Last Tuesday I took my daughter to a movie after work. I had some free time because the New Life Bible class on Tuesdays had finished, and it was the last day of her vacation. She seemed to be very excited because she knew this would be her first and last date with her dad during her vacation. We bought a drink and a bag of popcorn to share. After the movie, we went to get chicken wings and talked about what's happening in her life and the cutest boys at school and church. She's starting high school this fall. Unlike many teenaged daughters, she still likes spending time with her dad. She seems to appreciate the time we've spent in the past. Once ...

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Do you know the difference between members and voting members of our church? If you say voting members are simply members who have been at Seoul Baptist for certain period of time, you don't understand our church system. Or you might say that members are simply those people who have filled out a commitment card. They don't need to be believers; they may even be from other faiths. Being a member is just an expression of their desire to learn more about Jesus and the Christian faith through our church. Voting members are people who have received Jesus as their Savior, have been baptized by immersion, and have applied to become voting members. If you ...

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My 6 years of experience in house church ministry has taught me this: house church members take after their shepherds. One day my wife and I were enjoying some free time with coffee and doughnuts at a doughnut shop. I noticed some writing on the window and said to my wife, "The sign on the window says that this store's specialty is TUNOD. Do you know what that is?" "TUNOD? Never heard of it." Then I realized that I had read the word "donut" in reverse. The other day at our house church meeting, a female member served chicken wraps, the most popular item at the deli shop where she works part time. My wife thought that the tortillas were especially ...

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It's been a month since I started to fill in for Pastor Chai. I've done many new things in that time: baptisms, funeral service, officiating Communion, leading the Gospel Presentation Session and The New Life Bible classes, etc. I have been able to manage thanks to prayer support, especially by the 333 Prayer partners, but I must confess that it hasn't been easy. I've found that it's hard to get used to my new routine, especially for early-morning prayer. It's harder than I thought to get up 30 minutes earlier at 4:30 AM. And praying for 3 hours is no walk in the park. I thought that increasing my prayer time from 2 to 3 hours was just a matter of ...

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I just came back from a retreat in Conroe for pastors and their families who are pastoring house churches in the Southeastern U.S. I left Houston at around 11 PM after the third Sunday worship service but got lost on the way and arrived at the retreat site at almost 1 AM. Two families from Dallas, two from Austin, one from College Station and three from Houston (including Pastor Chai's family and my own) came to participate. I'd like to share a few of thoughts about the retreat. First, I saw the beauty of unity, when pastors become one. We know that churches should be unified and that pastors are coworkers for the same Lord. In pursuit of this, we ...

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The World Cup is over. Germany, the host country, and Switzerland, whose national team played against Korea, both played important roles in the history of the Christian church. Germany, the birthplace of Martin Luther, led Reformation in the 16th century. Switzerland was the home country of Zwingli, another major leader in Reformation, and was the model country where Calvin experimented with a theocratic society. These two counties stand out in history for saving Christianity from total religious corruption by playing major roles in Reformation. However, if you visit these two countries now you may not realize their glorious past. A Church History ...

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When Pastor Chai preached, house churches studied the passages preached from beforehand. Some people are wondering why we stopped doing this since I started preaching. The reason is, there's no need for it. When Pastor Chai preached, he covered many passages - three to five chapters in the Old Testament or an entire chapter of the New Testament - because he wants to preach through the entire Bible before he retires. We needed to study the passages in advance to understand the sermon because he couldn't discuss the background and other important information during the given time. My sermons involve just a few verses, so there is not much to study. ...

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