Tom Kim

Last night my church held its annual World Missions Conference, which intends to introduce and inform the congregation about the missionaries and missions ministries the church directly supports and encourage us to get more directly involved in this field. In five years, this is only the second Missions Conference I’ve attended — not because I don’t want to know about or support missions work, but because, shamefully, my selfish, quotidian concerns have placed it on the level of “general apathy.”

The last Missions Conference attended was well-organized and straightforward. Missionaries and ministries had their booths, and there were several get-to-know-you breakfasts and presentations. It was all important but, as you might imagine, a little staid.

This time around there was much more hoopla around the Missions Conference. Some of it had to do with the excitement around the new Vision Statement of the church. Some of it had to do with its assertive promotion from the pulpit. But a good deal of it came from its new interactive format: Missionopoly.

The board game Monopoly has probably been co-opted for marketing and educational purposes in thousands of different ways — and for good reason. It’s a familiar brand with easily recognizable and duplicable symbols; it’s fundamental concept is simple and readily grasped; and it’s all about exploration and acquisition. It was perfect, really.

Here’s how Missionopoly worked:

• You had to sign up in teams of 5 or 6. Kids were welcome to participate, and entire families were encouraged to sign up. If you did not have a team, you were assigned to one.
• Each team received a game board, and a bag. (The game board, by the way, looked stupendous).
• Every missionary and ministry had its own booth spread out over two separate floors. In addition, there were several “fun” booths that dealt with aspects of world missions and missions work. Each booth was represented as a square on the game board.
• Each team must travel together to various booths. Each booth had a task to complete. Many of the informational booths had a basket of slips of questions, and the team had to randomly pick three of the questions to ask. Some of the booths had questions that the team had to answer. There were booths that had mini-games of Jeopardy and Snakes and Ladders. There were booths that required you to sample food or drink. There were booths with arts and crafts activities. There was a booth where the group had to take a “passport” photo. Your group also received credit for dressing in the costume of a foreign country. Your group might also be nabbed by the “Secret Police” to be interrogated and watch a video on the persecuted church (the “jail” block on the game board).
• After completing the task at a booth, the group receives a sticker on its game board. The bag was for collecting flyers and handouts from the different booths.
• Every group that collected a certain number of stickers qualified for a random drawing for some gift basket prizes at the end of the evening.

It was really a smashing success. I’ve never seen a Missions Conference better attended and with more enthusiasm. It was wonderful to see kids and families especially come and enjoy and learn. It was wonderful to pastors and deacons in a relaxed and less formal context with their families. People came in colorful costumes, Pastor Ryken cracked jokes with the missionaries, and we got to know new people from the church along with the rest of it. It was really a lot of fun.

I’m going to have to steal this idea sometime.

[More: Tenth Presbyterian Church's blog on its support and vision of missions]

Why does humanity suck so much?

I’m having a hard time soldiering on. Lord, help me.

Only Partially Insane has posted an incredibly moving post about an old flame. Make sure you read it in its entirety.

I just want to thank all my loves — amorous, platonic, collegial, paternal, imaginary, brotherly, dutiful, spontaneous, erotic, bittersweet, effervescent, transcendent, hormonal, effortless, inappropriate, bizarre, reciprocal, and unreciprocated, in my past and present — for all the moments we’ve shared.

You may or may not know how much I cared about you, but my life would not be the same without you.

Thank you, thank you, God.

Recently, Dana and I spent the Easter weekend at my folks’ place in Potomac, MD. These things are always tricky: Dana and I don’t have the best relationship with my folks (particularly my Mom), there’s leftover drama from family history, and there’s usually something going on with my brother, as well. And this particular weekend promised to have some extra turns in the screw over some things I really shouldn’t go into here, but enough that I anticipated a big bad blowout to happen at some point or another.

It was tense even on the ride down. There were some misunderstandings; Dana was snippy, I was sullen, and then vice versa. It was then that I remembered the Lai’s, one of the couples in our Bible study. Before they went on their annual trip to Chun’s family, they asked us to pray on their behalf in anticipation of the spiritual difficulties they would face. I was impressed that they saw these trips as a kind of short-term mission — an opportunity to be ambassadors of God to their family.

Taking a cue from them, Dana and I prayed for our trip in the car. Immediately, the atmosphere lightened. I felt renewed in purpose and bolstered in the knowledge that we weren’t going into this alone, but as representatives of God’s purpose. Dana and I made up to each other and we reflected a bit on all we’ve learned these past few weeks in Bible study.

The weekend was nothing short of miraculous. My mom seemed unusually chipper, almost as if she had forgotten all the stuff that had been bothering her before. The weekend not only went quickly, but pleasantly. We went to McLean Bible Church on Sunday (that could be the subject of another post), and had a nice lunch as a family in Far East.

Big deal, right? It’s not like I raised the dead or anything. Any unbeliever reading this post have probably already rolled their eyes and went, “Pshaw.” As we left, my brother attributed the good fortune of the weekend to our cunning: “Good strategy in coming late on Saturday. Can’t do it all the time, but it certainly worked out all right for you this time.”

But I know better. That weekend made me genuinely praise God and the power of His resurrection.

prayer, spiritual warfare, family, easter

YSMarko has a nice post on The Beauty of the Sunday Afternoon Nap:

there’s something almost liturgical about a sunday afternoon nap. it’s the transition point between one week and the next. it’s the “putting to bed” of what was; and, upon waking, the beginning of what might be.

Interestingly enough, he mentions that in his household Sunday lunch was called “dinner,” and the evening meal was called “supper.” I myself didn’t know that the midday meal was traditionally called “dinner” in some parts of the country. This help clears up the confusion in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Scout and Jem go home for dinner, and then go back to school.

sabbath, sunday, sleep, language, to kill a mockingbird

More at White Boy DJ. Apparently he’s selling more hilarity on DVD to fund a church plant in Cleveland.

humor, christianity, bible, video, youtube

Dana and I missed church last Sunday, but ended up seeing The Constant Gardener the night before. Now the latter doesn’t excuse the former, but man, what a movie — it convicted me the way a good sermon would. Easily in my top five for its artistry and moral outrage. Ralph Fiennes gave a very nuanced performance of a tricky role to pull off; I don’t understand why he wasn’t in the contention for an Oscar. And anyone who saw the movie wouldn’t have tsked Rachel Weisz for a little sermonizing during her Oscar acceptance speech. Africa has indeed become the latrine for the “civilized” world, and this jeremiad should shame the multitude of meaningless mortifications we are proferring there as penance for our sins.

Think this doesn’t happen? Think again. Why do you think medical testing is so popular in India?

If you are looking to make a difference, pray for, fund, and support the real-life Tessa Quayle’s, looking to make a difference: medical missionaries like Scott Kim and Helen Tak.

missions, africa, india, movie, health, medicine, business

No Bible study notes today, true believers; today we’re all heading out to a congregational meeting and dinner at Tenth. Actually, probably only Jonny and Laura will get to enjoy the Irish-themed dinner; Dana and I registered too late.

[Update: Dana and I never even made it to the congregational meeting on account of Dana's temperamental gastro-intestines. Oddly enough, we went out to eat instead. Sounds shady, I know.]

Anyhoo, I thought I’d reiterate some ideas tossed around in last week’s meeting. It was an interesting study, really, because so many of us were exhausted and barely able to keep focused (including myself), yet we had such a wonderful freeform discussion that really took on its own life apart from the guidelines of the study guide. I think Dana is right in suspecting spiritual warfare.

If you recall, we were studying Jepthah who infamously bargained his daughter as a human sacrifice to God in exchange for military victory. In the throes of our discussing how this bargain belied the pagan cultural influence that Jepthah was working under, Chun kept us fast to trying to work out how this applies to our modern life. How are we used to bargaining with the idols of our culture? How does this affect the way we deal with God?

We considered career. Funny how, earlier that week, I was thinking in Meeting for Worship that “We work like slaves to live like kings.” We will literally sacrifice our whole schedule, even our families, to our jobs with the implicit understanding that we will be rewarded with a better life. Even in ministry, there’s the notion that those truly dedicated are those who work with a single-mindedness, going into overtime, even to the neglect of other aspects of life.

We considered beauty. Once again, the same tit for tat mentality that Jepthah was working under. With constant sacrifice of time, money, and health we are given the consumerist fantasy that we can control our bodies — and ultimately our sense of fulfillment and acceptance. We often buy into the same consumerist fantasy in our spirituality — one need only look at the healthy states of Christian niche markets.

Implicit in this bargaining relationship is that this sense of fulfillment is tied in with comfort. When we consider how we bargain with the idol of entertainment, we bargain for a state of passivity, to be anesthetized from reality. The final virtue becomes escapism, zoning out, a higher “quality of life” index. And even in our faith we are applying this same ROI formula: better = more comfort or more productivity or higher social status/acceptance. “Thy will be done” becomes “my life more fun.”

Often without knowing it, we make the same bargains with God that Jepthah did. We may never know, in the end, how much we sacrificed for this point of view.

Judges, bible study, christianity, culture, career

Rainy Sunday morning, originally uploaded by dillydante.

I’ve been increasingly convicted that I really do have to set the Sabbath aside for worship and reflection. So, starting today, no work — no matter what. Fortunately for the frequency of this blog, I hope to do a lot of my reflecting here.

I’ll set the posts to automatically post in later dates, so that you don’t have to be overwhelmed by my mental diarrhea.

sabbath, blog