I can appreciate these pictures more, especially after having returned from a weekend church retreat today…

ht: Neatorama for finding this link and these pictures about how the Chinese people can sleep just about anywhere.

You may have heard the term “The Sleeping Giant” being applied to China, but as German photographer Bernd Hagemann found out, the term may actually have a more literal meaning: Chinese people can sleep anywhere, anytime!

Indeed Bernd has documented this phenomenon: Here’s a fantastic gallery of sleeping people in China, categorized as “hardsleepers” (those who sleep in pretty hardcore positions), “softsleepers” (who needs a little padding) and “groupsleepers” (those who sleep with friends, literally!)

For Asians, I think this is what makes falling asleep in church seem like a breeze!

According to this recent AP poll, belief in the supernatural is relatively high.

And 30% believe to have “Woken up from sleep with sense of a strange presence in the room”. From the Korean perspective, we call that “Ga wui”.

I wonder how much our un-Americanness has affected our views of spirituality with relation to spiritual warfare. I remember hearing stories of Korean ghosts and know that many Asian are superstitious, but wonder how that fits in with our more Westernized Christian society. Haven’t really heard that sermon recently.

Furthermore, with Halloween on the way, I saw this AP article on the wire as well: “Minorities less likely to trick or treat”. Some quick snippets:

• The survey found that 73 percent of whites versus 56 percent of minorities said their children will trick-or-treat on Wednesday.
• Ninety-one percent of whites, compared with 75 percent of minorities, said they felt their kids would be secure when they went out seeking candy in their area.
• Lower-income people and minorities are more likely to worry that it might not be safe to send their children out on Halloween night.

What about you? How do you feel about Halloween?

I never went trick-or-treating as a child. I think my parents just saw too much of the demonic in it, not to mention, if you’re to step back and think about it, Halloween does seem like a pretty strange holiday. I’m not sure if that was worth not getting candy for, but I don’t miss it or regret it. Maybe it’s because my parents had real ghost stories to tell.

h/t to Kye S. Chung for this video from Catalyst Conference.

I don’t know what to make of Andy Stanley’s rendition of “Chopsticks” following the performance and saying that it was composed only on the “white keys”. I guess it’s funny at the time and less funnier afterwards, but this type of dialogue often simplifies the racial dynamics in America and where the church is…

I’m no ethnomusicologist, but I wonder if Asians have something to offer here. What are the yellow notes?When I was learning to play tabla, I thought that tala was a fascinating way to look at rhythm that was not 4/4 or 3/4.

Perhaps it’s too early to cite references of art reflecting a holistic, communal, global aspect of the Gospel, but it’s something for our generation of artists and creatives to think about.

I found this on a UK site, “Communities and Local Government”…

The Race, Cohesion and Faiths Directorate works with other government departments to reduce race and faith inequalities in education, health, housing and the Criminal Justice System, as well as the labour market.

We are reducing perceptions of race discrimination and leading the work on creating more cohesive communities, tackling racism, extremism and hate and promoting inter-faith activity and a shared sense of belonging.

I know what a race inequality is. I’m not sure if I know what a faith inequality is.

I know that historically, issues of faith may have created inequalities based on racial lines…or maybe it was issues of race that created inequalities based on faith lines?

If we try to reconcile differences across faith boundaries, does that address and resolve racial boundaries as well? Or vice versa? I think I hear what this community in the UK is trying to accomplish, and this one too, I guess I’m just asking how it came to link the two (that is, race and faith), when in the US, especially in the church, we hardly let these two livewires touch. Are we pessimists or realists for not associating the two?

This is an interesting added dimension to viewing inequality and justice.

There are rich Black folk and there are poor Black folk. Are the rich obligated to help the poor?

What if we add to this, there are rich Christian Black folk and poor Christian Black folk. Now what? They help the poor, OK, but more or less? How much more or less? What would the marginal return of faith inequality to race inequality be?
Add to this the historical oppression of Black people in the US by the dominant White majority…a Christian White majority at that. Can you see how complicated this can get? What is the relationship of race and faith with regards to justice over time?

And what if we throw in another religion in there? Because the hope for a resolution wasn’t complicated enough…

Is the solution to promote inter-faith dialogue to create inter-racial harmony? or an inter-racial dialogue to create inter-faith harmony?

Can we really work together and not be in competition? Gosh, that sounds fundamentally un-American, doesn’t it? That’s probably why the Brits can talk about it across the pond, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. Although I did find a new blog that bravely states (I’m a new fan):

This is not one of those sites that seeks to “end intolerance” or “end racism” in America. From where I sit, that’s simply unrealistic. The goal here is to talk about race in America with renewed energy, compassion and candor.

At the very least, I find that if our faith does not have the recursive property of asking itself how it relates to every aspect of life, then we have failed to honor God with our whole lives. At some level, we must acknowledge actively barricading God from impacting our society or passively ignoring the call for complete transformation of our individual lives.

The Christian faith cannot say that race doesn’t matter. Instead, we must seek God’s design in our race. For all our unredeeming qualities, we must discover redemptive purpose and meaning. We must not minimize the issue or the pain, nor maximize beyond sight of our Lord, but we must recognize that it must be address as individuals, as communities of faith, and unto other communities.

Got an email from my awesome friend, John today. Please read, consider, pray, and vote…

The DREAM Act is up for a vote in the U.S. Senate – it may be the most important immigration votes to come up this year, and there has traditionally been wide bipartisan support for it. The DREAM Act would let good kids become legal immigrants and go to college, even if their parents brought them here illegally in their pre-teens. The status quo is that once you’re illegal in the U.S., even if you were brought here as a kid, there are few avenues for becoming legal in the U.S. You have to skirt society in cash-only jobs and pretty much forget about college. Most of your life goes underground, and any dreams you were fed in middle or high school are forfeited to the rest of your peers.

If you would read the e-mail below and consider both PRAYING and CALLING.

I called my senators’ offices. Despite the bipartisan support I had heard about, each office said that its Senator is against the DREAM Act. I asked why, and Corker’s said he is always against “amnesty,” and Alexander’s said that you can’t fix a broken system by encouraging more illegality.

I asked both offices to pass on to the Senators that (a) we don’t normally punish children for legal violations that they have no moral responsibility for committing, (b) we should want to encourage/reward the good kids who would be the only beneficiaries of the DREAM Act, and (c) the Senators should look at the balance between punishment and second chances that we have in the rest of the laws of this country (like bankruptcy, statutes of limitations, etc.) and apply that balance to immigration law instead of implementing only punishment.

I don’t know if it did any good, but if everyone called, maybe it would make a difference.

Prayer will probably make more of a difference, but the calls are good, too.

John Lamb

THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

SENATE VOTE ON DREAM ACT

AS EARLY AS WEDNESDAY!

[Read more...]

Georgia declares state of emergency over drought

Psalm 63

My Soul Thirsts for You

A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.

1O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Today it rained for the first time it seems in months.

My wife and I had begun to collect water in buckets. Last week we collected almost 20 gallons worth of excess water in our shower and from our faucet. The sheer amount of water we collected and hauled to our front lawns to resuscitate dying plants brought to our attention how wasteful we are. So it’s a small change that we’re incorporating into our lives. I’m no Josh Brown, but it’s a start.

I first caught a glimpse of this on YouTube, and I think it’s better than “Sex in the City”. It’s absolutely addicting to watch honest, street-level views of Chinese culture from a completely fluent Jewish-American woman, Anna Sophie Loewenberg!

Sexy Beijing is an Internet TV station run by an in-house production team. We also work with a handful of contributors in the editing room and on productions. Sexy Beijing has been on the Internet since 2006 when we launched Danwei TV, a now popular video site.

Check out their new site, SexyBeijing.tv!

Here’s the first one I watched…entitled “Looking for Double Happiness”

And here’s another popular episode: Lost in Translation.

asian american leadership conference 2008

“encouraging and equipping those who serve the asian american community nationwide”

[From their website]

Over 400 pastors, parachurch leaders, seminarians, and spouses attended the first AALC in 2004. We anticipate more than 500 to attend this second AALC on March 24-26, 2008.

DATE

Monday-Wednesday, March 24-26, 2008

LOCATION

The 2008 AALC will be utilizing the facilities of the Grace Korean Church (Grace International Ministries) in Fullerton, CA

PURPOSE

The purpose of the AALC is to encourage and equip those who serve the evangelical Asian American community nationwide.

SPEAKERS

• Dr John Townsend, Cloud-Townsend Ministries
• Pastor Ken Fong, Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles
• Lisa Espineli Chinn, Director of International Student Ministries, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
• Pastor David Gibbons, New Song Church, Irvine, CA

WORKSHOPS

20+ workshops addressing a wide range of ministry topics

PARTNERS

Churches and ministries are joining as partners in this conference.

***Edit – Follow up:

Great conversation tonight and wonderful re-presentation with DJ Chuang tonight (thanks DJ!). After several attempts to use Skypecast, we may have found a good medium for our TalkBacks by using Talkshoe, a technology that seems to have great flexibility and fast recording features.

Regarding the talk, it seems that this crowd is asking some different questions than the pastors and ministry leaders from DJ’s original presentation. Less ‘how-to’ and more ‘relevance’ and contexualized theology questions. But you be the judge if you’d like to share your comparisons.

Stay tuned for next month as we’ll be discussing issues of how Asian American college students and young adults perceive the ethnic church and where they see their churches headed!

Check out the audio:

Thanks again, elderj, cyrusco, and DJ! Enjoy and spread the word…

____________________________________________

[originally posted 10/15/2007]

If you haven’t heard DJ Chuang‘s wonderful talk on “Revitalizing Asian American Churches,” which he gave at the end of September to a group of pastors and ministry leaders in Southern California, please give it a listen here or on his blog post:

Check out more of DJ’s work here with L2 Foundation and Leadership Network. And also his list of resources mentioned in his talk.

• Asian American Church Report – free PDF download with registration
• List of Asian-led multi-Asian/multi-ethnic Church Plants (100+ less than 10 years old)

There are few people who have the breadth of experience and exposure to as many churches and networks as DJ does and this presentation has hundreds of hours of research and discussions behind it.

Join us for a follow-up discussion on DJ’s presentation Sunday, October 21st: 6-7pm Pacific / 9-10pm Eastern.

Here’s the info for the phone call, hope to hear some new voices…

Phone Number: (724) 444-7444
Talkcast ID: 60596