As our prayer partners have already been made aware through the 333 prayer request, we had planned to purchase 20 acres of land for our church near Hammerly Road and Beltway 8. Here's an update on those plans. Based on the Long-term Expansion Committee's projected figures, we will double our Sunday attendance within the next five years. Practically, it will be impossible to accommodate this many people at our existing facilities. One possible solution is expanding by purchasing the lot north of us. The drawback to this is that, if the projections hold, within ten years we would again face space limitations. In light of this, Pastor Shin suggested ...

Read More

The people that need our forgiveness the most are often our own family members. Families are communities bound by blood relationships. Love runs deep. But just as familial ties make love strong, they also make it easy to hurt one another. In fact, many children live with emotional pain and scars they received from their parents. And their parents often don't even realize that they caused such pain. Emotional healing occurs when parents ask for forgiveness from their children. But this is not easy to do. It is especially difficult in Asian families where parental authority is emphasized. Simply saying, "I'm sorry, please forgive me" would heal many ...

Read More

I want to sincerely thank the "333 Prayer Partners" who prayed during the past year. These are people who committed to praying for a particular request 3 times a day, 33 seconds each time, for a full year. The prayer request for 2002 was: "Pray that Pastor Chai may feel the pain of those who are suffering and that each House Church may bear fruit in winning souls." It's clear that our prayers for the House Churches have been answered. The 163 people we baptized last year are proof of that. It's a little more difficult to assess the prayers for myself, but I do believe they have been answered also. I made some personal decisions this year which I ...

Read More

My younger brother was visiting me in Houston for the first time from Washington state and he asked me this after attending our worship service. He was surprised to see his older brother, a grown man, shamelessly crying in public at the podium. As a matter of fact, I frequently cry; not only during worship but even when I'm completely alone. When I feel the presence and the love of God in a deep, real way, I often shed tears. I lost my parents when I was 7 years old. So for most of my life I had a strong longing deep inside for a father. A father who would be there to help guide me through my life. But more than that, I had a primal longing just ...

Read More

As I mentioned last time, space has become a major problem at our church. In order to continue being an effective church, we must find ways to provide space to accommodate the non-believers that God sends our way. Here are the plans we are currently considering. I'm sharing these to ask for your help with them and to solicit any suggestions you might have. First, there is the problem of worship space. The current plan is to find ways to maximize the use of our existing facilities. For example, there are still open spaces in the front of the sanctuary during the Sunday worship services. Before we do anything else, we will work to fill all available ...

Read More

Before I believed in Christ, I used to drink excessively on Christmas. The reason being, I felt I had to do something special for Christmas, but I didn't know what to do. So my way of celebrating was drinking until I passed out! After I became a follower of Christ I stopped drinking, but I still had this feeling that I must do something different at Christmas time. And it was bad for me because it was almost an obsession. To escape it, I decided to treat Christmas just like any other day. So now, since I decided not to send Christmas cards, I don't really feel like Christmas is coming or going until the day itself. Unfortunately, this has made me ...

Read More

The presidential election of Korea is over. During the campaign, I would often read internet bulletin board posts from newspaper readers. It always made me feel uncomfortable. Posters were extremely negative, calling the opposing party's candidate names, that he was a bastard, traitor, commie etc. Regardless of who won, I worried that with such a negative attitude, a big problem was brewing. Then on December 14, approximately one week before the election, I read an article in the Korean Daily Newspaper by a columnist named Mr. Yuk Kil Won. Reading it was like finding an oasis in the middle of a desert. Here is a small portion. "Let's look at ...

Read More