Love is Sharing!

I'd like to think that my lack of posting is due to the hectic nature of a short-term mission trip, where every second of a far too quickly dwindling month should be spent on something more important than writing on the internet. I sure hope that's the case because I'd like this blog to help me remember all that's been going on and everything that I think about. I think far too often I rely on my faulty memory and end up wasting some valuable a-ha moments.

And secondly, I still can't decide how much I want to write in this blog in terms of my own personal emotions and thoughts. I certainly don't want this to be a list of things I did. Perhaps more important than the actual events are the way that they have impacted a person.

The next few blogs will be some overdue backtracking, so please bear with me.

The week between July 14th and 21st (when the Korean team came) was fun but pushed me off routine a tad too much. I admit I got caught up in the heyday of meeting a bunch of new genuine Korean girls (as did the rest of the guys on the team ha!) as well as some really cool brothers. It was a whole new world for me as my only source of Korean exposure comes from the rather diluted Korean-American experience. Most of them could barely speak Korean and being forced to speak Korean constantly for the first time in a long long long time, I became quite cheng pee hae at my poor excuse for being Korean. A small, but valuable lesson of life - I'm Korean. Learn Korean. (Exactly how I'll accomplish this I don't know...)

STEM, Grace Fellowship, and the Korean team joined together to hold a camp at the Horizon resort on July 17th through the 19th. The camp was called "Grace Fellowship Episode 1 - Love Is Sharing" (I asked why it was called "Episode 1", the answer? Because it sounds cool.) I know we had been praying for 40 non-Christians to come, but only around fifteen came. There were a lot more Christians from Grace Fellowship, STEM and the Korean team than there were non-Christians, but in hindsight, it turned out to be perfect.

The camps that STEM held in 2005 and 2006 revolved around teaching English and sharing the gospel as a kind of side-thing. This camp however was centered around the theme of love and sharing. When I initially heard this, I couldn't even imagine what kind of activities we could do. But Grace Fellowship planned all the events and schedules and gave the Korean team and STEM time slots for our skits and special songs. (On a side note, I'd like to add that I was truly blessed and impressed by the fact that Grace Fellowship planned everything. Pastor Jeff always says that the number one priority of STEM is to support the local church, not supplant it.)

I think the most memorable activity was this candle/prayer ceremony and love feast. I'm too lazy to look for the pictures so basically P'Koy (Grace Fellowship's pastor's wife) made the shape of Thailand with chopsticks on the ground and everyone stood around the outline with candles in our hands. We sang "Dangshineun Sarangbatgeewieh Taeyunnan Saram" and prayed for each other and the nation of Thailand. Then we participated in a love feast where we expressed our love for one another in hugs, words, and feeding each other snacks.

The camp felt much more like a Christian church retreat rather than an evangelistic camp, but nevertheless two Thai girls named Aom and Kay accepted Christ as their savior. Aom had been coming out to Grace Fellowship for a couple months and had already helped us out so much before she was even Christian. Kay is the younger sister of twins that already attend Grace Fellowship. Kay had wanted to become Christian for almost two years and was afraid about what her mother would say, but the Spirit moved her to accept at this camp. (Remember my "Sign From God" post? Dan Matsuoka implied in his comment that I was stretching the text to fit my own situation. It's true. But God still did encourage us that day. And now, two Thai students were saved. What was the number of each animal Noah was called to take on the ship? Two! A Miracle! j/k)

I believe the biggest lesson we learned from this camp is that more than the couple thousand dollars STEM and Korean team spent, hours on dances, skits, and dramas, seeds were already being planted for months and years by Grace Fellowship before we held this camp. I was reminded of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." I think far too often short-term teams go to mission fields thinking they're going to reap this huge harvest by all their own preparation, but in reality, short-term teams know way too little about culture or language to effectively evangelize. Short-term missions is designed to support the local church or long-term missions. And God truly revealed this to be the case, but in the end, we all gave glory to God for His working.

I'll finish this post with one last thing about Grace Fellowship. What I love and admire about Grace Fellowship is that it is not a church that opens only on Sundays, but is open practically 24/7 to all who wish to come and just hang out, do homework, play board games, or talk. Obviously the fact that it's literally right across the street from the university helps create this type of setting, but at Grace Fellowship, Christians and non-Christians interact on a daily basis. There are activities periodically throughout the week where some seeker-friendly messages are shared, just to get people thinking about the meaning of life, love, death, and other important things that many people often ignore amidst of all of life's hustle and bustle. More direct, gospel messages with opportunities to accept Christ are given every so often, but hell and brimstone is forced down no one's throat.

Grace Fellowship seeks to create relationship before anything else. In America, I think we rely far too often on truth-encounters (direct gospel messages of heaven/hell, etc) that tend to scare people away or bring hasty judgment upon Christians. But here, Grace Fellowship uses relationship to share God's love with action before any words. The goal is to try and make others see the overflowing joy and the worth of a purposeful life in being a Christian.

One added benefit of this approach is that when people do accept Christ, they are already plugged into a community and have understood subconsciously what it means to love and share within the church. The physical community established even before personal salvation is only made stronger as the new believer now joins the spiritual community. Think about American Christianity and its emphasis on revivals and individual salvation. People do get saved and accept Jesus as their savior, but a lot of times people don't know what to do after that. They are told to go to church, but everyone knows how hard it is to become a part of a new community. It is a scary and vulnerable situation. And far too often, American Christians believe that commitment to one local church is not as important as their own individual relationship with Christ - they fail to see the very direct relationship between individual salvation and corporate community. So there are just way too many Christians hopping from church to church with a consumer mentality, seeking this perfect church that does not exist.

I don't know if such a ministry could work, even at Sarang. I try to put myself in the shoes of being a Recomm leader again and trying to reach out to others this way but it seems impossible. All I know is that the purposeful interaction we have at home between believer and non-believer is far too little. The church as been called to share God's love with all people, not just within the church. So I challenge anyone who's reading to try to think of ways we can do just that.

"Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God." - William Carey

With much love,
Eric