Mr. “Likes to Play Worship Music to Get All the Chicks” Guy
Urbana Log – Commissining an Army for the Lord
For Calvin, it really is a complex world.
The Sax man for Urbana 09
I was privileged to record with the Urbana 09 worship team this Fall. Their CD, “Worship from Urbana 09,” is one of the most unique worship CDs out there, an eclectic arrangements of songs from across the multiethnic spectrum. You’re not going to find any mainstream CCM worship music here (with perhaps the exception of “In Christ Alone”). Instead, you’ll find worshipful, congregationally-friendly originals and beautiful, lesser-known songs Egypt, Kenya and around the world.
You can purchase it here: Here are two samples for your listening pleasure. If you listen hard you can hear my virtuosic tenor saxophone in there somewhere. =) “Con Poder”
“I have a Hope”
Download now or listen on posterous
03 I Have A Hope.mp3 (4690 KB)
2010 begins NOW – Goals for the year
I’ve decided that February is the first month of the year. Clean slate. Fresh start. New beginnings. I have a long way to go in my life, but the journey starts with a small step… or at least some manageable goals.
- Don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight.
- Be 5 minutes early to everything big or small.
- Blog twice a week.
- Refinance my mortgage.
- Sell my car.
- Buy the perfect Kitchen table.
- Be fully funded on staff.
- Take a monthly spiritual retreat – for at least a full day if not overnight.
- Work out at least twice a week.
- FINISH reading at least one book a month for pleasure.
- Compose and COMPLETE a four songs.
- Have a balanced, separate personal life from IV.
- Start a regular volunteer position in the neighborhood.
- Be less of a people pleaser.
- Don’t dwell on past mistakes and regrets.
- Take a seminary class.
- Take a REAL vacation with no other purpose than to rest and recreate.
- Take voice lessons.
- Completely pay off credit card debt.
- Dress more professionally and not like a college student.
UrbanaLog: Just another stop on this adventure, yet why am I giddy?
The sea of people that was Urbana 06
Urbana – if you’ve ever done anything with InterVarsity, you know all the specs already — the largest missions conference in North American, 18,000 students gathered to be mobilized for the Kingdom, you know, all that jazz… the kind of stuff that goes REALLY nice on a brochure.
But if you’ve ever done anything with InterVarsity, you know Urbana is more than good PR (even tho it is). So much more. Life change. Turning point. Revolutionary. Pinacle. I’ve met 60 year-old IV alum in farm towns in rural Illinois tear up when they talk about New Years Eve communion at Urbana in the sixties. Four out of Five IV staff cite Urbana as a key factor in the decision to do campus ministry.
For me, Urbana has marked the seasons in my adult Christian life like towering goal posts. Life is never as cut and dry, but Urbana helps me organize the seasons in faith journey more clearly than most other events. Urbana 03 – the plucky, conflicted, semi-confused Korean American youth group student encounters a God and a Kingdom much bigger than anything he could have imagined. Urbana 06 – the naive young, unfunded staff sets out on the long journey of ministry.
And not that Urbana embodies the Kingdom of Heaven anymore than any other conference, any other week, any other time for that matter. God is omnipresent, I have to remind myself. Yet, there is something about Urbana that is Costco-sized kairos time, an opportune moment… when supreme and universal themes of God, humanity, mission, vocation come swirling together in the fierce urgency of now… perhaps something college students can resonate with moreso than your typical adult.
***
My journals from my first Urbana in 2003, a young InterVarsity student fighting cynicism, holding back. A committed Christian, yes. An active leader, yes. But unsure if all this excitement about Jesus was worth it. I remember getting caught up in the emotional synergy of 20,000 dancing, jumping students and wondering, am I getting too much into this? I wrote things like this following my return home:
We were really gangstas back then. Aren't you intimidated?
I know that God is up to something in this world. I was skeptical going into Urbana. With all those people, I was bracing for emotional manipulation up the wazoo.
And it was emotional. You should have been there at 11:59December 31, 2003. 20,000 exploding Christians exclaiming “YOU ARE! YOU ARE! YOU ARE!” May seem like an incomplete sentence and grounds for minus points, but that phrase makes a lot of sense when you realize that.. God, well, He just is…
But I digress. Amidst all the hoopla, I sat down in my seat as they began holy communion. (doing it for 20,000 people took some time). While most people were singing, or praying, or looking flat out spiritual, I just kinda sat. I thought about a lot of stuff. And you know what I realized? The emotion. The tears. The ups and downs. The struggles. The trials. The temptations. You know, they come and go.
The feelings that I’m all spiritual and holy and stuff. It comes and goes. You that feeling that I can take on the world and change the world for Jesus? It comes and goes. You know that moment in worship when you think that this is the most amazing experience in the world and that I can’t wait to go to heaven. Well, sadly that comes and goes.
I remember now, where I was then. Struggling with sin, guilt, feeling on one hand waaaay too confident in myself and my abilities. And on the other, like I had this dirty little secret about myself that nobody knew. I was good at repressing/ignoring the second part.
Urbana punched a whole in that cynicism. Not by more emotional hoopla. Not by bigger, better worship, or bigger and better speakers or lights, multimedia and slick graphics (tho Urbana had all that). It did it by presenting Spirit and truth. The undeniable, undescribable truth of who God is, His essence, His love, His mission, His Gospel, His word. And infusing it with Spirit. The awe-inspiring sense of His total presence that transcends emotion. The weightiness of His presence.
Urbana was the same as any other conference I’d been to in that there is the same spiritual peer pressure. The same group impulse to ride the emotional roller coaster together. But the difference? Well, I’ll let 2004 Andy Kim explain:
But what totally knocks me over is the realization that while so many aspects of my spirituality and my faith waver, whats TRUE doesn’t. I think I miss that sometimes. When I’m in a spiritual rut. When I’m wondering what the heck I’m doing with my life, I realize that the truth that “God is.”
This truth doesn’t make my problems go away. It doesn’t make me suddenly feel happy or make me want to become a missionary to Antarctica or anything. The strange thing is, well maybe not so strange, the truth stays true no matter what I do. And because I can confirm this truth in everyday life as I look at the world and I look at the church, I know that this truth is worthy to be adhered to.
So what I got at Urbana was a lot of stuff (some good stuff and some bad stuff) but most importantly, I experienced the truth. And that doesn’t change when I’m sitting at my computer in Evanston. And it won’t change for my missions organization reaching out to the peoples of Antarctica.
Reading my journal, even from my post Urbana03 experiences, the tone is still hesitant, excited, but still unsure. I honor that. I know students will probably be in the same place.
We were also really spiritual.
What I can say confidently, 6 years later. That cynicism of Urbana03 is washed away. What remains is an undeniable affirmation of the truth of God’s mission and the amazement that I am a part of it. I’m not revising history, I’m refining history — leaving what really matters, what really lasts.
I have new cynicisms now, I have new fears, new uncertainties. But I know how far I’ve come. As I look forward toward the next 5 days, the 16000 students that are making their way to St. Louis. I am excited. Sure, a little scared and uncertain. But excited and hopeful. Knowing that God has done this many times before, and He’s in control.
My Urbana small group from 2003, lovely NU students.
And God Ran: A Redemption Story
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
- Isaiah 43:19
It was a balmy summer night in 1998 when God found me.
He had tried once before, sending me proverbial flowers and chocolates by way of introduction. A few years before, as I listened to a somewhat formulaic version of Graham Kendrick’s well-worn 1970’s Christian pop standard, “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” the thought entered my mind that the idea of God was real and perhaps there was something to this Christianity thing that I had been immersed in for all my life. But it could also have been the electric guitar, which was to me at the time quite possibly the coolest thing ever.
But I was a naïve, misguided junior high youth back then. Tonight was different. Now I was a ninth grader attending my first high school church retreat, with some more experience under my belt and a more mature, nuanced understanding of the mysteries of this world and the next.
Beauty in the broken: where theological concepts grow legs.
Within a few minutes into the speaker’s opening talk, I could hear audible sobs and sniffles.
He didn’t use crash language or make salacious emotional appeals. He just read a few cartoons. Like this one:
Cartoons that seemed all at once simplistic stereotypes and way-too-close-too-home-for-comfort. Cartoons that depicted familial pressure to maintain a certain body image, grades, career etc. In other words, family brokenness that just about everyone in the room could relate to.
It was our fall retreat and the topic was “Beauty in the Broken.” The speaker, Jon Warden, was a licensed counselor who specializes in working with Asian Americans. Our fall retreats in the past were always a wonderful and fun experience. After the whirlwind that is the first two months of the school year (what we call New Student Outreach or NSO), Fall Retreat represented the exclamation point to NSO and was a time of fun, fellowship and a chance for freshmen to meet upperclassmen in a relaxed weekend excursion.
This year would be different.
Finding hope in the midst of Deadly Vipers
*Update: Deadly Vipers has been pulled from shelves by Zondervon and the Deadly Vipers Web site is down. I need some more time to process my thoughts, but I’m thankful what seems like progress. Yet I know it will be a long road ahead towards deeper reconciliation.
When the whole saga about Deadly Vipers hit the fan I felt a cornucopia of emotions — agony, frustration, anger, sadness, tiredness mourning, indignation.
But after two weeks, things seem to have cooled down somewhat and I’m left feeling mostly a sense of excitement and hope at where this all might be going. Not that everything has worked out perfectly (it hasn’t) or that the pain that came through this wasn’t real (it was). But as a follower of Christ who loves the Church and desperately longs for it to be “a house of prayer for all nations” — I think there is a lot to look forward to in the weeks, months and years to come.
I want to focus on looking forward, so I won’t rehash some of the key issues surrounding the Deadly Vipers saga except share some of the posts that I think best summarize the issues and were the most helpful for me in understanding and responding:
- Soong-Chan Rah’s open letter to Zondervon, the publisher of DV, and authors Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite. Rah defines some specific offenses in the material and suggests practical response that both the authors and Zondervon could take.
- Eugene Cho offers helpful reflection on the key issues and begins to address those who wonder if he is “over-reacting.”
- Helen Lee, guest blogging at Next Generasian Church, challenges those who responded to the criticism of DV with, “Get over it. Stop being so insensitive. This isn’t a real big deal.” The seemingly benign caricatures can have powerful associations, especially for those who have experienced abuse and ridicule using some of those same images. For Lee one example was being called the “dorm geisha” or “Heren Ree” as a student whenever she baked cookies for her classmates.
- A joint statement by Foster, Wilhite, Kathy Khang and Rah suggesting that there is real and significant dialogue taking place and there is an increasing amount of common ground and mutual understanding on the issues.
What I’m really excited about on the other hand is how the DV saga has catalyzed the Asian American evangelical community and how in many ways this could impact the future of American evangelicalism. I see two things happening:
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1.) A robust, larger-scale discussion within the Asian American evangelical community
When you get a chance, read through the comment threads on Soong Chan’s open letter or on the deadly viper’s blog site (find Soong Chan’s comment about 8 down) or on other blogs like reconcilliationblog or eugenecho or charleslee. There is incredible dialogue (with the requisite share of vulgarity, trolling and unnecessary snarkiness of course) but good points are raised, dialogue and discussion is happening.
This was happening for days on the blogosphere, but also on facebook and twitter in smaller, less well-known circles. Not among pastors of mega churches or social media fiends, but among friends, small group members, students, people with out seminary degrees or PHDs. I was dialoguing with friends and acquaintances I haven’t spoken to in years, but who wanted to chime in on my facebook thread and tell me I was being too sensitive or to echo my horror at the material or something in between.
Poetry, sometimes life’s best monument
I wrote this a little over 5 years ago, when life for me was very different. As I’m revisiting some of this material from my past for another project I’m working on, I was thankful that God in his abundant creativity gave us the gift of poetry to capture the stuff of infinity at least for a brief moment.
This definitely isn’t Shakespeare (or even Seuss for that matter). Its just me. And I confess, I love it. So I thought I’d share it here again.
Scents of Mokottam
Wednesday, August 4, 2004
The smell, the poignant smell,
The kind that smacks you over the head like a rusty frying pan,
From the mounds of decaying compost and fertilizer,
That makes you wish you hadn’t eaten whatever you had just eaten for lunch,
It hurts sometimes.
The smell, the musty smell,
The kind that gently floats into your nose like a thousand sharp daggers,
The smell of a dank basement and food that has spoiled for months,
Like a thin layer of green mold festering under your nostrils,
It never seems to let go.
The smell, the smell of despair,
The unemployed father shamefully showing his oldest son’s identification card,
He is handicapped.
The unemployed father wondering what to do with his “stupid” twenty-year old son,
As he feeds his other children my leftovers,
I wish I didn’t eat all that sweet-smelling chicken.
I smell barbeque, the smell of pork kabob,
I eat. I eat. I eat.
The smell of hunger?
Faint now.
Until I look into the window and see young Mina,
When did he eat last?
There’s only one left.
The smell of home,
The scent of a loving family sipping Egyptian tea together in unison,
Sweat rolling down their faces,
Laughter shaking the foundations of the weak building,
Don’t they know they are living in a garbage village?
The smell, the putrid smell of injustice,
The rotten odor that emanates from all things evil,
The heinous stench stuffed in the nose of a holy God,
The yellow fumes that rise when workers are not paid,
When children sleep beside crushed rat carcasses,
When tourists come to worship merciful God at the monastery
And drive through the garbage village
With bright red handkerchiefs covering their noses,
When the government pawns thousands of garbage collectors’ livelihoods
To multinational corporations
To bury them in the ground in huge landfills,
To bury them in the ground in huge landfills,
It hurts sometimes.
The smell, the smell of Jesus,
A sweet scent of hope to those who have no hope,
We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved
And those who are perishing,
A fragrant breath of fresh air to those whose lives are
Stuffed with the stench of oppression, suffering and hopelessness,
The fragrant offering of our lives poured out like a drink
At the feet of Jesus,
And the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
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Things I like to blog about: Food, Faith, Music, Culture and just about anything else that comes out of my crazy mind. No refunds.
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