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| At church tonight Timmy pulled me over the Men’s room, and pointed to a note which was taped on the door.
“Dad, can you read that?”
“Yes, it is in Vietnamese: Hoi Thanh Tin Lanh Viet Nam tai Midway”
“What does it mean?”
“Vietnamese Alliance Church at Midway City.”
“What else does it say?”
“Thang Muoi Hai co gi la – Is there any special thing in December?”
“And what’s the next line?”
“Thi Kinh Thanh Giang Sinh 2009 – Bible Memorization Contest for Christmas 2009. Are you interested?”
“No. What else does it say? Does it say anything at all about the restroom?”
“No, nothing’s about the restroom. Why do you ask?”
“Because I need to use the restroom and I thought it is broken or something!”
With that, Timmy got behind the door quickly and closed it.
And I thought the kid was suddenly want to learn more...
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| I had a day off today from work (Veteran Day) to think more about yesterday sermon “Abraham and the Test of the Only Son” from MS Nhan. It is providential that we plan the preaching schedule out 18 months in advance, and God somehow would still meet our spiritual needs in a timely manner. Sometimes it seems to make no sense at all journeying through life toward a goal (a son, in Abraham’s case; a ministry vision, in my case); then God intervenes and demands it back. A year ago we were glad that the church finally supported what we want to do since 2005. Yesterday the Board swiftly reversed it back. Other reservals might follow. It seems to make no sense that many years of investment seemingly becoming blue smokes. But as Abraham came to trust in his God and friend, I think I would need to learn how to trust as well. For God’s purpose, He sent Isaac; and for His purpose, He demands the boy back. Abraham submitted, but still trust in the promise, saying “we will come back”. I will need to learn likewise. May be the good run we had in EM for the last 10 years was simply to build people up, not for any other changes. And that is OK. People are more eternal any way. But what a waste of times in administrivia. Let's take a sabattical, learn from this, and get ready for the next assignment. God, you know what I made of, how weak am I. Help me to loyal to You alone, not to any people nor institution. | | |
| My adopt-a-prof wrote a new book about heart's idols: "Counterfeit Gods", and this is his personal notes about it:
I often get asked how I personally became acquainted with the pervasive influence of idolatry in the human heart.
Like many younger ministers I worked far too many hours, never saying "no" to anyone's request for my pastoral services. When salary increases were offered to me, I turned them down. When administrative help was offered to me, I declined. I was quite proud of being the kind of person who worked very hard, never complained, and never asked for any help. This regularly brought me into conflict with my wife, who rightly contended that I was neglecting my relationships to her and to my young sons. It also led to health problems, although I was only in my early thirties. Nevertheless, I continued to feel that the way I was living was noble and good. I believed I was sacrificially committed to the ministry of the Word. I was especially delighted to make sacrifices that nobody saw -- not my people or even my family. That made me feel most noble of all. If all this created some problems for me personally, wasn't that just evidence of how truly devoted I was? It was a very dangerous situation. My future was bleak, though I didn't know it. In the short run, this kind of ministry workaholism is often rewarded by admiring people all around.
Some well-meaning friends, however, saw the problem and literally "laid the law" on me, showing me that I was violating the commandments of taking Sabbath and of honoring my family. I usually responded with incremental changes that never endured. Others used the modern technique of self-esteem -- "You need to think of yourself; you need to do things that make you happy." I despised that advice as terribly selfish. I valued self-sacrifice. It wasn't until I began to search my heart with the Biblical category of idolatry that I made the horrendous discovery that all my supposed sacrifices were just a series of selfish actions. I was using people in order to forge my own self-appreciation. I was looking to my sacrificial ministry to give me the sense of "righteousness before God" that should only come from Jesus Christ. People make idols out of money, power, accomplishment, or moral excellence. They look to these things to "save them" -- to give them the sense of purity, value, and acceptability that only Jesus can give. In my case, I was using ministry (and my own people) in this way. Without the category of idolatry -- a good thing turned into a pseudo-salvation -- I would never have been able to see myself. Nothing but the concept of counterfeit gods could have blasted me out of my illusion of virtue and superiority. I thank God for this life-saving insight -- though I still struggle mightily with the implementation of what I've learned.
Thanks Dad for being open and honest. It means a lot to me, and I am sure to others to get a glimpse into how deep idolatry can go into even a pastor's heart.
The discover of of my own heart's idol is one of the best thing happened to me. Without it, I am not able to see how deceitful my heart really is. And if we don't see how sinful we are, we will never see the grace of God.
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| I have been blogging lately about the turmoil at our church and the affects it has on our English Ministry. In the "Throw the Rock" parable I got from Elizabeth Eliot, I am confronted with the question if the Parallel Model of doing English Ministry had become an idol for us, where all of our hope and dream got wrapped up in its implementation. And as many other typical idols, its success will bring us much comfort, but its collapse will also devastate us also. May it never be! May God's grace be the only true foundation for our ministry! "No one should die for a Ministry Model", MST told me this 2 years ago. But I don't think I got it (at least in the idea of "Vision sustaining Endurance" as I posted the story of Swimming to Catalina a few months a go). But now, as I buried the Parallel Model (at least for as long as it will keep the peace with the older church leader, following the mantra “in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity”), I begin to realize that truth. "No one die for a model", because there is a bigger vision worth dying for. This realization came about as I read about the prisoners often ordered to move rocks from one pit to another pit, just to keep them busy. Some of them go crazy because of the meaninglessness of it all. And then this story came (from the book "Youth Ministry 3.0", recommended by MST): We're now off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, touring Robben Island, the infamous prison that held antiapartheid activists such as former South African President and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Nelson Mandela during what South Africans modestly call "the Struggle." I'm privileged to speak with a former inmate who spent his late teens and twenties in this prison. According to my guide, most of the inmates were like him, young and black or "colored" (usually of mixed race or Indian descent). The guards - young, white soldiers also in their late teens or early twenties - were ordered to keep them busy in the lime quarry, great gravel pits where (you guessed it) they dug holes. My guide worked alongside Mandela during those years, moving gravel from one hole in the ground to another-and then back again. As it turns out, the gravel didn't need moving. No one needed it or used it. Moving gravel in the lime quarry was simply a way to keep the inmates occupied, day after day, year after year. Young black and "colored" prisoners moved gravel back and forth, while young white and free soldiers kept watch. Here's where it gets interesting. Mandela, 20 years older than most of the prisoners, was a product of a Christian school, where Methodist missionaries instilled in him a passion for liberation and a generous view of divine grace and forgiveness. So Mandela began to see the gravel pits as a school. While moving gravel from one side of the pit to another, Mandela and his colleagues taught each other everything they knew. Mandela taught his young fellow prisoners the contents of his missionary education: Shakespeare and the Bible, English poets and philosophy, the ancient Bantu wisdom umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu ("we are people through other people") and Jesus' and Gandhi's views on reconciliation. Mandela fervently believed in the power of education for social change, and at "Robben Island University," as it came to be called, Mandela arranged secret lectures and informal seminars about humanity's interdependence and taught that "the common ground is greater and more enduring than the differences that divide." Then my guide shared one more remarkable memory. Mandela often purposely taught within earshot of the young white guards. "They were boys as well," said my guide, "and their privilege came through no choice of their own. Mandela believed that they were victims of the same political system that we were. He wanted them to have this education, too." What do Robben Island have to do with Ministry? Well, let me ask you this: How often have you wondered if the work you're doing in youth ministry is making any difference? Has your church ever kept young people busy, moving gravel from one side of the sanctuary to the other, rearranging ecclesial landfills without substantively changing either young people or the church? Have you ever wondered if the mission trip really mattered - the one where the 10th graders spent all week moving massive rocks to build a wall for an Appalachian family, only to be told by the staff the next day that "they made a mistake," and the wall needed to come down? (That really happened on my church's youth mission trip two weeks ago.) How about your hard-earned training, your long hours at the church, your earnest efforts to help teenagers recognize Jesus Christ's presence? Is God getting through? Are you creating cracks for divine grace, or are you moving gravel, day after day, year after year, for no apparent reason? Incredibly, Nelson Mandela made a ministry - one that changed the world at the end of the 20th century - out of a lime quarry pit. And what allowed him to transform a futile situation with young people into a faith-inspired, world-changing opportunity for witness?
I would answer the question: that the faith and hope, anchored firmly in the unchanging grace of God, the gospel, is the core of Mandela's "ministry" admist unthinkable circumstances. Some of my friends have had enough with the church, and sick of "playing church". We simply folded. No more pursue of the "Parallel Model". And since "no one should die for a model ", we will no longer care about moving rocks from one pit to another. Those ministry activities were just simply a mean to contact with one another, a mean for us to show God's grace, to live in grace, to live the Gospel in real life. We will content to leave the administrivia to the formal institution, and we will focus on the core Gospel. Because we know only the Gospel will bring life. The Gospel changes everything! | | |
| There were a lot of words throwing my way lately about the necessity of guiding our next generation in "Lễ Giáo" (Vietnamese rites, ethical behavior). While there is nothing wrong with teaching ethics to the youth, I would like to ask, "Should it be the responsibility of the church to do so, or is it the responsibility of the parents?" Every chance I have the opportunity to preach, I could hammer moralistic bahaviors into the hearers. But will that save them, or the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The cultural god is virtues (do well and you will live), but the true God is Jesus (live well because what He had done). “The courage to break his cultural and familial ties and abandon the gods of his ancestors out of allegiance to a God of all families and all cultures was the original Abrahamic revolution. In the same way Christians ‘depart’ from their original culture. Christians can never be first of all Asians or Americans, Russians or Tutsis, and then Christians. Christians take a distance from the gods of their own culture because they give the ultimate allegiance to the God of all cultures and his promised future. But [now in Christ] departure is no longer a spatial category; it takes place within the cultural space one inhabits. It involves neither a modern attempt to build a new heaven out of the world nor a postmodern restlessness that fears to arrive anywhere. When they respond to the call of the gospel they put one foot outside their culture while the other remains firmly planted in it. Christian distance is not flight from one’s original culture, but a new way of living within it because of the new vision of peace and joy in Christ.” – Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace
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True
