Sunday Service
- Adult 1st Service: 9AM
- Adult 2nd Service: 11AM
- Youth Service: 10:45AM
Taking A Sabbatical
Our church constitution stipulates that the congregation must take a vote of confidence on the senior pastor at the end of the 6th year of service. The senior pastor, if he passes the vote, may take a sabbatical of up to one year. It's time to recharge. Many pastors, when taking sabbaticals, take courses at a theological seminary, serve in a foreign mission field, or simply take time to rest. I took a vote of confidence at the end of my 6th year but I postponed taking a sabbatical because I wasn't tired. Also, I didn't have someone to handle pulpit duties while I was ...
Broken Records
Some of our younger members may have never even seen a record player. But I think most of us remember them and how they worked. You put a grooved plastic disk onto a rotating platter. When a needle is placed on the grooves, music comes out. You might also remember that sometimes when there are scratches on the surface of the record, the needle skips on the scratch and stays on the same section of the record, so the same segment of music is played over and over again.
Sometimes our minds are like a broken record: the same words play in our heads over and over again. ...
2004 Special Prayer Meetings
We will be having our annual revival from February 12-15. The guest speaker will be Rev. Kim Jung Myung, senior pastor of Yu Soo Full Gospel Church in Korea. He is a pastor I admire greatly, and he lives what he preaches. When I first met him after being invited to speak at his church, he casually mentioned that he only had one kidney. He had donated the other to someone who needed one. He talked about this as if it was nothing special, like he was giving away clothes to someone who needed it.
He also introduced a baby to me as his son. I was confused, because he and his ...
Policies that Help Our Church
There are many advantages of being a part of a large, growing church like ours. Powerful worship, diverse ministries, intense training program, fun fellowship and friendly atmosphere where you can comfortably bring your unbelieving friends are some of the benefits that I can think of.
However, we could also think of several potential drawbacks of being part of a big church. One of them is the rising complexity in operations. The more people you have the more relationships and communication channels you will have. This could mean that we are stuck with a more compli...
Churches Should Encourage Independence
"I feel sorry for some pastors who came to our House Church Seminars because I wonder if they will be able to successfully transform their churches to house churches without help from good lay leaders. We have been successful because of our many good lay leaders. Most pastors do not seem to have mature lay leaders as we do," said a member of our church after a seminar.
It is true that we have many mature lay leaders. It is also true that many churches do not. But I believe that much of the blame lies with the pastors themselves.
Many pastors simply do not let their ...
Going Deeper with God
In the past six and a half years of New Life history, we have emphasized the importance of Sunday corporate worship, weekly house church gathering, intercessory prayer and missions. There are other essential elements of a local church, such as community outreach and Bible studies, that we need to pay attention to and must develop in order for us to become a biblically fully functioning church, and we will do so when the time comes. But there is a reason why I haven't stressed the significance of Bible studies in New Life all these years.
The purpose of studying the ...
Winter Family Reunion
My son Danny and his wife Jieun visited from California this Christmas. Since my daughter Christine and her husband Peter live in Houston, we had a nice family reunion. Unlike Korea, the U.S. is so big that it's hard for family members to meet often; it had been a year since we were last together. I've asked them to make it a tradition to spend Christmas in Houston.
It's obvious to us that Christine and Danny love and are loved by their spouses. They don't seem to fight as much as we did when my wife and I first got married. This might be because they were raised in ...