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Ministry of Reconciliation - God is the Initiator

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Ministry of Reconciliation - God is the Initiator

So the last three articles looking at the passage of 2 Cor. 5:10-17  was a set up to help us dig further into “the ministry of reconciliation,” what it is and what it means for us in receiving its benefits and in participating in the work. Here’s a summary for the last section: 

In light of the wisdom of "the fear of the Lord", knowing we will appear before the Judgment seat of Christ, we persuade others. Because of the Gospel message, we do not boast in ourselves, and we are compelled to serve others and share the Gospel. This is our response to Christ's sacrifice and our great love for Him, not because we deserve to but because He chose us anyways and made us spiritually new, with a new identity, giving us spiritual lenses. 

Though it was a set up for digging into “the ministry of reconciliation,” the verses we read didn’t mention it directly. This next section does, so we’ll take some time to define it more. Let’s start with reading through the next section of Scripture. 

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Ministry of Reconciliation - Acknowledge Spiritual Realities

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Ministry of Reconciliation - Acknowledge Spiritual Realities

This article is the third in a series about the Ministry of Reconciliation. You can find the others here.

And finally, a part of spreading the Gospel is POINT #3 - v16-17 Acknowledge Spiritual Realities. In other words, as we saw in the previous article on this, there’s no longer any distinctions (age, gender, ethnicity…) that we as Christians use to evaluate people, only looking to the spiritual reality of their eternal destinies.

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Ministry of Reconciliation - We Persuade Others

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Ministry of Reconciliation - We Persuade Others

This article is the second in a series about the Ministry of Reconciliation. You can find the others here.

We’ll pull the points directly out of the passage here. POINT #1 - We persuade others v11-13. This point comes after Paul’s acknowledgment of the fear of the Lord in regards to His infinite power and the impending judgement for all.

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The Fear of the Lord - Ministry of Reconciliation

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The Fear of the Lord - Ministry of Reconciliation

The last two weeks of July, I had the opportunity to preach the Gospel, specifically on a topic I’ve been wanting to dive more into, reconciliation. There are several passages in the New Testament that draw out this aspect of the Gospel, but one in particular that stands out to me is in 2 Corinthians 5:11-6:2, where Paul lays out what he calls the Ministry of Reconciliation. In the coming weeks I’ll share my writing from my studying on this topic that I used in my sermons.

In this first post I will share how I laid out the phrases of the passage selection and highlighted patterns. Doing this allows you to find the main points and repeated themes or words of importance. This first post will also take a step back into 2 Cor. 5:10 as the setup for the rest of the section, as well as looking at a brief overview of the Gospel doctrine of reconciliation, which will be covered much more in depth in a future post.

Back to in person school

Here’s a quick update for the Education Assistance Program. It’s been a weird and ever-changing school year for everyone, but we did what we could to be flexible with every new change and challenge between all the school districts and how they were implementing their hybrid and virtual school schedules. As of this week, all districts in Iowa are doing 100% in person or virtual school, so all hybrid schedules have stopped (for now). So for us and helping our students, we won’t be doing our early afternoon tutoring time that we were doing to help them get their at-home assignments done for their hybrid school days since they are all back in class full time, which is great for them. For our program, we are working on finding a way to create a weekly or periodic extra tutoring times and utilizing some of the great volunteers that have jumped in over the last few months to give some extra help to these students and work to fill in the gap that they are having to overcome with their education. Continue to pray for them and their education, and our schools and how they are working to help all the kids get caught up from this frustrating year. God is good and has continued to be a blessing to us and our churches as we work together to be a blessing to the students in our community.

Update and Launch Dates for Education Assistance

Update and Launch Dates for Education Assistance

Here’s an update on our Education Assistance program launch date. We will be planning to launch officially on Tues. 10/27 and then on Fri. 11/6. This will allow us to avoid conflicts with Halloween and Election Day, and then the following Tues. 11/10, we will begin regular Tues/Fri tutoring days from 12-4pm.

The internet situation has been an unresolved headache still…

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Education Assistance Plan Update

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Education Assistance Plan Update

Thank you for all your prayer and support for the Education Assistance program we are developing. We did a soft-launch test the second week of September to get a picture of what we were needing to work on. It proved eye opening so we have a lot to work on.

I am currently working on focusing our plan so we can officially launch with a more streamlined and hopefully productive system.

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An Unexpected Journey to meet an Unforeseen Need

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An Unexpected Journey to meet an Unforeseen Need

Life has unexpected turns in it, but God is always faithful. I will give more backstory to our journey at a later date, but here is what we’re up to right now:

COVID-19 has made everything chaotic this year and things that were hard before are now acutely frustrating and even unmanageable. School for K-12 in particular is in a bad spot with lots of controversy and no clear answers, and many vulnerable families and communities are worse off because of it. One such group in particular that is being hit hardest are immigrant and refugee families because of language barriers and many working multiple jobs to provide for their families. The issue when it comes to online homework assignments and online or hybrid classes is the parents and care-takers who know very little English cannot help their children do basic homework assignments because they don't understand the instructions.

Things are changing...

In short, It’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about my blog, obviously. That’s a long story for another day. But for now I want to put this out there: The world is kind of crazy right now.

And on that note, our lives have changed a lot too. Here’s the quick answer. We’ve been helping a church plant in Urbandale (Des Moines suburb), called CityPoint, since around February 2019. It’s been a great fit for us and we’ve been able to serve more and more in different roles. We’ve been leading the music for the past year, as well as small groups, and other various areas.

The biggest shift is that I’m now leaving coffee in less than a week, and I will be fully fundraising to support our family and a new Education and Homework assistance program for immigrant and refugee families that we are creating. We are primarily focusing on the Congolese community, because our church shares a building with a Congolese church, and so our efforts will start there.

More info and stories to come soon….

Give Online:
https://citypointu.churchcenter.com/home
"community assistance" fund

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Des Moines, Topping Lists and Drawing Church Planters

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Des Moines, Topping Lists and Drawing Church Planters

It's more than coincidence that a city like Des Moines is topping lists, which are praising it's current status as well as it's projected rise to prominence, while God is also calling church planters here as well as sparking growth in many other area ministries.

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You have to be close to listen.

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You have to be close to listen.

Oswald Chambers' My Utmost For His Highest is one of the most popular devotionals ever complied, and a favorite of mine that has never ceased to kick me in the gut when I'm needing it or feeling a little stale. One of the entries that has always jazzed me up is "Called By God" which looks at Isaiah 6:8, one of my favorite sections in Scripture, and one that's often used for people's calls to ministry.

Appreciating Hindsight

Appreciating Hindsight

Over the last several years I've had a lot of various journeys and experiences that I can look back on and learn a lot from. An interesting thing though, is as I get to know new people and we learn about each other or as current friends ask about how various things are going or if I regret certain life decisions or directions, they often seem to be thinking I would have regrets or negative feelings about different things. Sure we can all often wish certain things went differently, but good or bad there's so much to be learned from hindsight, as well as just being flexible enough to not think that something was a failure if it didn't end up the way you expected on the outset.

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Our NOLA trip was a Smash

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Our NOLA trip was a Smash

Our trip to NOLA has wrapped up. We had a great time with the New Orleans Chinese Baptist Church youth group at their retreat weekend where I had a chance to teach more in depth on the elements of the Gospel, our identities in the Gospel, and what it means to be Gospel fluent. We also had a great time hanging with the students…

Officially moved into Des Moines.

Keeva in front of the Capitol building. 

We are finally in our location where we feel God has been preparing us and calling us to plant a church. Keeva is doing a certification class this weekend to begin teaching at La James where she will teach part-time, and also continue to work part-time as a hairstylist at Ulta. I did my first shift tonight at Mars Cafe, my new coffee shop job and our inevitable home away from home. It's a super cool place and I'm pumped to pour into it as both a barista and regular hanging out with the other regulars. Bonus, it's about 10 blocks from our house, so I can quickly ride my bike to work, though I may need to invest in some different tires for the snow....

Thanks to Keeva's oldest brother Berrik and and our friends Britni and Brandon Holloway, who helped us pack up in Omaha and move into our new place in Des Moines, we are happily chilling in an old duplex from the 1920's with a large living room and connected open dining room. We are looking forward to that place facilitating small group Bible studies, with its good central location and plenty of open communal room to hang out in. 

Continue to pray for us as we meet people and connect in with other ministries and pastors in the city. We haven't yet had a chance to visit any churches to attend for the time being, but will asap. Also pray for us as we go to New Orleans this coming weekend to visit coffee shop friends and our home (at least what we consider our home, Vintage) church friends. Primarily we are going for me to preach a retreat for the youth of the Chinese church, which I, along with others, have done pulpit supply for quite some time. The retreat will be Saturday evening - Monday morning, and we will be walking through the concept of Gospel Fluency, which has been a huge influence on Keeva and I over the last year from our time in Omaha at Coram Deo. All things in life need to be dealt with as an issue of unbelief first, and practical steps secondly. We don't get over an issue of lust, for instance, by mere will power, but first through understanding properly who God is and our relationship to him and others, and then practical steps to break the bad habits secondly. So the idea of Gospel Fluency is that the Gospel is our starting point for overcoming any sin and struggle. 

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” - Romans 1:16-17

 

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We got an apartment! (and website updates)

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We are pumped to move to this beautiful city!

We are pumped to move to this beautiful city!

 After a mind numbing amount of Craigslist searching and driving randomly through neighborhoods we nailed down a place.  It's an old stacked duplex from the 1920s, 2 bed 1 bath with a large living room and open dining room setup which should do well in facilitating new in-home Bible studies and Gospel Communities. It's on University Ave. just off 35th, which is awesome since Mars Cafe is on the same street about 11 blocks away. Biking/skateboarding/walking distance is a luxury I very much prefer after my years living around the corner from barista job at PJ's on Magazine in NOLA. 

Keeva did a practical interview at a cosmetology school and that went well. Now we just need to see what's available and pray about whether she should teach and work at Ulta, or just one or the other. 

With jobs pretty much take care of and a place nailed down, we will be able to move in on August 20 or before depending on the current tenant and the owners turn around time on it. 

Also I'm still learning more and more of all the top notch site development I can do through Squarespace, my hosting and development platform. I added in some contact and feedback in a new page and combined my news and blog posts into one feed for RSS (which the RSS button is on the bottom of the Blog page) and to keep things simple. Also on the new Connect page has an email subscription option. Stay tuned for more updates and a more robust site in the near future!

I leave you with an article from a site that's new to me called Made for More. The article is about how a grace filled life should be rubbing off on those around us.

Why the blog?

I plan to keep this a regularly updated blog and news update site for the ministry journey and adventure that Keeva and I are on. Our call to the Midwest and Church Planting is a recent one (in the last couple of years) and it is something that intimidates and excites us. It's very much a work in progress as we figure things out and improvise as we depend on God and listen to Him as He leads us to these people and places we never anticipated. 

We've learned a ton in the last couple years, especially in the last several months. I will use the blog as an outlet for those growing thoughts and convictions as we move forward pursing the ministry calls on each of our lives. We aren't necessarily trying to blow minds with our thought processes, but many things are new and fresh for us as God grows us through study and interactions with other ministers that will be specific to us and our contexts. 

So follow us here and through various social medias, and pray along with us as we figure this out and work to see God glorified, disciples made, and ministries started in the Des Moines metro area.