I don't expect all house churches to grow at the same pace. Shepherds have different talents and gifts and their house churches each have different circumstances. I cannot expect each of them to have the same results. So I don't pressure them to grow their house churches quickly. I just congratulate those whose houses churches are growing and encourage those whose house churches are not. Happily, even in those house churches that aren't growing, people are still coming to know Jesus now and then. As long as that happens, I think their shepherds are all right. Although I don't pressure them, many shepherds do that to themselves. In a way, it's good ...

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I am taking another 2-week sabbatical to continue work on a book. I need your prayers because I am not a professional writer. I've been writing Pastor's Corners for 10 years now, and my writing skill has improved somewhat. But I still don't feel comfortable writing. I'm not a born writer; I remember that in high school I received poor grades in writing. So I'm writing this book not because it's something I enjoy but because I was asked to. God has blessed our church greatly, and I believe it's my responsibility to share the awesome things that God has done. It 's been that way with all my books. People have urged me to write, and I've felt led ...

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There are two Supreme Court decisions that have been most influential in America becoming a secular nation. One is the decision that prohibited the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in schools, handed out in 1963. The other is the one that made it illegal for states to prohibit abortions in 1973, commonly referred to as Roe v. Wade. Interestingly, both cases have turned out to be based on false witnesses and lies. The plaintiff in the first suit was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a well-known self-proclaimed atheist. She claimed that her son experienced mental anguish because he was forced to recite the Lord's Prayer at school. The Supreme Court sided with ...

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Our children live in difficult times. The degree of temptation they are exposed to is far beyond their parents' experiences. They are exposed to violence on TV and in movies. They are exposed to pornography through the Internet, often by uninvited, explicit spam. They are exposed to alcohol, drugs and sex as early as elementary school. It is next to impossible to protect them from all these temptations. To deal with this, we should not be on defense but offense. Instead of trying to shield our children from the world, we should train them to combat corrupting influences and conquer them. Jesus said that the children of God are agents of change in ...

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New Life Fellowship and Seoul Baptist Church are not two separate churches but two different language groups under one church. We use two different names for convenience but there is only one church (Seoul Baptist Church of Houston) with two congregations: the English Speaking Congregation (ESC) and Korean Speaking Congregation (KSC). We should exist as one church because we want to be obedient to the Lord. The night before he was crucified Jesus prayed: "Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:21)." Sadly, many churches have failed to be one. It's a sad fact ...

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I met a friend of mine at a restaurant in Korea. He was smoking when a waitress asked what we wanted to drink, He ordered plum juice, and then turned to me and said, "Plum juice is good for your health." I smiled because his remark reminded me of something Brother Jin Soo Lee (who went to Korea to be director of the national cancer center) said. He noted that the efficacy of certain fruit juices have not been well established. Thorough scientific research has yet to be done on the potency of these juices. Even if they turned out to be beneficial you would need to drink gallons of it to get a measurable benefit. Still, people pay extra money to buy ...

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I'm concerned about the growing anti-US sentiment in Korea. The other day I saw a headline in bold letters on the entertainment page of a Korean Newspaper that read: "Korean flag, porn?" A smaller line underneath it: "850,000 viewers insulted." Naturally the article piqued my curiosity. But when I started reading I realized that the headline was misleading. A blockbuster movie entitled "Under The Korean Flag" is currently playing in Korea. In a short time it attracted the aforementioned attendance numbers, breaking all records. It attracted foreign distributors as well. A major US-based Internet movie site listed the movie under the categories ...

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