“Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Matthew 9:37 Almost twenty years ago, in 2005, I received my call to ministry. I was in India, looking out at a landscape of green fields with the occasional Asian Water Buffalo grazing amidst the grass, and then I thought of the billions of people in India who did not know Christ. In that moment, I was struck…
Well, another week has come and gone. It’s another week since we’ve planted the church. Another week since my Father-in-law died and has gone to be with the Lord. It’s another week since we have moved from Atwater Village to Glendale. And it’s another week of trying to discern where the Lord is leading us as Ethos Communion Church. There is a potential space for us to gather in Gardena. And we had…
If you didn’t know, baseball is one of my hobbies. To be more specific, developing my son into a baseball player is one of my hobbies. As we are on this journey of him becoming the best hitter and pitcher that he can be, we of course have an interest in Shohei Ohtani who is the generational, if not legendary player, who is hall of fame caliber at both hitting and pitching. In…
This is the sermon I gave this past Sunday for Ethos Communion Church. It’s a pretty important concept for me, so I’m posting it here. Updates This past week, I went to an EFCA Assessment retreat for church planters. If you didn’t know the EFCA is the Evangelical Free Church of American, it’s a denomination that we as a church are in the process of joining. And this assessment retreat is where they…
This past Lord’s Day was the soft launch worship service for Ethos Communion Church. We met in my backyard, and there were 22 adults, 3 teenagers, and 6 children present. The service was interrupted briefly by a heavy drizzle which just so happened to start in the middle of my sermon. I took it as God’s sense of humor and his way of saying: “Get to the point son!” After concluding the sermon,…
So this post is probably long overdue because I’ve been planning to do this since the end of December, but anyway, here it is… I will be planting a church. Let me back things up a bit to explain. In 2005, when I was first entering into ministry, I began with the intention of becoming a missionary. This was sparked by a short-term mission trip in India. One day, I was looking out…
What does it mean to be fully human? I mentioned this idea in the second post and I want to elaborate. I have come to realize there are so many people who are not fully human. They are disconnected souls. What do I mean by that? What is a soul? Now, theologians and philosophers can give you many answers to that question, but the way I think about it simply is that a…
When I was admitted to the hospital, I was placed in a room right next to a very needy woman. I don’t know what she looked like, but I could hear her voice: “Help. Help. Help! HELP ME!” At first, her cries made me think she was in a very serious condition. But as time went on, I came to realize that she was just a very needy person. The nurse would come…
Can pastors have panic attacks? Well, the answer is yes, obviously. Perhaps a more accurate question would be, “Should pastors have panic attacks?” That was the question running through my mind. Why did this happen to me? Over the years, I had preached several times that anxiety was sinful. Scripture explicitly commands us not to be anxious (Philippians 4:6; Matthew 6:25, 31). I had even spent the past year preaching through Hebrews 11,…
Welcome to my new blog. It will chronicle the beginning of a new journey for me. And this journey begins with a panic attack. On November 29, 2023, I’m sitting in my church office. It seemed to be a very ordinary Wednesday studying for my next Lord’s Day sermon. But then something weird happens. My vision is disoriented and I feel dizzy. Other people in the office are sick, so I figure that…