When I have to travel, Brother Park - who has volunteered to serve as my chauffeur - gives me a ride to the airport. He recently sold his SUV that had more than 200,000 miles on it and bought a new sedan. The smell of his new car reminded me of when I first came to the U.S. I came to America in 1970 for graduate school. My wife came a year later, also as a graduate student. For the first year after we got married, we didn't have a car. We then decided to buy a car because we couldn't depend on our friends for rides all the time. The first car we owned was a Mercury Comet, an 8-cylinder convertible. It was over 10 years old and had more than 100,000 ...

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You may have been asked about the differences between House Churches and Cell Churches. They’re very similar. Both share the common Biblical goals of reaching non-believers and making them disciples of Jesus. The biggest difference is that the main goal for cell churches is saving souls, whereas the main goal for house churches is to restore the New Testament church. Cell churches recommend that cell groups disband if they don’t multiply. We don't do that with house churches. We believe that house churches are true "churches", and you don’t shut down local churches simply because they don't get converts. Although we don’t disband house ...

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The House Church is spreading all over the world and model House Churches have sprung up in Japan, China, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia. However, while South America is close to the U.S. and although many missionaries from there have attended House Church seminars, there is not yet a model South American House Church. To identify obstacles and find ways to overcome them, I felt it was necessary for missionary leaders in South America to get together and devise common strategies to advance the House Church in South America. So I invited missionaries who had attended House Church seminars to a strategic meeting in Lima, Peru from August 11 to August 14. 7 ...

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"Could I be a false prophet?" I’ve been asking myself this question for a while, after reading an article about Paul Cain, a man I admired. Paul Cain was born in Texas in 1929. He started to preach when he was 16. Through his ministry, many miracles occurred and many people were healed. But when he felt that his fellow charismatic leaders were losing their integrity and purity, he abruptly quit his ministry in the late 1950s. When the third wave of the Holy Spirit swept across the country in the 80s, he received a message from God that unless the leaders of the movement sought holiness and purity, God would remove His presence from their ministry. ...

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I recently received an email from a friend who wrote that his church’s pastor - who came only a few years ago - recently submitted his resignation because he could not deal with conflicts he had with the church’s elders. My friend believed that only a few elders opposed the pastor and that most church members were supportive of him. He asked me how he could help him. To learn more about the situation, I visited his church’s website. I found many posts there, both for and against the pastor. Some thought that the pastor was sincere, genuine, and an energetic person, and pointed out that many lives had changed under his leadership. His opponents ...

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Recently, a church member who was facing an important decision asked me how to discern God's will. I’d like to share the email I sent to him. It may be helpful for people who have similar questions. The best guide to finding God's will is the Bible. If you are given the opportunity to buy a bustling bar at an attractive low price, you don't even have to think about it, no matter how tempting the deal may be. Selling hard liquor and running a bar is obviously against God's will as revealed in Scripture. But many situations aren’t this clear cut. Often, people have to choose between two options, neither of which are clearly sin. For example, ...

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I had a nightmare a few days ago. I was on my way to church, when I suddenly realized that I had forgotten that I was supposed to preach that day. I panicked. Then I remembered that I left a sermon on my office computer for occasions like this. But then I realized that I didn’t know what street I was on. Every effort to find my way to church failed. I could feel my blood pressure shoot up. When I looked at my watch, I found that I was already 15 minutes late for service. At the height of my anxiety, I woke up. It felt so real to me that it took me several minutes to realize that it was just a dream. When I was a child, common nightmares were being ...

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