When I visited Brazil last May I found that the Koreans who live there experience the same kinds of financial difficulties as Korean Americans here. And these difficulties affected church life. Some church members borrowed money from other members to start businesses and simply disappeared when they could not pay back the loans. Elders and deacons were being criticized for not paying back money they had borrowed from other church members. Financial difficulties affected the house churches in a different way. Some house church members asked shepherds for loans, then got upset when they were refused and openly criticized the shepherds for lacking love ...

Read More

The number of people visiting our church's web site keeps increasing. Sometimes when I'm invited to speak at other churches, people whom I have never seen before sometimes come to me and say, "I visit your church's web site every day." The most popular page on our site is Na Num Tu, our bulletin board. I asked our webmaster to set it up because I wanted to help build community through the Web. Since our church consists of small house churches, our members scarcely know anyone outside of their own house church families. I wanted to help form a larger community by allowing our members to share their life stories. Any stories that come from life ...

Read More

I envy people who are able to finish whatever they are doing in one sitting without being distracted. I also envy people who can use fragments of time effectively and not waste them. It takes a lot of time for me to do things. Even preparation takes time. It used to take me 2 hours to mentally prepare myself to mow the lawn while it only took 30 minutes to actually do it. So a long time ago my wife started hiring people to take care of our lawn because she didn't have the patience to wait for me taking forever to make up my mind before doing it. Naturally, it takes time for me to prepare a sermon also. In theory, when I finish outlining my sermon it ...

Read More

In the last church calendar year, 258 people were baptized, including English speaking adults and youth. Sunday worship attendance is currently around 1,600 and increasing. The number of people taking the introductory Bible class I lead also keeps increasing, with 80 people in the most recent class. All these point to the continuous numerical growth of our church. Our church formed a Long Term Planning Committee consisting of members from both the Korean and English speaking congregations, with brother Yoo Jai Hong as chairman. After careful study they presented a long term forecast for our church and made suggestions concerning worship areas, ...

Read More

I get to hear many interesting stories about what's happening in the house churches by reading the shepherds' reports or when I visit house church meetings. I'd like to share a couple recent ones. The first is about the miraculous power of prayer. About a month ago, a non-believing woman visited a house church meeting. She had come from Hawaii to receive treatment for stomach cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. In Hawaii, her cancer was diagnosed as being in an advanced stage. A team of six doctors at MD Anderson concurred with this diagnosis and made a treatment schedule. She would start receiving radiation therapy the following Thursday and ...

Read More

Starting this month, we'll be initiating the office of Church Administrator. Until now, the chairmen of deacons have been in charge of church administration but our church's administrative responsibilities have become too large to be handled by someone with a regular full time job. Many large churches hire a Minister of Administration to handle these duties. Most of them have seminary degrees. But I don't want someone with a seminary degree to handle our church administration. For one thing, they did not go to a seminary to become a administrator. For another, seminary does not make them particular well trained to be administrators. When our church ...

Read More

I recently saw a picture of former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in the newspaper with agony on his face as he heard the news of his son being arrested for political impropriety. President Kim's former aids are also being investigated on similar charges. Justice should be pursued regardless of a person's current or former position, but I feel that the current administration is overdoing it. I feel that they are dishonoring the former head of the country. During his term, President Kim helped the nation overcome the IMF (International Monetary Fund) crisis, the economic crisis which put Korea under the temporary supervision of the UN. He ...

Read More