3 days remain.
I only have 3 more days in Canada.
There are only 3 more days until my wife and I begin our new life in Seoul, Korea.
How did it get this way? How did we end up leaving our ministry and our life in Montreal to move to the other side of the world? How were we so sure that this is where God was calling us? How did we know that this was God’s will for our lives?
Almost a month ago, Michael Guglielmucci, a pastor in Australia who had written and sung “Healer” on the latest Hillsong album, came out and confessed that he had been living a life of deception. For the past two years, he had deceived everyone, his wife and parents included, and told them that he had terminal cancer.
When I first heard what had happened, I went into absolute shock and I began grieving. I couldn’t understand how he could do such a thing – especially as a pastor and a follower of Christ. And how could he lie like that to his wife and to his parents? However, I resisted the urge to blog about it and tell everyone until I heard the full story.
Here is the full story and statement of confession.
Here is also an exclusive interview (video) where Guglielmucci came out and made a public statement,
While listening to a sermon by John Piper, I was encouraged by the way he explained how he meditated on scripture. For in Psalm 19:14 it says, “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my redeemer.” And it also says in Psalm 119:11, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
As a result, when he would spend his daily time with God – reading scripture and praying – he would always strive to pick a verse that he could meditate on throughout the day. He would do that through memorizing the verse, repeating it, and praying through it in the course of the day.
I started doing it yesterday and it has been a great encouragement.
Yesterday I memorized Galatians 1:10 – “Am I now trying to win human approval or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
And today I memorized Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Lord, grant me the perseverance to continue this discipline so that I may meditate on your word always and hide your word in my heart.
The New Testament and Multi-Ethnic Groups
When examining the incarnation, the apostles, the early church, and the eschatological vision in the New Testament, the ethnic picture is unambiguously multi-ethnic. This is best portrayed by looking at the very first multi-ethnic church.
The Church in Antioch as a Model for the Multi-Ethnic Church
The very first multi-ethnic church in the history of Christianity was not established by the Holy Apostles, but it was a handful of “Christians” (Acts 11:26) who, obeying Jesus’ words in the Great Commission and the Ascension, traveled to the “ends of the earth” – Antioch – to “make disciples of all nations.”
Antioch, the “religiously pluralistic and pleasure seeking” urban port city was “the provincial capital of Syria,” and “the third largest city in the Graeco-Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria.” As a result of the city’s multi-ethnic demographic, there was constant interaction between “Syrians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Persians, Armenians, Parthians, Cappadocians, and Jews,” which created a cultural ethos of “hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms.” Thus, in this global and urban port-city, the first multi-ethnic church was formed.
The church in Antioch was multi-ethnic because it was a community of faith that was composed of more than two different ethnicities, where not one ethnicity held a significant majority. For example, the leadership of the church consisted of one Jew from Jerusalem (Barnabas), another Jew from Tarsus that was also a Roman citizen (Paul), a black African (Simeon who is called Niger), a man from “the capital city of Libya in northern Africa” (Lucius of Cyrene), and the step-brother of Herod Antipas, a Roman tetrarch (Manaen).
Not only was the leadership of the church multi-ethnic, but so was the congregation. And not only was the congregation multi-ethnic, but so was the city.
Obviously, a multi-ethnic church isn’t something that can be realized everywhere, but should they not be much more evident in multi-ethnic metropolitan cities?
(Sources Cited: Ken Shigematsu, Thomas V. Brisco, Michelle Slee, Crutiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, Karen Chai Kim)
