Category: dialogue
Becoming a Church for Many Generations
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Grateful for each and every opportunity I have to connect with people and to speak at an event. Last Sunday I was invited to speak at a Chinese church in Walnut, California, called Vineyard of Harvest. As with a majority of Chinese churches in the United States and Canada, worship services are provided in English…
Most people are not entrepreneurs or fundraisers
Every individual is uniquely gifted, talented, with innate strengths and abilities to more easily develop skills in certain areas of work and find it very challenging to learn other skills. And in our time and age, the opportunities for entrepreneurs and fundraisers are greatly needed, and even increasing, amisdt disruptive economic realities. The heightened volume…
Where is God when good people hurt?
Very privileged to get a tremendous opportunity last month to speak during a Sunday worship service at an ethnic Chinese church in Austin, Texas. The message was very well received, I think. The sermon was translated live side-by-side, phrase-by-phrase, from English to Mandarin Chinese, and that was followed by like 20 minutes of interactive Q&A,…
How to be effective by having no agenda
I enjoy meeting all kinds of people and it’s easy for me to talk with people without an agenda. I love to get to know people by sharing our stories with each other, talking about what we’re working on, and explore how to help one another in life. But, I have to confess, I get…
A new kind of Christian lifestyle that’s less repulsive to people
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@ dialogueThe reputation of Christians in mainstream culture, both in America and many parts of the world, is less than spectacular. The top 6 perceptions of Christians are (according to extensive research published in Unchristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, via survey data of outsiders ages 16-29): antihomosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, sheltered (old-fashioned, out of touch…
Listening and being inefficient in a results-oriented society
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@ dialogueAttended the Mosaix Global Network members retreat in Chicago this week for the first time. So sweet to be with a wide variety of multiethnic church and ministry leaders who took the time and energy to invest in relationships that will no doubt bear long-term fruit and impact, though it may not quite look like…
Beyond recognizing white privilege
My last blog post, Tim Keller explains the systemic problem of white privilege, excerpting a commentary from the Q&A portion of March 2012 event, generated a record-breaking number of responses, mostly retweets. Now what? Acknowledging the existence of white privilege is a huge step, yet a baby step, 1st of a thousand, towards opening the…
Tim Keller explains the systemic problem of white privilege
Back in March 2012, during an event titled “Race and the Christian” with John Piper, Tim Keller, and Anthony Bradley, they surfaced a number of the challenges and difficulties about the topic of race in the Christian ministry and church contexts.One particular segment during the Q&A portion was particularly poignant (and insightful, to me, so…
It’s personal, oh so personal
A leading influencer of our time, Seth Godin, can do it both, short-form blogging, long form articles, speeches, books. Knowing how to mix it up is just one more dimension of his success and influence. Yet he doesn’t go super short-form aka microblogging with twittering and facebooking. That’s to say you don’t have to use…
Why isn’t Easter bigger than Christmas?
The 2 most powerful things about the Christian faith get celebrated year after year: Easter for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death to life, and Christmas for the incarnation of Jesus Christ born as a baby from a virgin. Both supernatural and miraculous. And being raised from the dead is a far bigger miracle…
Anxiety and Christians don’t mix, usually
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A timely book arrived in the mail last week and I happen to have some time to read it all in one day. The book? Rhett Smith‘s The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good? What I love about this book is how Rhett vulnerably and honestly reveals his own life story, how…
