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if so, check this out (for mac & pc!): http://linein.org/blog/2008/02/23/dog-screen-cleaner-screensavers-4-different-dogs-win-mac/

Just found a great post on Matt Sweetman’s blog. This was another find through twitter (you can follow matt here). Matt interviewed fellow church planter Rick Kuhr. Rick planted as a bi-vocational pastor in Chicago that started in 2007 and they are seeing around 15-30 in attendance at their services. After reading the interview it’s obvious numbers don’t matter–Pastor Rick is a success story!

The last question Matt asked Rick had a surprise answer, but one that resonates loud & clear with me. It’s been kind of a mantra of sorts:

Matt: I am doing a church planting internship, in St. Louis. You are already doing the stuff, out in the field. What would be your advice for me?

Rick: I would encourage and challenge you to have a team. The research that has been done shows that if you don’t have a team you are setting yourself up for disaster. So, I would challenge you to bring a team, people that will help you along the way. Make sure you love God and loving Jesus and loving people as the main thing. Also, maintain that balance. We are useless as followers of God if we forget that we are following God. It may sound obvious, but if we are not receiving, others can’t receive from us as easy. We need to be able to have a balance with our family, our wives. There is a huge witness in loving our wives and loving our families. That responsibility in the community needs accountability. You need an established overseer. Those would be my advices. Go with where you are strong. My most recent blog is about we as individuals are meant to live in co-dependence with God and others to advance the kingdom.

It’s all about teamwork, baby! …But *every* piece of advice from Rick is mandatory wisdom for a planter. I am very encouraged by the work God is doing through Pastor Kuhr and Near West Vineyard Church in Chicago.

As I reflect, pray, read Scripture and look deep into my heart about the process of church planting I am overwhelmed at all who have been called before me and all that will be called after me. I must never lose sight on God’s amazing grace in my life and this is all for him.

The song “Who Am I” by Casting Crowns is really speaking to me right now. Take a look at the lyrics in the video below and relate them to where you are right now in this moment. May God speak to you and bless you through this song as he has for me…

Found what seems to be a huge blessing via twitter today. I’m now following @jasonsalamun and linked through to his blog about an awesome ministry: projectchurch.net. Just as Tony Morgan posts about Perryisms, I’m totally digging on some Jasonisms. Jason Salamun posted a list titled “101 Nuggets for Church Planters” and it’s very awesome! All 101 are necessary, but here are some that really made me say “Ah ha! Someone else gets church planting!” or “Wow! I definitely need to work on this!” I’ll let you decide which is which for me

2. If you are called, you have permission.

4. Don’t just plant a church; start a movement.

6. Don’t make the church your idol.  It’s easier than you think.

14. There’s a lot of wisdom in the words of dead guys.

22. Don’t talk about church all the time to your wife.  Pace yourself.

26. You should be able to explain the vision on the back of a napkin.

29. You’ll get criticized for things you never even said or implied. Get used to it.

40. Start a church where it’s okay to be a dude.

66. Typical is boring.

74. Be intentional.

77. Prepare- but understand that you’ll never been prepared enough.

79. Stand up for the ones who can’t stand up at all.

80. Time alone with a notebook, a pen, and a Bible often lead to something special.

81. Authentic people are led by authentic leaders.

87. It will be messy.

88. When was the last time you went to a bar or sat in the smoking section of a restaurant?

92. Repeat after me, “I heart simplicity.”

100. Church all boils down to relationships.

Rock on Jason! Praise God for putting the desire to be passionate for the Lord and minister to people and open enough to help other ministers stay on-track and to share in your victories!

Ron Edmondson posted about Spiritual highs and spiritual lows and it hit me where I was at in a way nothing else had all week. There have been so many ups and downs this year. A lot of time the up moments have been followed with a big swing down. As Pastor Ron shares in his blog:

It reminded me of a principle God has taught me over the years that is incredibly important for all believers to understand. After a period of spiritual highs there will most always be a period of spiritual lows.

It even happened to Jesus. Consider His baptism experience: As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.d (Mark 1:10-11) This was certainly a high point for Jesus.

What happened next? At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. (Mark 1:12-13)

I totally forgot about that passage from Mark 12! I’m not sure if I would consider myself being tempted by Satan, but I haven’t been in the mood to celebrate the many victories done in the name of the Lord this year. I can relate to being in the desert all alone. For the sake of others around me I need to find a way to be encouraged and show my faith and trust in God and let his peace and joy be my own. It’s been tough lately. I probably owe some people apologies as a result of it.

Having people around you that know your walk and can just listen and encourage is definitely going to be an important thing. Unfortunately for me, the friends I’ve known forever and that know me well aren’t Christian and can’t relate to my burdens and struggles. So for now, I just need to spend a lot of time in prayer and try to be at peace without getting too excited or too depressed. It’s not about me anyway, even though it can feel like it sometimes. In God I put my trust and believe that he knows my heart and my humility and that I’ll get through this season and coming out gold

I am reading a lot of reports that show myspace as having more subscribers, but that Facebook is fast becoming the social network of choice. I think a lot of this coincides with the emergence of web 2.0 as Facebook fits within the parameters of web 2.0 much better than Myspace.

For me, they are vastly different forums and they each serve separate purposes:

Facebook-

• clean and consistent feel so no surprises
• consistency leads to a generic sense of place with no real individualistic identity
• allows one to get info quick and run off to the next task
• better suited for networking with others than facilitating relationship building
• links very seamlessly with blogs such as blogger, typepad, etc.
• for whatever reason it has gained more respect and credibility from adults (adults are more inclined to link to a facebook profile page rather a myspace profile page
• can’t send links to friends advertising your facebook (friends need to search for your name and then have to be accepted by you before they can see your full page)

Myspace-

• very personalized - lots of creative freedom for background images, different layouts, fonts, etc.
• blogs and categories used by many that don’t want to maintain a blog and social networking account separately. includes notifications to friends on myspace of new posts and encourages feedback.
• more standardized for chatting and messaging. intended to be an experience and to allow us to live life connected with others though photos, bulletins, blog, im, polls/surveys, etc.
• can be used for advertising and promotion of events since direct URL access is available (i.e. www.myspace.com/mybirthdayparty)
• promotes a better sense of community because of the interaction

Because of certain relationships I have built in the past 3 years on myspace, I still maintain a blog and engage some agnostic and atheist friends in discussions. I say hello and offer encouragement to people around the world and they do the same for me. However, I found that over the course of this year I have spent much less time trying to stand and be technologically creative and captivating on myspace. I went back to the generic profile with a white background. In essence, my myspace profile is beginning to look similar to my facebook profile.

Facebook can be quite distracting to me at times with all the applications that can be added. I’ve been able to do away with most of those things. I’ve linked my facebook profile to this blog and have been networked to people though it. There is no myspace badge which allows that. I’ve noticed too that most pastors my age or younger are promoting their Facebook profiles so this allows me to network with other people that are planting churches or considering planting churches. That has been interesting for me However, I still find way less interaction with people through Facebook. It seems very informational and not so much relational. In a fast-paced world this makes sense and its simplicity is appreciated. It just seems a little impersonal.

So, in conclusion, I utilize Facebook to network with people and get glimpses of their daily lives and thoughts and they do the same towards me. I send updates and photos from my cell phone. I even just added a Facebook toolbar to Firefox so I can share my browsing experience with my Facebook network. Facebook is a great tool for this aspect of social networking. However, I still believe that there is a place for Myspace and the relationships that I can maintain and the new ones I can create through the more personal interaction through its way of social networking. I don’t think either will consolidate things to replace the other with one social networking platform that is the king of internet interaction. So for now, I’ll maintain the blog and Myspace and Facebook.

Anything you’d add to this or care to comment on?

From a strictly personal perspective, I wanted to share a little of my story. After reading a post from Daniel’s Random Platypus blog: “Why are Asian American church leaders so obsessed with multi-ethnic church?” I feel like the debate over multi-cultural or multi-ethnic churches is somewhat divisive in itself. So, I wanted to clarify a little bit. Apparently there is a perception that Asian-American church leaders have their own personal baggage and that is a motivating factor to the desire for multi-cultural, ethnically-diverse churches. The actual reasons that Daniel lists in his blog are:

1. Theology and hermeneutics
2. Ethnic church baggage
3. Identity issues

The only one I can even relate to here is theology, but only in a subcontext (used to confirm my position, but not the motivating factor for my position). For me the reason is simple. I live (and feel called to plant a church) in a community that is incredibly diverse. Here are the demographics for Rancho Cordova, CA from wikipedia:

As of the census^[7] of 2007, there were 59,060 people, 20,407 households, and 13,550 families residing in the CDP. The population density was 2,445.4 people per square mile (944.0/km²). There were 21,584 housing units at an average density of 958.6/sq mi (370.1/km²). The racial makeup of the CDP was 66.66% White, 11.34% African American, 0.95% Native American, 8.24% Asian, 0.54% Pacific Islander, 5.72% from other races, and 6.54% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.90% of the population.

With only 66% of the population being Caucasian (note: this does not take into account immigrant groups like first generation Russian/Slavik/European people which have prominent neighborhoods within the community) it means that there are 34% of the people that are not. A portion of the other ethnic groups worship in segregated churches (African-American, Korean-American, Mexican-American), yet most of the second generation people of these ethnic groups do not worship anywhere. They just don’t feel like they fit in anywhere. With this much diversity, there is no single church within the city limits that I can think of that reaches out to all people effectively (not a criticism, merely an observation). Without exception (that I can think of it at this moment) there is no church in the community that has a white senior pastor and also has someone of color on the pastoral staff. Same is true for the churches of African-American congregants with a black senior pastor will not have a Caucasian or Asian pastor on that same staff. In essence, the white church remains white, the black church remains black, etc.

It’s interesting to note that as I sometimes enjoy eating Asian foods that I prepare, when I go to the local Asian supermarket, there are mostly Mexican men putting out produce and stocking shelves and that the majority of the patrons are Russian or Eastern European. No matter what day or time it seems to be like this. It used to be exclusively Korean cashiers, but these days there is a Russian girl, Indian girl, Korean guy, etc. The grocery store reflects ethnic and cultural diversity, yet I can’t think of one existing church that does.

What this breaks down to is this: It’s not about being multi-cultural per se, it’s about being a gathering of people from diverse backgrounds all living and working in community with each other, all welcome to worship or seek the Lord in His church. I don’t want to be known as the Japanese-American pastor that crossed cultural lines to develop a multi-cultural ministry. I want to be known as someone that has a heart and a calling to minister the gospel to a specific community with a missional mindset and action behind our faith. I want to be able to make my experiences and testimony relevant to someone that is hurting and far away from the Lord whether they are black, brown, mocha, yellow, pink, creamy banana smoothy, hazelnut cream or whatever skin color. I want to be able to speak to people in a loving and caring way regardless of whether they lost a job, got turned down at the college of their choice, can’t make ends meet financially, etc. because I’ve experienced all aspects of life with highs and lows. I want to be relevant to those outside of the church because I was outside of the church for the first 37 years of my life and most of the questions they have about God, religion, or church are the same ones I had and I am not better than they are because I profess faith in Christ and they do not.

You see, it’s not about some mission to reach every cultural and ethnic group in my community because segregated ministry is inherently evil. I’m not searching for some better way because I can’t relate to the ethno-centic church I was raised in or because I’m not “white” enough for Caucasians, yet not “yellow” enough for Asians. So, I have to disagree with the suggestions within Daniel’s post and argue against anyone that believes there is some underlying baggage that must be causing my desire to be outside of the Asian-American church.

In the end, if I am faithful to the calling I believe God put on my heart and this is the community I am supposed to minister to, then I am not in control of who the Lord sends and I cannot manipulate who I want to connect with us. If our church is 95% Asian in 3 years, so be it. If it ends up being 95% African-American, so be it. However, if it ends up being 66.66% white, 11.34& African-American, 8.24% Asian, and 12.9% Latin/Hispanic then I’m going to feel pretty confirmed in the vision I feel came from the Lord and I won’t refer to it as some multi-cultural formula, but instead it will truly be a church of the city. As I mentioned in Part 2, I don’t want to be viewed as a Japanese pastor leading a multi-cultural church, I instead want to be known as a visionary leader, faithful to God, His people, and His Word doing my small part to see the kingdom of heaven reign on earth with God getting all the glory and transformed lives promoting the love of Christ for all to see. This is my journey.

We must face our fears, mistrust, and ignorance and become a society of one. It is often said that Sundays are the most segregated time in America. I would tend to agree. As I watch the news on the Democratic National Convention and underlying question that is always looking my commentators is whether Obama as to overcome racism in 2008. Simply put, yes he does! Race and racism are still in existence today. However, if we try to drive racism by pointing out differences between black and white culture we are on shaky ground, yet when it comes to the church, I rarely hear anyone take issue with calling a predominantly African-American church in Atlanta, GA a black church or even talking about the black church as if it is its own denomination.

It’s not so mainstream in America, but there is such a thing as the Chinese, Korean, Japanese or more-generic Asian-American church.

Should American churches be black, Chinese, Mexican, Russian, etc.? I say yes, and no. Let me define my point:

1. For first generation immigrants that have a language barrier, yet want to be able to worship, there should be a church that exists to allow that to happen. If Russian-speaking immigrants can gather in the name of the Lord, then that is great!
2. Regardless of language or race inherently the second generation will want to assimilate into American culture and be taught English and encouraged to become Americans. Will this second generation want to stay in an ethnocentric church the rest of their lives? Their friends are diverse ethnically, their school is ethnically diverse, their workplace, etc. Why wouldn’t they want their church to be representative of their Monday-through-Saturday environment?

Looking at Jesus’ ministry on earth, we know that as a Jew he broke away from traditional custom to walk though Samaria on his way to Jerusalem. It is on a walk through Samaria that he encounters the woman at the well. The end result is that a wave of Christ followers came to know salvation even though they weren’t the chosen people of God (Jews). We also read testimony of Jesus being in the company of prostitutes, those with leprosy, and the much-hated tax collectors. Jesus didn’t care whether someone was of the “chosen” or not, because one of the primary things about his gospel was that anyone that believed in him was granted forgiveness of their sins and brought into the brotherhood of God’s people. Looking at the New Testament, most of it was written by the Apostle Paul, whom Jesus called to preach to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Greeks, Romans, Ethiopians, all would come to know the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ through Paul’s outreach. Paul gathered the Jews and Gentiles and assembled them into one church in the community. There were the Ephesian, Galatian, and Thessalonian churches with Jews and Gentiles in unity, not the Jewish Ephesian church, and the Greek Ephesian church on the other side of town, etc. One church, one God, one love for all.

With such examples from the Scripture, why do we so often choose to be segregated during worship? Why must we use Sundays to try and preserve our culture, when God calls us to him above everything else when we come before him in worship?

One argument I hear from some is that if God sends us an Asian-American congregation, then that is who we are to shepherd and minister to. Okay. The problem with this argument is the leader/visionary. I’ve heard (and experienced) that the church will generally take after the senior pastor. If the senior pastor is Caucasian, mid-40’s with a college degree, married and has 2.3 kids then people of similar makeup will be drawn to him/her because they can relate to each other equally. So, me being an Asian-American, it would make sense that I could attract those that have similar cultural backgrounds to me. Therefore, if as Asian-American pastor, I have to be intentional about attracting those that are different than me. Can I as an American cross cultural lines and connect with people that are Hispanic, African-American, Russian-American, etc.? If I can’t, then personally I believe I have a problem because Jesus doesn’t differentiate based on race and I should be doing the work of Jesus, not the work of myself. If the population at large still won’t accept me because I am not of their heritage, then I believe that empowering leaders within the church that represent diversity can help people overcome such personal issues. If I have an Asian-American leadership team and talk about my experiences growing up with racism and certain aspects of Japanese culture, then I am going to relate to Japanese-Americans almost exclusively. It just makes sense. However, if I preach and exemplify the gospel of Christ and do so to Hispanic, African-American, Russian-American people in my community and they see the love of Christ and not a Japanese-American, then they will be drawn in by Christ’s love and not because we are of identical cultures.

To be diverse, I have to agree with DJ Chuang’s position in his blog post and state that it does take being intentional. However, I don’t believe that this is some form of manipulation or relying on some system of diversity rather than trusting God to build his church. If God wants the church to be multi-cultural, then I believe the leadership, attitude, sermon illustrations, etc. must be ethnically/culturally/socio-economically diverse in order to facilitate this happening.

Imagine what it must be like for some Asian guy to invite an African-American unbeliever to his church only to find out that his African-American friend doesn’t fit in and isn’t really welcomed because he is not Asian. Is that the example we should be setting for unbelievers? Would Christ only want to see African-Americans saved in African-American churches? When Scripture states that Christ will return to claim his bride, do we really believe that we are to be a segregated bride seeking solace in our cultural customs rather seeking peace and joy in unity and love? Interesting complementary post to this from Laurence Tom titled, “Is your church more Chinese than Christian?“

We can only stop talking about racism when we start coming together and worshipping together with our community rather than just our cultural community. We can only stop talking about racism when we are viewed as light and love rather than black or white or brown or yellow. I believe the church is an important instrument in this process of change and that someone needs to not be afraid to be a little uncomfortable for the sake of seeing ignorance win in the battle of racism and prejudice. When we should be leading the charge for this in the church, we are the last to embrace this concept!

It’s amazing to me that through a simple question so much information can be found through study and research in order to confirm an answer. I was asked the following question by a Korean friend:

What should be our attitude toward multi-cultural church? Should we seek it out or just build a church without actively seeking it?

As someone that has way more experience on this subject than me, I contacted DJ Chuang and got some insight from him, which he posted on his blog to illicit feedback from others to help as well. Then I started finding that through following blog links that this is a subject discussed a lot within the Asian-American context. As an Asian-American, this interests me a great deal. It seems that there is quite a lot of debate on the issue of having segregated Asian churches in the US or whether we should strive to be an amalgamation of one body within one homogeneous church.

For me, I really feel more comfortable in a multi-cultural church. I want church to be about loving God and loving others and being in-service to my fellow man rather than being served. I feel like being in an ethnic church makes it more about one’s heritage rather than about serving others. In a Korean church, the context of the message is going to be presented in a way relevant to the culture of Korea. Food will cater to Korean taste buds. So, what if God sends a Mexican family to a Korean church? Well, maybe they will connect, but most-likely I think they will feel out of place. Even if they connect, the church is probably so inwardly focused on reaching other Koreans than unchurched Mexican, Caucasian, African-American, Argentinian (etc.) people with the saving grace of Christ for both the Jew and the Gentile, that they will miss out on connecting others to the church and subsequently to the gospel of Christ.

One thing that puts me up against a lot of others in ministry is that I believe church was never intended to be safe and comfortable. The minute it is, where do we need to seek Jesus? If the church is feeling all warm and fuzzy then why would they want to venture out and attract those unlike them to be a part of their community? Jesus called upon the disciples to be challenged and always learning and growing. They were put in situations so risky that at times their life was dependent on whether or not they would be willing to die for their faith in Christ. I don’t think we can truly comprehend this idea in modern-day America.

Looking at the church and it’s amazingly rapid growth under oppression and persecution, it causes me to wonder something. They are Chinese and don’t really have options to worship in multi-cultural churches, but if religious freedom came about, I’m wondering what would happen. As a country that just hosted 200+ nations for the Olympic Summer Games and is reaching out to the US, Middle East & Europe and adopting some of our cultures into their way of life, would they really want to be just a church to the Chinese?

If we are to expect the kingdom of heaven to reign here on earth, will there be ethnically separated churches on that day? Are their segregated streets with segregated worship spaces in heaven? I seriously doubt it! So, we might as well realize that Christ has only one bride and it has nothing to do with our birthplace or skin color. It has to do with our love and faith as we set out in the journey to follow Christ.

For more thoughts, some of which go against my thoughts in this post, take a look at:

• Churches should stay segregated: http://waynepark.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/churches-should-stay-segregated/
• I could write pages and pages on this: http://www.randplaty.com/2008/08/06/i-could-write-pages-and-pages-on-this/#more-223
• Does a multi-cultural church need to be intentional?: http://www.djchuang.com/2008/does-a-multiethnic-church-have-to-be-intentional/
• Asian-American churches…the wave of the future?: http://www.randplaty.com/2008/07/26/asian-american-churches-the-wave-of-the-future/
• In class today: Mosaic Church: http://nextgenerasianchurch.com/2007/10/16/in-class-today-mosaic-churches/#more-352
• Why many Amerians prefer their Sundays segregated: http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/why-many-americans-prefer-their-sundays-segregated/

Here is what wordle picked up as keywords from the blog today: