I exercise 4 times a week on a treadmill in my office. I watch Korean TV dramas as I exercise. I'm usually so eager to see the next episode that I rarely miss a day. My favorite shows are heart-warming human dramas, and the main characters are usually nice people. But these nice characters sometimes drive me crazy. They're so naive! They give away important information when bad characters pry into them. They say menacing things like "You'll get what you deserve" to an evil person when no one else is around, risking their safety - even their lives - because you don't know what evil people will do when they feel threatened. Christians must be kind but ...

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I just came back from the 43rd House Church Conference for Pastors, which was held in San Jose. It was the first time in North America that the conference was sponsored by not one church but several churches in the area. Eleven churches participated as sponsors. Interestingly, most of them had either just implemented the house church or were preparing for it. It warmed my heart to see churches of different denominations become one, taking turns preparing meals and providing rides for seminar attendees in one accord. A highlight of every conference is the testimonies given by pastors who implemented the house church. They're always moving but were ...

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One reason I had for starting the house church was to help every church member become a useful member of the body of Christ, the church. The Apostle Paul says that the church is the body of Christ and that we are members of his body. (1 Cor. 12) He emphasizes that no member is useless and that everyone is necessary. But in traditional churches, only a small number of people are active in church ministries. Even churches known for their active ministries have no more than 30% of their members involved in ministry. Many churches are divided into two groups of people: ministerial staff and their helpers, who provide service, and the rest of the church ...

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Scripture commands wives to be submissive to their husbands and husbands to love their wives (Ephesians 5:22). Two weeks ago I wrote a column, "How to Be Loved by Husbands." To be fair, I felt that I should also write a column "How to Be Respected by Wives." However, I thought it would be best if a female wrote the column. So I asked Sister Sun Hee Cho, who leads our class on marriage and is known to be a model wife, to write the column for me. I hope you enjoy it. – Pastor Chai 1. Be on my side. When a wife has a problem, she usually wants to talk with someone who shares her point of view. But when she talks with her husband about it, he tends ...

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Scripture calls sexual intercourse outside of marriage sin. It's adultery when it occurs with someone's wife and fornication when it happens between non-married people. As Christians, God telling us not to do it is reason enough for not having premarital sex. But we can still ask why a loving God calls it sin and prohibits it. There may be many reasons but I'd like to share one of them. God made humans sexual beings, male and female. The pleasures we enjoy in relationships are different between those of the same sex and with the opposite sex. Relationships with the opposite sex progress from less intimate to more intimate. You start as friends, ...

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Several couples in our church are so devoted to each other that they're envied by other couples. Some wives compare their husbands to them and become envious of their lucky wives. But I've found that wives who don't seem to do anything but be pampered by their husbands are in fact doing a lot to be loved by their husbands. One thing they all do without exception is try to boost their husbands' self-esteem. The best way for wives to enhance their husbands' self-esteem is to love them with their husbands' love languages. If their love language is physical touch, provide them with full sexual satisfaction. If their love language is words of affirmation, ...

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Texas is known for its vast land. But even though our church is located in Texas, we still have problems with space. Our parking lot is not large enough to accommodate the attendees of both worship services at the same time. So there's congestion between the two services. We stopped serving lunch after the first worship service to try to alleviate the parking problem but it didn't help. House church members starting bringing all kinds of food - doughnuts, rice rolls, boiled eggs, steamed sweet potatoes - and sharing them with house church members after service like they're on a picnic. We make an announcement at 11:20 asking people to leave the ...

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