I recently taught a course on Women, Leadership and the Church at NLF. It was great for me to do the in-depth exegesis, hermeneutics and theology around the issue. It was fantastic for the 100+ people in attendance – male and female. The 5 hour course can be found on-line at NLF. Enjoy the videos below:
The Rule of St. Benedict teaches us about the value of stability, that is, staying in one community over the long-haul. I have been in the New Life Fellowship Church community in Queens (www.newlifefellowship.org) for over 23 years. A lot transpires in 23 years. I have wanted to quit the community more than once and run. I am glad, by God’s grace, that I did not. My failures, weaknesses, mistakes and sins over these years have all been lived out in our fellowship. I love and am grateful for the opportunity to learn and to be part of such a rich, wonderful group of people. The following is a short video of our past year that we showed at our annual meetings of members last Sunday afternoon. I thought you might enjoy it: NLF Highlights 2009-2010 from New Life Fellowship Plus on Vimeo.
When I became a Christian my sophomore year in college, I was birthed into a community (IVCF) that linked the gospel and the bridging of racial, economic and cultural barriers. It was not a specific “calling” for some but a biblical mandate that filled us with visiona and hope. I see the Holy Spirit moving in a similar way today as large numbers of young people are passionate to build multicultural churches that demonstrate the power of the gospel. When Geri and I planted New Life Fellowship Church 22 years ago, we chose Elmhurst/Corona, Queens, as a strategic location for the church due to the fact that individuals from more than 120 nations live in the area. In addition, the neighborhood consisted then, as it does now, of poor, working, and middle-class New Yorkers. So while we recognized the benefits of such a location and desired to bridge the racial, cultural, and economic barriers for. Read more.
I am only now beginning to enter the space of social media, so I am very much in a learning mode. Yet, I think it is worth pondering Danah Boyd’s initial findings around racism, classism and social media. She is a a Social Media Researcher and Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, recently completing her PhD at the University of California (Berkeley).The following is an excerpt regarding her work: Speaking at this week’s Personal Democracy Forum in New York, Danah Boyd said that even among people with access to the Net, long-held social divisions of race, class, and income are starting to play out online, particularly among teens now starting to choose which social network they prefer, MySpace or Facebook. “Social media don’t eradicate social divisions,” says Boyd, an expert in NextGen behaviors for Microsoft and a senior fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “[Social media are] making. Read more.
This blog title comes from Soong-Chan Rah’s outstanding book entitled The Next Evangelicalism(IVP, 2009). I have given over thirty years of my life to the task of building racially, ethnically and culturally diverse communities, first as an Inter-Varsity staff worker and the last twenty-one here in Queens at New Life. Doing theology and leadership,within this context, has been a rich privilege. Along these years I have often felt the need to write a book about racism, reconciliation, and the church There is no need. It has been written by Soong-Chan. I highly, highly recommend it! The following are a few of my highlights from this well-seasoned, thoughtful work on the challenges before us around the world (and not simply the USA) as we seek to build churches that demonstrate the power of the gospel to bridge race and culture. The white, Western cultural captivity of the church is marked by individualism, consumerism and materialism, and racism. Less. Read more.
I wrote a brief article recently for Mark Deymaz that will appear in a book he is writing on diverse, ethnic Churches (Zondervan). It forced me to think through our history and what we have learned. The following is most of the what I wrote: Twenty-one years ago, when my wife and I planted New Life Fellowship, we chose Elmhurst/Corona, Queens, as a strategic location for the church due to the fact that individuals from more than 120 nations live in the area. So while we recognized the benefits of such a location and desired to bridge the racial, cultural and economic barriers for the sake of Christ, we underestimated the suffering this commitment would require for all of us of in leadership. For instance, I soon realized that our evangelical discipleship/spiritual formation model was too superficial to bring about the kind of in-depth transformation we would need to live in authentic community. There. Read more.
