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Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:23:09 GMT

I haven't posted on here in forever!

Monday, November 24, 2008

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:23:34 GMT

Team United’s Fall 08 Mission Bowl Story

Not everything here is completely accurate… its just the best I could do with my memory (let me know if I got something incorrect).

Here is a link to last year’s (Feb) Mission Bowl story and the year before (07) if you want to read those. This year’s mission bowl was pushed up to November because of all the weather and field issues that the tournament had last year. So we can’t say its the 2009 mission bowl because it didn’t happen in 2009. We can’t say its 2008 mission bowl, because that one already happened.

So this year we had a lot less time to practice and train. We were notified that the tournament was going to be in November in the middle of September, so we really had on a couple months to practice. Another big change we had to go through this year was that Pam (our QB from the last two years) was in China and wouldn’t be playing in the tournament this year.

I also wasn’t sure if I wanted to coach this year because 1) I had started going to Kairos in Feb and 2) It just takes up a lot of time and a lot of time away from Cindy. Anyway, both Pastor Dalon and I decided to coach, but we decided that we would keep this year a “less intense” year and basically we would practice but not try to win that much since we had only 2 months to prepare when we usually prepare 4 months in advance.

That didn’t work out too well because as we got closer and closer to the tournament, it became more and more obvious that we had a very talented team. The more I realized how talented the team was the more I felt like we should do really well and have a good chance to go for it all. So the more I realized how talented of a team we had, the more the pressure built on me.

There was an infusion of great new talent to replace the loss of some of the players from last year as usual, but one big thing I noticed this year that I never noticed in years previous was that a lot of players that had been with us over 3-4 years had improved dramatically. There really is a big difference from being a “rookie” to being a “veteran.”

Anyway, on to tournament day. The tournament had the same format as it had last year. 2 game round robin. All six teams would make the playoffs but the top two seeds would get first round playoff byes. All six of the teams from last year returned. United, Kairos, Hope, Harbor, Harvest and Lighthouse. We drew Kairos as our first matchup and then Harbor.

Kairos

So being that Kairos is now my church and I’ve been going there for about 9 months, this matchup was pretty weird for me. I knew the coaches and some of the girls and Onechuel kept telling me how they were going to destroy us and how good “Superstina” was and how she was going to torch us. On top of that some of the girls on our team had heard how good Kairos was this year and how they were the team to beat this year. Well, personally I thought we were the team to beat, so I didn’t know what to make of all this talk.

Quickly I found out that Onechuel was not all talk. Superstina would catch these 5 yard quick slants and take them for 10-15 or more yards. The defense would get stops but we couldn’t consistently stop the Kairos offense. They scored twice, once on a reverse. Our offense couldn’t get on track either. We tried to throw the ball a lot and it didn’t work out too well. We ran a couple times for modest yardage, but when you’re playing from behind you want to throw the ball and Sylvia hadn’t really gotten into a rhythm yet. We didn’t score at all except for a safety and we lost 13-2.

That’s not how I expected to start the tournament. I knew that Kairos would be a tough team but I didn’t expect to lose to ANY team. There was also a bit of a rule mess up that made me pretty upset. The refs gave Kairos the ball to start the first and the second half, but that didn’t make the difference in the game anyway.

Sylvia was pretty dejected and I tried to rally the girls and keep them excited and pumped, but I don’t know if I did a good job or not.

Harbor

Now since we had a break after the Kairos game, I watched Harbor play a little and I had Simon scout Harbor for me. Simon provided a really detailed and extremely useful breakdown of the Harbor team. Harbor looked like a formidable opponent. They were being coached by the same coach who coached the mens team who were the mens champions a week earlier. I knew this was a tough team. Part of me didn’t even want to try to win this game because I knew we would probably have to conserve our players if we wanted to win the championship. But I knew we couldn’t do that because of team morale. We had to win this game. If we didn’t, people would start to doubt themselves and our team might crumble in the playoffs. The problem was, Harbor was an excellently coached team. They had really good execution.

We learned from Simon that Harbor ran the ball 70% of the time and that their QB was their main threat both running and passing. They would pass deep to the corners in order to keep us off of the run. Good thing our defense was geared to stop 2 things, the run and the deep ball. I put LeighAnn in as a QB spy against the quarterback.
From the very beginning our offense dominated their running attack. While their running attack was well executed, our defensive line just had more athleticism and penetrated the backfield consistently. Leigh Ann would be right behind them, pulling the flag or making a stop on the QB whenever she leaked out of the pocket. Leigh Ann had a lot of football smarts and she knew exactly when the QB committed to run and would dart in to stop her. Their QB “Chu” was very athletic, but Leigh Ann almost singlehandedly stopped her. Early in the first half we forced the QB into a bad throw and Eupheme caught an INT and ran it back to like the 2 yard line. It took a couple tries, but our offense finally punched it in.

Meanwhile our offense started to get on track a bit. We ran the ball a lot more and got Sylvia to run out of the pocket a bit and during the first half we scored a TD mostly pounding the sweep. In the second half they started containing with their linebackers so we couldn’t really run the ball anymore. Our passing offense hadn’t really gotten its rhythm yet, but I could tell that the offense was starting to regain some confidence.

We won the game pretty convincingly, 13-0. They never really got close to scoring on us because our defense was so good against them.

Hope

After lunch, our first playoff game was against Hope. Hope had played Lighthouse and Kairos and had lost both games. The game started off slowly with Hope driving all the way down the length of the field against us. When they were about to score, we put in our “special” defensive package and we stopped them. So our offense took over on the 2 yard line or something like that and we tried to run a sweep but got taken down for a loss. They scored a safety on us. At that point I was kinda worried. How could we be doing so poorly? Not that Hope was a horribly bad team or anything, but we weren’t supposed to be struggling this much.

The second defensive series, things changed. Eupheme intercepted another pass and ran it back in for a touchdown. This changed the momentum a lot. We converted the 2 point conversion making it 8-2. Sylvia started to run a lot during this game. We ran sweeps and they were pretty successful and we scored another TD on a combination of those. Sylvia also started to get her passing into rhythm as she completed some long passes. We won the game 15-2.

Our defense kept getting stop after stop. We would intercept the ball to stop the drive half of the time. A LOT of girls got interceptions throughout the day. It was great!

Lighthouse

Our next playoff game was against the defending champions of Mission Bowl and the tournament host, Lighthouse. Once again, it was very tense in the beginning of the game. The stress of the game when its close is ugh… yuck. But Eupheme again got the scoring started with an INT return for a TD. I give Gavin a lot of credit for putting her at cornerback for a lot of the game giving her opportunities to get pick sixes. That helped us out a lot. I don’t think we converted the 1pt conversion.

That’s the way it stayed for awhile. We were leading 8-0 at halftime. It was pretty nerve racking that entire time. I think that’s how I felt for most of the tournament, nervous. I remember thinking, is it halftime yet? Then I remember thinking, we still have 12 minutes to go until the end of the game? Soon after that though, the offense scored a TD giving us a cushion… I don’t really remember how. Near the end of the game we scored another TD, I think on runs mostly because PD told Sylvia to go conservative. At one point in the game, Sylvia started cramping and LeighAnn had to go in for QB a bit, but luckily Sylvia got back onto the field after awhile. So we won the game 21-0 though the game felt a lot closer than that.

Kairos (again)

Kairos and Harbor played in their playoff game and I heard that Harbor was up 12-0 but then Kairos miraculously came back with two TDs to tied the game. Then they went into overtime and played 4 overtime periods. It took a long time but finally Kairos won the battle. I knew Harbor was a well coached team, but nonetheless I was surprised they were able to hang with Kairos, which I thought was the superior team.

I told my team that though Kairos beat us the first game, we were going to beat them this time. We were going to pull out all the tricks and do everything we could to beat them. I put in our “special” defensive package for most of the game. Truth be told, I really wanted to play Harbor because Superstina gave me nightmares. How could we stop her?

It was a defensive stalemate for most of the game. Sylvia did complete some long passes, but we could never punch it into the endzone. On one play, Sylvia threw the ball deep to Angie and Angie was running behind all the Kairos defenders toward the endzone. Ruth, Kairos’s deep safety, ran and caught Angie from behind and grabbed her flag on the 5 yard line. We had a couple penalties after that and could not punch the ball in.

Kairos’ defensive line was very good and penetrated and gave our offense some trouble behind the line of scrimmage.

Our defense was doing very well, but the special package did not give them as much trouble as I thought it would. Leigh Ann had to come out because she was cramping. Eupheme kept knocking down passes and our defense was performing well, but I was expecting Esther (Kairos QB) to get sacked a lot more often. Our defense produced a lot of sacks this game too, but just not as much as I thought they would.

So the sun was going down and the refs told us that if the sun was going down, they would just give us a 2 minute warning and then end the game. We were going to have a 0 minute halftime… basically they would just reset the ball. There was no time.

Then Kairos finally hit Superstina on a quickslant yet again and she waltzed into the endzone making our defenders miss the flag a couple times. I thought we had lost at that point. They didn’t score the extra point but we had not been able to score at all against their defense so far, and the sun was getting lower.

But on the next possession, Sylvia hit Natasha long on a corner route and Natasha ran all the way down the sideline. Ruth again was closing in on Natasha but missed the flag grab at the goalline and Natasha scored! We tied the game! We couldn’t convert the extra point either (close play) and so we were tied 6-6. Then Kairos started driving again. They then ran a reverse on 3rd down and their ball carrier (Superstina, who else) was running towards the sideline. Our corner (Mindy) was doing her job by staying home on the play and Esther saw that she could potentially break up the play so Esther threw a block on Mindy and they both went down.

Our safety pulled the flag and while they gained a lot of yardage, they didn’t make the first down. But, the bigger concern was that neither Mindy, nor Esther got up from the ground. They didn’t get up for a long time and both teams started praying. Eventually the refs wanted to talk and I think it was mainly Leigh Ann’s idea to go for Co-Champions rather than to finish the game. We consulted our girls and they were happy with that idea. We didn’t want anybody else to get hurt and the light was winding down.

The refs wanted to go immediately into overtime play, but we wanted to propose Co-Champions. Sung and the rest of the Kairos coaches consulted the Kairos girls and they were happy with it too. It was a good idea and a good compromise. I liked it a lot because I really didn’t want to beat Kairos because Kairos is my church now… but I also didn’t want to lose to them either.

So in the end, Kairos and United were co-champions. It was a great ending. Everyone cheered and we all gathered in the middle of the field telling each other how great everyone played. I think everyone was very happy with the ending.

Conclusion

Team United was loaded with talent both on offense and defense. The defense probably intercepted 10+ passes during the tournament. We played 5 games and went 3-1-1 and were declared co-Champions with Kairos. What an accomplishment. Women you all played great and I was proud to coach all of you. Congratulations to the Kairos women also. Us guys have a lot to learn from the graciousness that these women play football with.

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 04:24:32 GMT

Prop 8: No such thing as neutrality

photo by brebot

In California we have the opportunity to vote on a state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. This vote promises to be a very close one and in California, it’s probably a bigger deal than the presidential election. (The presidential election has been wrapped up for awhile in California).

I see older white families holding “Yes on Prop 8″ signs on busy intersections in the morning. I see younger ethnically diverse people holding “No on Prop 8″ signs on those same intersections at night. It is a very interesting fight considering that 8 years ago, prop 22 was passed with an overwhelming majority (61%).

I can perfectly understand why non-Christians would vote no on 8, but arguments for Christians to vote no on 8 have been popping up. This blog post argues that Christians should vote No on 8 because we should acknowledge religious freedom for all and not all religions think that homosexuality is wrong. Basically, don’t pass laws that force others to be Christian or think like a Christian. Many would use this same argument for abortion. Many would argue that we should vote no in order to ensure the separation of church and state.

One thing these people forget is that there is no such thing as neutrality. Those against prop 8 would have you believe that a No vote is a neutral vote on prop 8. You’re not FOR gay marriage, you’re merely for personal freedom and choice. You’re for allowing people to do what they want to do. You don’t want to restrict people’s freedoms even though personally you believe gay marriage is wrong. They argue, if you’re against men marrying men, then don’t marry another man. But if someone else does it, its none of your business.

They have reframed the debate. A vote for YES is eliminating rights for them. A vote for NO is retaining rights. It’s no longer about gay marriage or being gay. But that is wrong. A YES vote is against gay marriage. A NO vote is for gay marriage. It’s as simple as that. Gay activists know this. They want to trick Christians into voting for gay marriage by reframing the debate.

If gay marriage is legalized, children will grow up in an environment where their sexuality is a choice. It will become a government sanctioned choice. The gay community is slowly transitioning their argument from “it’s genetics!” into “it’s my free will choice.” I personally know a couple people who do choose to be gay. They don’t struggle with it. It’s a choice for them. I know most people do not choose to be gay and wish they weren’t. But it’s not true that “nobody chooses to be gay.” The gay community wants people to have that choice and to choose to be gay. The gay community wants more people to identify with them.

That is why there is this argument about whether or not gay marriage would be taught in schools. If gay marriage is illegal, it likely would not be taught in schools because it is difficult for a teacher to advocate something that is illegal. If gay marriage were legalized, it would make it very easy for teachers to advocate gay marriage. Of course teachers would not be forced to teach gay marriage, but many teachers want to. Many teachers have taught about gay lifestyle and that’s a fact.

So it’s a culture war and the law speaks volumes about what is acceptable in society. If you vote No on prop 8 you’re casting a “gay lifestyle is good vote.” Don’t make any mistake about it. There is no neutrality here.

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:41:30 GMT

Peak Oil & the Energy Crisis

photo by Josh Parrish

Any of you believe it? Check out www.chrismartenson.com and take the crash course. Check out lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

Basically it’s saying that our entire economy and way of life is based on the presence of cheap oil. We have already peaked in terms of oil production but not worldwide demand. Worldwide demand for oil will continue to grow exponentially. Oil prices will skyrocket and oil producing nations will stop exporting oil once they realize the world is going to run out of it.

That will make not only our gas prices skyrocket, but the price of everything else will skyrocket also because it takes oil to transport and build everything. Our way of life is built on oil and since oil will no longer be available, our lives will be changed forever.

World wars and massive famine and depression will result.

There can be a solution to the energy crisis. It needs to be dealt with in two respects. Supply and demand.

Consumption (demand or conservation)

Over the summer gas prices rose sharply and you saw the nation cut back on its gasoline usage. Most people only changed their driving habits slightly. If we were faced with huge price hikes or even rationing, the nation could respond. This could mean drastic changes to our lifestyles, but we could prevent chaos or loss of all technology. How?

Bicycles - The more I read about it, its not as impossible as it sounds. Many people cycle 20 miles one way to work every day. Tough? Yes. But in the face of crisis, definitely possible. Most of our energy consumption is in the form of gasoline for cars… bicycles could go a long way if everyone starts riding instead of driving.
Plug-in hybrid cars - The technology is coming soon. Toyota should be coming out with a plug in hybrid electric prius by 2010. It will require a good number of years and a lot of motivation to force everyone into these types of vehicles, but it can be done.
Old fashioned conservation - No more long roadtrips. The airline industry will likely collapse. Turning off the AC, not using the heater etc…
Closer communities - People can move closer to work and closer to each other. Rather than having to drive miles to get to work, people will choose to move closer to their jobs so that they can bicycle or walk there. Rather than driving across town to visit friends and family, they can choose to live near each other. Instead of going out to eat, people can choose to eat in each other’s homes.

If our energy needs continue to grow exponentially, there is no way that the world’s resources will be able to keep up. If rather we conserve, use less energy than we do today, it’s possible for alternative forms of energy to make up the rest. We would probably need to cut energy consumption by 25% in order to have a chance.

Production (Supply)

Like everyone has been saying, no single source of energy can replace oil. There is no source of energy that is so plentiful and so easy to obtain. That is why peak oilers have been saying that our society will collapse. While no single source of energy can replace oil, if we can conserve and use less energy, then multiple sources of energy has a chance to meet our demand levels. Solar and nuclear advocates need to stop fighting. There is room in the future for both. Energy for transportation via oil currently takes up half our energy needs. By converting transportation to electricity, we would double our electricity needs if there is no conservation.

Nuclear power - Its not dangerous and there is a huge supply of uranium. The problem is, we would need 500 nuclear power plants to power our energy grid in the United States and there are huge problems in setting up that many nuclear plants that quickly. The solution? Set a more modest goal and don’t rely on nuclear power to replace the entire power grid. Currently 20% of the electricity used in the US is produced by nuclear power. If we can up that number to 40-50%, that would be a huge boon. How to do that? New technology called molten salt reactors. This type of nuclear power plant is more easily mass produced, safer, and cheaper.
Solar power - The problem with solar power has been cost and irregular energy production. The cost aspect will always solve itself the more the technology is used. The irregular energy production due to clouds and less sunny areas is the real problem. The solution? A new technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to heat a tube of liquid in order to generate steam for electricity. This technology uses molten salt which can retain heat so that it can be saved for night energy usage. That way it reduces the irregular energy production solving some, but not all of the irregularity issues. When combined with coal and nuclear power as backup systems, solar power could be a major energy producer in the future.
Coal - I’ve said before that I’m not an environmentalist so CO2 emissions are really not a huge concern for me as long as they remain under control. Coal is going to be needed for the foreseeable future because these new nuclear and solar technologies are still 20 years away if we begin a massive program now. What will tide us over? Reduction in consumption, the remaining oil we have, and coal.

What won’t work?

Wind. Wind, like solar is too irregular to be useful. Because its so irregular, it would require massive redundancy and a massive worldwide energy grid. Wind would require a massive worldwide wind project where we could ship wind power from Sweden to the US and vice versa depending on wind patterns. Because of line loss, this would be extremely unproductive and costly. Wind doesn’t have any new technologies on the horizon that could reduce the irregularity like solar does.

Biofuel. Ethanol, alcohol and biodiesel require us to put more energy into it than we get out of it. For example, to grow corn or sugar for ethanol, we would need to run tractors and other farm machines using oil to produce the corn. In other words, it costs way too much energy to produce way too little energy.

Infrastructure

A large component of any new energy plan would need to be shifts in infrastructure.

Transportation needs to use electricity. Plug-in hybrid cars and electric trains.
Larger, higher capacity energy grid. Our energy grid capacity would need to double in size in order to support all of the cars and trains we want to run off of it. The current grid is too small and inefficient to transfer electricity across the country. Flexibility will be important with energy sources like solar because it’s not available everywhere. The government needs to invest a lot of money into the grid.
Large scale energy storage. The technology does not seem to be here yet for this so none of the current plans are predicated on this. But if inexpensive energy storage on a large scale could be developed, all sorts of alternative energy sources could be opened up including wind power.

This plan would take probably 20-30 years to implement if we act quickly and decisively. The entire nation would need to view it as the crisis it is. Oil, coal and conservation could help us through the next 30 years until nuclear and solar plants on a mass scale could be constructed. At that point we would probably need to continue our conservation efforts. Clean coal could be a part of the permanent energy structure.

If we take these steps the technology and resources are there. We can avoid World War and depressions, but I fear that there will not be the leadership in place to make this happen. We need to act quickly right now on a massive scale. Power plants take 10 years to construct sometimes. What I fear is that we will not recognize this crisis until peak oil has already passed and we are on our last leg of oil. At that point, it’ll be too late.

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Saturday, September 06, 2008

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 06:40:06 GMT

Voting on issues is impossible

photo by Daquella manera

Charles Lee encourages us to vote on actual issues rather than image or rhetoric. The problem is, I don’t know enough about almost all the issues.

It’s very difficult to vote on issues. We would all like to say we vote on issues, but really its difficult for the President to have a good understanding of all the issues. The President has hundreds of advisors. We only have the internet.

The fact is, most of the issues are much too complex for individual decisions to really understand. The issue of “trickle-down” economics is still debated between PhDs in economics… and that economic policy relates directly to whether or not we should cut taxes, raise them, or who we should tax and how much. So how am I supposed to vote for McCain or Obama based on taxes as an issue? It’s impossible. Completely impossible.

Foreign policy is the same. So many countries, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, N Korea, China, Russia, Georgia… so many leaders… so many different types of politics and different interest groups within those countries. How is any one person supposed to really know who is right or wrong on these issues? The President will really be relying on hundreds of foreign policy advisors to make decisions. We as individual voters don’t have that luxury. Let’s not be arrogant and think that we know more than people who have spent their lives becoming experts in this field. If the experts disagree, there’s no way I can know. We cannot vote on this issue.

So what’s left? Character? How can you get to know someone’s character by watching them give speeches or do interviews? Impossible. There are a lot of people that I’ve known for years and I can’t say that I really know their characters. How can I know Obama’s or McCain’s? Let’s not be arrogant and judge from a few interviews and debates.

All I have left are a few social/morality issues. So that’s usually how I vote.

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:40:29 GMT

I like Barack Obama

“Great respect goes to Barack Obama not only for saying criticism of candidates’ children is out of bounds in political campaigns, but for making it personal, and therefore believable. “My mother had me when she was eighteen…” That was the lovely sound of class in American politics.”

Read this line in this article by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal online. Completely agree. Completely agree.

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:35:41 GMT

Bi-vocational… nice try, but no cigar

photo by Helico

Bi-vocational ministry shouldn’t be held up as an ideal, but should be looked at for what it is–a good idea that just doesn’t work.

As I was perusing some blogs, I ran across an interesting discussion on bi-vocational ministers. Chris Marshall has a really heartfelt post on his struggles with being a bi-vocational minister. After I read that post, I just felt sad. Sad sad sad.

While he put a positive spin on bi-vocational ministry at the end of his post, the line that stood out the most to me was,

From an emotional/pychological standpoint, it has been brutal. I guess it has some of the same attributes of a mid-life crisis. A loss of identity which is only somewhat healthy, this loss reveals how many false-idols you had in place, places where I should have had only a trust in Christ to begin with.

Why would he subject himself to this? What’s his reasoning?

I knew that my context was with those that were well outside the church walls and that for “postmoderns”, they had complete disdain for organizational structures and distrust in traditional pastoral roles. So to me, if I cared to be incarnational to this group of people, I had to sacrifice my vocational identity as a pastor and take a different role in culture to support my family.

His reasoning is a strategic one. Postmoderns distrust pastors and therefore he could not be one if wants to minister to them.

This A51T15 blog also advocates bi-vocational ministry due to changing times and economic recession. So here again, its a practical/strategic matter and not a biblical one.

This guy chimes in on the discussion and names a few more practical reasons why he is a bi-vocational minister. He is able to interact with non-Christians on a peer/personal level rather than as a professional minister, and also that others in his congregation are encouraged to take up ministering too because they know that he does not have time to minister to everyone.

So basically this is a strategic discussion. This is a discussion on what works best rather than what is biblical or more spiritual.

The strange thing is that most of the comments said things like this,”One of my concerns is that our idealism kills some people trying to do this. This only gives others more reason to say, “Told you it wouldn’t work.” How do we channel our idealism into some creative ways to come up with solutions economically and otherwise?”

and Daniel So comments, “I love the idea of being a bi-vocational pastor (although, if I’m totally honest, I think part of it is pride — not being forced to rely on the church for income), but that ideal comes up against the question of how we can make it work when we have barely been making it so far on one and a half church salaries for the past ten years or so. We’ve both been considering going back to school (but that’s another round of educational debt that we probably can’t bear)… “

What do “ideals” have anything to do with anything? Remember this is a strategic and practical conversation. Every reason put forth in favor of bi-vocational ministry has been a practical one. Paul was bi-vocational for purely practical reasons. So if it doesn’t work and everyone is talking about how brutal it is, then don’t do it! There is no ideal here. There is no “idealism” that we need to strive for. Its a purely practical issue.

Practical reasons why it doesn’t work:

1. Who is going to shell out 60K for seminary and not get paid? Bi-vocational ministers without seminary training are really just good lay leaders. Chris says “Get your theological training from the church community…” Do you really think that the church community, which cannot even come up with enough small group leaders, are going to be able to teach theology in the depth and breadth that is needed? Seminary is generally a full time thing for 3 years. That’s pretty tough to pay for without a job waiting for you at the other end.

2. Bi-vocational ministers just don’t have enough time to devote to their ministry. Bi-vocational ministers need to juggle their family, work and ministry… all full time jobs. Supposedly the other people in the congregation are supposed to step up and minister themselves, but I just don’t see that happening on a large scale. The result is just a starved church that is not growing because there’s nobody really leading them.

3. Bi-vocational ministers can’t get good jobs. Even if a pastor decided to be bi-vocational and pay for seminary him/herself without being paid, they don’t have the job skills to get paid very well in any other vocation because they don’t have further training in other vocations. So what you have are pastors who work low paying jobs and try to do ministry on the side. Either that or you’re going to have pastors who have just done 3 years of seminary go back to graduate school for 3 more years of something else. That’s just abuse.

What about the practical reasons for bi-vocational ministry?

1. You can have a “natural” way of ministering to people. This is the “incarnational” ministry model from the emerging church. This is Chris Marshall’s argument that postmoderns do not trust pastors. While its true that working can give you an excuse to see or interact with someone, this is one very narrow and time consuming way to interact with a dozen people. One better way is to join clubs or associations. I played table tennis at a table tennis club and made more friendships and deeper friendships in 6 months than I did in 2 years at my job. It was just more natural and conducive to social interaction. They do not need to see you as a pastor, they can just see you as a guy who is really into ping pong. Work is for work. You might spend 8 hours working and only spend 40 minutes during lunch “ministering to coworkers.”

2. The church is desperate financially. The church is desperate financially because of a lack of giving. It is not due to any recession. It’s not due to rising gas prices. If the church did not buy into consumerism, they could easily give 20% rather than the 2% they currently give.

3. Bi-vocational ministry is congruent with the values of the emerging church and house/organic churches. What are the values of the emerging church? What is the goal of organic churches? Isn’t it for people to know Christ and follow him? The goal is not decentralization. The goal is not to be grass-roots for the intrinsic value of being grass-roots.

Marshall predicts this, “I would suspect that within 10 years due to these emerging church trends and economic realities in America that the number of vocational pastors may decrease by as much as 50%. “

I seriously doubt it. The true economic reality is that there are only so many hours in a day and a bi-vocational ministry is unsustainable. The economic reality is that a person only has so many hours a day to devote to work, ministry and family. The economic reality is that seminary costs 60K. In fact, I would assert that bi-vocational ministry is even less practical today in the US than it was in the first century during Paul’s time. Professions are becoming more and more specialized. Even low level jobs require a lot of training. It takes a 5 year apprenticeship to become a plumber. It takes 2 years of school to become a radiology tech.

Chad Wright (a pastor/photographer) calls bi-vocational ministry, “… you work your tail off at a regular job and then do the same for the church.

I agree.

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Sunday, August 24, 2008

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:59:40 GMT

Simple, not green.

photo by annia316

Recently I read Dr. Scorgie’s post on whether or not Christianity will become a force to protect the environment. He characterizes worldviews that do not ascribe to a green Christianity as “sinister” and those that do as “healthy” and “hopeful.” Evangelicals have traditionally been labeled ‘conservative’ politically and therefore against environmentalism but there seems to be a new movement towards an environmentally friendly evangelicalism.

It’s not convincing.

I think it’s really really cool to be green. When someone drives a Prius or tells me they bike to work, I seriously think that the person is really cool. It helps that these people dress very fashionably and are usually artistic and technologically advanced also. I’m not joking or being sarcastic. When people talk about recycling or refuse to use Styrofoam, I admire them. They live downtown so they can walk to work or use mass transit. They buy groceries from local growers and eat organic.

But I just can’t buy it. Why?

Because being an environmentalist is an argument of degree. It’s not yes or no… it’s how much? Very few people would argue that littering is okay. Very few people would want to cough on smog all day. I don’t want to either. So to that degree, I am an environmentalist.

Here is the Chicago Statement on Biblical Application on Stewardship of the Environment:

We affirm that stewardship of the Lord’s earth includes the productive use of its resources which must always be replenished as far as possible.
We affirm that avoidable pollution of the earth, air, water, or space is irresponsible.

What does “as far as possible” mean? What is “avoidable?” Does that mean that we should all live Amish lifestyles? Does that mean that we should live like Native Americans did before Columbus? I would argue that both lifestyles are clearly possible. All pollution is avoidable if we live lifestyles like that. Yet very few environmentalists live Amish lifestyles.

Another issue I have is the arrogance of environmentalists. We are saving the earth for the future right? How do we know what the future will look like? Global warming is based off of an arrogance that we could project a future of catastrophe. We have no idea what the future will be like. There are so many mitigating factors that it’s best left in the hands of God who created the earth.

Yet there is one area where environmentalists have hit on a real problem.

Consumption. Our society is a consumer society. It needs consumption to drive the market. Businesses are constantly seeking to create new needs rather than just fulfilling the needs that already exist. Why would you want to create a need when you don’t have one? Businesses are all about making you feel more poor than you really are. Business are about making you feel uglier than you really are. Businesses are all about making you feel hungrier than you are. They are about making you feel dirtier, smellier, slower, lonelier, colder, hotter, and basically just worse. That way they can step in and sell you something to fix your needs.

What does that do, that makes you buy something, consume something. That is how we destroy our environment. We consume it because we “need” so many things. Then you have to work really hard in order to buy these things. Then the time we spend at work is spent making things for other people to consume which they do not really need. That makes us feel unfulfilled in life. So we have to buy more in order to fulfill our desires. It’s a vicious cycle of consumption.

What drives this cycle of consumption is greed. The cycle of consumption has been set up to feed the need for businesses to grow. If you’ve ever worked in a business environment, you know that just making the same amount of money you did last year is a disaster. You need to grow. In other words, you need to make more money. In otherwords, you need to make people consume more of your product.

Living a simpler life and consuming less is a much more biblically grounded concept than environmentalism. God cares about people and we should care about people. He’s told us to love him and love others but we don’t have time to do either anymore. We’re so busy working in order to make money. If we live simpler lives, the environmental issue will take care of itself. If we devote ourselves to God rather than to money, the environment will take care of itself. If our society will stop being so greedy, we will naturally live much more sustainable lives.

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Saturday, August 09, 2008

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:53:09 GMT

Why are Asian American church leaders so obsessed with multi-ethnic church?

photo compilation by pardeshi

Asian American (AA) church leaders are particularly concerned with building multi-ethnic churches. In fact, EVERY Asian American pastor that I personally know has at least seriously considered building a multi-ethnic church. But why?

There are a number of possible reasons: (Much of this is my own personal observation, so take it all with a grain of salt. It is not meant to offend anybody… my observations may not even be true.)

1. Theology and hermeneutics

2. Ethnic church baggage

3. Identity issues

Lets start with the first reason: Theology

This doesn’t fly with me as the real reason. There are so many great pastors out there but very few of them champion the multi-ethnic cause like Asian Americans do. Every well known AA church leader is associated with or has written about the multi-ethnic church. Why is it that out of all the non Asian pastors I know personally, none of them are seriously involved with a multi-ethnic ministry? There are a few books being written about multi-ethnic churches, but the number pales in comparison to the number of books being written about the emerging church, pentecostal movement, women in ministry or any other church issue. Outside of the Asian American church, its not a big issue. Now AA leaders may say that it ought to be a big issue, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people don’t seem to find the theological basis for this movement compelling enough to take action.

If theology was the real reason, why has the theology resonated so well with AA pastors, but not so well with other ethnicities?

Ethnic church baggage

Ouch, getting a bit personal here. I haven’t met one AA church leader without some ethnic church baggage. I personally definitely have some baggage. I really feel for AA church leaders because I feel like this group of people have seriously been battered and bruised. Nobody has mentored them. They’ve largely been put down and abused. But doesn’t every church leader have some church baggage? Maybe. Possibly. But if other ethnicities have the same church baggage, it hasn’t been nearly as well documented as the struggles of AA church leaders.

AA church leaders largely do not want to stay in bilingual ethnic churches. Perhaps they’ve been so scarred by their own ethnic church that when the possibility of escaping that ethnicity arises they embrace it? Possibly.

Identity issues

Asian Americans have identity issues. I’ve faced it myself. People ask me “where are you from?” I have to say “China” or else they will be confused. I go back to China and tell the people there that I am Chinese and they say, “no you aren’t, you’re American.” So I’m not American and I’m not Chinese. I’m nothing.

The Asian American culture is far less established than Hispanic American or African American culture and I think this leads to confusion and displacement among Asian Americans. They do not have an established cultural identity which leads them to seek a church where there is no established cultural identity — the multi-ethnic church.

I think this last reason is probably the strongest. But who knows? Lend your observations. Tell me why you think Asian American church leaders are obsessed with multi-ethnic.

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Thursday, August 07, 2008

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 05:07:45 GMT

I could write pages and pages on this…

photo by dasasaki

We know that the Asian American population is growing… particularly the American born Asian population. But where are Asian Americans headed? Which church will minister to them? Will it be bilingual churches? Will it be Asian American churches? Or will it be multi-ethnic churches?

Due to the huge surge in population (look at the charts in my last post) Asian American churches will grow in all forms. I believe English ministries will grow larger and more robust, Asian American churches will grow both in number of churches and the size of the churches themselves, and so will multi-ethnic churches. But I believe that Asian American churches will capture the largest portion of this population increase. Second generation Asian Americans are going to be choosing their own churches for the first time in large numbers, and they will overwhelmingly choose Asian American churches.

Churches are primarily built to support a single culture. Whether or not this is biblical is debatable, but the fact is that only 5% of churches in America are racially integrated. Pastor Ken brings up the homophily principle in his video presentation. African-Americans have historically attended African-American churches. Hispanic-Americans have attended Hispanic-American churches. Thus it follows that Asian Americans will attend Asian American churches. Again, this is not a matter of whether or not this is desirable. This is just plain what happens. It’s very difficult to argue against the fact that Asian Americans will naturally want to be with other Asian Americans. They feel more comfortable. They know you understand them on certain levels.

For the first time EVER, Asian Americans are developing a distinct ethnic culture that is all their own. Church attendance will reflect that culture. For the first time we are seeing distinctly Asian American cultural icons. Anime, boba, asian yogurt places, none of these things existed when I was in high school. Especially in California, Asian American culture is finally defining itself. The reason? The biggest reason is that for the first time there are enough Asian Americans to create their own culture separate from their parents culture and separate from mainstream American culture. They will therefore have a church that is separate from their parents and also separate from mainstream America.

Why not bilingual churches with English ministries?

I am sure English ministries in Asian churches will thrive like they have never thrived before, but many will find discontentment in English ministries. Why? Because that is not their native culture. We have already witnessed the big struggles between generations and those struggles have been well documented. English ministries will grow, but it will continue to be very difficult. It is my own personal observation that while some English ministries are doing well, these English ministries are few and far between and require a very unique mix of leadership. On top of that, the thriving English ministries are chock full of people who do not rock the boat. These English ministries have been around for awhile, and have not been able to reach a significant number of non-Christian Asian Americans. The percentage of Asian Americans that attend Asian churches is very low. This speaks volumes about the current system that is trying to minister to them.

Why not multi-ethnic churches?

While I believe multi-ethnic churches will grow and many Asian Americans will go to multi-ethnic churches, they will not be the largest segment of growth. Why? Because of the homophily principle. It’s just too difficult. We are talking about real people here rather than lofty ideals. Real people have a tendency to hang out with people who are like them. The majority of multi-ethnic churches are actually single ethnicity churches that “wannabe” multi-ethnic. That is the way it will be in the future. Perhaps a lot of the new Asian American churches will call themselves multi-ethnic, but they will actually be AA in ethnicity.

I would not be surprised to see the number of Asian American churches to grow tenfold in the next 10-15 years. The only question now is, who will lead them?

Next post: Why are Asian American church leaders obsessed with the idea of multi-ethnic churches?

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