Many small businessmen lament the severity of the current recession and how greatly their businesses have suffered. Some have indicated that their revenue is down 50% from the previous year. They eagerly hope for the end of the recession and recovery. But many experts say that recession is officially over. The stock market is improving and the national unemployment rate is dropping. The hardships that many Korean small businessmen are experiencing may not be temporary but a reflection of permanent structural changes in the U.S. economy. When there are major structural changes to the national economy, some businesses decline and some businesses boom. ...

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When people are appointed as Shepherds, they often think that they must meet all their house church members' needs and help them solve all their problems. They don't realize that there's very little they can do when their house church members have serious problems. For example, Shepherds are helpless when their house church members' businesses have financial problems and are on the brink of bankruptcy, or when their members can't find jobs and are unemployed for a long time, or when they can't change their visa status and are close to being expelled from the U.S, or when they come down with sicknesses that even medical doctors cannot find the causes ...

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The church is both a healing community and a mission community. Most churches focus on the first aspect. They try to comfort people and help solve their problems. Seoul Baptist Church has focused on the second aspect. I believe that when churches become mission communities, reaching non-believers, helping them receive Christ and live their lives as light and salt of the world, healing naturally follows. When a church wants to become a mission community, its members must become one. No matter how talented and dedicated the individual members are, their mission cannot be accomplished unless the church unites around their leader. This leader is their ...

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Since I started watching Korean dramas while exercising on the treadmill, I've rarely skipped a session because I can hardly wait for the next episode. The last Korean drama I watched featured a woman who was diagnosed with cancer with only a few months to live and a man who fell in love with her. Understandably, both characters cried a lot. In one episode, there were three scenes where one of them cried. I felt that it was excessive. So I decided that if either character cried one more time, I would stop watching the series. Unfortunately, one character cried again, so I moved on to a different drama about Genghis Khan, produced by a Chinese ...

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During the 10-day special morning prayer meetings we had last January, I preached from the book "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn. The subject of heaven made me think of my grandmother, whom I hope to see first when I go to heaven. My grandmother had a warm and loving heart. When I was in high school, most students wore army boots because they were inexpensive and durable. In the winter, she warmed my boots near the stove before I wore them so that my feet wouldn't get cold. When making soup, she always replaced the soup in my bowl with fresh soup from the pot right before I ate so that I could eat hot soup from a warmed-up bowl. On New Year's Eve, she ...

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Our families used to be big, consisting of 3 or 4 generations living together. Intentional training of children wasn't necessary because children learned right behaviors by observing how their family members interacted with each other. Today, the nuclear family is the norm. Children can't learn right behaviors unless their parents intentionally teach them. Sadly, most young parents appear to be uninterested in training their children. They seem to think that their only responsibilities as parents are to meet their children's needs and fulfill their wishes. That's wrong. Children need to be trained. However, old ways of training no longer work. In ...

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People have asked me: what's the retirement age for our Shepherds? There is no retirement age for Shepherds because shepherding is not a ministry but a lifestyle. Just as mothers and fathers never stop being mothers and fathers, Shepherds don't retire from being spiritual parents. Some of our current Shepherds are 70 years old or older, above the typical retirement age in the corporate world. When you want to make shepherding your lifestyle, you shouldn't be too anxious about your ministry results. You need to learn to enjoy ministry. When your ministry is fruitful, enjoy your fruit. When it's not, enjoy the fact that you're being changed into ...

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