One of the concerns people who come to attend our house church seminars have is that their church members may be unwilling to meet every week. In most Korean-American churches small groups meet once or twice a month. But every house church is a true "church" and as such, must meet every week. These people wonder if such frequent meetings might be requiring too much commitment. Weekly meetings should not be a problem if members' needs are met. One big human need is self-expression. In Korea, men go to bars after work with their coworkers almost every day, not so much for ...

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These days a great number of people have been visiting Houston for cancer treatment. Many of them are non-believers. Some of them became Christians after attending our church when they came here. I think this recent influx of people is related to the work of Brother Lee, who used to serve as a shepherd in our church and is now the director of the National Cancer Institute of Korea. When he was working at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, he treated two well known Koreans for lung cancer. One of them was the CEO of Samsung, the other a former CEO of Hyundai Auto Company. Many ...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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