#MigrantCaravans
The Western church needs the global church's voice (including POC minorities and refugees in the West) more than ever before. The global church is best equipped with the experiential wisdom to teach the Western church how to read the Bible in its human context:
Written when God's people were refugees or part of a migrant caravan: Gen, Exod, Lev, Num, Deut, Josh, Judg, and Ruth.
Written when God's people were defending against foreign invaders: 1-2 Sam, 1-2 Kgs, 1-2 Chr, Ps, Isa, Jer, Hos, Amos, Obad, Jon, Mic, Nah, Hab, and Zeph.
Written when God's people were enslaved or colonized by foreign empires: Lam, Ezek, Dan, Esth Ezra, Neh, Joel, Hag, Zech, Mal, and the entire New Testament.
Written during a period of privilege, peace, and prosperity: Job, Prov, Eccl, and Song.
Percentage of biblical books/letters written during systemic oppression, slavery, persecution, and warfare: 93.9%.
Percentage of biblical pages written during systemic oppression, slavery, persecution, and warfare: 93.5%.
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1/ Example: I've been working part-time for MNA for about a year now. There's a prevailing consensus (not monolithic) amongst the Korean American brothers that much of MNA's assessment standards are unhelpful, unrealistic, or inapplicable for Korean-American planters.
2/ Money: Most of our churches and presbyteries are still mostly immigrant populated with little extra funds for supporting church planters or RUF TEs. It's not realistic to fundraise the amount MNA/RUF sometimes requires us to or for our wives not to work.
3/ Preaching: Many of us are used to contextualized preaching that addresses the immediate needs of our congregants, whose lives are more drastically affected by politics than those in the majority culture. So when we preach real-life issues, it's inevitable to sound political.
1/ IMO one of the bigger issues with the PCA is that we want multi-ethnicity but white cultural normativity. But we can't have a multi-ethnic denomination without a plurality of cultural normativities depending on the space and context.
2/ Just because people of different races speak the same language doesn't mean cultural normativities will automatically dissipate either. Those cultural barriers will continue to hinder most minorities from feeling welcomed in majority culture spaces.
3/ Koreans were given the denomination's blessing because many of us conformed to the model minority myth & "knew our place." And at least in our own churches and presbyteries, we could create a sub-cultural normativity that would be conducive for reaching other Korean Americans.
1/ #BreonnaTaylor
An excerpt from a sermon preached by Rev. Francis Grimké, a Black Presbyterian minister, on November 20, 1900: "Whether their silence is the result of cowardice, or of blunted moral sensibility, it has operated equally against [Black people].
2/ This is the charge I make against the Anglo-American pulpit today. Its silence has been interpreted as an approval of these horrible outrages. Bad men have been encouraged to continue their acts of lawlessness and brutality.
3/ As long as the pulpits are silent on [racial violence], it is in vain to expect the people to do any better than they are doing. It would be a good thing if we could have a day or special prayer for the pulpits of our land, North as well as South,
1/ We're currently observing the fruit of a century-long, anti-science attitude within some circles of American evangelicalism. Public health officials are applying the scientific method in real-time:
2/ making adjustments to projections, correcting prior hypotheses, taking note of new observations, and repeatedly going back to the drawing board. This is what scientists do and how they arrive at conclusions, a process that usually takes years (if not, decades).
3/ But when we've discipled large swaths of Christians to distrust science, it shouldnt surprise us that the slightest correction by public health officials would result in a complete dismissal of their recommendations, even when the NIH Dir is an evangelical himself.
1/ In the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:9-13), Jesus teaches us to "Your kingdom come...on earth as it is in heaven" before we pray for individual needs of sustenance (v11), reconciliation (v12) & overcoming temptation (v13). But kingdoms are built on & sustained by institutions/systems.
2/ To pray God's Kingdom in heaven come to earth is to pray for the institutions & systems (& the cultures those institutions cultivate) of that Kingdom to come to earth too. This is contrasted to the hypocrites, oftentimes the religious leaders in power, who pray superficially.
3/ Having taken the heavenly origins of systemic reformation on earth into account, the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) is the ushering in of God's Kingdom in heaven on earth, a reformation of institutions & systems that result in a true gospel culture as seen in heaven.
1/ After witnessing the rise of Jim Crow, Francis Grimké, a Black Presbyterian Pastor, wrote in 1916 that churches ought to make us "stronger, better, more determined than ever to do right." And when they stop pursuing this central task, they forfeit their right to exist:
2/ "A church is of value to us just in proportion as it helps us spiritually: as its services tend to build up in Christian character and life. If it doesn't help to make us stronger, better, more determined than ever to do right, it is of no value to us.
3/ Nor are we of any value to the church of which we are members, unless we are helping to make it a more efficient agency for good. If we can be in it, year after year, and it be none the better for our presence, we had just as well be out of it; we had better be out of it.