Back when I was a layperson, I heard a retired pastor talk about the futility of preaching. What he said stuck in my mind for a long time. He explained, "When I preach, I feel like a man who goes to the roof of a tall building with a bottle of eye drops, opens the cap, and pours the contents out over the edge, hoping that someone with an eye affliction might happen to be walking by below, and get hit with medicine in the eyes and be cured. As a result of this pessimistic view of preaching, when I became a pastor, I regarded preaching as a pastoral duty that I faithfully ...

Read More

The President Bush's proposed immigration bill recently failed to pass the Senate. Many Senators, including Bush's fellow Republicans, opposed the bill because they felt that there were too many loopholes that might be exploited. I feel sorry for those illegal immigrants, including some of our church members, who pinned their hopes for legal status on the passage of this bill. If the Senators' primary reason for opposing this bill was too many possible loopholes, I think they made a mistake. Every bill has room for exploitation. No matter how airtight lawmakers try to ...

Read More

We will have a church-wide business meeting on July 4 to vote on changing our church's name. We're proposing that the church name be changed in Korean from "Seoul Baptist Church of Houston" to "Houston-Seoul Church" (the name sounds strange in English, but makes sense in Korean). The English name will remain "Seoul Baptist Church of Houston". The reason for the proposal is to help pastors of churches who are considering switching from traditional churches to house churches. The vast majority of churches in Korea belong to Presbyterian denominations. When pastors of those ...

Read More

I recently came across a survey of immigrants in the U.S. The percentage of college graduates among Korean-Americans was considerably lower than for Chinese, Indian, and Filipino-Americans. The average income of Korean-Americans was slightly higher than that of African-Americans and Hispanics, but lower than the average income of other Asian groups. The number of private business owners was very high among Koreans compared to other ethnic groups, but the number of people working for the government was significantly lower. Some Korean-American parents want to raise their ...

Read More

Someone shared with me his experience at a recent event. Many of our church members were in attendance. When one of the programs ended, the church members stood up and exited as a group, even though the event had not yet finished. He was concerned that such behavior might give an outsider a negative impression of our church. Our church's goal for ministry is to reach non-believers and make them disciples of Jesus. To achieve this goal, we must have a good reputation in our community, because non-believers are easily persuaded by reputation. Let me make the following ...

Read More