Churches often broadcast the message that they offer “the world” a glimpse of “the kingdom”.

The high medieval period in Europe was a time when the very architecture of the church sought to reflect the transcendent nature of divinity, to overwhelm with beauty and majesty, and to visually exhibit perfection.

The outsides of churches portray something different than what was really going on inside. For the most part we still recapitulate that façade on the interpersonal level – I profess a godly lifestyle on the outside, but inside I am alone in my depravity. It is only by mistake or under duress when we expose the flaws. And of course, it doesn’t help when our industrial culture quickly dismisses vulnerability and discards the broken. Pop culture isn’t real – it’s a façade as well.

Can church broadcast then a different message now in the 21st century? This ad shows that at least one auto corporation acknowledges the façade and addresses it “head on”. But perhaps it could double for our churches.

It is still beautiful in its brokenness. There’s something to be said for that.

What if you could save someone’s life for $50?

Peter Nguyen shared with me the story of Jonah Nathan Chuang this morning:

Jonah was born to us a full term healthy 8 pound baby boy on August 2, 2007. We were so happy to have him home – the result of many prayers and medical help since we had great difficulty conceiving him. He was doing well at home until he developed a fever on August 25. His 3 year old brother, Ethan, had caught a cold in daycare, and we thought that was all it was going to be.

He began antibiotics for a mild pneumonia, but the doctors were surprised to find his blood counts were quite low. They then found that his liver and lymph nodes were larger than expected, his liver function was declining, his blood counts were falling to dangerous levels, and his body was not able to clot properly. Some of his test results were the worst that doctors had seen.

Jonah was diagnosed with HLH (hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis), a rare condition where one of the immune cells attacks and eats all other blood cells. Although not cancer, it acts and is treated like a cancer. There is a high chance that the problem is genetic, and we were heartbroken to hear that his brother, Ethan, may also be at risk (testing underway).

At 4 weeks old, Jonah began chemotherapy. If he responds, he will need a bone marrow transplant by the end of October. If he does not respond, he will need one sooner. His chances of cure and survival with a transplant are 60-70% if a match is found.

The doctors say the donor registry does not have a lot of Asians. They suggested that we organize drives to increase Jonah’s chance for a match. We plead with each of you to be screened – his only hope is if we find a match. You could save his life.

Please pray for baby Jonah and our family – that God would strengthen and guide us during this difficult time. Thank you so much for considering being a donor.

Please see if you can help. My wife who is a hematopathologist at a children’s hospital says that the cost of registering your blood marrow could cost $50, but because there are not many Asians on the registry, it is far more valuable than that. I plan to get tested soon. If the $50 to get registered is an issue, please let me know. I would be glad to help you foot the bill. Time is of the essence.

We don’t need another Korean church that does the same old thing, that is, a church that preaches the same old moralistic, fear-based or principle-based messages and leads us in singing someone else’s songs.

We don’t need another place where the excuse is that people there look like us, but we don’t talk about what we look like and who we are and who we were made to be. And then talk about going multi-ethnic – Why? So no one else can acknowledge their own culture/race/ethnicity too?

We don’t need another outlet for the distribution of Christian materials. We don’t need to keep up with the Joneses and the Kims and whatever “40 Days…” they’re pitching.  We’re tired of consuming whatever the industry is producing. Sure, you say we need “daily bread”, but we still leave hungry because we’re tired of processed food.

We don’t need the “church is a hospital” mentality. We’re sick of seeing doctors who are great at diagnosing but doesn’t treat the problems. Or you know what? We’re even more sick of seeing doctors who are sick themselves.

We don’t need a new building or a new cause. We’d actually like to see some collaboration and sharing between churches. And I’m not talking about a basketball league or a softball tournament.

We don’t need marketing. Quit creating things that we “need”. We want to see some organic growth. We’ll spread the word ourselves if it’s valuable enough.

We don’t need another program. Missions is not a summer event – it is a lifestyle. Welcoming is not a team – it is a posture. Small groups is not a department – it is a circle of friends.

We don’t need hard answers from the pulpit. We need to be asked tougher questions and to think through our faith more. We are great do-er’s and thinkers, but our souls have grown cold. We have become consumers and not producers of the Word. We are moral, but sterile. We are educated but ignorant of how to apply the power of the Gospel in our lives. We complain because this had the look of a performance, but we didn’t realize that we were the ones being asked to bear the fruit.

We don’t need a younger pastor who is drinking the same old Kool-Aid. Often a new church for Korean-Americans is like dressing up an old woman. At some point, the most expensive makeup will not cover her wrinkles.  I’m not disrespecting young pastors or old women or Kool-Aid, I’m saying we tend to put old wine in new wineskins and call the whole thing “new”.

We need new wine.

We need to learn to live in the tension between ancient and future, already but not yet, motherland and fatherhood. We need to learn how to dream again and get dirty. We need to learn to take risks again, and we need to see that risktaking as a value in our churches. We need to see maverick pastors teach us, not leave us for the next big thing. We need to hear about how we are wired as sons and daughters of immigration and of Christ, and then how we can be re-wired, or perhaps disarmed if the wires in our hearts are connected to bombs. We need you to acknowledge the materialism in our midst – the alcoholism, the workaholism, the addiction, the pornography, the loneliness, the depression, the racism, the sexism, the xenophobia, the homophobia, and whatever else you and all of us are all aware of and afraid of talking about. We need courage to address the taboo.

It’s OK if it’s not the same as before. It’s OK if you’ve never been there before either. It’s OK if we make mistakes and you make them too. Let’s quit pretending that no one should.

This is not a youth group thing. This is not a mid-life crisis thing. This is an acknowledgement that what we have is a failure to communicate the gospel to this generation. What we have is a judgment call that the same old church is never going to attract people who are sick of the same old church. What we have is a wonderful systematic theology that hasn’t dismantled the systems of corruption and evil in the zip codes around us. What we have is this strange notion that we are in our own worlds, and not of the world – but we have not really entered into “the world.” Thus, we have aging churches, and aging members arguing over aging parking lots. And to the next generation, it’s old wineskin talk.  It’s all old wine.

We need new wine. Not just talked about, but planted, harvested, fermented, and fit to drink.

The Resident has given it some thought…

Some of the 2nd-generation people I’ve spoken to say they don’t like the notion of illegal immigrants and that current laws should be enforced. I suppose it somehow bothers people of the wealthiest, highest-educated demographic in America that somehow our taxes are going to someone other than us. Or maybe it’s just someone posing as one of us?

Either way, I have to ask why Asian American churches don’t address this issue more often? If they do, how do they address it? While we acknowledge the first generation church deals with these issues regularly, how is it this hot topic, which is so easily politicized, has so little commentary from Asian American pulpits? Does God not speak for the alien or the foreigner? What a most unnaturalized response. Is this another case where Shane Claiborne would say “even the rock stars would cry out”?

“There are so many Asian Americans who would benefit from immigration reform,” said Inday Larot Day, executive director of the National Federation of Asian American United Methodists. “There are Asian Americans who did not take advantage of the amnesty offered years ago because they were afraid of being deported. Of the estimated 12 million undocumented persons in the U.S., I would say there are at least 3 million Asian Americans included in that count.”

And if we as the sons and daughters of immigrants don’t know about the issues, perhaps it’s time to educate ourselves (presentation thanks to Songhua Hu – Stanford) . (As an aside, check out Google’s Presentation app!)

“From a first generation perspective, we don’t understand the second generation. It doesn’t seem like they care about the same things. And if we wait to see what they do–the thought being that we would like to support them, we really don’t know what they’re going to do. We have a communication problem.”

I nodded my head. Jae said the last sentence in English (all the rest he had said in Korean) as if to prove his point. Even though I understood.

“Honestly,” he continued in Korean, “It’s a language problem. It’s tiring.” Pause. He shook his head. “It’s just easier to let them do what they want and not bother with it.” Another pause. “It’s a big problem, but what else can we do?”

I responded in my own Korean. “Even though we share the same building, we act like we don’t know each other.”

Jae and I continued talking like this for about fifteen minutes in front of the bookstore, encouraging and discouraging one another with one of the more memorable moments when Jae said, “The first generation must speak first and reach out. They are the ones with the power.”

But the two words that remain with me and keep me up tonight: “It’s tiring.”

Just communicating itself is exhausting. There are so many obstacles and it takes so much time, knowing what I know of my parents’ generation and my own generation, I wonder if they will invest in one another’s language, not just to order a meal or to watch each other’s movies, but to work through deep wounds and issues of faith and meaning together.

It’s hard enough to speak to our mothers, how much harder to speak with our mother tongue? Can we worship our heavenly Father without it? What does it mean if/when we should become linguistic orphans?

In this latest article off the AP wire, “Researchers say many languages are dying” – what if one of them were ours? How does language play into identity and worship? What does it mean that we find less connection between our mother tongue and our church?

Bravo James Choung. Had to share the love…

I would’ve posted this had I found it on Tuesday, but I didn’t want to wait until next year.

It feels good to hear and see these words shower over me…to make a change. Wake up changemakers, today, yes, even today 9/14, is our day.

Thanks to Sonya Bearson for helping me find this article:  Hostages’ Pastor: ‘Remorse Is the Face of the Church’

Here are few quotes from the ex-hostages in the article:

“I’ve had sleepless nights, thinking of what we have caused the country. I am deeply sorry,” Yu Kyeong-sik said at a press conference.

“Remorse is the face of the church,” said Park Eun-jo, senior pastor of Saemmul Church. The Presbyterian congregation that sponsored the trip, in the Seoul suburb of Bundang, has a weekly attendance of about 5,000 people.

What exactly are they apologizing for? What did they do that was so wrong?

This is a strange age we’re living in – when we care more for animals than we do people, and terrorists don’t apologize, but missionaries have to.  Since when did the church become such a burden on society? Have we come to a point that we expect missionaries to apologize when the gospel they wield is subversive enough that terrorists find it threatening? We have come to a point where are more angry at the missionaries for being held hostage than the terrorists who held them hostage. How screwed up is that?

That’s like telling an abused woman that she had it coming. The church shouldn’t have to apologize, they should be the ones to have the government apologize for this same sentiment also expressed in the article:

After the hostages’ release, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told the Associated Press that the group plans to abduct more foreigners.

“We will do the same thing with the other allies in Afghanistan, because we found this way to be successful,” he said

Separation of church and state is fine, but know this, this one’s on the state. Nonviolence should never have to apologize to those who use violence. Just because there are cowards in the state, doesn’t mean the missionaries have to apologize. C’mon South Korea, don’t boast about missionaries if you’re not willing to send them out. The Taliban is not entitled to perpetuate violence, nor should we, for fear of death, allow them to think that they can.

The series continues with Virtue 5.

Original author: Eric Foley.

Virtue 5: Preparing and eating meals together

Parents in the United States today are spending 40% less time with their children than parents in the US did thirty years ago. 40% less!

A lot of that lost time is due to the fact that American parents aren’t eating together with their children nearly as often these days. In fact, American families now eat together less than five meals a week. That means that there are at least two days a week when American families don’t eat even a single meal together.

How many meals do you eat together with your family each week? How about the families in your congregation? How often do they eat together each day?

My own experience suggests that these statistics about American families in general certainly seem accurate in the case of Korean American families in particular. Korean American parents often must work twelve to fifteen hour days six or seven days a week, which makes having dinner with their children almost impossible. And Korean American children are so involved with sports and after school activities that even if their parents are at home for dinner, they frequently are not.

Some Korean Americans may look at these statistics as simply inevitable. But there are two things that make these statistics particularly sad:

1. Research has demonstrated conclusively that the less a family eats together, the greater the likelihood that the children in that family will experience bad grades, poor nutrition, health problems, and troubled relationships with their peers. Likewise, research shows that the more a family eats together, the greater the likelihood that the children in that family will experience good grades, good nutrition, good health, and good relationships with their peers. In other words, the amount of time we eat together with our children determines more about their success in life than the amount of money we make or even how much time they’re spending in youth group!

2. We would hope that the Korean American church could be one place where Korean American families are able to share meals together. After all, Korean American churches do a wonderful job providing food every Sunday—and often during the week as well! But despite the joy I feel every time I attend a Sunday lunch at a Korean church, there is often something very sad that happens at these meal times: Teenagers and young adults are frequently absent from the table. Very few times do I see a teenager eating with their parents during the Korean American church meal time. If teenagers do stay after church to eat the meal, they often do it in another room or away from the rest of their families. This means that the Sunday church meal becomes just one more meal that Korean American families don’t share together. Even morning prayer can make it challenging for Korean American moms to eat breakfast with their children.

The end result, tragically, is that Korean American churches may accidentally be adding to the problem of our Korean American families not eating together, rather than helping to solve the problem. And, as research has shown, the less a family eats together, the more problems children in that family are likely to have.

In what ways is your church helping and encouraging families to share meals together? In what ways are your church’s activities making it less likely for families to share meals together? Are there ways you can creatively modify those activities so that your church can make it possible for Korean American families to spend more time together around the table?

According to research, the end result would be Korean American children getting better grades, having better health, and enjoying better relationships with their peers. Now THAT would be a great accomplishment for a Korean American church youth group!

Of course, we would not want to focus on these things and neglect spiritual matters. But even though research hasn’t been done on the subject of how sharing meals together impacts children’s spiritual growth, we would probably be safe to say that the more frequently children eat meals with their parents, the more likely it is that their parents can help shape their spiritual life as well.

There is no doubt that the Korean American church is in an especially strategic position to be a force for either good or bad in this issue. That is why next month we’ll offer you specific suggestions and practical help on how you can draw upon traditional Korean Christian cultural practices to enable the Korean young people in your congregation to prepare and eat meals together with their families.

When the news that the Korean missionary hostages were released in Afghanistan, I considered it to be good news.

When I heard the conditions upon which they were released, I considered it not as good.

I don’t know if it’s too early to write about this. And of course, it’s easy for me to write this–sitting in my plush chair in an air-conditioned room, well-fed, and middle-class– but it makes me wonder if I would’ve have made the same deal with the Taliban.

Release the hostages and I’ll take all the missionaries back. Oh, and here’s a cool $20 million to make sure that happens soon. That was the basic proposition and the deal that was met.

And check out this article, “Viewing the Hostage Crisis Through Game Theory”:

Experts in game theory emphasize that the best strategy to minimize terrorist threats is to leave a deep impression on terrorist organizations, making them believe they will pay dearly for taking hostages — that our country is unyielding on hostage issues.

As a Christian, I think the best way to send the message to terrorists is to say that our faith compels us to be witnesses (in Greek: martyrs) as well, but not of violence, but of love and peace. While we have gained 19 lives back, what is at stake is the greater impact of missionaries/aid workers to the nation of Afghanistan. Should we be relieved that the Taliban have returned those hostages then?

The world would have seen the end game of terrorism played out had those innocent hostages died at their hands, but we have succumbed to their threats. We could have said to them, you may take the lives of Christian missionaries, but they were willing to support, educate, and help your people – what have you done for anyone? We are the ultimate anti-terrorists because perfect love can cast out all fear.