Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Multiethnic Ministry

Eating as a Holy Act

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Did you know that over the past three decades, there has been a 45 percent decrease in entertaining friends and a 33 percent decrease in families eating together? And more than half of those families watch television as they eat together – I know it…that’s what my family did growing up (research from Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone).

What did you eat today? Whom did you eat it with? When’s the last time you had a meaningful time of relationship and community with another person? Was it around food? Most of us not only organize our day around our meals, but is is the social glue that connects families and friends together. Isn’t that why the big holidays, like Christmas and Thanksgiving are celebrated with family, friends, and a big meal?

However, we oftentimes eat without knowing and understanding the significance of it, other than satisfying that hunger or satiating that palette.

So what would it look like if we began seeing food and our meal times through the eyes of Jesus? How did he view the table?

Well, in the New Testament, here are three of the ways that the sentence “The Son of Man came…” is completed:

  1. …not to serve, but to serve (Mark 10:45);
  2. …to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10);
  3. …eating and drinking (Luke 7:34).

Book Review: The Next Christendom – Philip Jenkins

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The following is an analytical book review of Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom.

Philip Jenkins, the author of 24 books, and 120 book chapters and refereed articles, has been on the faculty of Pennsylvania State University since 1980, and in 2007, he was appointed as the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Religious Studies. He completed his undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral work all at the University of Cambridge, but it is not his work in global Christianity that got him on the faculty of Penn State. He began as an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in 1980. In fact, his early work consists of history, criminology, and pedophilia. It was not until his publication of The Next Christendom that his reputation as an expert on global Christianity came to the forefront. Since then, he has spoken widely around this topic of global Christianity (http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/p/jpj1/vita.htm).

The thesis of this book is that the center of Christianity has shifted southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Location 36). As a result, in spite of the seeming decline of Christianity in the western world, Christianity is actually growing and flourishing in most areas around the world (Location 992).

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Book Review: The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission – Lesslie Newbigin

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The following is an analytical review on Lesslie Newbigin’s The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission Revised Edition.

Leslie Newbigin (1909-1998) was a theological missiologist/missionary and a missiological theologian. There are over six decades worth of his writings on mission theology and practice. Thus, he is considered to have had one of the greatest influences on the theology of mission in the twentieth century. Furthermore, Newbigin was a scholar practitioner since his works were always rooted in his living relationship with Jesus Christ; after all, he modeled what he wrote. He was also a Western missionary to India from 1936-1974, and upon returning to Great Britain, his missionary focus turned to the West (Shenk 1998).

The thesis of this book is that Christian mission is an open secret. It is open in the sense that the gospel is proclaimed to all without any boundaries, but it is a secret in that “it is manifest only to the eyes of faith” (Location 2556). As a result, mission cannot be relegated as a side task of the church, but it is the central calling and purpose of the church, yet the church does not own the mission, the mission is God’s (Location 256). Newbigin’s prophetic call to the church is for it to reemphasize its missionary character “to bring all things to their true end in the glory of the triune God” (Location 2556).

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Making Idols

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From Judy Baxter

We all tend to make idols. So to prevent ourselves from doing so, it’s important to understand from what we are manufacturing our idols from.

  • Things that entice us
  • Things we fear
  • Things that we trust
  • Things we need

Whenever we make idols from these things, we are basically rejecting God.

“The only antidote to such idolatries, and therefore the task of biblical mission, is to lead people back to acknowledge the only true and living God in all of these domains.”

– Christopher Wright, The Mission of God