As I was driving home from morning prayer today, I heard a song on the Christian radio that really spoke to me. In the last couple of weeks, I have been speaking a lot (via sermon, blog, meetings with people, etc) on this whole topic of self-centered Christianity that is pervading the Church. In fact, […]
Days of Devotion
I read an article this morning by Margaret Manning. It just reinforced a lot of things that I have been writing about this week, especially about how Muslims view us and also about the “self-centered me” Christianity that we have tolerated here in the States. Manning writes, “September is a very important month for Jews […]
Reconnecting with a Pastor Friend
Today, I had lunch with a pastor friend from the county. We are from a different background, ethnicity and even experiences but God sovereignly brought us together about 10 years ago. It is a friendship that I cherish. We realized that it has been a very long time since the last time we connected. We […]
A Consumer Generation?
We have heard a lot about how our generation is a consumer generation more than ever before and we don’t know how to commit to something. In defense of our generation this is not always the case. I have seen many young people commit to things with their whole life… maybe it is because there […]
Déjà Vu a la Church’s Role
When we first started the church, we had to grapple with the issue of the church’s and the para-church’s role on campus. Since we were a fully functioning church with a focus on the campus, we ran into some problems with the para-church. Maybe I should say it was more of a conflict of interest. […]
A Response to a Post
First of all, let me try to explain once again why I do not have a comment section on my blog. In fact, there are a lot of people who have said various things about me for not enabling the comment section. I understand I am not a true blogger if I don’t have the […]
Die-Hard Chicago Fan
It is good to be a Chicago fan today. Cubs 4, St. Louis 2 Bears 20, Kansas City 10 Die-hard fans are hard to come by nowadays. We are hoping that this will be the year of glory!
Raising the Next Generation of Leaders
I just came back from meeting with some of the men in our church. Several weeks ago, I sent out an invitation to all the men in our leadership team (TEAM Community) about being part of a group who will get discipled and trained to be future pastors and ministry leaders. It was encouraging to […]
Reflections on a Whirlwind Day
Morning – Our first all day training conference for our TEAM Community (leadership community for our small group leaders and ministry team leaders). It was great having the leaders of HMCC of Chicago join us for the conference. It was also a blessing to see non-pastors teaching some of the classes to equip the people […]
Ramadan and Christians Fasting
For many Christians, the start of Ramadan came and went. Ramadan in 2007 started yesterday, September 13th and will continue for 30 days until Friday, October 12th. During this month there are a lot of various religious observances that a Muslim is suppose to follow. The most common practice during this month is the daytime […]
The Joy of Music
Since people know I enjoy all kinds of music, one of my members recommended a website awhile back that plays all “kinds of music” for FREE. Yup, you heard me right… FREE. It is called The Pandora Radio, which is sponsored by the The Music Genome Project. The best part of this is that you […]
The Car of the Millennium
I grew up with Mattel’s Hot Wheels. I remember just playing with the die-cast metal cars for hours and imagining I was a race car driver. Also, as I was growing up, I idolized Speed Racer and pretended to have my own Mach 5. Do you remember what all those buttons did on his steering […]
Karissa’s 4th B-Day
I cannot believe KiKi is 4 years old now. Time has flown by quickly. We followed our b-day tradition: 1) We allowed the birthday person to pick a restaurant that they want to go to. KiKi picked Macaroni Grill not for the food but because of their Smothered Chocolate Cake. This girl is starting early […]
Kite Flying and the Holy Spirit
After dinner, the kids and I decided to go kite flying. It wasn’t as windy as we wanted it to be but it was sufficient. As we were taking turns in flying the kite, I was trying to teach the kids to wait for the wind and then let the wind take the kite up […]