God is Moving

This Saturday we had our first Covenant Church Launch Team Meeting! This is most, but not all, of our Launch Team--a great group of people, who are quickly becoming dear friends and fellow family and servants of Jesus. We will be meeting together every Saturday to pray, plan, discuss, fellowship, worship, and prepare to serve the city of Seoul! There has been so much happening, as life in Korea is getting busier and busier, as God continues to guide and shape His plan for Covenant church. This past week was filled with preparatory work, mainly involving the purchasing of our new Church Office Space that we just moved into today! God graciously provided in leading us to a place that was nearly half the cost of other buildings around Seoul! We have been preparing non-stop to set up everything in the building from finding a designer to construct and install the outside signs; order chairs, desks, tables, and a book shelf; and this week put up new wallpaper, paint the ceiling, and install extra lights. God is really putting everything together quickly, as the building should be fully ready by Thursday! I am really excited to move from a lot of task-oriented work to reaching out to people, as we will begin doing in earnest this week and next! Our vision for Covenant Church Plant is not simply to start a worshiping community with a few people, but to first be an Outreach Center that offers nearly free English classes to Koreans of all ages and levels in English. Currently, Jae and Hannah Yoo, and I are working on a beginning curriculum that offers a couple classes for children, youth, college students, young professions, and adults. The vision for our Outreach Center has its roots in 2 Corinthians 4:14: "But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him." Our desire is to be the sweet aroma of Christ in the city of Seoul, following God's leading in using us to spread the knowledge of Jesus Christ in every place. Many young Koreans from teenagers to college students to young professionals are disillusioned and bitter toward the church, seeing Christianity as a dying breed amidst the struggles, pleasures, and immediate needs of this life. Rather than seeking to show Christ and the gospel and how they directly relate to and transform the issues in our lives and the world, the Korean Church here often misses them through offering a recylced, spiritualized, seeker-friendly version of Christianity that doesn't measure up to reality--a very common issue and failure of the church throughout the world. Our vision is use teaching English--which is a great need for all Koreans, especially for college students and young professionals--to show and spread the knowledge of Christ in classes concerning the gospel, worldview, God's existence, current issues, the workplace and business world, and other classes that will engage the lives of Koreans, while hoping to show them how Christ and the gospel relate to and transform all areas of life. In doing this, we will seek to serve and effect the community of Koreans around us, while looking to begin worshiping once God brings a decent number of people with the desire and need to join our church. We will mostly offer classes on nights and weekends, and will hopefully be able to move from starting on a smaller scale to a much larger ministry as God brings people into our contacts to serve alongside us. It's incredible to see how He is already doing that. This week our focus will be on networking and spreading the word to Koreans about our Outreach Center, basing what classes we offer first on what age groups sign up to come. However few or many come is not the point, as we pray that God would use our ministry to point any Koreans that come to the transforming person of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Please pray that God would fill the Yoo's hearts, mine, and our Launch Team with Christ, that we might be the sweet aroma of Christ to anyone who comes in our path, exhorting all to come and eat and drink of the free gift of life eternal and life abundant in Jesus Christ alone for the glory of God and the joy of all people's.

Yesterday, I went to my first Korean-speaking worship service with the Yoo family. It was a beautiful experience to hear Koreans worship and praise God in their heart language, and to hear the the pastor preach in Korean but then hear it translated through my very handy head-set. The most memorable moment of the service came when the Korean choir sang the beautiful version of "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" by John Rutter. Immediately, memories flooded my mind of the many times I sang this song with my family, as it is a song we usually sing at least every Christmas together before leaving each other's fellowship. As these Koreans sang in their own language, I felt my worlds colliding for one of the first times, as God brought a profound bridge of beautiful continuity between these worlds, cultures, peoples, and continents, revealing His presence powerfully and simultaneously in and through both. It was as if I could hear my family and former community singing together this truly amazing blessing from God Himself from the past, urging me forward in God's blessing to press on, because He is here just as He was there; and yet, not only them, but combined in there past singing was synchronized a new culture and people who sang the same blessing from God over me in there country and culture, leading me to see that God's blessing and presence is unlimited in its scope and power, existing and heard and sung in every continent and part of the world. What a sweet, rich, and amazing experience of God's grace and power, as His hand of blessing and mercy extends throughout the world. How glorious to experience and learn how God enables His people to live as sojourners and strangers in a foreign land who are, at the same time, always at home through always being in the presence of God our Father and His global family of believers bought and adopted by the blood of His Son. If the experience I had yesterday is as great as it was, I cannot even imagine how indescribably beautiful and magnificent that day will be when all the family of God from all lands, ages, and cultures will come together to worship our Savior and Lord in perfect love and communion. Rather than having that day lead me to seek such a home now--a utopia of my own making on earth according to my own wishes and desires--I pray that God would use that vision of His greater Kingdom to implant an unquenchable desire in me to extend that invitation to as many people as God puts in my path, desiring that others would come to taste and see how good our God is in Jesus Christ! May God never cease to remind you of how high, wide, deep, and vast His love and Kingdom extend: from the furthest corners of the globe in other cultures, worlds, and languages that seem to difficult to enter and affect to the all-too familiar places in many of our lives that seem beyond God's reach. His grace is, indeed sufficient; His mercy surely reaches from age to age; His power absolutely knows no limit, and His love truly does endure forever and, as David says, is better than life itself. May you abound richly and deeply in Christ, knowing and believing in your hearts and lives in word and deed that transformation, life, substance, meaning, righteousness, goodness, grace, justice, love, joy, peace, and satisfaction are found only in Him.

Family and friends, thank you so much for your love and support--you mean so much to me, and are being used by God to continually have a deep impact on my life in Korea. Know that I am praying for you often, even as I pray this blessing from God upon your day-to-day lives in Christ:

"The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace" --Numbers 6:24-26