not “my” blog, but that ultimately it is a space to invite a variety of bloggers to discuss the challenges facing the next generation of Asian American church. The voices involved are varied, and should be on this blog as well. Anna Lee and DJ Chuang are two who are gracious enough to help that be the case, and I, for one, can’t wait to read more of their thoughts (especially if Anna’s first post is par for the course!).

While there are Asian pastor / theologian -types with wonderful blogs, I think there is power in keeping a journalistic/essayist appeal to this type of conversation that can be read by intellectual and layperson alike. (Besides, don’t you wonder what the people in the pews really think of you? Or the people that have already left your church?) While I fully anticipate that many people may not agree with me or some of the points I bring up, I’d still like to put up the invitation that you’re welcome to write here. One of the key problems that I see that the 2nd generation Asian American Christian has inherited from our mother culture is our inability to resolve conflict and disagreement. We avoid it, we ignore it, and although we might release a little steam when no one’s looking, we still don’t discuss through our differences enough. All our conflicts are unfortunately multiplied with our hangups on “saving face” and avoiding shame, which only serve to quell the dialogue even more.

Another reason why I’d like to turn this into more of a team-blog, is because I think that ultimately, the idea of blogs, while is emblematic of the postmodern generation, can be terribly self-defeating. I think had Bonhoeffer been alive today, he could have easily written a short work entitled, “Life (on the Web) Together”. There is something to be said about forming our thoughts and stories together under the banner of Christ. The thought strikes me that we, as believers, should be more sensitive to that spirit of unity than others, although you would never know it as Christians have historically had the tendency to build a church (or three) on every block.

Despite some of my occasionally harsh criticism of our churches, this blog is written out of love for the church, the bride of Christ. And the hope is that together we can use this space as a bride would use a mirror with 10x and 20x magnification so that she might be able to see every clogged pore, every errant hair, every imperfection as to make herself beautiful for her groom. So, say good-bye to “dpark.wordpress.com”, and hello to the NextGenerAsianChurch.com. And again, feel free to join the conversation.

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