Korean American Christian Blog

Confession: I have organized far too many things for imaginary people. Let me explain...

As leaders, many of us spend a good amount of time creating new projects, structures, campaigns, programs, and events for people. Many of these activities are considered avenues to increasing the health, morale, productivity, and longevity of an organization or business. There's no doubt that these kinds of creative development offer life to the organization or business.

Nevertheless, some companies and organizations still don't fulfill their mission (or in some cases, end up dying) even with sincere efforts towards these activities. Although there are several factors that lead to this kind of derailing of mission or organizational death, I would like to focus on just one of these contributing elements.

I used to work for a church that had ample budget and man-power to produce and pull-off many great events and programs. It wasn't uncommon in that setting to spend thousands of dollars on advertisement, staffing, and development to produce the "perfect" event or program. Through much trial and error, I learned that all the money in the world could not replace the value of connecting directly with the actual people we were trying to benefit.

This past Sunday at New Hope, we kicked off a new series of teachings called, "Crossroad: A Theological Praxis from the Streets". This new series will focus on developing a theology rooted in the streets as exemplified by Christ's interaction with humanity during his time here on earth. As a former professor of theology and ministry for 9 years, I was able to see and experience some of the disconnect between the theology formed in academia from that of practitioners ministering in the field. Although much good is produced from the ivory tower, I believe there needs to be some more field-based development of our theological lenses.

This series is designed to encourage, challenge, and inspire the hearer to reconsider the stories of Christ's interaction with people on the streets in hopes of developing a practical theology for day-to-day ministry, especially outside the walls of the church. I invite you to listen and interact via this blog about the topics introduced during this series.

Click here to hear this message on the New Hope podcast (iTunes required). [Please keep in mind that it may take a few minutes or hours for this particular podcast to show up on iTunes. It is there. :) Just click on subscribe and it should start downloading.]

Yesterday at New Hope, we continued our series of teachings entitled, "Sacred Kinship". The focus of this series centers around this notion of biblical kinship and its impact on how we live our faith within the context of family, friendship, community, and mission. I'm anticipating that this series will help to frame a healthy context for life with those we love.