Red Flag: Praying for others to change

In some online discussions with former ubf members this week, I realized that prayer is taught by ubf teachers as a tool for change. We almost always exclusively prayed for the nation to change, for sheep to change, for some other country to change, for our children to change, etc. We always said “I’m praying for you” with the sentiment of “You need to change somehow”.

So many times the prayers of ubf shepherds are about pointing out sins in their sheep. How many remember sitting through a long prayer session where people prayed about your sins and how much you need to change?

Yet when did Jesus ever call a prayer meeting to change people or the nations? Do we see any evidence that Christian prayer is to be focused on changing something in other people?

I now see this kind of prayer as a red flag of spiritual abuse. If ubfers are praying for us former members to “repent” or “come back to our senses” then it is wasted effort. In the same way, if we ex-ubfers are praying for missionaries to change or to publicly repent or for ubf to be destroyed, then it is also wasted effort. Such prayers are not of Christ, in my belief.

How should we pray?

Jesus taught about prayer several times. The most famous is of course the Lord’s Prayer. How does the prayer begin?

Prayer, as Jesus taught it, is about the glory of God, not about changing people.

Prayer is about God doing his will and bringing about his kingdom, not about changing a nation to be holy.

Prayer is about raising the awareness of our collective needs, not about reminding Bible students of their sins.

Prayer is about forgiving people, not about changing people.

Prayer is about discerning God’s leading and listening for God’s voice, not about submitting to your shepherd’s ideas and plans for your life.

So the next time you hear someone at ubf “pray for you”, remember this is a red flag of cult control. This form of spiritual abuse is something that must end. Prayer is a wonderful gift, not something to be abused as a tool of manipulation.

Is sorry puppy always supposed to be sorry?

This blog post discusses the phenomena of feeling the need to constantly apologize for one’s existence. It’s when “repentance” goes overboard.

Scenario I:”You always say, ‘I’m sorry.'”

I had only been talking to him for a couple hours and he was already psychoanalyzing me. Despite the brevity of exposure, his insight into my character was uncanny. After he made that statement I tried semi-successfully weeding out those two words from my vocabulary. Since then I have continued to make an effort to stop apologizing incessantly.

Scenario II:”If you care about what people think about you stand on the right side of the room.”

And there I was, the lone participant in the survey on the right side of the room. The next question was something along the lines of “would you do something that needed to be done, even if others didn’t like you for it?” And again I shared my overwhelming desire to be liked and accepted. When the surveyor asked me why I was on the right side I answered, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m Asian and this is the way I was brought up.’ What I meant was I was always taught to obey and concede, even when I didn’t like it. Speaking up for myself was disobedience and disobedience was a sin punishable by Hell. Therefore, I must always obey. I interpreted that in my mind as I must always do what others want. I backed it up with Bible verses such as, “deny yourself,” “take up your cross,” “consider others better than yourself,” “to give is better than to receive,” etc. Somehow in my faulty exegesis I considered offending others as one of the ultimate sins.

Scenario II: Today’s ESL Class

Fast forward to today. During class, I was sweating bullets because some of my students were whipping through the material I had prepared at lightening speed and they looked bored, while other students were taking their sweet time like tortoises on a leisurely stroll. There I was stranded because I could not please all my students. Each one of my students has a different expectation of me and the fear of not meeting their expectations is what keeps me up at night. It also makes me hate the job that I initially had valued and enjoyed so much. And this scene of struggling with multi level learners has been repeating itself for my whole teaching career. This has been the toughest aspect of teaching, learning that I cannot please everyone.

If you ever taught, you know what it’s like to have constraints. You have your directors who need good test scores. And then you have parents who also desire results (or if you teach adults like I do, you have expectations for jobs and a higher salary.) And finally you have the actual students sitting in your class who have their own preferences and learning styles. In a classroom with 20 students there are so many variables for learning; this transforms the teacher, in a sense, to a juggler attempting to find the magic elixir that once imbibed will give the student the ability to have English flow from their lips as water from a faucet. I put a lot of pressure on myself for my students to succeed and it kills me. Not only that, but the old school I taught at put the blame for any failure of the student solely on the shoulders of the teacher. In the classroom, however, my spineless posture of attempting to save everyone gets me (and my students) no where.

“Get over yourself, MJ.”

Those are the words I said to myself after class today. After the 105 minutes of teaching responsibility were up I realized my fear of letting people down is not sustainable. I cannot cater my class to what my students want. I have to decide what my objectives are, how my students will reach them and how I will assess them on it. I have to make a plan backed up by my own reasons and stick with it. Then when my students disagree, which is inevitable (someone always disagrees), I have explanations. I have a degree in education and experience. I am the expert in the classroom. Yet for some reason I had been conditioned to think that owning up to my ability to teach was pride.

Ultimately it is my class and I make the rules. I do not do this out of the desire to control and dictate, but out of practicality. Nothing can be done and no goals can be reached if I’m constantly second guessing every decision I make.

I’m going to be honest, my personality is riddled with insecurity. I have always compared myself to my classmates and siblings. Am I as accomplished as them? Am I as smart? Am I as pretty? Am I as liked? Not only that, but I have always thought that to think anything positively about myself or any personal virtues was sinful because it stemmed from pride, the number one sin. But life cannot be lived like this. I am tired of being afraid and unsure all the time.

The passive-aggressive spectrum    

I don’t know if you can tell from reading this article, but I am very passive, to the point of passive aggression. In my mind I had somehow come to the conclusion that the way to respond as a Christian and a woman in any and every situation was passively. Now, thankfully I’m learning that the passive response is not the only response. I can be assertive, which means I am direct with my expectations and needs.

I am entitled to preferences and expectations. Before I viewed my role as a teacher/victim. Meaning, I have to jump through the hoops that others have set before me, but that is false. I am a person, just as my students and directors are. I am a human being and I have a voice, and I will use it unapologetically.

What are some lessons that you have learned about disobedience or humility? Do you constantly apologize even for things that are not your fault? Have you experienced a posture of constant apology to the point that it eventually became a hindrance? Do you struggle with speaking in an assertive way, which is neither passive nor aggressive?

“Many times being right is the same as being wrong.”

Acknowledgement that you do not monopolize the truth
This blog is a response to Joe’s excellent article about healthy communities. I particularly liked point #3:
“A third sign of healthy community is acknowledgment that the group’s distinctive views and values are not always right, and that in the final analysis, maintaining these distinctive is less important than learning how to love.”

Talking to those who have been burned by the church, I have noticed a pattern. People have been trampled on/ignored/ostracized/threatened because they did not agree with the doctrine of the church on an issue such as: evangelism, sexual orientation, racial issues, etc. Every time I hear a story of someone mistreated because they didn’t agree with their Pastor, it shocks me. I honestly don’t understand how that is a representation of God’s unconditional love and acceptance. I don’t understand why the church’s love always comes with strings attached. It’s as if the church has a “terms of use” page that is full of fine print, i.e. you can’t watch this show, you can’t read this author, you can’t associate yourself with those people, you can’ts do yoga etc. And years later people will take that terms of use and shove it in your face.

The difference between big “T” truth and little “t” truth 

You may say, “But MJ, it sounds like you don’t believe in objective truth. Do you believe that no one is wrong? Does that mean no one is right?”

Born in 1928 as the son of a high-ranking official in the Canadian government, Vanier traveled the world and served in the Royal Navy. Sensing that there must be something more to life, he resigned from his naval commission in 1950 to study theology and philosophy, eventually completing a Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Paris. Through his friendship with a Catholic priest, he renewed his faith in God and became deeply concerned about the plight of people with intellectual disabilities. In 1964, Vanier invited two disabled men to leave their institutions and move into his home. This led to the establishment of L’Arche (“The Ark”), a worldwide federation of residential communities where people with intellectual disabilities live, pray and worship together with caregivers in an atmosphere of friendship, mutuality and inclusion. Although L’Arche was founded as a Christian organization, the communities are open and welcoming to people of all religious beliefs. Vanier has studied, taught, and written extensively on topics related to faith, disability and community. He became a close friend and mentor to the late Christian author Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), who resided at a L’Arche community in Ontario, Canada for the last ten years of his life. In recognition of Vanier’s influence and achievements, he was awarded the Templeton Prize in 2015. (Previous winners of the Templeton Prize include Billy Graham and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.)

For decades, Vanier studied the inner workings of communities (especially religious ones) throughout the world. He learned what makes communities thrive and what causes them to fail. In his international bestseller Becoming Human (1998), he describes the enormous role that community plays in human development. Community is not the same thing as society. Society is where we earn a living, but community is where we experience belonging. Community is where we grow into full fledged human beings.

Belonging is important for our growth to independence; even further, it is important for our growth to inner freedom and maturity. It is only through belonging that we can break out of the shell of individualism and self-centeredness that both protects and isolates us…

(Becoming Human, Kindle edition, p. 35). If a community is healthy, it provides the structure and security that foster personal growth. But communities can also be unhealthy. They can appeal to the dark, egotistic parts of human nature and sow conflict and discord throughout the world. Vanier continues:

However, the human drive for belonging also has its pitfalls. There is an innate need in our hearts to identify with a group, both for protection and for security, to discover and affirm our identity, and to use the group to prove our worthiness and goodness, indeed, even to prove that we are better than others. It is my belief that it is not religion or culture at the root of human conflict but the way in which groups use religion or culture to dominate one another. Let me hasten to add that if it were not religion or culture that people used as a stick with which to beat others, they would just use something else (p. 36).

In Vanier’s understanding, the key difference between healthy and unhealthy community is this: An unhealthy community turns inward and develops a superiority complex. A healthy community recognizes that it is only a small part of the human race and fosters a sense of interdependence with the rest of humanity.

A group is the manifestation of this need to belong. A group can, however, close in on itself, believing that it is superior to others. But my vision is that belonging should be at the heart of a fundamental discovery: that we all belong to a common humanity, the human race. We may be rooted in a specific family and culture but we come to this earth to open up to others, to serve them and receive the gifts they bring to us, as well as to all of humanity (p. 36).

Vanier writes from an international perspective. He knows that Western people tend to be individualistic, and Easterners tend toward collectivism. Having seen the strengths and weaknesses of groups operating in diverse cultures, he is constantly aware of the delicate balance that must be struck between limiting personal freedom for the good of the community and preserving the dignity and uniqueness of the individual. He is also keenly attuned to the inequalities that exist in our fallen world, where the strong usually dominate the weak. In healthy community, each person knows he is both strong and weak; understanding and accepting their individual limitations is a key part of what gives community members a sense of belonging.

In Chapter II (“Belonging”) Vanier lists four signs of communities that are healthy. The first sign of a healthy community is that it treats all of its members, including the weakest and most vulnerable, with respect, seeing them all as equally important, and deliberately includes everyone in decisionmaking.

In healthy belonging, we have respect for one another. We work together, cooperate in a healthy way, listen to each other. We learn how to resolve the conflicts that arise when one person seeks to dominate another. In a true state of belonging, those who have less conventional knowledge, who are seemingly powerless, who have different capacities, are respected and listened to. In such a place of belonging, if it is a good place, power is not imposed from on high, but all members seek to work together as a body. The implication is that we see each other as persons and not just as cogs in a machine. We open up and interact with each other so that all can participate in the making of decisions (p. 58).

In Old Testament times, most of the Jewish people had a deep sense of belonging. But through the prophets, God rebuked them for ignoring the poor, weak and disadvantaged in their midst, for treating them as less-than-full members of God’s family (Isaiah 58:6-7).

The second sign of healthy community is that it values differences of opinion and promotes dialogue. Vanier has sharp words for communities that enforce and manipulate.

The second sign of healthy belonging is the way a group humbly lives its mission of service to others. It does not use or manipulate others for its own aggrandizement. It does not impose its vision on others but instead prefers to listen to what they are saying and living, to see in them all that is positive. It helps others to make their own decisions; it empowers them. When a community is closed and fearful of true dialogue where each person is respected, it is a sign of death not of life (p. 60).

A third sign of healthy community is acknowledgment that the group’s distinctive views and values are not always right, and that in the final analysis, maintaining these distinctives is less important than learning how to love.

As we begin to see others’ gifts, we move out from behind the walls of certitude that have closed us up… A few centuries ago, different Christian churches were fighting each other. Their theologies were calculated to prove that one was right and the other wrong. Today, instead of seeing what might separate us, whether as churches or cultures, we are instead seeing what unites us. We are beginning to see each other’s gifts and to appreciate them and to realize that the important thing for each one of us is to grow in love and give of ourselves (pp. 60-61).

Finally, the fourth sign of healthy community is openly admitting its mistakes and reforming itself with advice from the outside.

Fourth, it is a healthy sign when a group seeks to evolve and to recognize the errors of the past, to recognize its own flaws, and to seek the help of experienced people from outside the group in order to be more true and loving, more respectful of difference, more listening and open to the way authority is exercised. The group that refuses to admit its own errors or seek the wisdom of others risks closing itself up behind walls of “superiority” (p. 61).

In conclusion, healthy communities are where people experience God’s goodness and become well formed human beings.

Groups that develop with these four signs are, to my mind, healthy groups; they are helping their members to break free of the egotism inherent in us all and to grow towards greater maturity and inner freedom. They are discovering our common humanity, allowing us to be ourselves, intertwined with each other, receiving and giving life from one another. Do we not all share the same earth and sky? Are they not for us as we are for them? We all belong to each other, we are all for each other. God, too, is for us as we are for God. We are called to grow in order to become fully ourselves and fully alive, to receive from others, and to give to others, not being held back by fears, prejudices, or feelings of superiority or inferiority (p. 61).

Orthodoxy is Gk Chesterton’s account of his journey from secularism to Christianity. It reminds me of a doctoral student explaining his dissertation to someone who is not an expert. For brevity the student will skip vast amount of details to give the main overview. To the uninitiated or poorly informed this is always quite jarring. At the end you find yourself in agreement, but barely understand what happened. Most of the arguments in Orthodoxy are the same way. He speeds though arguments, making tangents that don’t make any sense until his vision is complete. Anything even remotely in his style would be met with only the most puzzled of looks and side comments about how it wasn’t about Jesus. The whole effect is dizzying.

Chesterton’s view of the world, his vision that seems ancient in scope, transmodern in approach shines through the pages like sun into a dark room. Too much of modern Christianity today is compartmentalized into trite slogans that at best offer nothing and at worst demeans Christ. Rationalism and science seem to point away from Christianity, but we find Chesterton taking the view that rationalism and science have inaccurately become unquestionable, yet have extended beyond what they can accomplish. They are false idols and page after page he makes the point that if rationalism is what you want; suicide is what you will have. This was in stark contrast to what I had been taught. Romanticism taught me there was more, but not where it might be found. The church told me that it was best not think about such things and just have more faith. Chesterton taught me to think about such things and see that they are not what they seem to be.

Chesterton taught me that following Jesus is more than acting a certain way; it’s more than believing certain things; it is even more than loving certain things. Christianity is about seeing things a certain way. It is about seeing the world the way God sees the world, not as something to be marched against but as something to be a steward of. Perhaps God wants us to delight in Him, as he delights in his creation. God used Chesterton in a way that made me realize the Joy of God. He taught me that we must love the world without being worldly. “The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more…Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.” Perhaps that’s why I can’t take these UBF people seriously when they reduce the gospel into a straight command to make disciples. I have learned too much, seen too much to be tricked by such an illusion. For one who has found a well spring of water can stop trying to squeeze moisture from his sweaty clothes. Chesterton never did a one of one bible study with me, but he has taught me more about God than anyone ever has. He has shown me Christ more clearly than any one to one bible study ever could.

“No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.”

Here is the book for free online
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm

Forestsfailyou

Historically, Egypt has been the enslavers of God’s people and their most memorable adversary. But one day they will be converted, transformed, saved and become the people of God together with Israel. They will display evidences of true believers, such as:

• the fear of God (Isa 19:16-17),
• pledging allegiance to God (Isa 19:18),
• relating all of life to God (Isa 19:19-22),
• being united with those who are unlike them (Isa 19:23), and
• regarding all others as equals (Isa 19:24-25).

Fear God (Isa 19:16-17). The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7). The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10). People might generally prefer the love of God to the fear of God. I probably do as well. But I contend that to fear God is not to live in fear as commonly understood, but to live in awe and respect for what the Almighty will do (Isa 19:16-17). Also, I’ve found that when I fear God, I do not fear anyone else (Prov 29:25). Not fearing people does not mean that I become belligerent or disrespectful. It simply means that I acknowledge that my life is entirely in God’s hands, and in not the hands of other people. During Isaiah’s time, everyone lived and behaved as though the world was in the hands of Assyria, the superpower nation of the day (Isa 10:12-14). It is also why an important major theme of Isaiah is to not to trust mere humans (your leaders and shepherds!), but to calmly and confidently trust God alone (Isa 7:4a, 9b). Jesus practiced what Isaiah taught (Jn 2:24-25).

Pledge allegiance to the God of Israel and learn their language (Isa 19:18). To put this in contemporary context, it is like Americans submitting to Koreans and speaking “Konglish,” or Koreans submitting to Filipinos and speaking Tagalog instead of Korean. Some might prefer death to such subjugation and humiliation. But in that day the Egyptians swear allegiance to the God of Israel and learn their language (Isa 19:18).

Relate all of life to God (Isa 19:19-22). They build an altar (Isa 19:19), which signifies reconciliation with God. They cry out to God for help (Isa 19:20b), instead of seeking human and political solutions. They know God as God reveals himself (Isa 19:21a). They understand that to know God is to respond to God’s revelation of himself, and not just them seeking to know God by their own efforts or good intentions. They make sacrifices and vows in response to God’s revelation (Isa 19:21b). They walk the walk. They turn to God and experience healing in times of divine discipline (Isa 19:22), rather than becoming bitter. A true believer relates every aspect of their life–both good times and hard times–to God.

Unite with those unlike themselves (Isa 19:23). Egypt and Assyria were enemies. But in that day, they will worship together. There will be a highway connecting these unlikely bedfellows. The highway–a favorite metaphor in Isaiah–connotes the removal of alienation and separation. We human beings understandably prefer like-minded people. We prefer our own ethnicities and culture, which explains why there are ethnic communities in virtually every city. Even churches tend to be sharply segregated along racial, ethnic and denominational lines. But true believers welcome and unite with those they might not generally welcome or prefer. For virtually all of my 35 years of Christian life since 1980, I have done ministry virtually primarily and exclusively with UBF people, such that I do not really know how to relate well to or interact with non-UBF Christians. I hope to learn the spirit of inclusivity and ecuminism, which John Armstrong introduced to me over the past decade. Reading books by contemplatives such as Richard Rohr has been quite helpful to help me overcome my unique sense of exclusivity. UBFriends, comprising of many ex-UBFers, is also a great place of interaction and unity for me, since in the past I would never have maintained any relationship or interaction with anyone who has left UBF.

Regard all others as equals (Isa 19:24-25). Egypt, Assyria and Israel lived in enmity and animosity for hundreds of years. But in that day they will first acknowledge and submit to the God of Israel (Isa 19:16-17), even humbly learning their language which was foreign to them (Isa 19:18). But they do not remain in a subordinate position indefinitely. Rather, God declares that they are all equally God’s people, God’s handiwork and God’s inheritance (Isa 19:25). This is how God’s people from different ethnicities and cultures become a blessing on the earth (Isa 19:24). This exposes the repeated failure of missionaries over the centuries to this day. Unlike Paul who turned the ministry over to his indigenous converts within a few years during his four missionary journeys (Ac 14:23), Christian missionaries have generally acted as the leaders who continued to lord over their converted indigenous peoples for years and decades. This is well explained in Roland Allen’s classic book, Missionary Methods. I wrote about this in 2012: Let Local Leaders Lead. I sense that many are coming to a gradual realization that each country’s indigenous UBF leader should be leading the ministry, and not the original missionary pioneer nor a foreign overseas director.

I don’t preach what I write because I preach extemporaneously. This write up is part of my preparation and reflection which I may or may not share on Sunday. Please feel free to critique it both as a sermon, as well as for content and substance.

Dear spiritual children,

It seems as though the words in my last testimony made you react with so many strong outlashings and bitternesses. I planned to comment and share my spiritual wisdom with you, but this reaction greatly frightened me and thus prevented me from doing so. To be honest, I felt like the Saint Paul when he was lashed forty times plus one from the Jews. But you know, Saint Paul was tended to by Luke the physician, whose gospel we happen to be studying. In the same way, as I read and meditate on his gospel, it is like he is tending to my spiritual wounds as well. I was like Daniel in the lions’ den and God protected me by eventually shutting your mouths after you got all of your garbages out through commenting.

So, when the storm had finally passed and all was quiet, I could gain more insights into why we had a severe clashing. Like Isaiah says, we are all like sheep who have gone astray. And of course, some sheep stray more than others. As the common American expression goes, “we are like two sheeps passing in the night”. Indeed, it is hard for spiritual giants to relate to others some times. So, I think that we may need the great shepherd, Missionary Shepherd Samuel Lee PhD, to give us guidance in this matter. He wrote an introduction to Luke’s gospel, and this will be the content of our lesson today. Gather around children and let us drink in this spiritual wisdom together.

Our great shepherd begins,

“It is impossible to write an introduction to the gospel according to St. Luke, because there is a danger that the introduction will be longer than the text. So it is summarized with a brief preface.”

Again, there is a danger. Whether it is good or bad, I will let you be the judge this time. I remember as a young boy, I would roam the Korean country side, looking at all of the beautiful mountains, the flowers and the vast East Korean Sea. I could write about everything, or so I thought. But the danger was that all of the paper and ink in the world may have been exhausted by writing about such majesty and beauty. Then no school children would be able to finish their studies. And tragically, the modern society would become uneducated and eventually collapse and fall apart. This is what it is like to attempt to comment on something that only a spiritual giant would dare to do. Who can capture these kinds of majesties with only a pen and paper and at the same time avoid destroying oneself and the society? Only Samuel Lee can record the deep things of mysterious grandeur and summarize them for us. Then he will feed us like baby sheep suckling from the mother lamb. So let us begin.

First, Luke, the Author

SL states about Luke,

“Luke is known as a Gentile and a historian because of his universal point of view. But when we study the Bible broadly, we don’t find any hint that Luke was a Gentile. Still, people call him a Gentile. Maybe it is because his gospel is universal: He included Gentile people for their salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord as much as Jewish people.”

Have you ever thought of why we refer to Luke as a Gentile? I never gave it much thought, but only accepted it at face value. But SL is right to point out that the Bible never says with certainty that he is either a Jew or a Gentile. Luke’s gospel is universal, showing that God even loved the untouchable Gentiles. When I became a Christian, in my college days in Korea, I had the vision to go to America. When I arrived here, I encountered many students who seemed so outwardly noble, like Jews. But inwardly, they were very much like Gentiles in terms of inner desires. But I realized that God so loved these Gentile-like Americans and so I could be a light to them, teaching them the Bible with all of my heart. I could begin to relate to them by watching many American movies on my VHS system, such as Ghostbusters, Good Fellas, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and National Lampoons. Various movies gave me insight into the minds of my sheep. Mainly, I learned that Americans are preoccupied with the occult, gangster activity and navigating the difficulties of vacationing. SL continues,

“Humanly speaking, for Luke to remain as a medical doctor was very reasonable. But since he was converted to Christianity, his priority was changed to Jesus first, and to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus to the whole world.”

Luke probably could have made a lot of money during his lifetime as a medical doctor. He also enjoyed the prestige and recognition that came with such a position. But in private, he must have been very sorrowful because he had no purpose of life. He began to make many misdiagnoses because of his meaninglessness. Then, when he met Jesus, he became so happy because he found the forgiveness of sins and meaning of life through him. He left his medical practice and began to follow the number two of Christianity, Saint Paul, serving as his personal physician. From Luke’s life direction, I could gain wisdom about how to teach my Bible students to value following Jesus more than the worldly success. Many students want to spend much time studying, getting into the best universities so that they can secure a good future for themselves. But I explain to them that eventually, they will find that the world is meaningless and that they will not be happy no matter how much they study. I instead encourage them to put the Bible study first, even if it means they will lose school study time. In this way, they can grow to be truly spiritual disciples of Jesus. By the way, I am so proud of my children who all got into the Ivy League universities and have become doctors and got good jobs. They don’t teach the Bible or go fishing, but instead Jesus has a special plan for them to be exceptional disciples who can contribute to the society for his glory. But among my bible students, it is crystal clear that God called them to be bible teachers first and foremost. Why else would God call them to UBF if this was not his intention for them? They should strive to be like Luke, who gave up his worldly ambition to serve God’s servants. Amen.

Second, Luke Gives a Special Position to Women

“In Palestine, the place of women was not regarded. For example, when Jesus was carrying out the Messianic ministry around the Galilean district, many people, around 5,000 men, gathered (Lk 9:14). They did not include women and children in the count, because at that time women’s human dignity and equality were not appreciated. Children were also not numbered because the bigoted Jewish people were all money lovers. So children who had no labor power or could not earn money were unimportant.”

Luke was so keen to notice how Jesus included women into God’s world salvation plan. I was surprised to learn from SL that the Jews were bigoted money lovers. I suppose this makes sense and is factually correct seeing as how they did not care for those who couldn’t earn money, like children. However, this is a natural tendency for all of mankind. Sometimes, I would look at my small children and only see them as mouths to feed or nuisances who interrupted my Bible studies with college students. But SL newly opened my eyes that from the Bible’s point of view perhaps we should give them equal status with everyone else. Maybe, maybe not, only God knows in the end. SL continues,

“In Luke chapters 1-2, there appear Elizabeth and Anna. Humanly speaking, they were useless. They were no more than senior citizens who deserved food stamps. But Luke saw with spiritual eyes and recognized them as the lamp of God. They were old and useless. But in the sight of God they were praying women.”

Through SL, a repeated lesson that I have learned from him is that people are either useless or useful. It is very simple, if God does not call you into his service, then you are like chaff that the wind will blow away. You are like a hammer with no handle or a toilet that won’t flush. But when God calls you, even though you have many weaknesses, you can be a useful tool to him, like a pot used for a noble purpose.

SL gives many beautiful examples of useful women, such as those who financed Jesus’ ministry, the merchant, Lydia, Mary the mother of Jesus and others. We can put Mother Barry on equal footing with these spiritual pioneering women. She was once a southern belle in Mississippi who enjoyed her large book collection and even her own horse. But when she went to South Korea, she met Chang Woo Lee, and then suddenly the scales fell from her eyes to co-create UBF ministry and care for college students who suffered from deep meaninglessness. In this way, she could inspire many more strong women, such as my precious co-worker shepherdess Sincere, to be a good influence in the ministry and become world changers. Amen!

Third, the Outstanding Universality of Luke’s Gospel

SL relates a breath-taking story,

“Once an English novelist was convinced that he could write a better parable than Luke’s gospel chapter 15. So the English government gave him five years of time and he tried to write a better parable of the prodigal son. The government was supposed to reward him with one million pounds. When the day came to hand in his parable, he pleaded with the government officials to give him three years more to write the parable, and after three years, another two years. Finally he surrendered himself to Luke’s gospel chapter 15.”

SL didn’t list any sources for this story and I’ve never heard it before now, but anyway it probably happened. It is totally believable because the Bible is God’s own literature which surpasses anything that could ever be written in the history of mankind. The word of God has power to change people. The Bibles in our hands are powerful tools to drive away the dark forces of Satan and bring people to God. SL relates one of these most life-changing stories to us,

“The parable of the good Samaritan is a very familiar story to our ears. The characters are an orthodox Jew, a religious Levite, and a vigorous merchant. They saw a man badly wounded by gangsters. But the orthodox Jew turned around and ran away with an excuse that he must keep his worship service time. The religious Levite knew he should take care of the wounded man. But in order not to miss singing in the vocal team, he ran away with full speed. But the Samaritan, a Gentile, ruined his business and gave all his money and saved this man’s life. This story is not at all dogmatic. But it reveals the universal love of God. Who could have been the most happy?”

May God’s servant not be angry with me, but I was severely confused by this commentary. On the one hand, I understand that the Gentile was happier than the money-loving Jews who would not spend a dime to help the injured man. But on the other hand, wouldn’t the Levite and priest be the most happy by loving God through attending the worship service and singing on the vocal team? I am getting mixed messages here. I need to meditate on this commentary more deeply.

SL explains probably one of the most important spiritual lessons through the story of the ten lepers,

“When they were healed, the nine Jewish lepers went to their mommies, or went around claiming that they healed their leprosy by their own effort. Jesus was very sorry that they did not come back to thank Jesus for the healing. Only one man came and thanked Jesus for his healing. He was a Samaritan, a Gentile. Jesus was very sorry that God’s chosen people all forgot God’s grace; they were saved from their leprosy, but they did not have a thankful mind. Jesus was very sorry, because they were supposed to be shepherds and Bible teachers and a blessing to the Gentile people. But they were really unthankful. Their root was totally corrupted because they did not thank God. Unthankfullness is the root of sin. Jesus was very sorry, because there were so many people who should study the Bible with his chosen people, but his people were worse than the lepers.”

Here I learned that the root of sin is unthankfulness. When Jesus heals us, if we do not become shepherds and bible teachers but only enjoy our healing, we are worse off than before we were saved. Some of my Bible students went to other churches after meeting Jesus through Bible study. They did not stay to become shepherds, something which has surely broken God’s heart. They have become like the useless Jews who were unthankful. Nevertheless, God will raise up other students in their places who will show their gratitude by becoming shepherds and Bible teachers. Amen!

Fourth, the Kingdom of God

On the kingdom of God in Luke’s gospel, SL states,

“But Luke’s gospel’s teaching of the kingdom of God is far superior to Matthew’s gospel in planting the kingdom of God in the hearts of vulgar people who are suffering under Satan’s rule.”

Indeed, those who do not know God are simply vile and vulgar people. In contrast, we who have the kingdom of God in our hearts are like those who have precious feet and faces like angels which shine light into the darkened hearts of men. When God rules over us, we are much better than those in the modern, secular society.

Fifth, Luke’s View of Discipleship Training

SL explains the mindset of the disciples when faced with Jesus’ main teaching,

“According to Luke’s account Jesus emphasized to his disciples that he should suffer and be handed over to the Gentiles and should die on the cross and rise again on the third day. Whenever Luke emphasized this, he related that Jesus’ suffering and death is to fulfill the will of God and the will of God is that he would become the Lamb of God for the sin of the world. The disciples, who had been clumps of desires, were not willing to understand the way of the cross.”

I have found this lesson to be true as well. Before my Bible students meet Jesus, they are like useless clumps of sinful desires. They do not understand the way of self-denial and taking up the cross. In fact, before I knew Jesus, I was a useless and dishonest creature, a mere worm in fact. But when I began to deny myself and take up the crosses of world mission, bible study, shepherding and school studies I could find true happiness in Jesus. I went from a clump of dirt to a happy disciple of Jesus.

SL closes his preface to Luke’s gospel with the precious example of the risen Jesus, who taught the Bible as of first importance (Lk 24),

“May God raise us as Bible teachers like Jesus. May God open our spiritual eyes to see the Risen Jesus. May God help us study the Bible truth, and believe in our hearts, and see from God’s point of view with universal eyes so that we can really understand God is like the Father in the parable of the prodigal son in chapter 15. May God give us universal love, so that we can embrace all kinds of sheep without any prejudice like Luke, a servant of God.”

Bible study and teaching are central parts of our spiritual lives that we cannot neglect. It is the only way in which people can have their eyes opened to know God and inherit eternal life. If we do not teach the Bible, then many students will tragically perish in their sins. We must see them as the prodigal son from Luke 15 who despaired after visiting prostitutes and eating with pigs. We must be good older brothers who will teach them the truth from the Bible and guide them to carry many crosses. When they are truly thankful for their salvation, then it will show in how much they teach the Bible and shepherd others. Instead of enjoying the worldly pleasures, they will become spiritual world changers and gospel workers.

Thank God for this Luke’s gospel study! I hope that SL’s condensed summary has shown like beautiful sunlight into your hearts. I long to bring you under my spiritual wing so that we can continue to enjoy these precious meditations together! From this point forward, in this Ubfriends community, let’s start a new history together. Amen!

What Guy taught us is that we should not be afraid of seeing our work be used in ways we never intended. He said you should be so lucky if someone buys your product and uses it for all the unintended reasons. His example is of course the Mac. He and Jobs and the Mac team intended the Mac to be a spreadsheet processor. But nobody used it for that. Instead, they used it for desktop publishing and artwork. He mentioned that a business might be tempted to get upset because they lost control over their product. Instead, Guy urges us to accept such things and embrace the success. Like Jobs, Guy says “Go dent the universe!” He teaches us to let the flowers blossom where they blossom, and let your creations grow and take on their own life. In the Christian sense, the message is this: You are not in control of your ministry, the Holy Spirit is.

How the purpose of ubfriends changed

Guy’s advice helps me embrace what ubfriends has become, instead of trying to control it. When I helped start ubfriends with Joe and a couple others, we were both pro-UBF and had a very specific idea about what we wanted to accomplish. We thought UBF could be reformed. For example consider this quote from our About page:

This website is not intended to promote or denigrate UBF or any organization. Our purpose is to serve people by giving them an independent forum to learn, to think, and to express themselves in a healthy and friendly manner. We hope that this website will foster multi-way conversations among friends, open new channels of communication and friendships among people of different ages and backgrounds, overcoming prejudice and stereotypes, help members of UBF develop stronger connections to the broader Christian community, and help us to see multiple sides of difficult issues and truly learn from one another, even when we do not agree.

We had hoped to discuss Christian theology and bring real change and reform to the UBF group.

That all changed because what has been revealed is that the foundations of the group are in shambles. Like an old house that cannot be repaired and must be torn down, we uncovered the failed theology called UBFism that cannot be repaired. UBFism is hindering all of us from seeing the all-surpassing gospel Jesus preached.

Over time, many different kinds of flowers blossomed here on this website.

Why must UBF be redeemed and not reformed?

Many hundreds of people over many decades from many cultures, including Korea, have attempted to reform UBF. It has not worked. The business model is fundamentally flawed, as Joe pointed out recently. Furthermore, UBFism is a theology that needs to be deconstructed and exposed as harmful.

This week I have extra time to ponder all these things. It has been an eye-opening week too, as I have had more people reach out to me and share confirmations of abuses. Some UBF leaders should be in jail for not reporting such abuse. This denial of abuse is the main reason I say UBF cannot just be changed or reformed, but must be stopped so that redemption can begin.

Here are the topics numerous people were talking about on social media this week:

– An older Korean missionary has routinely slept with his daughter.
– An American shepherd regularly molested children at CBF.
– A student regularly molested children and then was appointed to lead children’s singing.
– An American shepherd was made to live in a one room apartment with only a small window in order to kill off his worldly desires.
– An American shepherd was sick and kept at home with an IV instead of going to the emergency room.
– A Korean missionary died at a UBF center and they prayed instead of calling 911.
– Some 2nd gens are locked in their rooms after they partied too much and got drunk.

When will it stop? Will you speak up? 

Here are some examples of what I am trying to say, from our previous articles. In order to see many flowers grow and blossom, UBFism must be stopped and deconstructed:

Here is my bluntly worded article:
http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/05/08/it-must-come-to-an-end/

Here is Joe’s nicely worded article with John Amstrong’s input:
http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/05/09/john-armstrong-on-knowing-when-to-stop/

Here is Ben’s good article, in Ben Toh’s ubf-friendly style:
http://www.ubfriends.org/2013/11/09/why-churches-stop-growing/

So people can pick which “tone” they like, but in regard to this topic Ben, Joe and I are on the same page, even though we arrive from different viewpoints.

I want to share my testimony from this week’s message because I feel that sometimes the positive things about UBF are not heard on this site. I hope that you will appreciate my humble offering before the Lord. God bless.

In this week’s message, Pastor Ron Ward gives us great insight into how we can prepare the way for the Lord. These are dangerous times and we need an equally dangerous message. I mean dangerous in two senses here: the first is real danger, like living in an immoral and spiritually corrupted time where Christians can become infected by the culture. The second danger is a good one, at least for spiritual people, meaning that God’s word is dangerous to the forces of Satan because it has the power to set people free from his captivity. So in that sense, the words of God from his servant can match the dangerousness of the time that we live in. Also, there is another danger to Christians when they hold onto God’s words. Recently, a Kentucky clerk who was to issue marriage licenses refused to give them to homosexuals on the basis of God’s holy law. She was put in jail, thus signaling the unjust persecution of Christians. She had her own marriage problems being divorced many times, however God forgave all of her sins through Jesus’ precious blood and then called her to serve at the dangerous front lines to pull this country out of depravity. May God be with her and keep her strong.

P.Ron Ward comments about how Dr. Samuel Lee taught for many years that we must have a sense of history. This is why we study the historian Luke’s gospel so many times. We can see the change in culture when we forget the strong Christian heritage of America as PRW noted,

We are living in times of surprising change. Within this year, the 1972 Olympic decathlon champion announced that he is no longer a man, but a woman. This announcement was received with praise by prominent sports networks and media sources. This is compounded by the fact that he, or she, claims to be a Christian. Has our society gone completely crazy? This phenomenon is possible where there is no sense of history. Any student of history knows that great empires disappear when they weaken from within due to easygoing mentality and moral corruption. Seeing this trend in America, Muslim radicals have gained confidence the push their agenda in recent years. Having a sense of history is vital to sustaining a healthy nation. It is even more important to be a healthy Christian.

This is alarming indeed. If Caitlyn Jenner lived in Jesus’ times, he would probably say something like, “You call yourself a lover of God? You cannot be an ‘it’ and claim to love God. Repent and be a man as God made you!” Also, I recently read an article on radical Muslims explaining that they have come to power mainly due to hard economic times which were induced by bad foreign policies imposed by western nations. Powerful nations exploited them for resources so many times until they gave them no choice but to lash out in an outrageous way. For instance, the United States some time ago put an extremist leader into power in Saudi Arabia. Now the Saudis are oppressing smaller nations like Yemen and all the while the US is benefiting from Saudi oil. But from PRW, I learned that all of this is actually due to America’s easy going mentality and sexual immorality so that now Muslims have become proud. In reality, Muslims realize that they can entice thirsty western men by promising that they can marry up to five wives and receive 72 virgins if they blow themselves up. The article I read did not open my eyes to this, but planted a sense of victim’s mentality in the reader so that we would feel sorry for Muslims. Instead, we should resist the sexual immorality and build a strong military to fight against Satan’s forces all over the world! In this way, America can become healthy and great again, thus creating a new history.

PRW’s words are so comforting here,

We can find real hope in God to make a new history. It happens when we accept God’s word with repentance. No matter who we are, no matter how many mistakes we may have made, we can start a new history when we respond to God’s word with repentance. The same is true of our church. As we begin this new fall semester, let’s learn how we can start something new in our spiritual lives and in our community.

I was so encouraged, because in my ministry I have been hurt so much by sheep. So many ran away. I may have made some mistakes, but those were just the growing pains. No matter, I learned that we should put this history behind us and make a brand new history by newly listening to the words of God! As Paul said, “forgetting what is behind…” In this way, I can start a new ministry and look for the Abraham and Sarah of faith on my campus. Through Luke’s study I hope that I may repent and bear the fruit of new disciples. Amen!

Wow, there were so many spiritual foods just in the introduction alone! I asked myself why we were starting from chapter three instead of the first one; I was a bit confused. Then I realized that PRW is challenging us to not be easy-going. He wants us to be spiritual detectives and work hard, even backwards sometimes to figure out the truth. Also our young sheep can grow when they are challenged in this way. Praise and thank God for this training. Now let’s begin the passage.

First, The word of God came to John (1-2)

PRW explains the crazy times of Jesus’ day by pointing out the crazy and weird emperor Tiberius. So many people were crushed and hopeless under the Roman Empire. We can also see this going on in our day, as PRW notes,

Christians should not expect too much from our political and religious leaders. American evangelicals have been disappointed that engaging in political process has not been so effective in the last 30 years. But there is real hope. It is in God.

At first, I was a little confused at this statement because we are told that we should respect the authorities which are instituted by God (Ro 13:1, 2) and pray for our leaders that we may live in peace (1 Tim 1:2). Also, for many years we held up Billy Graham as a great world-changing evangelist and even prayed for PRW to be like him. I think we should hold these kinds of people in a special regard. But I newly learned that more than these, we should have hope in God, not merely in men. More specifically, it is God’s word that gives us power and faith to overcome the world. We should find a quiet time to listen to Jesus’s words. PRW gives us a good example,

In order to listen to God we may need to put away our smart phones, ipads and other media devices. Historically, the UBF ministry has been strong because dedicated people have listened to the word of God more than the noise of the world. Recently I worshiped in smaller UBF chapters in Chicago and Canada and had the chance to hear the messages of lay shepherds. It was obvious that they listened to God’s word, and his word was spoken powerfully through them. This is a precious spiritual inheritance. However, listening to others’ messages is not enough. We all need tie to meditate on, digest, and put God’s word into practice. Those who regularly struggle with God’s word maintain a healthy spiritual life. It requires time and energy. We have done this through testimony writing and sharing. Some people, however, have given up this struggle. This is one reason that problems arise in their lives and ministries.

Testimony writing may be the greatest invention of UBF and God’s great gift to the Christian body. Because of it, we have grown to be the navy seals of the Church. I confess that when I stopped writing testimony because of full time work and full time studies and full time ministry, I became lazy and eventually even demon-possessed. I fell into shameful temptations and could not do the work of God. But when I newly committed to struggle all of the demons and spiritual cobwebs and spiders were driven out. I have recently heard of some small chapters struggling spiritually and eventually going to local churches. I was so disappointed because it was obvious that they became full of complaining and laziness because they didn’t hold onto God’s words. May God help them to repent and write testimony once again. PRW notes the miraculous story of Brother Yun. He had no Bible in communist China. But that did not stop him from praying and eventually leading a spiritual revival in China. If this is the case, then we have no excuse. I pray that we may have Brother Yun’s fighting spirit and hold onto the words of God like he did so that we may see a new history of God in America. Amen.

Second, John preached a baptism of repentance (3-6)

PRW talks about how John the Baptist preached and baptized at the Jordan and proclaimed that all, even spiritual-looking people, should repent. He says,

Baptism indicated radical repentance. It meant to turn from self to God in terms of purpose, life direction, value system and desires. It was to renounce self-rule and accept God’s reign. The first step is simply to acknowledge that God’s word is right and “I am wrong” for violating it. It is to let go of excuses and justification and to admit my fault and guilt. It is recognizing that I should change, and not expecting God to change.

These words are so powerful. I did not fully understand the repentance until I listened to this. I used to think that repent meant to feel sorrow for my sins. But I newly learned that it means to admit that I am wrong, that I need to change and that God is right and unchanging. It makes sense because I had so many worldly thoughts before I became a Christian. I learned so many things through the spiritual wisdom of my spiritual fathers in UBF. I was challenged so many times to ignore my own thinking and listen to the words of God and his servants. It was very difficult at first because some directions seemed strange to me. In fact, I rebelled a little bit. But I realized that these were my demons speaking and that I had not truly repented. Now I am a spiritual man of God through many repentances.

PRW also speaks so honestly about one of his failures as a father and how he needed to practice true repentance to shepherd his son. He realized that his own sins damaged his relationship with his son. He felt the godly sorrow because of his sins and through God’s strength he could truly repent. May we all follow such a godly example and be good spiritual fathers and mothers for our sheep. Amen.

We are also encouraged to call sin as sin. We should not be afraid to tell our sheep the truth about their sin instead of being politically correct, as PRW says. I once had a bible student who liked to indulge in homosex. I told him, that is not right before God and explained from the Bible, starting with Genesis 17. He asked why I was so blunt and he was hurt because I did not want to go into a deep discussion about the matter. He eventually ran away. I realize that people want to talk and talk about so many nonsenses, but really it is their way of escaping the truth of reality. God will eventually burn up all sinners with wrath. So we cannot get caught up in useless talking and debates, but instead we must proclaim the word of God which even has the power to heal homosexuals. I remember when first coming to America I saw the gay pride parade. I was shocked and asked, how can anyone be proud of that? We surely have to rescue this nation from extreme immorality which invites God’s wrath.

We should do this proclaiming which leads to repentance to prepare all of our hearts for the coming of Jesus. What is this coming of Jesus like? PRW explains,

The word salvation appears six times in Luke’s gospel. It refers to the coming of Jesus and his work to save his people from their enemies, forgive their sins, and restore their relationship with God. He made a new world, a perfect paradise. Jesus did this through his suffering, death and resurrection. This amazing grace of salvation is good news. Those who prepare the way for the Lord through repentance will be abundantly blessed and comforted.

There is one sneaky and clever-sounding theologian named N.T. Wright. He preaches that we should be bringing heaven to earth, through our actions and prayer, even in our present day. This sounded so intoxicating to many people, and I shamefully admit even to me. But here I newly learned that instead we are waiting for Jesus to come and give us the new heaven and new earth and solve all of our sins problems once and for all. Our spiritual task is to sincerely repent with tears so that we can prepare his arrival. We should not get caught up in trying to change this world or make a home in it. We are merely pilgrims passing through. We should be like John the Baptist who lived in the wilderness and shunned the modern society, thus making a way for Jesus to come. God will burn this earth up along with all sinners, so we should look to Jesus to rescue us from this godless environment. The thing that will set us apart from corrupted sinners is our godly repentance. Amen.

Third, Produce fruit in keeping with repentance (7-14)

John allowed many people to come and repent, but he was not easy-going, as PRW explains,

Many people came to him. They heard God’s word through his message. They wanted to drink it in like thirsty deer lapping streams of water. But John did not praise them. Rather, he challenged them sternly by calling them a brood of vipers. Holy John sounds a little like General Patton.

Wow, John was such a powerful spiritual general. He knew that only lip service would not help the people become the true children of God. They had to truly believe and live a changed life. They had to experience ongoing change, in fact. This is what sanctification is.

PRW closes with some practical ways in which many people in John’s day repented. People worked hard, did not extort others and lived as honest people. PRW even gave an example of how he is helping his son to be a hard worker. Instead of taking it easy on his vacation, he worked so hard to teach his son the hardworking mentality. I remember him saying one time that he regularly worked 100 hours per week. He is so hard working to serve so many things, even his family. This surely is the power of God and the fruit of repentance working in him. Also, he is so brave to talk about his family problems through the message. One day, his son will look back and thank him for including him in this message, which is a precious part of the history of God for all to see.

Personally, I was cut to the heart through this message. I remember when I was in Korea, I went to drink soju at night many times throughout the week. I enjoyed the worldly pleasures and wanted to marry and live an easy-going life. But when I came to bible study, I was challenged to be honest with my shepherds confessing all of my sins. This was so hard because I was so used to deceiving people all of the time. I remember one time even stealing money from my college roommate so that I could pay for a fancy perm. But I repented very sincerely of all of this through Bible study with my shepherd. Then, I was given the direction to change my name to Honest. Honestly speaking, this was difficult and my parents thought that it was strange. But now I see the wisdom of God’s shepherds. I can be an honest and hardworking man through Jesus Christ. Now I am a source to help many American sheep to repent and make a new history with God. May God be with our ministry this fall and help us to raise up many new Abraham’s and Sarah’s of faith. Amen!

One Word: Do the hard work of repentance through God’s strength and prepare the way for Jesus

Going back to Seminary produces mixed feelings in me. Seminary has been so crucial to my spiritual growth this past year, but the school that I study at is also very conservative. I have to look a certain way (even in the gym there is a dress code), think a certain way (premillennial dispensational), and hold certain political/social views (usually conservative republican). Basically I have to toe the party line and keep the status quo. This is not a necessarily bad thing, it’s a part of being in a community. In the church the “we” is bigger than the “me.” This means that I have to be extra careful in the way I dress, speak, write, blog, etc. Often I have to remain silent on topics that mean so much to me. I have to be careful with the discussions I have with my classmates, I don’t want to pick fights. My prayer is to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. (Please do not misunderstand, I love my school, but I don’t agree with everything. In this post, my goal is not cynicism, but authenticity).

Recently I was talking to a friend who four years ago had been accepted to my school. She was given a free ride and also the option of living off of campus (something that usually never happens,) but she refused. As we were talking, the reason why she refused unraveled. As I shared my love for my school, community and professors, my words resonated with her when I began to talk about the rigidity. It was because of the school’s rigidity, ultimately, that she decided not to study there (I think at that time dancing and any alcohol whatsoever was prohibited, even for professors. I’m not sure if it’s still prohibited).

After that conversation I was riding my bike contemplating our words and Gandhi’s idea of “loving Christ, but not Christians.” And I realized that Christians can come across as nitpicky and ultra-sensitive. Their love can be perceived as conditional because it is only given if you dress, think, vote or write like them. I think this might be one of the reasons why Gandhi felt the way he did toward Christians. (Actually when he was in South Africa he did meet Christians, but he was turned off by their exclusivity. Gandhi was greatly influenced by Christ and he lived out Christ’s words through nonviolence, but he did not like Christians, pretty ironic).

And yet just because a majority of Christians are judgmental, does not mean all Christians are. For example, if Bob judges Jane for the way she dresses and Bob is a Christian, does that mean that all Christians will judge women based on dress code? (Hopefully not).  The problem, however, isn’t Christ, but Bob; the problem isn’t the message, but the messenger. People see Christians and think Christianity is hogwash that creates judgmental bigots and two-faced hypocrites. But that is not true, Jesus Christ embraced all types of people and he sternly rebuked hypocrisy. He taught us to love our enemies, that leaders must serve and that forgiveness is crucial. If people knew the beauty of Christ, it would rock their world. Jesus is the embodiment of both grace and truth and God is love.

The problem is not Christ, the problem is me, the person, the interpreter, the communicator. We often have screwed up pictures of the Bible, gospel, God and the church. Then we impose our personal interpretations on those around us. This causes excruciating pain and broken relationships, which fly in the face of the greatest commandment Jesus gave us in Matthew 22:36-40,

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Do Gandhi’s words resonate with you? Have you been hurt by Christians? What has your experience with Christians been like?

…And Instead Dwell In Christ

Admin note: Reading Kevin’s testimony, I immediately resonated with what he shared below. I know that the Christian life should be full of love, joy and peace (Gal 5:22), as well an overflowing and abundant life (Jn 10:10b). But after a quarter of a century as a Christian, I was experiencing anger, joylessness and anything but peace–perhaps like Kevin after 26 years of “endless self-pruning” as a Christian, as he vividly shares in Part 2: Lost in my human efforts to love God. The Christian life felt to me very much like such a torturous unbearable drag. At that time I didn’t quite know why. But I knew that I needed to seriously re-evaluate my life as a Christ-follower…and make major drastic changes if I were to restore my joy of intimacy with my Lord. See if you can relate to Kevin pouring out his heart in what he shares below.

Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (NIV).

Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (NIV).

Deuteronomy 6 discusses ways in which, we, as believers, can guard our hearts when we are on the cusp of abundant blessings from God. The Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, and receive houses and fields that were not theirs. A former slave people would become a nation. On the brink of receiving many blessings, they were in danger of losing their hearts to the world and drifting away from the God who saved them.

For any believer, it is when we are being blessed by God, that we are the most vulnerable in losing our hearts to the temptations of this world. We could end up following the idols of the culture in which we live. We could forget the Lord. We could loose a thankful heart and take all of our blessings for granted. We could even become proud, thinking that all of the blessings we have accumulated actually were procured exclusively by our own “human” efforts. In doing this we end up giving glory to ourselves and not to Christ, who is the actual source of our blessings. Our love for our Savior can grow cold.

Anyway, we know that we must guard our hearts, for God’s blessings are being poured out on us continuously. We are so blessed. We live in one of the most blessed countries of the world. We are living in the most blessed generation. We have freedom of religion and freedom of thought and expression. The greatest blessing is yet to come, the resurrection from the dead into life everlasting in the Kingdom of Heaven where we will live with our Savior Jesus, face to face. But, as a result, we are the most vulnerable generation. We Christians, must make it a point to guard our hearts.

How? Dt 6:5 says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Mk 12:30 says. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” I will explore each aspect of devotion, to love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength. Then I will explore the dangers of continuously trying, with our own human efforts, to become more efficient in showing love for Jesus, verses simply being found in Christ, through faith, and allowing the God, the Eternal Gardener, to prune and perfect our expressions of love to Christ. This will be illuminated by my personal testimony.

Part 1: Suggestions On How To Better Love God: But Be Warned!

People have been endowed by God, with various tools to love the Lord. They can be found in the following verses:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Dt 6:5).

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30).

God has given us heart, mind, soul and strength. He has given us these characteristics to love him. He has given us the direction to love him intensity, using these qualities, so as to guard our hearts and protect and nurture our relationship with him, especially in the vulnerable time when we are on the cusp of great blessings.

But be warned, trying to apply these teachings, without having a “vine and branch relationship” (Jn 15:5) with Jesus Christ, can make a person into a disciplined disciple who is depressed and devoid of joy and laughter, limited in their ability to exalt the name of Jesus. With this in mind, we will explore different ways to love God in the modern context. Keep in mind… this is not a check list on how to become more efficient in our walk with the Lord. It is not a blueprint on how to self prune ourselves of our useless branches. It is an ideal that could inspire us as we follow Christ.

First, loving God with all of our heart: A person’s heart is the seat of their passions. We give our hearts to many things. Young people give their hearts to their friends, to music and self improvement. They achieve great things when they give their hearts. Adults give their hearts to their hobbies, families and pursuit of their dreams. They too can achieve great things. Loving God with all of our heart, is loving God with all of our passion. How can we do this? What we are passionate about comes naturally. It is unique for every person. Our passions are somehow related to our giftings. God can redeem our passions and use what we are passionate about, for his glory. Or, a person can do what doesn’t come naturally…forcing their passions to be in line with what they think is loving God. I would not suggest this. This will lead to joylessness.

Second, loving God with all of our soul: We have two components to our being, body and soul. The soul is made in the image of God. With the soul we can commune with God. We can relate to God. We can love God and we can worship God. Loving God with all of our soul means that we worship God. We nurture our relationship with God as we worship, revere and adore him. Loving God with all of our soul is something that spontaneously erupts. It is a response to an encounter with Jesus. It is a result of experiencing God’s grace. We can encourage worship to happen, by joining in worship with the local congregation or a church meeting. But ultimately it is God that causes our soul to overflow with worship and praise. Forcing ourselves to worship him can only go so far.

Third, loving God with all of our mind: Our mind is very powerful. When humans begin to pursue something with their minds, nothing seems impossible. Even extending human life to 200 years, resurrecting a mastodon, or starting a colony on Mars seems possible. Once the mind starts to pursue a topic, it is hard for us to get it out of our minds. There are those who can’t put down a 700 page book until it is completed. Others pursue a hypothesis until they uncover the truth. We can love God with all of our mind. We can read books about God. We can develop mission fields with its many systems and networks with our minds. We can write about God and spiritual life. We can imagine the Kingdom of God and what great things the Gospel will bring to a people group, with our minds. In an attempt to love God, we can discipline our minds to think about Christ honoring things. We can discipline ourselves to engage in daily devotionals etc. But, we can also burn ourselves out, denying our mind to dwell on what it has a passion for and forcing a round block into a square hole for too long.

Fourth, loving God with all of our strength: People have a lot of strength to do things with. We can apply our strength to loving God. God gives us the strength. He inspires us, and loves us, hopes in us. This inspiration, hope and love gives us more strength. We can focus our strength to love Jesus. For example some people get up at 5 am to ensure they have time for devotionals. They sacrifice sleep in order to engage in a mission. We can muster strength to read a spiritual book. We can get a degree in Christian ministry. We can shed useless things in our lives in order go further with the strength we have been given. This is where the danger lies. A person may get so focused on shedding “the baggage” in order to muster more strength to love God, that they actually forget about God. Without a vine and branch relationship with Jesus, they become disciplined in spiritual things but lose the full life that Christ would have for them. The end result is a joyless, yet efficient, life of faith. This is where we fall into burnout if we are not careful. And this brings me to my own testimony.

Part 2: Lost In My Human Efforts To Love God

Now is the time to talk about the dangers of trying to be more and more efficient in our loving God using our own efforts. Out of a deep sincerity of heart, we try to become more disciplined, as we self-prune ourselves, to get rid of few more useless branches from our lives. We try to excise a little more selfishness and self serving tendencies, in order to devote ourselves to our mission, which we equate with loving God. Maybe we could squeeze out a little more offering, devote a little more prayer time, introduce a little more Bible reading, make sure that there is less time for ourselves and our “selfish” pursuits and more time for Jesus and his mission. All of this is done in our sincere quest to love God with all of our hearts, minds, soul and strength.

I operated like this for 26 years, all the while ignoring the importance of dwelling in Christ and finding my peace and rest in him. I largely ignored the truth of being still and knowing that God is control. This way of life helped me to be disciplined and to find my giftings in the Lord, but it also took a great toll on me.

Over the course of two and a half decades, I become very devoted to my mission in the church. So devoted that some days I would sleep for 4-5 hours a day, occasionally having to stop and take a nap in my car. After working all night, I would be up at 2 pm to meet students for Bible study at 230 pm. For over 5 years, I would memorize 10-30 Bible verses every two weeks and write a four page testimonial and travel 140 miles (there and back) to join a meeting. I would leave at 9am and get back at 7pm. I would study the Bible with about six people per week on a 1:1 basis each week. I would write a message weekly and deliver it on Sunday. Every two weeks I would do the Sunday thing with only three hours of sleep. There was a huge expenditure of money. Above tithing, there were conference fees and travel fees and the paying of two mortgages for a few years, one for our home and the other for a church house. On Sunday there were three Bible studies with the kids after the Sunday worship service. All of this was happening, after working full time and raising five kids with my wife. They activities varied over the years, but the intensity of it all carried on for 26 years. At the end of it all, I was running like a machine. I got this way from attempting to cut off one useless branch after another, becoming more efficient in expressing my love for God while ignoring the relationship with Jesus Christ.

The result of this kind of drive for efficiency was both good and bad. The good thing was that I did get to know Jesus better. I got to know my Bible. I grew to be a 1:1 Bible teacher. I could become a Christian mentor. I could lead group Bible studies. I could write and deliver Gospel messages. I could relate to other Christian leaders and work together with them. I prayed. I could write reports about the work of God. I could slowly grow to be a writer and a devotional writer. I could be a networker in the work of God. I could promote missionary support groups.

I am very thankful for these skills that God bestowed. They provide me with the tools I will use, as I serve the Lord Jesus, throughout my entire lifetime, even into the twilight of my life…even in a nursing home, I can serve Jesus with these tools. They are meaningful tools that are bringing about lasting fruit in my life. This is because of Jesus Christ, and the disciplines that I experienced while growing as a disciple and pruning useless branches.

But then there were the bad things. I was very efficient but largely joyless. Years ago I remember being attracted to Afro-American Gospel music and Southern Gospel music. I liked these genres of Christian music because they were full of joy. They were not full of joy, because of the number of people coming to an outreach event, or the numbers of disciples engaged in ministry. They were singing about the Kingdom of God and the Resurrection. They were sincerely celebrating life everlasting with the Lord Jesus forever and ever. Something that I knew about, but was not doing.

And then there was Jn 1:4 that I could not ignore. This verse reads, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.” And also John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” These verses continually knocked on the door of my heart. In Jesus is Life. This life is the light of all mankind. Jesus came to bring life. He came to grant us life to the full. I could not give testimony to these statements. I was not experiencing this life, nor life to the full, and yet I was sincerely trying to follow Jesus for 26 years! Though I was getting super efficient, I was depressed, without laughter, with momentary episodes of joy, and strained relationships. I doubted that anyone would ever choose to follow Christ, by looking at my life. What I was portraying was more, endless “boot camp” training than life in Christ.

In regards to ministry, did such a lifestyle bring about a larger church? Did it attract people to our fellowship? Did it attract missionaries to voluntarily gather to preach the Gospel together? Did it create a fellowship where joy in the Lord was overflowing? Did it create more Bible teachers and spiritual mentors? Did it inspire others to follow what I was doing? No.

After 26 years of trying to make myself more and more efficient in loving God, I saw no prospects for change, operating in that paradigm. Some would have me think that if I just suffered a little longer then the dams of God’s blessing would burst open. I didn’t believe that. Nor do I now. I knew that things would only remain the same, endless self pruning and refinement. I did believe in the parable of the five loaves and two fish. If I just offered what I had, then God would accept that and multiply it. But I was offering up my five loaves and two fish for twenty six years and I was left depressed. Once a thought crossed my mind, “What if I need to offer up my five loaves and two fish” more intensely and sincerely? Maybe then God would bless. When I shared this with a brother in Lord, he laughed. He saw the folly of my legalistic way of thinking. I was really stuck. No one was telling me I was wrong. I appeared to be devoted to the mission and appeared to be loving God with all my strength. But Jesus, seeing, my need, broke the chains himself.

Part 3: The Dawn Of A New Day

Jn 1:4 and Jn 10:10 resounded in my heart. If Jesus came to give us life to the full, then why was I not experiencing life to the full, even after streamlining my efforts for 26 years! I was stuck in a rut. I knew something was missing but didn’t know what. I was hard hearted. But God led me along a painful awakening in 2012 until now. Along this leg of the journey, I came to discover what it means to dwell in the Lord.

Jn 15:5 reads, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

I learned about resting in the Lord and taking the unique yolk that Jesus has for me and my life and my family in this season of living…the Missio Dei in my life.

Mt 11:28-30 reads, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I learned about being still and knowing that God is control.

Ps 46:10 reads, “He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’”

Over the last three years Jesus has taught me that loving God with all of my heart, mind, soul and strength, has nothing to do with endless refining and pruning myself to be more efficient. It has everything to do with remaining in Jesus. It has everything to do with allowing God to bear what he wants in my life, in his time and in his way, and not forcing the issue. There is life in Jesus, to be certain. There is life to the FULL in him. There is the fruit if joy, peace and love, but that is not found in self pruning one’s self for decades. It is an outpouring of our relationship with Christ.

Jn 4:14, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

I thank God for each leg of my life’s journey thus far. God has grown me into the man I am today. God willing, I will still have 50 more years to serve my Lord Jesus in this world. (That is if I live to 100!) I thank God for his gifts and his blessings and the missions he has called me to. It is now time to enter into the next season of my life and ministry and it not going to be marked by endless self pruning and streamlining of my expressions of love to the Lord. I will be more concerned about having a vine and branch relationship with Jesus. I will, by the grace of God, dwell in his love and allow him to bear his fruit in my life and family. I will allow him to exalt his name through my life. And I will enjoy the life to the full that Christ gives. I will bear testimony to the world, that in Jesus is life, true life and we can have life to the full by faith. I have a great hope that endless, God-honoring fruit will be born. It is God who will nurture and blossom love in my heart, allowing me to love him with intensity. No more endless refinement and self pruning, only remaining in Christ and trusting him.

A Chinese protestor blocks a line of tanks heading east on Beijing’s Changan Blvd. June 5, 1989 in front of the Beijing Hotel. The man, calling for an end to the violence and bloodshed against pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, was pulled away by bystanders, and the tanks continued on their way.

Before you read this article please watch this clip. This is one of my favorite clips of all time: Tank Man Raw Footage

If you do not know who this man is, he is known as the tank man and the event is the protest of Tiananmen Square June 5, 1989 (the year I was born, an auspicious year!)

Every time I watch this footage or look at the clip I get chills. Yet this man remains unknown to this day. He disappeared into the crowds shortly after his “moment of self-transcendence.” Not only is this man’s identity a mystery, but so are the details of the event itself, the student protest of Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government has never disclosed the actual number of deaths. The Chinese government wants to play it off as if it never happened. They will not acknowledge that they were wrong while the students were right. Read the TIME’s 1989 cover story: here

This brings me to the point of this article stated in the sub-title: language defines reality. The one who tells the story controls the narrative. This has been repeated over and over again in history. Let me give some examples.

Armenian Genocide

I did my undergrad in Turkey. There, we were required to take a class on Turkish History. The professor was exceptional, except for one thing; she was in denial about the Armenian genocide (1915-1918; estimated deaths 1.5 million) . She taught that 1 million Armenians simply died from the difficult trek across Turkey. Even when I asked my class mates about this event, they had no opinion on it. It just didn’t happen or the fact that it happened or not did not matter to them.

Holodomor

I also lived in Ukraine for 6 years. Everyone knows about the Holocaust (1938-1945) where 6 million Jews were killed and 5 million non-Jews. But what about the artificial famine in Ukraine (1932-1933) were 7 million Ukrainians were starved to death, not because of a lack of food but because of a ruthless decree? The world did not know about it and foreign correspondents who knew kept quiet. Even today so many people don’t know about it. Watch a trailer on it: here.

Injustice like this continues to happen today. When I was in Ukraine this time last year a Malaysian airliner was shot down.

“Russia, however, denied all allegations it supplied weaponry to the rebels and has instead suggested a Ukrainian military plane had flown within firing range of the airliner just before it came down. The Ukrainian government rejected the claims.”

If Russia did not supply the weaponry, who did? It is obvious that Ukraine lacks the military artillery to bring down a plane. Moreover, that week Ukrainian planes had been shot down, so are they saying that Ukrainians are shooting their own planes? Not only that but when Media blames the “Pro-Russian Separatists” Who do you think is funding the pro-Russians? Think about it.

Anyway I write this article not so that all those reading will think the same way that I do, but so that those reading will see how language dictates reality. Communist governments have taken advantage of this. Look at North Korea, they indoctrinate their people with the idea that they are the best, that they live in plenty and that the outside world is their enemy. Their reality is spoon fed to them by their government.

The same thing happens here in the US. Everyone eats up what the media gives them. The problem is not a lack of education or resources, but a lack of interest. Ray Bradbury said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” My plea for those who read this is to get educated on the Armenian Genocide, Holodomor, Darfur , Arab-Israeli Conflict, Tiananmen Square, etc. Do not just eat up everything on tv. Do that brave tank man justice and hear his story. Do not let the government rob him of his identity a second time.

I want to finish with a quote from Azar Nafisi:

“I want to remind you of what Nabokov wrote when he was asked to tone down his criticism of the Soviet Union during World War II: ‘Governments come and go, only the trace of genius remains.’ That statement certainly came true for Eastern Europe. When you tell your own story, you take control over reality. In Iran, reality had power over us. And one way of negating that control was by telling our own stories. When you tell your story from your own perspective, then those people lose their power. It’s like Scheherazade, in A Thousand and One Nights. She changed the King through telling the story, and that was the whole idea of my book.”

What are your reactions to this article? Have you heard about the Tiananmen Square Masssacre, the Armenian Genocide, Holodomor or the Malaysian Airliner shot down July 2014 before? Do you agree that language determines reality? What is the story that you will share with the world? Do you  Question Everything?

Additional Reading:

5 Things You Should Know About the Tiananmen Square Massacre

I plan to continue sharing each summary. Feel free to jump in at any time. I hope to share my reactions to questions posed to me from time to time by people of the non-affirming conscience. Whenever I say “God is love”, the response is often, “But God is holy.” The non-affirming conscience rightly concerns about the holiness of God. Are we disobeying God? What is God up to? Is there any possibility that God could be doing a new thing among gender and sexual minorities?

How do Christians navigate any change or issue?

When faced with new realities and cultural shifts, Christians begin and end with the gospel. Christians live as citizens of the kingdom of God. Christians face the facts of new realities with hope and compassion for the marginalized, and a passion for justice.

Christians look not only to the Bible but at least 2 other sources. Christians consider the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the lessons from Tradition, the human testimony of experience, and also sound, logical reasoning.

For example, how does a church react when an elderly couple asks to be blessed with the sacrament of marriage? Do they quote verses about “be fruitful”? Do they demand celibacy for the couple? For most churches, the answer is no, the couple would be allowed to marry even though there is no chance of children being born.

A word about holiness and obedience

To be holy is a valid Christian concern. To be holy is to be “set apart”. I would ask us to consider what we are set apart for? I contend that the holiness Jesus taught is very different from the holiness the Pharisees taught. Holiness is no longer about obeying a holiness code.

To be holy means to be willingly contaminated with the physical world, trusting that our heart and soul are kept pure by the hand of God.

Who is the most holy person you can think of? Mother Theresa is a common answer. She died September 5, 1997 in Kolkata, India. She is the one who lived her life in the contamination of the world, surrounded by the outcast. We seem to be so afraid of being physically or socially or spiritually contaminated that we avoid the very places that would strengthen our holiness and help bring about redemption to those around us. Jesus ate and drank with prostitutes. Does our idea of holiness allow us to do the same?

What new reality are we seeing?

Some have claimed we are seeing waves of sin and immorality and disobedience. Others claim we are in the end-times apocalypse. My contention is that we are seeing the kingdom of God coming to earth in a new wine fashion. I contend that we are seeing three reformations:

-The disarming of religious authorities
-The unleashing of freedom (break every enslavement)
-The deconstruction of male-dominated patriarchy

The “male and female” thread in the Bible

I contend further that we are seeing the binary wineskin of “male and female” bursting in society around us. People tend to quote Genesis 5:2 and point out that God created “male and female” in the beginning. I agree. I would point out that the end of the “male and female” thread in the Bible is Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” NIV.

Questions for discussion

Why is everything outside of “male and female” considered broken or disordered?

What does the bible condemn in regard to our modern, non-male/female term “homosexuality”?

In light of the male/female binary fading away, might we revisit the meaning of marriage?

How can we sustain “hate the sin, love the sinner”?

Should the church be the safest place to work this out?

How can we say that practicing homosexuality is any different from the desire of homosexuality?

Why I am fully affirming

Please note that I am NOT affirming gay sex orgies or immorality. I am ONLY affirming same-sex marriage. My claim is that sex is no longer sin in the confines of marriage.

I see three corrections gender and sexual minorities are already bringing to the church. This is the subject of my Lambhearted Lion book:

A more robust understanding of the gospel
-Move beyond atonement toward reconciliation
-Revisit Scripture without “male and female”

A restoration to the purpose of the church
-Are we sin police? Who is King? Who is Lord?

An excitement about philosophy and theology of life
-A gay Christian inspired me to return to church!

I also see three gifts gender and sexual minorities are already bringing to the church. This is the subject of my New Wine book:

The gift of heart
-Move toward courage, hope, compassion

The gift of holiness
-Deeper understanding of unity, conscience and purity

The gift of celebration
-All-surpassing joy of hospitality, marriage, celibacy

Words of Blessing from Scripture

A scan through the Holy Scriptures reveals the nature of God’s blessing.

Psalm 106:3 “Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!” My process of leaving was spurred on by the injustice of my sin against the Kim family in 1990. My conscience was bothered more and more as I was told the forget about this event by ubf people. The more I sought relief from this pain of conscience, the more blessed I felt. Seeking justice opens a door to God’s blessing.

Isaiah 30:18 [The Lord Will Be Gracious] “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” I was told repeatedly to just wait on ubf leaders to change. But I saw no evidence of change, just a mere rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. So I decided to stop waiting on ubf leaders to change, and to wait on God to work His justice. Waiting on God is so much more blessed than waiting on change in an organization.

What does Jesus say?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that blessing is not about being “in” or “out” of some community. Blessing is the gift of God, bestowed upon both individuals and community.

In Matthew 5:1-12 Jesus tells us the kind of people God blesses. They are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the people who are insulted and persecuted. I am not going to claim to be great in these areas. I know I fall short. Yet it was these verses of blessing that comforted me so many times during my leaving process. Every time I thirsted for righteousness, sought to deepen my understanding of godly sorrow or strived to be pure and honest, I felt the hand of God’s blessing. This brought much persecution from ubf people who cared more about obedience and loyalty than righteousness or purity of heart. And that led me to be greatly blessed.

What is blessing?

I have discovered that ubf taught me a vending machine attitude toward blessing. Go to daily bread in the morning, get a blessing that Sunday. Write a glory-story testimony, get a blessing that Friday. But Jesus does not have such a pragmatic idea of blessing. Jesus says blessings are the kingdom of heaven, comfort, the earth, satisfaction, mercy, the ability to see God, and the children of God. Surely there are many pragmatic blessings, but Jesus invites us to gain the greater blessings. Before leaving I and my home chapter in Toledo went through several years of discord. There was no satisfcation or comfort. But I found these blessings poured out on us through my leaving process.

So then, God does not show favoritism. Being “in” ubf is no more special than being “out” of ubf. In fact, maybe we could drop the in/out dichotomy and say “at” ubf. Some, like Ben and forests, are at ubf ministry. But they are not “in” any special blessing. I am not at ubf ministry. But I am not “out” of any blessing from God.

My Blessed Life after ubf

My life is also practially blessed. My wife and I went on our first date after 18 years of marriage (instead of single college students who “co-work”). We are learning and succeeding at how to be good parents (instead of passing on a heritage). My job is stable and our finances are recovering from the finance abuse. At ubf, I had 19 jobs in about 20 years. Now I’ve had the same job for two years in a row! Our family is making new friends and resting in the blessing of God. We have actually studied the bible and learned from the bible (instead of just making copy-cat white binders).

Our family had an initial time of turbulence, but that is smoothing out now. I no longer think it will take 24 years to recover from my 24 years at ubf. After just 4 years, we have already seen so much healing and blessing.

So please, ubf shepherds, can we stop the false teaching that when you leave ubf you are cursed? We former members are just as blessed as you are. Surely there is blessing at ubf and not at ubf.

My Resistance to the Cult Label

It must be noted first that the term cult did not come from me. I resisted this label for decades. Even after leaving, I wrestled with whether to use this term or not. In the past, I was “Mr. UBF” and argued intensely to defend the UBF organization for many years (2002 to 2007). I worked with Sarah Barry and others to erase negative information about UBF on the internet. I called Mr. Fisk of the NAE to argue in favor of re-instating UBF to the NAE organization. So for most of my life I hated the cult label and fought hard to remove it.

In 2008 I met John Jun at a UBF staff conference breakfast and listened to him gleefully tell me how UBF lawyers had removed the threat of Chris and his ubf-hate website. My eyes began opening to the facts.

In 2009 or so I discovered that James Kim (of Toledo UBF) had died. I was furious that no one told me so that I could attend his funeral. I was told another James Kim drove Paul Hong and Mark Gamber to the funeral. After this I decided to read the entire letters of James Kim and Rebekah Kim. I highly recommend reading these and processing them. Charles recently posted the links in a comment here.

Where does the cult label come from?

I began researching the issue online in the following years. I have now built up my priestly>nation website as a resource for links to everything related to UBF. One major resource is my list of links to newspaper articles that mention UBF as a cult, most of which pre-date the widespread use of the internet. The cult label started being applied to UBF right away in Korea and later in 1977, after missionaries from Korea UBF went to Canada.

http://www.priestlynation.com/newspapers/

There are now many organizations that have files on UBF. The primary two, in the West at least, are from Rick Ross and Steven Hassan. Both websites have a wealth of information about undue religious influence and how to cope with such influence. Both have extensive documentation about UBF.

The cult label came from the public. That is the primary way the public still sees ubf in 2015.

Cult Education Institute
http://www.culteducation.com/faq.html

Freedom of Mind Resource Center
https://freedomofmind.com/Info/

What does the term cult mean?

My first source is Merriam-Webster’s dictionary.

: a small religious group that is not part of a larger and more accepted religion and that has beliefs regarded by many people as extreme or dangerous

: a situation in which people admire and care about something or someone very much or too much

: a small group of very devoted supporters or fans

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cult

The cult label conjures up a lot of emotion and images but in itself, the word cult is not bad. For example, I am a full-fledged “member” of the Star Wars cult! I love all things Star Wars. In this sense, the term cult refers to the fanaticism that can surround many things. Some see a Jesus fan-club cult in the West. These things are not necessarily dangerous or harmful; just a phenomena.

Qualities of Cults in Religion

In the religious realm, the word cult takes on a different nuance. Lifton and Singer are two of the most robust thinkers in the use of the word cult in religion. In my 24 year experience at UBF and my 4 years experience outside UBF has given me thousands of examples of how Toledo UBF and UBF HQ fits into the realm of the religious use of the cult label.

Lifton’s Three Qualities of a Cult

• A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power.
• A process [is in use] call[ed] coercive persuasion or thought reform.
• Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.

Singer’s Three Qualities of a Destructive Cult

• The origin of the group and role of the leader.
• The power structure, or relationship between the leader[s] and the followers.
• The use of a coordinated program of persuasion, which is called thought reform [or more commonly, ‘brainwashing'”].

I would urge everyone to read the material on the FAQ at the Cult Education Institute and make up your own mind. The six most liberating words ever spoken to me were from John Armstrong: “I will not bind your conscience”. So while I use the term cult, everyone here is free to disagree. I only ask that we are able to discuss reasons why we disagree.

http://www.culteducation.com/faq.html

What kind of cult is ubf?

Clearly ubf was a personality cult from 1961 to 2002, the span of Samuel Lee’s influence. There are still many pockets of personality cult life in various ubf chapters where there is a strongly narcissistic leader who needs some sort of narcissistic supply to function. My term for ubf is that the organization as a whole is a destructive ideology cult. Here are seven reasons why.

1) Family neglect.

The first reason ubf is a cult is because they teach neglect of family. Using proof-texted ideas from the bible, they claim that it is more spiritual and pleasing to God to sacrifice your family and be mission-centered. ubf is now your family. Don’t believe me? Then try this. Share a testimony at ubf entitled “God’s will is to be family-centered. One word: I love my family.” And then skip a ubf meeting for a family event. You can expect to find many angry and sad faces when you return. To say you are “family-centered” at ubf means you are unspiritual, sinful and in danger of losing God’s approval according to ubf teaching. They further disrespect family by the requirement that every ubf shepherd must go through their arranged marriage process called “marriage by faith”.

2) Identity breaking.

The second reason ubf is a cult is because they are identity snatchers. They encourage you to adopt the viewpoint that your pre-ubf life is bad, sinful, unspiritual and the like. Your new ubf life is now good, holy and pleasing to God if you adopt the “Shepherd X” identity. To make a decision to be a ubf shepherd means everything to ubf people. Your pre-ubf identity is chipped away and cut out, meeting by meeting, until you lose touch with your authentic self. This is done in the name of self-denial and taking up your cross, strongly bound to more proof-texted ideas from bible verses. Dr. Hassan describes this as the cult identity, and it has just enough of “you” to make it seem real. ubf breaks you down through sleep deprivation at numerous conferences, continual indoctrination at daily meetings and repeated reminders of your shortcomings. Your identity becomes assimilated into the ubf community, as your life becomes intertwined with other members’ lives.

3) Decision control.

The third reason ubf is a cult is that the shepherds at ubf manipulate the members (called sheep) to control and check their life decisions, such as who to marry, when to marry, where to work, where to live, etc. The supreme values of most ubf people are loyalty and obedience to the ubf authorities. The leaders take control of people’s lives. Some leaders are called directors because they are charged with directing the affairs of their own chapter or sub-community within the ubf network. ubf leaders live a scripted life. Going “off script” is rarely tolerated, especially for repeated offenses. ubf leaders have a very difficult time in any situation where they cannot control the outcome.

4) Culture destruction.

The fourth reason ubf is a cult organization is that they destroy the culture of the host countries they send missionaries to. They consider American or German or Mexican culture to be bad or at best only useful for propagating the ubf culture. Being Korean is not bad. There are many good things about Koreans. But ubf missionaries from Korea have made the big mistake of imposing their own culture onto the countries where they go. A survey of people in ubf once asked people to describe their own ministry in one word. The most repeated word was simply “Korean”. ubf missionaries tend to ignore their host country culture and often speak of being “re-charged” by going back to Korea for a visit. After several years at ubf, a member discovers that they speak with Korean-english, eat Korean food and value the Korean Confucian ideas of loyalty, nobility, authority, etc. They also find a great disdain for their own culture.

5) Abuse of all kinds that is not acknowledged.

The final and most important reason why ubf is a harmful cult is because many incidents of abuse have been covered over since 1961 when ubf began in Korea. It is surprisingly well known among ubf leaders that there are incidents of sexual abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse, spiritual abuse and authority abuse. ubf teaches “covering doctrine”, which means leaders’ sins cannot be discussed or challenged in any way. They teach the notion that it is your duty to hide the abuse or sin of a leader. This flawed theology is again proof-texted from the bible with almost no reality check with the thousands of Christian authors and preachers who would expose such teachings. ubf has created an environment where abuse is swept under the rug and corruption thrives under the pretty masks of the appearance of godliness. While most ubf chapters are free of the sexual or physical types of abuse, verbal abuse and financial abuse is widespread.

6) Glory story fabrication

The ubf mindset is prone to rejecting perspectives and valuing intention over facts. mrkimmathclass is correct in that I was foolish to break into James Kim’s house. Who would do such a thing? No one ordered us to do that with a direct command. The reason we did such a thing is that we were fed glory stories–we believed the narrative that James and his family had asked Toledo UBF for help to move while they were in Houston. We believed the glory story that we were blessing them to become missionaries. At the time we had no idea about the god-father power struggles with Samuel Lee. That is why we were so confused when James and Rebekah were SO furious when they returned. Didn’t they appreciate our help? Why are they so angry and unthankful? Well now I understand because I faced the facts of that situation.

7) KOPAHN/12 slogans/shepherding ideology

We’ve already discussed the “kingdom of priest and holy nation” shepherding flaws extensively here. I have no desire to talk about such things but you can read all about these teachings that are so highly prized and even guarded by a new ubf website. If your ubf chapter has not specifically addressed these ideological flaws, you are still in the cult.

http://www.ubfriends.org/?s=what+ubf+taught+me

http://www.priestlynation.com/this-is-your-brain-on-ubf/

Why did I join? Why did I stay? Why did I leave?

In my books (which are onsale now 3 for the price of 1!) I share all about these three questions. My second book, “Goodness Found: The Butterfly Narratives” is where I process these questions directly.

I joined because of the promise of goodness. ubf offered many low-commitment/high-reward promises. They offered a noble dream of being a shepherd, which I was keen to since I had wanted to be a Catholic priest since I was 16 years old. The poured on my much praise and flattery. Mixed in with all this was a genuine spiritual awakening due to my father’s death in 1989. I had joined ubf in 1987.

I stayed for 24 years, until 2011, because the ubf ideology redefined goodness. What is good? Well going to the ubf activities is good! Everything else is bad, even family. The ubf system is primarily what I rail against, all of which fed my own desire for glory:

• Six Stages of Training
• One Cult Identity
• Three Layers of Burden
• Four Elements of Control
• Twelve Heritage Slogans

I left due to my discovery of goodness. I started reading about Spurgeon and the gospel of Christianity. The goodness of transformation by the Holy Spirit overcame me when I read Christian books. The goodness of a virtual community (like ubfriends) brought much peace and light and healing to my soul. And the goodness of LGBTQIA people who accepted me helped me re-connect with goodness again. Most importantly my wife and mother and all my family became my bedrock of goodness again.

Here is a quote from my second book:

“For the most part, I feel that I was drawn out of UBF. One could say the Holy Spirit lead me to UBF and lead me away from UBF in order to display God’s goodness. That drawing out began in 2003 when my family moved to Detroit as UBF pioneers. My time in Toledo UBF was intensely regulated the entire 16 years, being consumed by attending UBF meetings on a daily basis. But my time in Detroit was free of such meetings. For the most part, our family was left alone. The downside of this was that we felt abandoned and had no support to actually build up a Christian church. The upside was that we had no more direct supervision from UBF missionaries. We were free! I used this time at first to defend UBF ideologies on the internet. But it was quickly pointed out to me by former UBF members that my situation as a “pioneering” family was very different from normal a UBF experience. I could not but agree. And one by one, all my defenses of UBF fell apart. I desperately wanted to defend the organization that I had given my blood, sweat and tears for. As my defenses fell apart, I began seeking Christian writings and sermons. I fell in love with the work of Charles Spurgeon. I met my grandparents’ pastor several times and read some of the Christian books he gave me. All this lead me to have a strong desire for community.”

One final note

In the end it was and has been the gospel of Jesus Christ that set me free from UBF ideology and is breaking every chain!  Please read Isabelle’s book and process all these things:  “I Choose: Subtlety in Cults“

This sermon was delivered on April 26th, 2015 at West Loop UBF.

Introduction

A bit of disclosure is in order here: Since September of last year, I haven’t been attending church on a weekly basis. I’ve attended Catholic Mass a few times and have taken communion and have also had ongoing conversations about the Bible and life with others and have done my own personal study on biblical topics, but nothing like being plugged into a faith community on a regular basis. To some this may be disconcerting or off-putting, like who takes a half a year off of church and then preaches a sermon? But I thank Rhoel for reaching out to me and befriending and simply talking to me on a human-to-human level. One thing that I really appreciate about the West Loop community is you all’s desire to understand and practice the gospel in a loving manner. So I thank you all for accepting me and giving me the privilege to speak here today. I don’t take this lightly and I don’t want to waste your time, but instead I want to hopefully communicate an important point about the gospel that I think we, including myself, often miss. I’ll attempt to make my point in thirty minutes or less and end with a nice cherry on top which is an example from my own life.

What Does it Mean to be “Spiritual” Anyway?

I mentioned how I’ve been taking some time away from organized religion. I felt as though I needed to do this because I was growing increasingly weary of experiencing this disconnect, that I observed, which exists between the concepts of spirituality or “otherness”, that is something beyond our physical world, and the very material reality that we live in today. To put it bluntly (and with an example to follow), I got tired of sitting in church week after week and hearing things that sounded lofty and spiritual, but were not portable to my everyday life. And believe you me; this was not the fault of the church per se, because if anyone knows me, I love lofty ideas. This is more of an internal battle or beef within me.

At some point last year, the big question that I asked myself was what impact does spirituality have on us on a daily basis, that is, how does this line up with our present-day, physical reality in an impactful way? The form of Christianity that I was largely familiar with was one in which that aforementioned disconnect reached a tipping point on some key issues for me. For instance, in Western Evangelicalism, we are often taught as of first importance, that Jesus has forgiven us of our sins once and for all. Now, I don’t dispute this at all and it’s something that I certainly rejoice in. But a type of thought pattern which was pervasive in my own life was this idea that as believers, we are forgiven largely as individuals and as long as we individually are forgiven, then we are right with God and all is well with the universe. The problem with this is that we don’t sin in a vacuum; often times, we wound each other through our sins and if we are honest with ourselves it’s not enough, that when we sin against someone, to say “you know what, Jesus has forgiven me of my sins, so let’s leave it at that and move on”. On one level that’s true, but on another don’t we actually need to seek reconciliation with the other person; isn’t forgiveness at the cross meant to be an entryway into new relationships built on honesty and repentance? Or on the flip side, if I or someone else is wounded by another, we may often think to ourselves, “Jesus alone will heal me of my wounds by way of his sacrifice on the cross”. We tend to both diagnose and treat our wounds in this way; we overly-spiritualize and try to superstitiously wish away our real hurt and pain. And some wounds are spiritual, but there is also the very real, nitty-gritty task of processing our human emotions.  And still the task of reconciliation, and in some cases seeking restitution from the one that wounded us, remains. Don’t you think? But like I said, there is often this disconnect in Christianity where we are encouraged to see ourselves as these spiritual beings who only need spiritual solutions to our very real problems.

I also thought about what David said in Psalm 51:4, where he says “Against you, you only, have I sinned…” While it is true that all sin is, in a sense, against God there is a very real human dimension to what David did. After all, Nathan spells out what he did very bluntly: He killed Uriah the Hittite with sword and stole his wife. Furthermore, David wasn’t even man enough to murder Uriah himself, but indirectly used the Ammonites to do so. Nathan doesn’t pull any punches in regard to the very real people that David hurt; he doesn’t put a spiritual spin on the situation in any way, shape or form.

I’ll tell you what’s also an even bigger problem with this over-spiritualization: Jesus never advocated this. Look at what he says (right after the Lord’s Prayer, which is largely seen as a “spiritual” exercise between a believer and God):

“14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” – Matt 6:14, 15

Very interesting that Jesus would say this; in the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness does not appear to be the primary thrust of the prayer, yet Jesus deems it important enough to add a sternly worded epilogue specifically about forgiveness between God and others.*

And consider Jesus’ words here:

22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

It seems to me that Jesus is connecting these “spiritual” acts of forgiveness and worship between God and man to the human relationships that exist in our everyday lives. It’s as if he’s saying that no matter what our relationship is like with God, if we aren’t treating the real human beings in our everyday lives with integrity and compassion, our spirituality doesn’t really amount to much.  And this makes sense because think about who Jesus is; he is God incarnate or God made flesh. He is the very intersection between this spiritual otherness that we define as God and human beings just like ourselves. It’s as if God is saying in Jesus that our spirituality is inherently tied to our physical world, our own humanity and the communities that we are involved in.

Incarnational Ministry vis a vis Empathetic Communication

This incarnational aspect of God is what I want to “flesh” out through Acts 17. This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible for in this we are given a vivid example of God’s desire to communicate spiritual truths to us on our human level.

This was during Paul’s second missionary journey, which transpired between the years 50-52 A.D., (he did three in total) and before he arrived at Athens, he was driven from first Thessalonica and then Berea (where he famously met the “Noble Bereans”).  He was driven out of those regions by Jews who wanted to destroy his gospel-preaching efforts. For the sake of Paul’s safety, he was escorted to Athens with the hope that Timothy and Silas, his traveling companions, would join him there at a later time.

Upon arriving in Athens, Paul is deeply bothered by all of the idolatrous statues in the city. Surely Paul understood that it was Rome’s practice to subsume the religions of those that they subjugated. It was to keep the idea of Pax Romana (which was really not peace) intact. But in Athens it was overkill; one ancient is quoted as saying that Athens had over 30,000 idols [1]. I’m sure that Paul was alarmed by the fact that the Jews in Athens could possibly be syncretizing with the culture around them and thus missing the message of the gospel contained in the Holy Scriptures. Think about how many times that Isaiah denounces idol-worship. In fact, this is one of the key points of his sermon to the philosophers later on. So Paul takes the initiative to engage the Jews and the Greek converts to Judaism (called God-fearing Greeks) in discussions namely concerning the Messiah using the OT. From what Luke records, the idea of the resurrection of Jesus particularly piqued the interest of some of the Greek philosophers and so they begin debating with him. They probably regard him as some unsophisticated, primitive Jew (because remember, Greek culture at the time was hot and Athens in particular was seen as an intellectual bastion of sorts.) They probably argued, “Hey, we have all sorts of gods who are immortal, but an obscure Jewish guy from Palestine sure ain’t one of ‘em.” But nonetheless some of the people were interested in what Paul had to say (Luke notes that a lot of people were content to simply pontificate about the latest ideas at the time). So they took him to a place called the Areopagus, which functioned as a place of settling matters of jurisprudence.

Paul seizes this opportunity, taking the floor and launching into his gospel message. Notice how he begins his dialogue. “People of Athens! I see that in every way are very religious.” This was actually a commendation, because he affirmed the fact that they were somehow seeking to worship or reach out to God. And also notice the fact that he addressed them as Athenians. He didn’t open up his sermon by saying, “Non-descript people group who I’m preaching to, repent or burn in hell!” Rather he started with a positive affirmation which was actually quite true.

Next, Paul exploits one of their idols, using it as an entry point to introduce his God to them. He says, hey you guys have this inscription to an unknown God, and wouldn’t you know I happen to know something about a God that you guys don’t know about so take a listen to this:

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

This is such a profound message of God’s initiative to reach out to us. He corrects the idea of man’s tendency to make God in his own image, thus fashioning idols and temples and so forth; he turns this notion completely on its head by saying that no, we are in fact made in God’s image. And he’s not dependent on us, endlessly requiring our servitude so that he may be both appeased and sustained. Furthermore, he’s not a vending machine that only blesses us when we do something for him. Rather, out of his own loving initiative, he is the one that ultimately serves us and gives life and provision to us. And look at what Paul is doing; he’s essentially giving the message of the entire OT without using OT quotes or references. He understands that his audience doesn’t have the OT as a reference point, so he communicates biblical truths in a way that they can understand. In fact, he intersperses quotes from their own poets and philosophers. Aratus, a Cilician Stoic philosopher and poet remarked that we are God’s offspring. And the Cretan philosopher Epiminedes wrote that “in him we live and move and have our being.” These are beautiful statements which completely undermine the sentiment that we have come about by happenstance; indeed, God was intimately involved in everything from choosing our skin color and ethnicity to determining where we would be born; God infuses his own image into us so that through interacting with each other, we would come to know him in his fullness (theologically, this is called the variegated or multi-faceted nature of God). So it is no mistake that we are who we are, rather it is God’s perfect wisdom to put us in the optimal position where we could reach out to him and know him.

Finally, Paul closes with the revelation of God’s appointed judge, Jesus Christ. He will rule the earth with justice and judge every act; he will put everything in its proper place. A foreshadow of this kind of perfect adjudication is found in the resurrection and thus vindication of his Son; he was unjustly put to death, but God rose him from the dead in effect reversing the edict of guilt showing that he had power over such definitive decrees. Not even the stark reality of death can overcome God’s desire to mete out justice. In fact, Christ is justice personified and that is why he prevails even over death. This is a massive comfort to those who long for justice in this world; those who are involved in combating sex trafficking and tackling civil rights and equality issues. In the person of Christ, we see that mankind’s ultimate trajectory is toward becoming a perfectly just and loving being like him.

Through a comparison of the tenets of Epicureanism and Stoicism (link to ppt slide), we can see specifically how Paul contextualized the gospel to his audience. (The red and blue circled items are tenets which line up with Christianity while the strike-throughs do not) Note a few things here: 1) Paul affirms some of the positive aspects found in each philosophy (namely, free will and determinism). And he corrects some things which are vital to understanding Christianity and knowing the incarnational nature of God. For instance, God is theistic rather than deistic and understanding our existence does not come from abstract wisdom (logos) but rather through knowing God the person in Christ (Logos). Paul has a keen understanding of his audience and out of love, he can empathize with some of their beliefs and make a meaningful connection with them.

How God has Contextualized the Gospel to Me

Several years back I developed something called the Evil Survey, where I simply ask students about the problem of evil. After all, this is an issue that the gospel seeks to rectify and it hits home with everyone, religious or not. So the method is to simply ask questions and understand people’s world views. It doesn’t use any biblical language and avoids asking both leading and loaded questions. Through this, I’ve had many eye-opening conversations with people from all kinds of backgrounds including believers, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, former believers and so forth. Notably, what I’ve come to learn through this process of listening and asking questions is that 1) people genuinely long for someone to listen to and either challenge or affirm their worldviews and 2) I have to respect where people are at in a given moment in their lives. It’s as if God has been evangelizing me or teaching me the gospel through this, making me more human in the process. And this comports with a statement made by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

“The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear.

So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.” [2]

Though he’s speaking about the Christian community here, I believe full and well that we should apply this to those outside of the church. Additionally, I work in a multi-cultural environment where rather than preaching to my colleagues, I have taken the approach of simply seeking to understand where they are coming from. What are their life narratives? For instance, as someone who has migrated from the Middle East, what is it like to now live in America? What are the challenges, what do you like and dislike about it? What do you think about life and spirituality? Again, this process has served to humanize me and it has made me realize that as human beings, we all stand together in a sort of solidarity in that we are trying to make sense of life and seek some kind of meaningful purpose.

Counter-intuitive, Unconditional Love

But the main way that I have come to know the gospel in a contextual manner is through my wife. My wife and I are almost complete opposites. She’s always on time, has a schedule for everything and is detailed oriented to the tee. She doesn’t like to talk much either; she’s a doer. I couldn’t be more annoying to her. I’m always late, I take my time and I’m a lofty thinker and my head is usually stuck in the clouds. Plus, I like to talk. A. Lot. I always ask her, “What’s on your mind?” and I want to engage her in some kind of theological discussion, to which I receive the proverbial eye roll and sigh from her.

All this said, over the years, I’ve come to find out that my wife is one of the most loving people I have ever known. She puts up with so much of my stuff. If marriage teaches you anything, it’s that yes, you’re a jerk. See, mom will never admit this to you, though she knows it’s true. She’ll love you till the day you die but your wife loves you enough to tell it like it is. But my wife loves this jerk. She accepts me as I am and affirms the good things she sees in me on a daily basis. I’m simply floored and smitten by this kind of love. I’ve come to the conclusion that her unconditional love is God’s incarnate love to me. It’s fascinating how counter-intuitive his love can be. I thought that love would be putting me with someone who is the same as me, but in fact, it has come through two seemingly opposites. But this is wonderful, because through her I’m able to view an intriguing and captivating side of God that I would have otherwise never known. And now we have these beautiful children who are a product of this incarnate love. When I look into their faces, I’m amazed and taken aback at what God has done. We’re all vastly different in our little family unit and thus we’re put in a position where we can each grow in our humanity, that is, in Christ’s image together. So my family has sort of been the church to me over this past half year or so.

My Hope for the Church

In closing, I want to remark on a saying that I used to hear in ministry. It’s that you don’t have to necessarily like your fellow church members but you do have to love them. This is one of the most misguided sentiments I have ever heard. How are you going to love someone that you don’t like anything about? The gospel affirms each of us as individual and unique human beings. While the cross reveals the ugliness of our sin, it also helps us to look past this in order to see the beautiful images of God in one another and simply appreciate, learn from and behold that beauty. When we look at one another, we are looking into the face of Christ, I believe. Wouldn’t it be great to simply relate to one another in the church in this way? This is my prayer and hope. I’m starting first in midst of my family members. And who knows, I may someday again commit myself to a particular church fellowship. Thank you all for listening and God bless you all abundantly.

[1] Kayser, Phillip G., “Ruins of Athens – The Curse of the Athenian Model of Education”. Biblical Blueprints. 2009. Pg. 4 [http://biblicalblueprints.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/RuinsOfAthens.pdf]

[2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “Life Together”. 1954.

*[Author’s note] This originally said, “Very interesting that Jesus would say this; there is nothing about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer, yet this is right at the end of it making a seemingly important point.” This is of course wrong. I’ve both read and written about the Lord’s Prayer many times, so I might chalk that glaring error up to confirmation bias; I felt strongly about making a point about forgiveness and so I viewed the prayer a certain way. Good lesson in objectivity or the lack thereof we sometimes display. This could also indicate that I simply need someone to proofread my material beforehand :)

Per the question about membership, it probably goes without saying that the most important membership we have is in the body of Christ. While it may be obvious, it is the starting point of any Christian church’s legitimacy and must be mentioned. Our fundamental identity comes from our relationship with God through Christ, not from an organization. By God’s grace in Jesus Christ we are part of the larger, invisible church of God (Eph 4:25, 1 Cor 12) that spans human organizations and carries out his will in the world. The head of that church is Christ himself (Col 1:18, Eph 1:22-23). The benefits of this membership are numerous. The Holy Spirit lives within us, we have been given diverse spiritual gifts to use for God’s glory, we are part of a supportive community, we can grow through being accountable to each other, and we have a context through which we can serve the Lord to bring the gospel to the ends of earth, among many other things. Our responsibility towards each other is to do everything in love (1 Cor 16:14, John 13:34) and to seek peace and reconciliation (Rom 12:18, Mt 5:23-24). Communion is a symbol of our corporate fellowship with Christ, based on his broken body and the shedding of his blood for our sins. As we examine ourselves and repent of sins before taking communion (1 Cor 12:27-33), so we have the responsibility to continually be cleansed of sin in our lives and grow as Christ’s unblemished bride (Ephesians 5:25-27). Any Christian organization or church, including UBF, is subject first and foremost to the expectations of behavior for a member of the Body of Christ.

The church is greatly beloved of Christ and is a glorious manifestation of his love and purpose in the world, but it is not without its issues. Christ knows the good deeds of the church (Rev 2:2-3, 2:9-10, 2:13, 2:19, 3:8, 3:13), but he is also critical of her (Rev 2:4, 2:16, 2:20, 3:1-2, 3;15). He says to one of the churches in Revelation, “Those who I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.” (Rev 3:19) In the same way, while we may love the church we are realistic about it. She should not be an idol. We don’t serve an organization or a church in a vacuum; we serve the Lord himself through the church. We acknowledge that while our Lord is perfect, his church may have blemishes and stains that require cleansing and redemption.

UBF is one small part of the body of Christ. Samuel Lee was not the founder of UBF. He started the organization along with Sarah Barry in 1961. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine UBF ministry without both Samuel Lee and Sarah Barry. Ultimately it is God who started a ministry through UBF. God has mysteriously chosen to use fragile human beings, who have both good points and sins, in his work.

I knew Samuel Lee for more than two decades and for most of those years I was around him at least 3-4 times per week. God taught me a lot of good things through him. Overall my experiences with him and my observations of him were and still are mostly positive, though not all of it was positive and some of it was odd.

Of the 17 bullet points Joe listed related to Samuel Lee, I personally witnessed or experienced 7 of them at some point in time, though they may not have applied to everyone all of the time as you implied for a few of them. I heard about the other 10 items you mentioned happening to people. I can’t independently verify that those 10 items actually happened, but am reasonably certain that they did happen though they may not have applied to everyone all of the time as you implied for a few of them.

What do you think of getting blasted by a high pressure water hose for punishment, being forced to spend hours crawling on your knees in cold water, carrying heavy loads, and going without sleep and food for extended periods of time all the while someone is yelling at you at the top of his lungs? It sounds pretty abusive if you don’t know the context. But this is exactly what they do in the training for the Special Forces in the Navy (the SEALs), and all of those men voluntarily go through this training in order to prepare to be leaders and prepared for the harshness of real combat. One of the more inspiring videos I have seen is the 2014 Commencement Address at the University of Texas by Admiral William H. McRaven, who headed up the US Special Forces Command at one time. If you haven’t seen the video and have a spare 20 minutes, please check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70.

What do you think of being required to take a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience to the hierarchy in order to serve the Lord Jesus? This also sounds pretty restrictive, legalistic, tough and contradictory to the love and grace of Jesus, but it is exactly what they do in the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church, from which Pope Francis came. Jesuits are trained rigorously in many ways and can’t even own the shirt on their back, but they voluntarily submit to these to grow in their faith, and to mold their character to be more humble and obedient to the Lord.

For Lee and the people who went through the things you mentioned (and more), they had a similar motivation as those who go through the training in the above examples. I think that Samuel Lee wanted UBF to be something like a Christian Special Forces and a Jesuit-type organization. Since he and Sarah Barry took the Great Commission very seriously, the driving force was their zeal to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth and to make disciples in Christ’s name. Lots of people met Christ through their Bible teaching. Many were moved by the Holy Spirit to voluntarily go through various kinds of trainings at Lee’s direction in order to learn to rely on God, to be strong in harsh circumstances and to overcome in order to be Christ’s witness. It was good training for them, and many vigorously testify to that to this day. Many voluntarily became missionaries. God used them and is still using them to share his word and his love, and to in turn make more disciples of Jesus.

But Lee’s approach was not good for everyone. The Navy SEALs give each person the option of “ringing the bell” to quit at any time. The Jesuits also provide a path out if that is not God’s call in a person’s life. In UBF, Lee and others sometimes did not present a clear way to opt out. It was his way or the proverbial highway to hell sometimes. Some did not voluntarily sign up for “training” or were not ready for it but got that treatment anyway, and this caused unnecessary problems that look like abuse. Lee was given and exerted a great deal of control over the lives of a number of people. His zeal for God, genuine compassion for people, love of the Bible, wit and insight were remarkable. These qualities made him a benevolent dictator for many he was around for the vast majority of the time. But Lee had his shortcomings, as we all do, that had amplified effects because of his position of power. A dose of Confucian cultural norms, a pinch of Korean nationalism and a smidgen of Machiavellian turpitude made Lee’s mostly unchecked power problematic at times.

The strong emphasis on mission in UBF is a wonderful thing, but when misapplied it creates some knotty issues. For example, some people may not have met Christ deeply before earnestly participating in mission work. Thus, it could have come across that a message of salvation by works was being preached rather than salvation by faith in Christ alone, and it could have been inferred that service to the church or people in the church was most imperative. In other cases, mission was put above families, causing hurt, neglect and dysfunction. Only the Lord himself deserves first place in our lives, not an organization. And putting the Lord first is not inconsistent with loving our families and being a responsible person in the world. While our church and the students on the campus are important, our families, jobs, friendships and even our enemies are an integral part of our mission of making disciples of Jesus as well as of our witness for Christ.

The good qualities that Lee possessed and practiced consistently are elements that any ministry would want to maintain. We thank God for those positive legacies in our UBF ministry, and the work of the Holy Spirit through them. However, while it is necessary to have strong leaders, there has been work to remedy and redeem continuing authoritarianism in the ministry and its consequences. Leaders are being referred to more as “Pastor” rather than “Director”. More local chapters have bodies of elders so as to provide more shared leadership, and servant leadership is being emphasized more in staff interactions. There has been a gradual transition from Korean missionary leadership to native leadership. In parallel, I am aware of UBF reaching out to several people and families who have been adversely affected by ministry practices to apologize and promote reconciliation, and I foresee the possibility of this happening on a larger scale. The time frame for all of this is now and on a continuous basis going forward. Any attempt to address everything in one fell swoop at a particular point in time with one action or with one document would be a spurious exercise.

Having said the above, it is clear that any initiative or response in any amount of time is not good enough. A lot of the issues should have been dealt with long ago, or never even should have been allowed to happen in the first place. Many of us just may not fully understand yet about how we negatively impacted some people. We are all on our own spiritual journeys, dealing with our own personal issues, wounds and sins, and are still trying to process what God has been teaching us, but there are opportunities for frank and respectful interaction in many types of forums and contexts going forward. There is room for contrition, listening to narratives that may not be to our liking, and embracing people we misunderstood, disrespected, hurt and damaged in the past. Perhaps through this process God may help us to learn more and bring healing and blessing to those who have left, as well as to those who are in UBF.

As an additional note, there are numerous other ways we may not fully understand what we have done. I know some people who worked very hard to share Bible studies and sacrificed much to help others but are discouraged because they feel that they have little or nothing to show for their efforts. I’ve seen despair over what some consider to be “fruitless” ministry. But oftentimes our work in ministry cannot be accurately measured by numbers of people in a meeting, nor any other conventional metric. Some have come to faith in Christ through Bible study in the ministry and then have gone on to serve the Lord in other ways outside of UBF. Some may not have grown to be disciples in the sense UBF understands it but have been greatly encouraged by the Bible studies and the amazing acts of kindness by our missionaries and shepherds at critical times. The faithful everyday lives of God’s people in the world are a wonderful influence and testimony. God often works in ways we do not expect. I am blown away by the reaction of the “righteous” people in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31-46). They were surprised to hear that they had done anything of note, but the King saw it quite differently (Mt 12:40).

I am thankful for the work of the Holy Spirit through UBF as one small part of the body of Christ and pray that God may have mercy on us to repent where necessary and do what is right in his sight. Evangelism and discipleship is only strengthened, not hurt, when we are honest about our shortcomings in the process of striving to be even more authentic disciples of Jesus Christ.

The darkness of UBF is overwhelming. Secrets hide behind nearly every smiling face that offers you so much as a plate of bulgoki. Growing up, every Sunday I went to CBF at the “center.” Even as I child, I always felt like there was something off about UBF people. I never quite felt like I was at home, or that this was my family.

Upon leaving UBF at age 8 with my family, we went to an unnamed evangelical church in the area. It was there that I entered life and finally learned to be a normal human being. For the first time in my young life, I felt like I could fit in with the other boys, the other children, and I learned about God, who Jesus was, and accepted him into my heart as my Lord and savior.

When I went home and told my Dad about how I had accepted Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior, I remember him telling me that they were watering down the truth of God and that what I had experienced and been taught by the nice people at this church wasn’t true. That all I needed to do was believe that Jesus died on the cross of my sins. He told me that I was already more spiritually mature than the other kids at this church because of my time in UBF.

As a little boy, I was crushed, because I felt like I had experienced something good at this new church, and yet my Dad rebuked me for it. Apparently, you can take the shepherd out of UBF, but you can’t take the UBF out of the shepherd.

When I was 12, my Father convinced our family to go back to UBF, because it had “changed.” Looking back now, if what I experience during my teen years was a redeemed version of UBF, I am frightened about what went on before it was reformed. I was prohibited to date, or to even so much as look at a girl. My entire sexual and romantic being was squashed and treated as something to be despised, something evil. Along with this went my self-esteem and sense of self. I am emotionally scarred from this sole experience and to this day am not comfortable with anything relating to romantic relationships or sexuality in general.

We were taught lies. It was demanding of us by our parents and youth leaders that we write and share testimonies every week and there would be guilt and shame delivered unto us if we did not participate. I was made to feel as if the gospel were all about doing random specific things like writing testimonies, studying the bible in a weird specific way, and doing daily bread, etc. When in reality, the gospel is not about what we have to do, but about what Jesus has done for us already on the cross of Calvary

If I had known the history of UBF, that people were subjected to emotionally, physically, and spiritually abusive practices throughout the years, I would have never agreed to go back with my family when I was 12 years old. I was lied to, I was deceived. I was told that things had changed, but the truth is “once a cult, always a cult.” A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.

Until UBF leaders fully renounce and repent of every destructive practice and illegal action that has ever been been committed by UBF members, it was always be a cult, no matter how much things have changed. End of Story.

What I have shared is just the tip of the iceberg as far as things that I have experienced and seen within UBF. I plan on going into more detail in subsequent postings.

Unfortunately I must remain anonymous in order to protect myself, but if you are a second gen who has had a similar traumatic experience, feel free to email me.

Secondgensurvivors @ gmail.com

I felt so loved at UBF when I talked to or interacted with almost anyone other than my local Pastor.

You had a problem with me and so you made everyone angry at me

I could not talk to you about my problems

you would just get mad and not listen

so I did not talk to you

I could talk to anyone else in the Church

but not the Pastor

And then one day I had to leave because I did not agree with someone spiritually older than you. I suppose it was because I interpreted the Bible about a single passage. They told me I could not disrespect my elders.

I think I know why you would not listen

because you think the older never has to listen to the younger

that is why there is more hope for a fool than you

because you are wiser in your own eyes than everyone younger than you

I wish you had more hope than a fool

I wish we could be friends

I loved my UBF

I felt loved by everyone but the Pastor

Then he told them I must be fixed

But fixing me made me worse

because my Pastor broke me

He taught those below him we should not date

but pray to God

that God will send the right person

I prayed to God and thought I found someone

I did not date like he said

I followed the directions the way I thought he meant

But he did not mean what he said

There was secret knowledge reserved for the elite which I was not yet privy to, because I was not old enough. He really meant UBF has a system by which other people will find you a spouse. If I was told that in the beginning I could have obeyed but I was not considered old enough to know. But how could I have known if you did not tell me?

I obeyed what I was told

I was punished with brokenness

because I did not obey the secret rule

I was not told

because I was not old enough

So really Pastor it is not my fault that our chapter of UBF is at risk of being shut down. It is yours because you have the key to the esoteric knowledge of God’s will and you will not share it with those younger than you. You think they are too young to understand, they are too young to understand what they are not told. But you are too old to understand what you were told not old and senile but proud that you are older than everyone else so you will not listen.

If you just told them how people really get married they would not be angry at you for not telling them until it is too late. If UBF put it on their own website people would not have to read it on slanderous websites. There would be nothing slanderous about it because you would not have deceived them. A man cannot be guilty of the crime of hiding evidence when he put the evidence on the Church website for all to see.

I do not think most ex-members are angry that you arrange marriages so much as that you hide that you arrange marriages and promote it as the only way to please God best. Do not be a lamp hidden in a basket to block the light for if the light that is in you is darkness how dark will that darkness be?

When you will not share your light with the flock because you do not want them to know your secret rules the light that should come out of you is like darkness hidden within you and how dark is that darkness.

Put on the UBF website that you believe in practicing arranged marriage or matchmaking or whatever you want to call it but do not call it marriage by faith without explaining what that really means. If you don’t do this, Pastor it will be your fault when the Church doors are closed because you are spiritually too old to listen to the flock and they are too spiritually young to be told the truth about what you really mean.

People are not kicking Muslims off campus for forbidding dating they say openly it is “against our religion”. But when you keep your rules secret to the young so that the young cannot obey them, when the young have broken hearts because you broke their spirit, they ask a stronger man to break down your Church doors.

I want to cry

because I can see the flock no more

because the Pastor said I was bad

But now I want to cry even more

because the Pastor broke the pen

and scattered the sheep abroad

to be eaten by ravenous wolves

I never asked the University to ban UBF. But people are asking because you do not tell the truth. And there I was loved and felt loved except by you Pastor and I am sad that not only do I lose access to the flock but now they are harmed more because you have banned them from campus against my will.

Thursday

I arrived late Thursday and had a very long talk with one of the students from the Hyde Park chapter. He asked how things had been. Honestly the messages in my chapter have greatly changed in the last year. I really see that God has worked on my pastor. He no longer adds world mission into places where I do not feel it is obvious. Our relationship is better these days, and he understands that our relationship is very different. I try to understand him more, and I try to communicate more with him. The student was glad to hear. We talked a lot and I got to sleep very late. I had requested to have bible study with the chapter leader the next morning so I was very tired by the time I awoke. He asked me to read the book of Ephesians and give a brief outline.

Friday

I brought my outline to the bible study. I outlined the book as such:

• Blessings of the Spirit
• Who Christ is and his role in God’s redemptive plan.
• Who Paul is and his role in God’s redemptive plan.
What the Church is and its role in God’s redemptive plan.
• How the church ought to act to carry out that plan and how its members should act to help carry out that plan.
• A call to persevere against Satan.

He showed me his outline which was much more detailed. We talked about how the church should proclaim the kingdom. And he taught me how the church should shepherd God’s people, but the context of John 10 needed to be carefully understood. He said that UBF has been given shepherds. I mentioned that while the sacrificial nature of UBF shepherds and their great love for their students was its strength sometimes it was had been over stepped. He corrected me “Many times.” He mentioned that shepherds proclaim the kingdom. It was a very good bible study. Later that day I went to campus night.

Campus Night

People were totally bewildered to see me. I think in large part because I was unaccompanied by my “shepherd”. I suppose it is also surprising to see someone travel such a long way when they are really obligated in any way. It didn’t escape my notice that Yvonne Lee stared for a long time. I eventually moved to the back and when I saw Dr. Augustine he was shocked to see me.

Later Dr. John Lee from Springfield joined. The first speaker was Jacob Lee. I remember he was funny. At one point he said “I was not good enough to called Abraham so they named me Jacob which means deceiver. But I came to like the name since he had 12 sons.” I was put off by his talk. The powerpoint read “Why UBF should remain in world mission.” I didn’t believe this was a point of debate, and furthermore his answer amounted to- because UBF always has. Just because something has always been done one way does not mean it has to. But eventually he made his point. He presented from Stephan Lutz book calling campus mission strategic. I won’t go into details but he gives an outline from that book.

Mark V was the next speaker. His talk was on the history of campus mission movements. Mark V spoke incredibly fast. I was having a hard time keeping up with him. He also had a pained look on his face. I later found out he was in extreme back pain, and I suspect he was trying to get through it as fast as possible. What really struck me about his presentation was that campus mission movements grew out of YMCAs and the student volunteer movement in the mid 19th century. That explains a lot. American imperialism and a drive to evangelize the world have often went hand in hand (along with all their problems too). And here we see it.

It was remarkable how so many of the ideas of the founders of the campus movement are so similar to the ideas that Samuel Lee would later speak of. Hearing these ideas from someone who doesn’t have the history of Samuel Lee gave them more of an air of legitimacy. The frequent quotes from the founders of the student volunteer movement and its role as a parachurch were very helpful for me to understand the core foundational ideas behind UBF and its relation to Christian doctrine and why at times this has been a weak point in campus mission movements.

Kevin Albright went on to give a survey of Intervarsity. He mentioned that they do a lot of the same things as UBF. They do inductive bible study for instance. He also mentioned that many people in their organization were not encouraged at times, and the author of the book he read on Intervarsity regrets that they were not given more help. One thing he mentioned that struck me was that Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) was more for new converts and Intervarsity was more for discipleship.

Here he meant “discipleship” as “become a more mature Christian”. But for me I have always understood discipleship as growing in Christ in whatever capacity the Holy Spirit moved you. For me I have been taught that a Christian is a disciple and a disciple is a Christian (Acts 11:26, Ephesians 2:19-22). So for me telling me someone is not a disciple is the same as saying they are not Christian. But one can be a Christian and not mature. Although it is dangerous to judge or label, a goal of maturing Christians is a noble one at the very least (this makes no mention of the methods however). To call UBF a “discipleship ministry” has always been redundant to me.

In the next article I will talk about the last few speakers. I was more than a little surprised (and inspired) by their testimonies. I also caught up to someone on Joe Schafer’s recent letter, so I will include that next time too.

Oh, my, how the times have changed; so much has happened since then.

Be forewarned: this installment will be different.

And rejoice, for today is your lucky day! You are the winner of Wonka’s Golden Ticket. Reach out your hand. With this V.I.P. pass, we’ll descend into belly of the beast, to the inner sanctum, that secretive world of UBF leadership that has never before seen the light of day.

And this time, I will be naming names. Yes, today you will hear things that I have not yet shared with anyone, except for my wife and perhaps our dog.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to. And because I read an inspiring message from Washington UBF. This part of the message stuck in my heart.

How should we carry out this ministry? Look at verse 2. “Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” The gospel ministry is not like the worldly business or political campaign. It is a non-profit ministry. There should be no shameful secret agenda, no distortion, and no deception. Honesty, transparency, purity, and straight talk are the backbone of the gospel ministry.

I couldn’t agree more. Nothing promotes the gospel like honesty, transparency, purity and straight talk. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

‘Twas the middle of November, the week before Thanksgiving. From my perspective, morale in had fallen to be at an all time low, but the leaders didn’t seem to have a clue. What concerned me most was the lack of communication.  In private, a few leaders were becoming a wee bit honest, dropping some lines that sounded sincere. But no one had a grip on what I saw happening all around. Paul Hong was cheerfully chirping about his chapter, with that fancy new building and all. But I knew from firsthand reports that not all was well in Toledo, and dark clouds were looming on the horizon. Jacob Lee was crowing about all that love they were feeling in Washington, how he was so buddy-buddy with the younger generation. But Sharon and I had been to the Harvest Festival a few weeks earlier. We had seen for ourselves how the young people in the audience (virtually all second gens, almost no natives in sight) were rolling their eyes. Many had snuck out of the lectures because they were bored or offended. The title of that Harvest Festival was “Empowering the Next Generation,” but the ones who enjoyed it were the oldest Korean missionaries. The program was designed to tell the elders’ stories, to affirm their values and life-choices. But once again, a report had gone up on the UBF website telling how wonderful that Harvest Festival was, how the next generation had been empowered and accepted their mission and true identity. In most of the chapters that I knew well, members couldn’t be honest with their leaders; there was no safe space for people to express what they truly thought and felt. Leaders and members who saw each other daily had entirely different perceptions of reality, as if they were living in parallel universes.

On my own, I had decided to contact more than fifty UBF members whom I believed I could trust. I had collected their answers to five open-ended questions about the state and trajectory of UBF. I synthesized my findings in this report. That project occupied two weeks of my life. I worked day and night to finish it quickly, because I wanted the report in the hands of UBF leaders before a senior staff retreat. Sharon can testify how hard I worked, even when it was probably a stupid thing to do at a time when I should have been taking care of my health, my career, my finances and my family.

Dear everyone: You can say whatever you like about why I did this. Call me proud, foolish, inexperienced, know-it-all, untrained, too big for my britches, full of typical Ivy League mentality, blah blah blah. Whatever negatives you may say about me, I can give you more. All of those things are absolutely true. Yes, I am the proudest of sinners. But with God as my witness, I say this to you now.

To the leaders of UBF: When I put together this report, I did it on my own time, of my own initiative, without getting paid, knowing that it would probably land me in trouble, yet I did it anyway because I loved you and because I cared about the future of our ministry. I did it because I imagined that, as pastors, you just might be interested in how you were perceived by your flock.

To the Americans who were/are in UBF: When I put together this report, I also did it for you, because I am one of you. I did it because I loved you and because I cared about the future of our ministry. I did it because I hoped that someday you would be allowed to become who you really are, the people that God created you to be, American disciples who live in the American context, free to break out of the hyper-Korean evangelical mold into which you had been so awkwardly forced.

To all  the Korean-American second-gens: When I put together this report, I also did it for you. I was not one of you, but I loved you. I hoped to convey to your parents and your leaders some of the things that you wanted to express but could not say directly. I did it because I hoped that UBF could really become a unique multicultural community where the work of the Holy Spirit had broken down boundaries,  where unity in diversity was not some farfetched goal but our daily common experience.

On that snowy day in November 2010, I drove up to Camp Wonderland, Wisconsin to attend the senior staff retreat. I had emailed my report to the senior staff members two days earlier, but had not yet received any replies. I shared a ride with a member of the senior staff, and the conversation was fascinating. He was frustrated with the way UBF had been going, sick and tired of all the power plays, petty politics, all the people who couldn’t be trusted. In that car, he opened up and shared two stories that I had never heard before.

The first story was about all the political maneuvering that took place during the first reform movement in America (1989-92). He said that Samuel Lee had come within a hair’s breadth of being ousted. At one point, even Paul Hong and Sarah Barry knew that Lee was out of control, and they tentatively agreed to side with the reformers. But when this man  decided to stand with Lee, the tide turned back and some would-be reformers flipped. Paul Hong read the writing on the wall; he flipped back to support Lee, and was rewarded for his loyalty by being appointed director of Toledo after James Kim was forced out.

The second story he told was of his experiences with Samuel Lee. A member of this man’s chapter claimed that his Sunday messages were almost as good as the messages of Lee. When Lee heard about this, he became very upset. He demanded to see copies of this man’s Sunday messages. Those copies were returned to him, with every paragraph marked up with red ink, and the man was forced to make hundreds of corrections under the guise of “improving his English.” Those corrections were completely unnecessary, because the manuscripts had already been checked and edited by an English major from that chapter. Even worse, this man was ordered to come to the Chicago center for message training every Monday. Those trips were very costly, taxing his health, his finances, his family and his ministry. He said that those trips almost killed him. But for some reason, he decided to do it anyway. Finally, he spoke of one American shepherd who stood at Samuel Lee’s side in Chicago, supervising and carrying out this abusive training. Years later, he asked that American shepherd, “Why did you do that to me? Didn’t your conscience bother you?” The American said nothing; he shrugged his shoulders and smiled. That American is still in a place of leadership and, as far as I know, has no intention of ever allowing these issues of abuse to be freely discussed or admitted.

As he told these tales, I was taken aback. The stories themselves were not surprising; I had seen the harsh training since I first came to UBF, and I vaguely knew of the political wrangling in the late 80’s and early 90’s which ousted some chapter directors. What surprised me was his willingness to tell me straight up.  As I listened to the stories, I began to wonder: Are we on the verge of something? Are we reaching a tipping point where leaders will finally open their mouths and speak of those dark things that must never be spoken?

If anyone is interested in finding out what happened during the reform movement of 1989-92, I suggest you go and visit this man. Take him out to dinner, order a bottle of wine, and he just might be willing to tell you everything. Five years ago, he couldn’t care less about the reputation of UBF, and as far as I know, that hasn’t changed.

My memories of that Wisconsin retreat are a bit hazy, but I will share what I can recall.

When I saw the schedule for the retreat, I became upset, because it was not going to be a retreat at all. Little time had been set aside for open group discussion. The program was filled with Bible study, business items and committee reports. Still I hoped and prayed that our time would be productive.

The group Bible study was led by Sarah Barry, and the passage was from 2 Chronicles 20. The people of Judah were facing a national crisis. A vast, three-nation army approached from the desert, ready to attack at any moment. King Jehoshaphat had no idea what to do. He called a national assembly, and standing there before the men, women and children of Judah, he cried out to the Lord: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

As we studied this passage, I was stunned. Kings are not accustomed to showing ignorance or weakness. Even if they have no clue what they are doing, they want to project an air of strength and confidence, so that their followers stay with them and do not lose heart. Indeed, that was the leadership stance I was given by UBF: remain strong, keep choongshim, never stop marching, and when you are clueless, pretend that everything is going according to plan. That’s what I thought it meant to “have faith.” But in this passage, the top leader made himself vulnerable. He became a sitting duck, an easy target for a political or military coup. But when he stood in vulnerability before his nation, and together they all cried out to God, the Lord’s answer came through a prophet, and their deliverance that day was truly miraculous.

I found this passage so appropriate, the perfect metaphor for what was happening in UBF. Problems were mounting, morale was low, strength had run out, and the leaders had no clue. During that Bible study, I remember asking two questions.

My first question was, “What would it look like for the leaders of a Christian organization to actually do what Jehoshaphat did? What if we admitted to ourselves and our members that we have no good plans or answers for our problems? What if we all stood together helplessly before the Lord with our eyes firmly fixed on him, so that we might be open to his answers and his deliverance?”

When I asked that question, the room became still. I waited and got no response.

My second question came a bit later, and it was something like this. “One of the big items on our agenda is to decide what to do at the national staff conference three months from now. As of today, none of us has a plan. There are some big problems in our ministry. Our chapter directors are tired, morale is low, and many of you have been saying that we are burned out. I hope you all read that report I sent to you. Those issues are real; I didn’t make them up. Is it an accident that we are studying this passage today? Or might God be speaking to us through his word, asking us to do something courageous that we have never done before – to openly admit to our chapter directors that have no answers, and to stand together with them as equals before the Lord, repenting together and seeking direction and help from God alone?”

Once again, the room was silent. I knew that my question would make some uncomfortable, but I never imagined they wouldn’t even acknowledge the question.

The Bible study moved on.

That moment was for me a real eye opener. For a long time, I had known that UBF leaders were deeply flawed. But even in the worst of times, I had always sensed in them a stance of openness toward Scripture, a desire to treat the Bible as the word of God being spoken to them, and a willingness to obey what they were hearing. But at that moment, I felt a strange physical sensation. It was as though we had suddenly swung around on a hinge. Instead of looking into the face of God intending to do what he was asking, we now seemed turned away with our backs to the Lord, ignoring his voice and deliberately walking away. That was a feeling that I will never forget. It’s a feeling that I never want to feel again.

Little time was reserved for open discussion. At one point, we were able to talk for maybe an hour or so. I have a few memories of what went on. I remember Jim Rabchuk telling the story of how he had gotten burned out. The demands that UBF had placed on him (and many related demands that he had placed on himself) became overwhelming, and he was learning the necessity of saying “No.”

Jim also began to talk about some of the problems in his ministry.

As he was talking, he was interrupted by Jacob Lee. Jacob said (my paraphrase, but I believe it is accurate): “We can’t keep talking about all these problems. Of course, there are problems, we always have problems. We talk and talk and talk and there is never any solution. We cannot solve all our problems. We must move on from these problems and do the work of God.”

Jim got visibly upset. He shot back, “Missionary Jacob, that is ridiculous!”

I had never seen an American openly confront an older missionary like that, certainly not in the presence of other leaders. I was shocked, and yet I felt strangely comforted. “Good for him,” I thought. “Good. for. him.”

And James H. Kim made a passionate speech about spiritual disciplines. He had begun to read Peter Scazzero’s books on spiritual formation, and was learning the importance of contemplative prayer. He said (again a paraphrase): “Our American staff shepherds are all burned out. They have no time to think, no time to recharge. They are just doing, doing, doing every day like machines. That is not a Christian life. That is not the way to be a leader. Leaders must reflect, must stay in the presence of God. Leaders should meditate with times of deep contemplation!”

I was ready to stand up and applaud.

John Jun didn’t like what he was hearing. He yelled, “Time over! Time over! Time for lunch!”

Then James H. Kim shouted over him: “Each one of our staff shepherds MUST spend THREE HOURS EVERY DAY in quiet study and contemplation!”

My heart sank like a stone. That was the last thing our burned-out staff needed to hear. Three hours a day? I couldn’t contain myself, so I blurted: “Missionary James, you said ‘three hours a day.’ Is that instead of some things they are currently doing, or in addition to everything they already do?”

The discussion was over. It was time for lunch.

Here are a few more things I remember from that staff retreat.

After that exchange with James H. Kim, John Jun started to clamp down. At our next meeting, he brought out a call bell, one of those metal contraptions you see on the front desk of a hotel. When he thought someone was talking too much – which was after about 60 or 90 seconds – he would ring the bell and say, “Time over! Time over!” As he did this, some of the missionaries laughed. To me, this was not a laughing matter. We desperately needed to get real about things that truly mattered, and I didn’t care how long it took. But the funny thing is, at that time I didn’t get upset about the bell. I had lived in UBF-land so long that I was accustomed to that kind of treatment. Months later, when I told some friends what John Jun had done, their jaws dropped. They couldn’t believe that the leader of a Christian organization would do that in a room full of adults, shutting people up by ringing a bell. In retrospect, I see that this was outrageous. But at the time, it felt almost normal.

The so-called retreat shifted into all-business mode. Ron Ward discussed plans for a new CME (Continuing Missionary Education) institute. That 30-minute presentation was the longest three hours of my life. It droned on and on and on. Then Jacob Lee laid out his vision for a UBF school  for the education of children, teaching them all subjects (reading, writing, math, etc.) from a standpoint of mission, so that we could pass on UBF core values to the next generation. Of course, we all knew what was really happening: these leaders were angling for pots of money from the UBF treasury to fund their pet projects. To say we were bored would be an understatement. The next item was conference planning. Mark Vucekovich talked about the 2013 International Summer Bible Conference, and it was decided that we would hold it at IUP. When Mark asked questions, he got essentially no response. My strength had been sapped, and I sensed that others were feeling the same way. (Later, some confirmed to me that, yes, they were bored out of their skulls.)

The last major item on the agenda was the North American Staff Conference to be held three months later. No plans had made, no theme was proposed. I spoke up and said something like this: “In light of what we learned from our group Bible study, why don’t we do what Jehoshaphat did, admitting that we really don’t know what we are doing, and stand together in prayer before the Lord to seek help and renewal for our ministry.”

My suggestion wasn’t acknowledged. They fidgeted for a brief moment and then moved on.

After hearing complaints that we needed to talk, John Jun made a small concession. He allowed everyone in the room to speak in turn, saying whatever was on their minds, within a limit of two minutes. Thankfully, he did not ring his bell. I cannot recall anyone’s remarks, except for the elder Daniel Yang, who said something like this: “My main concern is that we have no spirit. In the old days we had great spirit, because we used to study the Bible every day, 365 days a year, on Christmas, on New Year, no exception. It is my opinion that we must go back to intensive Bible study 365 days a year, so that our spirit may be revived. You might think differently, but that is my opinion.”

When my turn came, this is what I said. This is an exact quote. I wrote it down so I wouldn’t stumble over my words, and I saved it on my computer.

As I reflect back upon my life, I see five people who helped to shape my Christian faith. First, my mother, who raised me and my twelve siblings by faith in God alone. Second, a Catholic priest who befriended me and prayed for me during my freshman year at MIT; it was through his influence that I read a Christian book and committed my life to Christ. Third, Mother Barry, from whom I learned to respect and interact with Scripture. Fourth, John Armstrong, whose writings deeply challenged my sectarianism and opened my mind and heart to interact with the Body of Christ beyond UBF. Fifth, my wife, who has taught me countless things that other people could not; through her I am experiencing the love of God in new and wonderful ways.

Please forgive me, but I cannot identify Dr. Lee as my spiritual father, nor can I see myself as the fruit of UBF. I have drawn much spiritual nourishment from UBF, but I would not be the person I am today without those other influences. This is why I will never be just a UBF man, and why I cannot get excited about dedicating the rest of my life to promoting UBF-specific values. To do so would deny my roots and my heritage.

In feeling this way, I am not alone. America was a Christian nation long before UBF missionaries arrived, and a “typical” North American person in UBF will have significant spiritual influences in his or her life outside of UBF. To strongly press the principles of UBF upon us, to force us to claim that as our spiritual heritage, is to divide us from ourselves and from one another.

On the last day of the retreat, three senior staff members excused themselves and left early, saying that they needed to get to the airport. Later I learned that at least one of them deliberately changed to an earlier flight, because he concluded the retreat was a waste of time.

And now, we turn to the question that prompted this article.

What happened after I wrote that report?

Brian guessed this:

I suppose the ubf echelon kicked you out of the Well, and marginalized you in various ways…but I will let you tell the story.

Yes, that did happen eventually, but those events unfolded over a couple of years.

Ben said this:

My short guess is that you were called aside, basically reprimanded, told to “keep you place,” “mind your own business,” and basically asked, “who the heck do you think you are?” Well, probably not in those exact words.

Something like that sort of happened. At the beginning of the retreat, John Jun was not aware of my report. The guy who managed his email hadn’t told him about it. At the retreat, someone urged Jun to look at my report, and that first night, he did. The next day, just as we were heading to lunch, he poked me on the arm and said, “A leader should be humble! A leader should be humble!”

I took one step backward so that he could no longer touch me, looked him in the eye and said, “A leader should be honest.”

He replied, “Okay,” and then we went to lunch.

Reactions from the senior staff were muted. A couple of them said, “Thank you for your report,” and that was it. During the next week, I got feedback from a few more.

Brian’s and Ben’s answers aren’t wrong, but no one nailed it.

The answer to “What happened?” is so predictable, so typical of happenings in UBF-land, that when you hear it, you’ll slap yourself and say, “Duh!”

So obvious that it’s invisible, like that nose in front of your face.

This is what happened after that report.

(Drum roll, please.)

Joe Schafer humbled himself.

That’s right. I did exactly as UBF trained me to do. I sucked it up. I decided that once again, I needed to trust my leaders, believing that they would do what was right in God’s time. So I decided to pray and wait some more. I would lie low, not make waves, and keep following the leaders to God-knows-where.

And I urged everyone else to do the same.

After getting survey responses  from dozens of members, I feared that hopes were building that change would be imminent. I knew that nothing would happen for some time, so I wrote a letter and emailed it to everyone who had answered my survey. My key verse for the letter was Ephesians 4:3:

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

I did not ask anyone to keep quiet. I asked them to approach their leaders humbly and prayerfully, not with a spirit of division or complaint, but in a manner that was gentle and constructive, realizing that people from different generations and cultures will see things differently.

If you don’t believe that I actually did this, see for yourself. The letter is right here.

If you hear anyone say that I stirred up trouble, print a copy of this letter and place it in their hands.

As I waited for UBF leaders to do something about these issues, I didn’t sit down and do nothing (as several know-nothings have suggested). In the months ahead, I continued to study the Bible and preach Sunday messages. I prayed for our ministry, especially for those who were unhappy. We entertained UBF guests at our home, including Paul and Sarah Hong, who stayed with us overnight. I wrote dozens of positive articles for UBFriends, monitoring the website day and night to interact with everyone who cared to comment. I read dozens of books on various topics, especially the theology of mission.

And Sharon and I enrolled in John Armstrong’s first cohort on missional ecumenism. At a time when we really could not afford it, we paid from our own family budget (not with ministry funds) the full registration fees for the year-long course, for all the books, and for round-trip travel and accommodation in Chicago. We didn’t do this to become know-it-alls. We did it because we needed to understand what Christian unity is about. We were longing for someone, anyone, to please teach us how to relate to other Christians in our community. Most of all, we desperately wanted to know what the gospel required us to do in response to our fellow believers in UBF who, as the weeks and months went by, seemed ever more distant and different from us.

And with that, dear brothers and sisters, I bid you do widzenia.

P.S. – Some of you might say that I’ve gone too far, that it was unethical and unChristian to reveal what happened at that retreat. If so, I suggest that you lodge a complaint with Washington UBF.  Then please note that, during the many years that I served on the senior staff, no one ever suggested to me that the proceedings were to be kept secret.  In fact, at that Wisconsin retreat, I specifically recall some of the members (I could be wrong, but I think it was Henry Park and perhaps Paul Hong) saying that they are completely open and transparent about these things, and when they return home after a senior staff meeting, they meet with their members and inform them of what happened. And no one never said I should spin the events to make UBF leaders look better than they are. So I have done precisely what they said, explaining what happened as I experienced it.

If you were there and would like to tell it from a different perspective, send us your article, and we’ll publish it right away.

When I listened to Grace’s testimony about her struggle with her teacher and friends I realize clearly that for many people they view Christianity as just a system of morals. The position is that the bible is first and foremost about ethics, and there is an idea that Jesus should be transcended in favor of the ethics he gives. At least that is their position. This is why you hear all this rubbish about Jesus being a good moral teacher. This idea was present with my friend Ali I had dinner with last week. He struggles with atheism and feels like the world is meaningless. He wants to kill himself at times and experiments with drugs to try to find anything to help him find meaning. He used to be Muslim but after a year of evangelizing him he gave up Islam. But to my sadness instead of becoming Christian he became atheist. The other night we met for dinner and after an hour of conversation he admitted that it is easier to live with yourself as a Christian, but it is harder to be a Christian. Nevertheless he would not believe. His point was ultimately the same as Kant, religion is about ethics, and while he said he had no ethics, he then said he had ethics. So there was no problem for him. In the past when I read the bible I always thought of morality and ethics when I read “Repent.” I had been taught that it means turning away from a sin. But it means something more than that. Kant was wrong. Jesus says in Mark’s gospel “Repent and believe the good news.” The word ‘repent’ is the same as John the Baptist used. The word literally means “to go beyond the mind that you have”. As you recall from his sermon, the word used is metanoia. When I break a rule or violate my conscience I am called to go beyond the mind I have. But more than that, Jesus urges us to change our way of thinking and see the world that is coming. The priest said that morality is not the central theme of the New Testament. The theme is a coming of a new way of things. A paradigm shift to viewing things unseen that ends in Revelations 21 with the New Jerusalem. That is why St. Paul tells the Corinthians that the time is short. That is why the scriptures say that what matters is a new creation. Why all of Paul’s achievements are nothing, why he tells the Roman’s their deeds are nothing, why circumcision means nothing. The predominate message of the early church was nothing besides the resurrection of Christ. The transformation of this world into some more, something greater. The curse that Adam brought, death is in retreat. That is the message of repentance. To go beyond death, by dying so that Jesus might live inside you.

At the heart of it all is a choice. Repentance requires a decision. We need Christ’s help to make this decision.To repent, to go beyond one’s mind is a choice. It is faith to step out into the unknown and depend on God. The forerunners to my culture believed that a man is his own master. The American dream is at its core the idea that I control my destiny. But as Kierkegaard states, when man is dependent on God, he is independent. When I make a choice I exclude all other choices. And the choice to repent excludes non repentance, and while this seems easy to understand, I constantly feel like I want it both ways. I want to repent but not really change anything. And while John says “The kingdom of heaven is near.” Jesus says “you are not far from the Kingdom”. Jesus helps me, and when I am unwilling he helps me become willing. I think of all that he has done for me and all that I have done by his power and grace and I am confident in his might. I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me. Let me go beyond this mind I have and take up my place with children of God. There is room for another at the foot of the cross.

Living with my head in the clouds. Last year I shared how West Loop (WL) UBF began in 2008. This is a follow up random, limited and selective reflection of our happy and eventful 6 year story and journey as a church. It mainly explains how my ideological perspectives changed. It is “heady” and not practical. As I’ve often told my wife, “Sorry that I live with my head in the clouds. Therefore, your feet has to be on the ground.” I hope this does not sound bad for her!

A theme for each year. For the last few years, as the primary preaching pastor, I loosely choose a particular theme for each year at WL:

• the year of the Gospel (1 Cor 15:1-4), a matter of prime importance.
• the year of Grace (Ac 20:24): Paul’s only aim was to testify to the gospel of God’s grace.
• the year of Sanctification (Phil 2:12b)–not by human effort but primarily by the grace of God (Phil 2:13);
• the year of the whole counsel of God (Ac 20:27), also translated as the whole will, plan, and purpose of God.
• the year of Remembrance (Dt 15:15a; 24:18; 8:2-3), to prompt us to love God (Dt 6:5) and to act and live accordingly (Dt 10:12-13; 30:19-20).
• For 2015: the year of Faith (Rom 1:17), knowing that it is only by grace that one comes to faith (Eph 2:8-9).

All these themes are rooted and grounded in the gospel–the only power for real authentic transformation and change that happens inside out (Rom 1:16). But Christians are often scared of grace, preferring instead to be punitive and retributive. We incline to giving and treating people as we think their sins deserve. We mistake grace for antinomianism, which was what Paul was accused of by the Bible legalists (Rom 6:1, 15). We think grace leads to lawlessness and licentiousness. This may happen. But withholding grace is never the solution. In fact, when grace is lacking, any church invariably becomes moralistic, legalistic, rigid and inflexible. Insufficient grace also inclines toward lacking the generosity, gentleness and graciousness toward others outside the church, and even in the church.

Changing how I taught Genesis. After teaching Genesis 100s of times for over a quarter of a century, I asked, What is the point of Genesis? Is it “live a life of mission”? Or “be a father of faith like Abraham”? Or “Marry by faith like Isaac and Rebekah”? I think not. It is by the grace of God that God chose our forefathers (and us), in spite of themselves. In 2011 I preached through most of Genesis by focusing on God’s limitless grace extended to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

What did Jesus say the Scriptures are about? When I first noticed it, I was surprised to read that Jesus said that the OT Scriptures are about him (Jn 5:39, 46; Lk 24:27, 44). In Acts, both Peter and Paul said the same thing: the OT is about Jesus (Ac 10:43; 18:28). It impressed me that the Bible is NOT primarily a book about proper morals and proper religious behavior, but primarily about Jesus. As a result, I shifted my emphasis from imperatives (commands) to indicatives (grace), from “you love others” to “God loves you” (1 Jn 4:19), from “you live a life of mission” to “Jesus fulfilled his mission for you” (Jn 19:30). Only the latter, the gospel, leads to true transformation (2 Cor 3:18; 4:6). I think I have the support from both Martin Luther and Pope Francis!

Overcoming the iron law of paternalism, patriarchy and primogeniture. Sorry for these rather unfamiliar words. (Google each word.) But they are important because every culture, society and church naturally follows the unbreakable law of these “3 P’s.” Loosely, it means that you follow the chain of command and the norms of society (or the church), whereby the older and the senior is ALWAYS favored above the younger and the junior. But interestingly God’s grace does not follow such “human rules and traditions.” In fact, God, more often than not, breaks such unbreakable human rules and laws by choosing and extending favor to the younger over the older. For instance, in every case, God chose:

• Abel the younger instead of Cain the older.
• Isaac the younger instead of Ishmael the older.
• Jacob the younger instead of Esau the older.
• Joseph the 11th of Jacob’s sons, bypassing 10 older sons.
• Ephraim the younger son of Joseph instead of Manasseh the older son.
• Moses, the youngest one in his family.
• David, the youngest of the 8 sons of Jesse.
• Young fresh disciples (Mk 1:17), rather than old tired Pharisees and boring religious leaders.
• Young Timothy (1 Tim 4:12), rather than the older elders at Ephesus.

What does this mean and how does it apply practically? I needed to unlearn and re-learn what I had previously practiced by honoring and favoring younger people as much as I had honored older people. Under Samuel Lee’s 40 year leadership, everyone in UBF honored him more than everyone else. But by understanding how God does not follow man’s ways of paternalism, patriarchy and primogeniture, I made an intentional internal decision to honor and favor younger people, just as much as I had honored Lee for the last 22 years of his life in Chicago UBF. How would I do this? I encouraged everyone at West Loop to do whatever they wished, or to take any initiative, without asking my permission or first getting approval or clearance from me. Why? Because I trusted them as my expression of trusting God. Because I wish to respect and welcome their initiatives and creative ideas that are different (and better!) than mine.

No more fear of man. A few years ago Prov 29:25 literally changed the way I viewed, perceived and responded to people in authority. Just as I feared and honored Lee, I also feared every older person and leader in UBF. The practical result of this was that I lived before the person I feared, rather than living in the fear of God (Prov 1:7; 9:10). I lived to please the person I feared (Jn 5:43-44), rather than pleasing God (Jn 8:29). This was a miserable way to live. What a tremendous freedom and liberation it was to no longer live in the fear of any man!

No one should fear me or anyone else. Practically, I prayed that WL may be a safe place, where no one would fear me (or anyone else), just because I am an older longstanding leader in the church. If anyone feared me, they will act and pretend and not speak up openly and honestly, for fear of retaliation or repercussion from me. So I chose to welcome critiques from anyone regarding my words, decisions, actions, sermons and leadership. It is sometimes jarring and humbling when some young person says to me, “How can you say such a thing in your sermon!” But I thank God that our WL community is free and unafraid to speak up. One of my catchphrases is, “Please stab me in the front!”

And this is what Ferguson needs. It needs laws that do not bind us to inaction. This country needs laws that do not allow police offices that are legally allows to shoot an unarmed teen over nine times and leave him in the street for four and half hours. Ferguson needs a state prosecutor who is not legally allowed to give out statues deems unconstitutional in 1985 and correct them three days before deliberation ends. Ferguson needs to know that justice exists. It needs to know that our country of laws values black lives and white lives in the same manner. It needs to know that tear gassing protesters and bringing in a militarized police force is imperious. It needs to know that in our country stealing cigars is not punishable by death. It needs to know that excessive force in the name of protection is a means that undoes an end.

Ferguson needs peace makers- blessed are they. It needs impractical men. Men who are willing to stand up for what is right and just and true.  Ferguson needs the most impractical, practical men. Men who judge actions, and furthermore act. Vox populi vox dei is our maxim. Our actions can only be successful when they are over, if we are to begin they must in the abstract right. My conscience rejects that an unarmed black teen deserved death for not getting out of the street fast enough. I have been to those neighborhoods. I have taught teens just like Michael Brown. I nearly became Michael Brown’s math teacher. For all of my experience it is clear that authority does not grant freedom from the law. Authority exists in the context of law, not in spite of it. If the laws allow for such a heinous action then the laws themselves are unjust. Prudence dictates that law ought not to be changed for light and passing causes, but change in the law ought not to be intractable. Mankind will suffer under the law before it changes the law assuming the law is sufferable. But when the law itself allows for the destruction of the basic tenet of existence perquisite to the law itself- life, it becomes not only a necessity but duty of the people to stand against the law, practically in the form of protests. Impractically in the creation of new laws and examination of the old law to determine the protection of all people regardless of race, religion, creed, or gender. This is what Ferguson needs. It is what the world needs. Behind this law lies the mysterious person who fulfilled the law. He is justice itself. He is what Ferguson needs more than all, for he who has Christ and everything has nothing more than he who has Christ alone.

I stand with the people of Ferguson. May Christ stand with them as well.

He is IMPORTANT in the church

Why do such shocking things happen in the holy church of God? My contention is that our theology (Bible study) always informs our Christian life. As I am studying Romans slowly and deliberately, I am positing a grossly inadequate understanding of sin as to why sin continues to thrive even in the church and often dealt with rather poorly.

1, 3, 22 sermons. Several times over two decades in Chicago UBF, I studied Rom 1:18-3:20 in one sermon and/or Bible study. This year, I expanded it to three sermons at West Loop:  Gospel Suppression (1:18-2:5); Gospel Impartiality (2:6-29); Gospel Accusation (3:1-20). If you think this is a lot (by UBF standards), John Piper preached 20 sermons on these verses, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached 22 sermons on these 64 verses!

Unthankfulness. The point of the UBF message was that the root of sin is unthankfulness (Rom 1:21). Therefore, we should always be thankful (1 Th 5:18). Of course, this is true. I know, as we all do, that if we are not thankful for any reason, we immediately lose peace and joy in our hearts and souls.

Disgusting sinners. I also learned that in a world without God, sin simply escalates and causes people to go from bad to worse (Rom 1:18-32). Again, we all know that this is also true.

UBF’s emphasis is on Rom 1:18-32 which constituted the major bulk of the sermon, while Rom 2:1-3:20 was just touched on rather briefly with a significant portion regarded as supplemental study. It felt to me as though it was optional and therefore not that important. So I never studied Rom 2:1-3:20, since the UBF sermon and manuscript spent hardly any time or emphasis on it.

My wrong understanding is that these 64 verses were not all that important for two reasons. (1) It’s about sin and we can skim it quickly, so that we can talk more about Jesus. (2) We studied these 64 verses in one sermon and focused on unthankfulness based on the chosen key verse, Rom 1:21.

Missing Paul’s main point in the flow of his argument. What I realized when I studied these verses more extensively a few months ago was that I missed what Paul was really trying to say in these 64 verses. (It was not “don’t be unthankful!”) Yes, the sins of the Gentiles are horrible. They are irreligious and immoral, lawless and licentious, and often gross and grotesque. But Paul’s point is not how horrible Gentile sinners are, but that the Jews–who were religious, moral and law abiding–were just as bad, if not worse! If we are to do justice with Rom 1:18-3:20, a key verse that better reflects these 64 verses is Rom 3:9, rather than Rom 1:21. “Jew and Gentile alike” (Rom 3:9) can be understood as “Christian and non-Christian,” or “religious and irreligious,” or “moral and immoral,” or “Bible believing and Bible ignorant” being equally under the power of sin. Doesn’t this explain why horrible sin happens in the church and then is covered up as though somehow Christians (or certain people) get some kind of special free pass?

What is Paul’s emphasis? Of the 64 verses, Paul spent 15 verses on Gentile sinners (Rom 1:18-32) and 49 verses (Rom 2:1-3:20) on Jewish sinners–more than three times the amount! Conversely, if I remember correctly, the UBF manuscript used up 4-5 pages on 15 verses (the sins of irreligious Gentiles) and just a page plus on 49 verses (the sins of religious “Bible believing” Jews).

This was how Paul preached and taught the Bible. When Paul taught about the sins of the Gentiles to a Jewish crowd, he noticed how the religious Jews were fully agreeing with him: “Yeah, Paul, go sock it to those disgusting immoral godless wicked Gentile sinners!” Thus, Paul switched gears from Rom 2:1-3:20 and socked it to the very decent, well-dressed, well behaved and religious Bible believing Jewish sinners for 49 verses!

Why am I belaboring this? As stated above, our Bible study of sin in these verses affects our understanding of sin and sinners. If we emphasize the sins of the Gentiles and inadvertently de-emphasize the sins of the Jews, this will be how it is in the church. We think, speak and act as though certain sins are worse (immorality, promiscuity, drunkenness), while other sins are not that bad (gossip, slander, politics, vanity, defensiveness, offensiveness). We blast the sins of the immoral, while we basically go easy on the “better behaved” sins of certain people in the church. Does this adequately explain my first paragraph above?

Have you studied about the sins of the religious in Rom 2:1-3:20? Should the sins of “certain important people” in the church be dealt with differently than others?

1. Mission above family

After more than 3 years of reflection, I would say the most harmful teaching I learned from Samuel Lee was to treat mission from God as more important than family and friends. More than anything else, this warped, non-Christian teaching influenced my life negatively. I am still dealing with the effects of over 20 years of this teaching. To teach that mission from God is more important than relationships with family and friends is to deny the very mission Jesus came to give us.

2. Fear of man

SL did influence people greatly, sometimes for good. But from a non-Chicago, non-Korean perspective the one word that describes SL is fear. We feared him. We were always on edge around him. When I visited his office and prayed with him for about half an hour once, I was highly fearful. This fear of him was intended to plant fear of God in people. But that logic doesn’t work out in the end. Such fear only creates a personality cult around you. And planting fear is not what Christ came for. The Messiah’s work is about liberation, as He declared wonderfully in His mission statement in Luke 4.

3. Contradictions

One of the best and most helpful things I learned from several Christian pastors the last few years is to identify contradictions. If someone says something, are they contradicting themselves? Are they contradicting the Scriptures? Are they contradicting my conscience? Are they contradicting the Spirit of God? Are their actions contradictory to their teaching? Do they contradict the greatest law, which is the law of love?  I can say clearly that when it comes to SL’s teachings, the answer to all these questions is “yes”. The ubf heritage that grew up around SL is so full of contradictions I would need an entire blog to explain them all (oh wait I already have one…)

One good example of contradictions in SL’s teachings is about pragmatism. I once ate a Big Mac on a bus in Moscow with Samuel Lee. He went on and on about how we should not be pragmatic, how such widespread pragmatism is the problem of Russian people. And yet SL taught us to make God into a vending machine by earning God’s blessings through “doing one-to-one” and “going back to the bible”. This is one of the most pragmatic things anyone could do.

So yes, there were good things SL did. He was passionate and influential. But my life stands as a representative of all the entanglements SL’s teaching placed on young people around the world for over 50 years. ubf ministry continues to be a ministry of yokes. So many yokes of burden are placed around people’s necks that they have no time to learn how to love the people closest to them.

May God set you free from such teachings. May many more come to see the liberating power of the gospel of Jesus Christ!

From 1980 (when I became a Christian and joined Chicago UBF) to 2002 (when Lee died), I witnessed firsthand what Lee said and taught. For the last 22 years of his life I listened to Lee’s preaching in Chicago UBF, and heard his prayer topics and announcements every week. He would be the final word at the Mon fellowship leader’s meeting, the Tue elder’s meeting, the Fri student leader’s meeting, on Sat when we met for prayer for the Sunday worship service, and also on Sun after the sermon.

There have been many negative accounts about Lee (which are credible accounts from credible people). But there are also Lee’s positive teachings, which I regard as the gist of his primary teachings and main emphasis for 22 years under his leadership. Many might insist that he did not practice what he preached. Nonetheless, this is what he said and emphasized repeatedly for the last 22 years of his life.

Humility. Lee said emphatically that humility is the first attribute of leadership. He would be even far more dramatic by saying, “The first attribute of leadership is humility. The second attribute of leadership is humility. The third attribute of leadership is humility.” He said this and similar statements regarding humility countless times on countless occasions over the years. For certain, UBF might be a different church if we sincerely took to heart the utmost importance of humility.

Influence. Lee said, “The water upstream flows downstream.” He meant that what happens in UBF at the ground level happens primarily because of the leader’s influence. He said very often that we should not blame our sheep, but take personal responsibility. He clearly articulated a culture of influence and responsibility that comes from the integrity of the leader. People have shared how their leader told them, “Our UBF chapter is not growing because of you.” Lee would not have been happy with that leader.

Jesus only. Lee said that whatever we write and share in both sermons and testimonies, 90% should be about Jesus and 10% about ourselves. He never deviated from consistently saying this for as long as I’ve known him for 22 years. If we practiced sharing primarily about Jesus (and not ourselves or UBF), issues with elitism and nationalism would dissipate.

Compassion. With an almost consistent and predictable regularity, Lee would emphasize in countless creative ways the compassion of God and Jesus for sinners. He encouraged UBFers to have a “shepherd’s heart” for others. He stressed that we should love our sheep like our children; that we should love and care for lost sheep with the heart of Christ and with the heart of a father and a mother. This is virtually an unchanging constant in his sermons and announcements throughout the 22 years that I‘ve known him.

Many people have shared with me their observation that they are treated differently from the children of missionaries and older leaders. They say that they often do not force their own children to feed sheep, attend meetings, write testimonies, or marry by faith. Perhaps, if we love others the same way we love our children such complaints would disappear.

Brokenness. Lee expressed it best when he said, “If one’s leg is broken we can fix their broken leg. But when one’s heart is broken, what can we do?” Many are emphatic about Lee’s motivation of primarily desiring to establish leaders for UBF. Yes, he was driven to make disciples the way he believed he should, which I do not always agree with. But I remember him expressing his compassion for broken students from dysfunctional families with genuine and heartfelt compassion countless times. I never doubted that he loved and cared for certain broken people, who will likely be ignored and discarded by a pragmatic leader.

Love one person. Related to compassion and brokenness, Lee emphasized ad nauseam about genuinely loving one person. In an attempt to help a college student, he said in the midst of a very hectic international summer Bible conference (ISBC) preparation, “Helping one person is more important than the entire UBF ISBC.”

Many people have complained about how UBF is far more concerned about the viability, success and reputation of UBF than about the welfare and well being of individual people, who have felt used, trampled upon, disregarded, unappreciated and disrespected. People felt conditional love: They are accepted and loved only if they are fully committed to serve UBF. But should they decide to leave UBF, they felt that they never had a true friend in UBF who loved them for who they were, but only for what they could contribute to UBF. If we took to heart Lee’s teaching about genuinely loving one person, then even if that person left UBF, the love would remain.

There are other repeated emphasis in Lee’s teaching. But I’ll stop here with humility, influence, Jesus only, compassion, brokenness, and loving one person. Could these six attributes be suitable replacements for some of the current 8 to 12 legacies attributed to him over the past dozen years?

Gentle and kind

Boring and predictable. Many have stated that UBF tends to be boring and predictable in the way the Bible is taught and presented over the decades. I hope that UBFriends does not similarly become boring and predictable by unrelentingly blasting away against UBF.

Mission, mission, mission Vs. bashing, bashing, bashing. Many have said that virtually every UBF Bible study, sermon and postings on UBF websites is primarily mission, mission, mission. Such a repeated emphasis on mission cannot but overshadow or even obscure all the countless other (perhaps far more) important teachings of the Bible, such as the Trinity, reconciliation, unity, justice, equality, honesty, friendships, relationships, condescension (instead of being condescending), etc. Likewise, is UBFriends going to be primarily known as bashing, bashing, bashing, even though there are so many other excellent topics and themes that have been written?

While accusing UBF leaders of playing God, is UBFriends doing the same thing? Many have accused some UBF leaders and shepherds of acting and behaving as though they are the Holy Spirit, as though their knowledge and assessment of their sheep is perfect and correct. In the past they have made highly offensive and reprehensible statements like “selfish Americans,” “Polish pride,” “beggar mentality Filipinos,” etc. Obviously no American, Pole or Filipino likes this. Do we now do the same thing by slamming and bashing UBF?

God is omniscient, we are not. God’s (Jesus’) assessment and judgement of us is objective and correct, even perfect, because God sees and knows every heart perfectly. But our judgment of others, even when based on observable facts and evidences, has elements of subjectivity, bias and prejudices because we do not know the deep intricacy of the hearts of others, and not even our own hearts.

Endless proof-texting. We can quote endless verses about how Jesus blasted others, especially the crooked and malicious religious leaders. Others can also similarly quote countless verses about how Jesus was endlessly gentle, patient and kind toward the wicked (which is everyone). Quoting verses is perhaps a stalemate.

Gentle, meek, lowly, kind. Since I’m writing this, let me quote my preferred verses that I believe exemplify Christ. (Feel free to quote “opposite verses!”) “A gentle tongue can break a bone” (Prov 25:15, NIV). “A soft tongue will break a bone” (Prov 25:15, ESV). “Soft speech can break bones” (Prov 29:25, NLT). “Blessed are the gentle / the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Mt 5:5, NASB; Mt 5:5, ESV). “I am gentle and humble / lowly in heart” (Mt 11:29, NIV; Mt 11:29, ESV). “Love is patient, love is kind” (1 Cor 13:4).

Don’t stop speaking up. I am absolutely NOT saying that people should stop speaking up against authoritarianism, elitism, exclusivity, cultural imperialism, injustices, spiritual abuse and controlling others in the name of shepherding and discipleship, etc. In fact if you do not speak up when you hear or see something wrong, you are either indifferent or a wimp as a Christian. But for those who do speak up, is there a way to speak up online in a kinder and gentler way, and not predominantly with the predictable accusatory rhetoric and polemic attack of Mt 23:13-39?

What if UBF refuses to do any or all of the following? Be accountable? Genuinely apologize? Own up with contrition or take responsibility for spiritual abuse? Stop slandering and speaking ill of anyone who dares to critique UBF or who leaves UBF? Acknowledge that their shepherding, training methods and their implicit no dating and marriage by faith policies are unbiblical and controlling? Stop justifying itself by their (gospel of) good intentions (which excuses the abuse)? Then what?

Even if many are changing, some may never change. I personally believe that many are genuinely changing, albeit rather slowly, if not invisibly. But there is also a very distinct possibility that some others–perhaps in the absolute minority–who will never change. Then what? Do we thrash the whole orchard because of a few bad apples? Do we damage the whole field of wheat while trying to remove a few weeds? Do we wound and hurt the majority of “good” UBF people, just because we want to relentlessly call out the few “bad” people, who may never change no matter what is said or done?

At the end of the day is Jesus remembered for blasting sinners (which we all deserve without exception) or dying for sinners (which we do not deserve)? What is UBFriends, in her present state and form and emphasis, going to be remembered for?

Is it possible for UBFriends to be gentler, kinder, milder, meeker, more patient, more self-introspection, less accusatory, and not be a predominantly one message website of predictably bashing UBF as though our assessment and judgment of UBF is perfect like that of God’s?

“What’s the game?” a student asked excitedly.

“Well it’s simple” Travis went on “You are going to flip a coin. If you get a heads you get a candy bar.” Travis revealed a selection of candy bars like Vanna White showing a prize. The boy with glasses eyes the Snickers ready to fend off a resolution rarely see outside of fights to the death and Black Friday shoppers (although to be fair that might be redundant).“Ok I will play.” The boy said as he reached to his pocket for a quarter.

“Oh one other thing. If you get a tails you have to eat this dried Asian crab I picked up from the Asian food market.” The boy turned to the two Chinese girls in the group “You guys eat that!” he cried
Both the girls had marked looks of disgust. “Must be a Filipino thing.” Another student concluded “My mom said they eat raw squid and grasshoppers over there.” Travis waited, but nobody seemed willing to try to win candy at the possibility of having to eat food from the Asian market.

Finally Travis said “A recent report showed that half of all marriages in the US fail today. Marriage is an amazing thing and a great prize, but as we saw nobody was willing to play the game because they could get stuck with a terrible outcome. What I want to say is that it does not have to be a game. It is not chance.” Travis opened his bible and proceeded to lead a bible study on marriage based on Mat 19:6. Travis went on “Marriage is not only an individual contract. It is a covenant before God, and also the community. When me and Michelle were married we signed the marriage document before the church, because we wanted to make it clear that our marriage was not just about up. We are married before God, and before the community which we are to serve.”

Marriage and divorce and the lesson of the Asian crab

I am going to pass on talking about marriage in a UBF sense here. It requires a much fuller and precise document that what I am willing to present here and now. What I want to mention is that something that many people of older generations are saying now, as Travis did is that marriage as an institution is failing. With so many failed marriages it seems like the only conclusion that can be made. With so many broken families and homes in America the point Travis makes really hit home. I can recall that Sunday service featured the same “O tempora! O mores!” message.

This lesson taught me that marriage is not just a chance, it is not just a random event. God does not play dice and neither does your marriage says the lesson of the Asian crab. As an aside, this idea that US marriage is failing as an institution is often used as a justification for the UBF marriage by faith. The problem is that it is a very biased to say increasing divorce means the institution is failing. I will leave the article to a famous statistican I follow. The basis of the argument is that income is strongly, inversely correlated to divorce rate. So if the combined income of you and your spouse is high, you are not likely to divorce, across all age groups and races. Most UBF marriage by faith couples include a doctor, or a nurse, or both and so we should expect UBF marriage by faiths to be generally lasting.

For more information the perseverance of marriage:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/marriage-isnt-dead-yet/
For those unfamiliar with this article series here is my introduction: http://www.ubfriends.org/2014/10/03/an-introduction-to-lessons-from-travis/

Did I miscommunicate biblical faith? I used to make such statements 100s of times to countless Bible students for over a quarter of a century….especially to those who are single and in (restrained desire and) need of a spouse! I am so sorry for all those I did this too… I realize that inherent in such seemingly “innocent” and “cute” statements is that it could be provocative and possibly misleading and miscommunicating biblical faith.

What’s so wrong about making such statements? On the surface, and without much thought or critical reflection, they do sound biblical, don’t they? For Jesus said, “Have faith in God” (Mk 11:22). Also, we Christians absolutely need faith to please God (Heb 11:6), and “the righteous will live by faith” (Rom 1:17c, Hab 2:4). In the OT, when Abram believed God, his faith was credited to him as righteousness (Gen 15:6). Therefore, when we have faith and pray with believing faith (Mk 11:24), we can move immovable mountains (Mk 11:23). We can marry the person of our wildest dreams and raise many disciples for the kingdom of God! Wow…all I need and the only thing I need is faith. This is surely all true, correct and biblical, isn’t it?

The problem is… and there are several potential problems with making such unqualified statements and other related statements regarding faith, such as “With faith you can be a great man, and a Ph.D professor shepherd, and a successful businessman.” So what’s the problem?

It’s up to you and your faith. It presents faith as though it is entirely up to you and to the quality and purity and correctness and soundness of your faith. It puts the burden and pressure on you to have and to exercise the proper kind of faith. Then you, through your faith, will please God and move God’s heart to bless you abundantly according to your faith. It is basically having faith in your faith, rather than in God.

It takes emphasis away from the primacy of God. I am not denying that each Christian is fully responsible for exercising their faith. But to place the burden of faith primarily on the Christian denies or obscures the primacy of God in our faith (Phil 1:6; 2:12-13). It is as though God is not sovereign but that I am sovereign to fulfill God’s will, since God is dependent on my faith before he can or will act to bless me.

It can cause self-centeredness and excessive unhealthy introspection. It causes you to think primarily about yourself (what’s wrong with me or with my faith?), rather than to think or focus primarily on God.

It can be a form of control and guilt-tripping. It gives the church leader and the Bible teacher the control by putting pressure on the Bible student as the one who needs to prove themselves through the exercise of their faith expressed by their performance.

God’s Not Dead misrepresents faith. In the movie God’s Not Dead, a college professor is a staunch atheist. When he was young his mother became ill. Growing up in the church, he believed and prayed that God would heal her. But she died. He became bitter and concluded that God is dead. His idea of faith is that God would answer his prayers if he sincerely and genuinely prays to God by faith. His idea of faith is that he is in the driver’s seat and that God is the one who should do what he prays for. I shared this extemporaneously in my sermon Gospel Faith to express the fallacy of such faith.

Does your faith make you righteous? Interestingly, Rom 1:17 can also be translated “the righteous by faith will live” (Rom 1:17, NET), or “And the righteous one by faith shall live” (Rom 1:17, YLT). This perhaps conveys the essence of faith more clearly by emphasizing what God has done. We Christians do not live by faith to become righteous (or to get what we want or to have our prayers answered). Rather, it is precisely because of our faith in Christ who saves us by his grace that we live! This is the emphasis in my sermon Gospel Power.

What are your experiences with faith? How was faith taught or communicated to you?

This is from a SL worship service lecture.

“Today we are gathered here to remember Dr. Samuel Lee who was our teacher, shepherd, and most of all, a good soldier of Christ Jesus. It has been thirteen years since he entered the heavenly gate like a victorious general after fighting the good fight.  We miss him so much.”

>> Are you gathered to remember SL or to worship him? I can’t tell the difference. 13 years? SL died in a fire in Chicago in February 2002. That was 12 years ago.

“Today’s passage is Paul’s personal admonition to Timothy. These words are also fitting for us who serve Campus pioneering and world mission. I pray that we may renew our soldier spirit and be good soldiers of Christ Jesus.”

>> So you admit that you serve the mission. At least you are being clear. Your ministry places mission above people. You are willing to sacrifice people for the sake of mission. This does not sound like Christ who had compassion for people.

“Apostle Paul reminds Timothy of his spiritual identity as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. A Christian is a soldier whose commander is Jesus Christ.”

>> Ok so yes a solider is one metaphor used in the bible to describe Christians. Are there others?

“A Christian’s goal is to fight against his enemies and defeat them.”

>> Well no, that is the goal of a terrorist. The goal of Christians, according to the bible is to love. Christ won the victory already.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood but against Satan.”

>> Ok yes that is correct. There is a battle. Our enemy is not people.

“We have to fight against our sinful desires to enjoy worldly pleasures and complacency. We also have to engage in the spiritual battle to rescue God’s flock from their sin and Satan. Moreover, we have to engage in the one to one battle to pioneer college campuses around the world, expanding his kingdom work.”

>> Wait, what? You just said our enemy is Satan, not people. Yet now my “self” is the enemy? Now the campus is a battlefield?

“Then, what kind of attitude should we have as good soldiers of Christ Jesus?”

>> Wow, what a loaded question, proof-texted by your own claims prior to asking the question!

“Paul says, “Join me in suffering.” It means first, to participate in Jesus’ suffering.  Jesus came to earth to live a life of suffering. Jesus prayed early in the morning, healed many people with all kinds of diseases, fed them and taught them until he  became like a root out of dry ground (Isa 53:2).  Finally, Jesus went to the cross at the age of 33.”

>> Yea, Jesus did those things. He also did a lot of other things that did not involve suffering. He made wine at a wedding. He ate grain from the field on Sunday. He slept in a boat during a storm. And many many other wonderful things.

“Jesus’ life itself was suffering. Paul also learned from Jesus and lived a life of suffering.  He was in prison, flogged severely and exposed to death many times.  Five times he received the forty lashes minus one. He was hungry and thirsty (2Cor 11:23-27). But he confessed in Romans 8:18, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Our suffering secures a crown of righteousness and glory. Therefore, soldiers of Jesus Christ should not be afraid of suffering but enjoy it with joy.”

>> Now you are binding our minds incorrectly and unnecessarily to suffering using the bible as glue. We should not be afraid of suffering, correct. But life does not equal suffering only. That is more of an Eastern philosophical value proof-texted with bible verses. Jesus came to give us life to the full.

“Second, “Join me in suffering” means you will receive training.”

>> WTF? Oh yeah, you must mean the ubf six stage training.

“A good soldier matches his training.  Whether you are a good soldier or not largely depends on the degree of the training you receive, not on human conditions.  In order to become a foot soldier, you will receive 6 weeks of basic training. But in order to become an officer, you have to receive 4 months of officer training.  In the case when you want to become a special force soldier, you will receive unbearable training. One example of survival training is where you are left alone on a mountain with only a knife and map to survive by eating snakes and rats.  Through receiving this special training, soldiers can survive in any circumstances and carry on any given mission.”

>> So now we are in la-la land. What are you talking about?

“Since we regard UBF as a spiritual academy, we use many military-related words such as “training,” “battle,” and “conquer.” We have received many types of spiritual training such as “Daily Bread training,” “message training,” “testimony writing training,” “Skokie training,” or “one to one training.” Dr. Lee called himself, “army sergeant” who raised spiritual generals, and trained many shepherds. Through this training in the early days of UBF, many UBF staff shepherds and senior missionaries were raised. Dr. Lee wore army clothes with a beret on his head and rode a Jeep because he considered himself a field commander in the front line of world mission. We must inherit this soldier spirit to love training and suffering in order to send 100,000 missionaries to 233 nations.”

>> Thank you. This is the best documentation of KOPHAN theology I’ve come across. At least you are bold enough to document it.

“Unfortunately, when God blessed South Korea abundantly, she began to have a spiritual crisis of materialism, hedonism, and complacency. The Christian population has now dropped from 12 million to 8.5 million. It is hard to meet one sheep and raise him as a disciple and so Korea UBF is seeing a constant drop in student Sunday worshipers. However, I have hope when I see God’s work done through a small number of trained soldiers who have soldier spirit both in South Korea and around the world.”

>> So how did we get to South Korea so quickly? Clearly you are on your own soapbox and not teaching us about the bible or Christianity. Your words sound like a certain group in Germany a few decades ago.

“There are many shepherds in UBF who are on fire about God and feed 15 to 20 one to ones per week. They are called one to one zealots. There is a shepherdess in Kwan-Ak chapter III.  It seems to be impossible to fish SNU medical students because they study all the time.  So she went fishing at 11PM when the medical school library closed.  In this way, several ancestors of faith were raised and now 40 families were established in Kwan-Ak chapter III.  Around her, there are many women coworkers who are one to one zealots, and every day they engage in united prayer and go out fishing, and in this way they invite 50 freshmen each year. Among them, 12 future leadership candidates are chosen to have common life. As a result, the number in Sunday worship grows constantly. Among 130 worship attendants, 80 of them are students. While the student attendants in most Korean UBF chapters are decreasing, Kwan-Ak chapter 3 is ever growing.”

>> Yes, thank you for admitting the problem: zealots. Way to heap guilt upon the heads of all your fellow ubfers.

“There are many one to one zealots in El Camino UBF.  I heard that they had 320 one to ones last week.  I think we should all be greatly challenged by that.  I pray that we may also learn their one to one zealot spirit so that we may overcome this stagnant time of ministry and revive it.”

>> Well, perhaps you should visit El Camino UBF and see what they are really doing…From what I can tell they have rejected a lot of SL’s teachings and are practicing Christianity. Maybe that is why they are now attracting people?

“I was called as a Gwang-ju staff shepherd just after accepting Christ 2 years and 10 months earlier.  But at that time I was not mature enough. Thus, God trained me severely.  Dr. Lee tried to help my marriage problem and brought a shepherdess from Seoul all the way to Gwangju upon my agreement. But my heart turned cold and I refused to marry her.  Another time, I came back from Jun-ju after successfully passing my ministry onto the successor. Dr. Lee told me that I would work in the daily bread department as an office worker since I lacked the intelligence to become a staff shepherd but had the faithfulness to be a good office worker. At that time, I was very confident as a staff shepherd since I was successful in Jun-ju ministry growing the number from 80 to 130. Upon hearing his words, my pride was hurt and I became upset. So I told him, “I was not called as an office worker but as a staff shepherd.”  As a result, I had to bounce a volley ball to the ground for three hours in the staff conference.”

>> Wow you are really good at praising yourself. And you admit you have endured such abuse. Your self-glory statements go on and on in the next paragraph. In fact this whole thing seems like you are trying to justify the abuse done to you…

“Among the sacrificial shepherds, S. Ok-ki Lee was an intern shepherd. He was the first UBF 1:1 zealot, who did 25-30 one to ones per week.  He then was scouted by Dr. Lee and sent to Jong-ro center as an intern shepherd under S. Maria Ahn.  S. John Park, staff shepherd of Gwang-ju 2 came to center from his freshman year. He received a full 4 year scholarship to Cho-sun law school and is a gifted scholar and a servant of God’s Word.  His chapter has 110 Sunday attendants. Dr. David Park is the layman staff shepherd who serves Gwangju III focusing on Chodae medical and dental schools. He has raised numerous medical doctor shepherds, including three professor shepherds in Chodae medical school and six medical missionaries. People used to call Chodae hospital, “UBF hospital.” They have 120 Sunday attendants.”

>> Nice. More guilt-trips for your audience.

“…I give my praise, thanks and glory to God who saved this sinner, and who called and trained me to be a useful servant of God.”

>> Was it God who trained you? Or SL?

“Let us renew our soldier spirit as good soldiers of Christ Jesus and love training and suffering to become strong warriors of faith.  In this way, I pray that we may recover our passion for one to one Bible studies and carry on our mission to send out 100,000 missionaries to 233 nations. Let’s read verse 3 together. “Join me in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”

>> Maybe you should recover your passion for Christianity and Jesus instead? Maybe you might one day view people as more than a means to preserving your heritage?

So maybe one day ubfers will give up this SL praising and worshiping. Their latest report tells me that God cursed the latest SL worship.

This is why it has been particularly hard to “disciple” me. Because I have already been “discipled” and not only that but in many cases the new teachings I have received directly contradict the old teachings. We have seen how hard it is to change someone’s mind once it has been settled, especially about people who have been strongly influenced and changed the lives of many.

The truth of the matter is that UBF is right when it says that a personal vested interest of a mature Christian can vastly impact a person’s lives. In fact sometimes it impacts their life so much they fail to see it. Like the grammar we use in our language it becomes so much a part of us that we forget it exists. Like the glass window out of which we view the garden, we know it so well we forget about it.

But then there comes a time where we hear incorrect grammar or a bird crashes into a window and we are jolted to the realization that something is present that was previously forgotten about. For me that something is Travis Peterson. In the following weeks (as time permits) I will share some lessons I have learned from Travis. I will try to have them posted every Friday. Travis was not the only person God used in my life at this time, but his teachings have come to be the most valuable in my time here in UBF.

The author makes no claim as to the exact memory of events, they will be only as he remembers them. Sometimes the lessons will be only stories, other times they may be essays on quotes from him. To many readers these lessons may be well known, to others they may provide examples for your own ministry. At the very least they will give a glimpse into what made me who I am today.

Truly,
Michael Lanier

“Just obey” may cause PTSD reactions

This is not biblical obedience. An “American shepherd” was introduced to “marry by faith” with a “Korean shepherdess.” But he politely declined. Then he was told without equivocation and in all seriousness, “YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO SAY ‘NO.’” After that he was told that because of his disobedience he had to leave that UBF chapter. (Does this cause PTSD reactions?) This is not biblical obedience, but teaching obedience to a human person. It tainted and jaded him to some degree. Because of such a humiliating church experience, I began to understand why PTSD reactions happen in some people who have been in UBF.

Why share such negative and discouraging stories. Some UBFers have angrily accused me of being negative, critical and discouraging because I share such stories publicly. But I do so because such “negative” stories are often not welcomed, not in emails or even in private discussion among some senior leaders. Also, there have been no proper official channels for such issues to be seriously addressed (without being pacified or patronized), or for it to be dealt with fairly and promptly. Yes, UBFriends is often messy and it may not be the optimal place to share this. But is there really an optimal place to share this anywhere? My hope is that as such accounts are known more and more in my church, they will happen less and less.

Obedience to the gospel. For the record, I still preach, teach and encourage obedience, but never to me, and never to UBF. Rather, I teach, promote and emphasize (willing, not coerced) obedience primarily in response to the gospel by personally knowing the grace of Jesus and the love of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Faith and Obedience. I had originally intended to write a theological exposé entitled Faith and Obedience. If you are interested to critique it and dialogue about it, I posted it on my blog here. So the above posting sort of just happened randomly!

Do you have any obedience stories or PTSD stories to share?

The Message

If you want to read the original message delivered in August 2014 at Toledo UBF, here is the link:

Jesus Christ is the Same Yesterday and Today and Forever
Hebrews 13:1-25

My Critique

“I’ve read through the messages you studied over the past five months, and have come to see two things: First, Jesus is better. Secondly, faith in Jesus is the secret of bridging the gap between what we know and how we live.”

I have read through those same messages. The thoughts that come to mind are that those messages are vague, full of ubf loaded language and pathetically void of the gospel messages. So this messenger noticed two things. Jesus is better. Better than what? The Hebrews author makes it very clear what is better and why it is better. And this messenger saw that the secret sauce is “faith in Jesus”. This secret sauce is supposedly what binds the ubf fantasy world (what we know) and the reality around us (how we live). “faith in Jesus” is loaded language for “just believe the ubf heritage without thinking critically”.

“How can we conclude today? Looking at chapter 13 there are many key verses. How can our hearts be strengthened? How can we live as salt and light in a dark and corrupt world? How can we work together with our leaders, and go back to the Bible? The answer is Jesus. Let’s think about him as we conclude this study today.”

Here we have the standard Evangelical thinking “Jesus is the one and only answer to everything and all life’s problems.” We also have more ubf code language. “go back to the bible”… “work together with our leaders”…

“Verse 1 reads, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.”  In this verse he is talking about Phileo love, or as C.S. Lewis defines it in his book “Four Loves”: Friendship. In Christ, a beautiful community of faith is established among those who believe. This produces an affection for one another. Out of this community of loving and sharing, real and genuine friendships should emerge. What is friendship? One brother in Chicago told me, “I can agape love people by bearing with them, but to actually love them as a brother requires that I like them, get along with them and enjoy being with them. That is much harder.”

This doesn’t smell right to me. C.S. Lewis seems far deeper and more profound than this simplistic idea presented here. We must “get along with them”? We have to enjoy them and like them? This just seems way too simple-minded for me. Lewis surely had a more robust thought in his book.

“I understand. There are many people whom I respect and would trust my life to, but we don’t really have a friendship. Who are your friends?”

At least here the messenger honestly communicates the reality around him. This is the norm for ubf people; they claim to “trust each other unto death” but don’t have even a beer-buddy level of friendship. The reality unspoken here is that ubf people will drop you like an anchor as soon as you question the ubf heritage or display “disloyalty”.

“In church we often put community above friendship, since community is inclusive, while friendship tends to be exclusive. In today’s world people have hundreds of Facebook friends but are so lonely. Some complain, “I don’t have any friends.” The trouble is, friendship isn’t about solving our needs or loneliness.”

Again, I appreciate the honesty here; ubf is a community that disparages actual friendships. Ubf is an environment where “community” comes first. I can hear the messenger’s lonely heart crying out here. “Some complain…” that is ubf messenger speak for “I complain… I am the one who is lonely…”

“Jesus loved us sacrificially and one-sidedly. But Jesus also had friends, his disciples. What was their friendship about? He tells them in John 15:14-15, “You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” Jesus’ friends are those who share in his Father’s business. Who are your friends? To keep such love dynamically in our community, we take a risk to share our hearts.”

After a veiled expression of his own loneliness, the messenger now justifies his friendless and superficial life with the classic ubf verse John 15:14-15. Friendship cannot be separated from obedience in the ubf mind. In the ubf mind, we must imitate this—calling people our servants first and then hoping they obey us until we can break through and have friendship. But this path is not what Jesus is prescribing here. Jesus is teaching about His Lordship, something this messenger fails to grasp in the slightest.

“Verse 2 reads, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” What is hospitality? “the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.” In those days such hospitality carried great weight, as inns were few and far between, and generally houses of ill-repute. Welcoming a stranger may seem burdensome, especially to wives, who sometimes think there is an expectation to have a perfectly manicured home and deliciously extravagant meal. But fundamentally hospitality is a welcoming attitude. Jesus had no home. But Jesus had a spirit of hospitality, and taught his disciples to practice this: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me (9:37).” When we invite a stranger into our home, we may be welcoming one of Jesus’ angels. He may send “secret strangers,” to see if we will welcome them. This gives a unique opportunity to reveal Jesus in our world today.”

Ugh… more ubf loaded language. Ubf makes a BIG DEAL about “welcoming strangers”. You must open your house after a conference to “welcome guests” and “show hospitality”. Otherwise you are disobeying Jesus and you won’t want to disobey Jesus right? The messenger now goes into what I call “drone mode”. He just repeatedly fires bible verses and a flippant, unthoughtful response to each verse. But one stands out:

“Verse 4 reads, “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” In that time, ascetics felt it was better not to marry, and that marriage was an unnecessary indulgence since Jesus would come back soon. But God created marriage before sin came into the world. Marriage supersedes the fall, and the law and the church. He who does not honor marriage does not honor God who created marriage. Jesus described his coming as a wedding banquet, and Paul said our marriage reflects the mystery of Christ’s union with the church. Do I honor my marriage? Since it is a private thing, we may not think it important. But God knows, and what he has joined together, man should not separate. Included in this is healthy sexual behavior. Society changes moral standards and even redefines marriage. But we honor our marriages, knowing that God’s standard and blessing in marriage does not change.”

Really??? You gotta be kidding me! ubf “honors marriage”? Not after you get married. After marriage you are expected to live like single college students! What about all the arranged marriages and threats of divorce or threats of not being able to marry someone you like? I’m so furious I will refrain from my litany of wrath since I’m posting this publicly…

“Second, spiritual leadership and the word of God (7-19). Verse 7 reads, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” This seems to indicate past leaders whose life of faith was now over and subject to examination. Their way of life led to a glorious outcome: a fruitful and victorious life resulting in the kingdom of God. Why was it so? They put their faith in Jesus Christ. The world changes all the time. Situations and methods change, but Jesus never changes. Verse 8 reads, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Faith in Jesus includes our faithful ancestors into the hallowed halls of the heroes of faith. The question is: how can we imitate their faith in unchanging Jesus, and pass that faith on to those who follow us?”

Can anyone say ancestor worship? Why in the world bring up “our faithful ancestors”? Why are we talking about dead people here? I can only guess.

“One thing that sticks out brightly in this verse is the word of God, which has power to change and give life. Through the teaching of God’s word the Hebrews accepted the gospel and were saved. Although the early apostles were not learned men of power and wealth, they were people of great influence who changed the world by teaching the word of God. Their spiritual leadership bears fruit through the ages. We need to remember these leaders, and all who followed them.”

Here we see the teachings of Samuel Lee shining brightly. Note the self-aggrandizing, self-comforting nature of this paragraph. Ah ubf bible teachers are SO important! Ah we may be labeled as a cult and maybe we hurt so many people and did so many bad things, but we are SO important. Sounds like the colonel in “A Few Good Men”… “you need me on that wall! You want me on that wall!”

“There are many kinds of leaders with many kinds of teachings competing for our attention. But verses 9-10 read, “Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. ¹⁰ We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.” The Jews had spiritual leaders, who emphasized ceremony and ritual.”

So now we are not talking about ubf leaders but Jewish leaders?

“Through the eating of certain foods you could be righteous or unclean. But these activities did not strengthen hearts in a good way. Rather, they led to self-righteousness when they did well and to utter despair when they failed. Strange teachings are contrary to the word of God.”

Indeed! Why doesn’t this messenger examine ubf’s strange teachings? Isn’t this the most hypocritical writing you’ve heard in a long time?

“When we read the word of God, we are pointed to Jesus. Jesus’ grace is what strengthens our hearts to bear with and obey all the exhortations of the word of God. Sometimes faith in the gospel of Jesus’ grace seems weak compared to self-righteousness, and we often feel harassed by guilt and shame. We need grace!”

Well maybe we are pointed to Jesus. I found that usually the word of God points me to another person—someone I need to apologize to or to befriend or to notice. Note the horrendous understanding of grace. Faith in the gospel seems weak?!? No way! Faith in the gospel ALWAYS is strong and powerful and mighty. Grace only seems weak if you have no idea what grace is. Grace is not simply power to obey better. If so, grace would not be grace.

“My eldest son is 10 years old. He is a soft-hearted and compassionate kid. From last year he started to give us attitude, and breaks down in angry, frustrated tears from time to time. I began to realize that in relating to him I’m full of expectations, and not grace. I never wanted to be the father who exasperates his children, but I did so. This is the difference between strange teachings and the gospel. What is the food you are trying to strengthen yourself with and take your stand on? Is it accomplishments, spiritual behaviors, relationships, other things? Our hearts are weak with pride and with sin. We need the grace of Jesus, the grace secured to us by a far superior altar, on which to stand (Ro 5:2).”

I find this vague and disturbing. I find the gospel messages absent here. Is it just me?

“To trust in Jesus and his grace alone will invite misunderstanding and disgrace from those who support a strange teaching, focused on legalistic righteousness in this world.”

Yes, and it will invoke the wrath of ubf leaders if you actually do trust in grace alone.

“The USA, once thought of as a Christian nation, is becoming increasingly hostile. But that is ok; our enduring city cannot be found on this world using google maps; yet we live in hope in the city that is to come. With this hope we live by faith in Jesus, who never changes, and we take our stand in his grace, not our righteousness.”

That is ok? Why is it ok and fine to become increasingly hostile? This is a clear expression of the ubf mindset which is living in a fantasy world and disconnected from reality. To say “peace, peace” or “safety, safety” when there is no peace or safety is a dangerous way to think. There are some freaky things going on right now, which the messenger mentions, but instead of allowing people to express their emotion, he just says “that’s ok”….

“In response to Jesus’ sacrifice, we are encouraged to offer two of our own: Verses 15-16 read, “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. ¹⁶ And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”  When we live by ceremonial foods, we praise ourselves. But when we live by faith, and our hearts are strengthened by grace, we praise God, not ourselves.”

So sacrifice is a two-for-one deal now? Jesus sacrificed once (and for all). But we have to sacrifice twice? I don’t think that is what God intended to teach here. And maybe the messenger should examine ubf’s self-praise here?

“How can we continually offer to God this sacrifice of praise? Only through Jesus, whose love and grace never changes. His forgiveness, love and direction are new each morning, and each generation. But as we continually offer to God this sacrifice, we must not forget to do good and share with others. Jesus’ love language is obedience, for he said, “If you love me, keep my commands (Jn 14:15).” What did Jesus command? Jesus said: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you (Jn 15:12).”  These sacrifices are pleasing to God, and pleasing God makes his children happy.”

More circular logic that binds the audience back to obedience. Ugh.

“True spiritual leadership speaks the word of God and leaves a legacy of faith in Jesus. We see that example of faith in Jesus yesterday through those who came before: those who taught the word of God to us. But Jesus is the same today, and we therefore have leaders whose faith we are to imitate to day as well. Verse 17 reads, “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.” Jesus has appointed leaders and will call them to account for keeping watch over us. So we are exhorted to obey and submit to them.”

So because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, our LEADERS are also those from yesterday, today and forever? This is some of the worst Hebrews teaching I’ve read.

“Who are your leaders in Toledo UBF? Do you know who they are? They are the ones who speak the word of God to you. They are the ones who are accountable to God. Let’s decide to obey and submit to their authority, and work together in joy, not in burden. As we do so, we may experience Jesus Christ today, and leave an example of faith for those who follow to experience Jesus tomorrow and forever.”

OMG! WTF? Note the blatant disregard for Scripture here! The messenger just says “obey your leaders” and SKIPS the qualifying verses! The author of Hebrews qualifies such obedience, but this messenger intentionally SKIPS verses 18 and 19. And after this, the messenger just quickly ends the message by emphasizing the key verse he chose.

Let’s read those verses shall we? “18 Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.19 I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner.”

Is there any ubf leader who has a clean conscience? Do they lead with any kind of conscience at all? Do they desire to act honorably in ALL things or just ubf things?

My Rating

1 star – monkey (flawed, confusing, disheartening)

This messenger doesn’t know what he is doing. Or perhaps he does know, in which case he is highly deceptive and manipulative. They have major flaws in their understanding of the material they are presenting. They don’t speak or write well. Typically this kind of messenger is just putting on a show, trying to perform. These messages are just lectures giving information. This messenger has a lot of learning to do and really shouldn’t be in the pulpit.

Suggestions for the Committee

First, that the UBF Ethics Committee should officially announce a policy that we are allowed to read material even if part of it is critical of UBF. 

Generally speaking organizations that are cults forbid people from reading material that criticizes their group and organizations that are not cults do not make such a prohibition.  Allowing people to read such material as an official policy would suggest to the public that UBF is not a cult.  And if UBF wants to improve, members should be willing to listen to criticism so they know areas that they should improve in. How can someone be serious about making reform when they will not listen to suggestions for how to reform?

Second, that UBF Ethics Committee should officially reject the “pastor’s permission” policy.

I heard that the Ethics Committee was considering ethics based on a document labeled “Code of Ethics for Pastors by the National Association of Evangelicals” Although there are many good points in that document, I disagree with one statement, “Do not recruit parishioners from a previous church without permission from the pastor. Avoid interfering in the ministry of a previous congregation.”

If I understand that statement correctly we should not recruit Jehovah Witnesses without their pastors permission

If we refuse to recruit Jehovah Witnesses without permission from the Pastor we are doing them a disfavor. Jehovah Witnesses are taught to be afraid to read information critical of their group. They are stuck in their group and afraid to leave even though that means they have to refuse blood-transfusions in order to stay in their group, which may cost them or their children their lives.  Refusing to share critical information with someone or recruit them because you do not have their Pastor’s permission can be cruelty in such cases.

Will they take me seriously?

I hope the ethics committee will take these suggestions seriously.  Although I do not know if they still are looking into that code of ethics or if that is old.

If UBF takes my suggestions seriously, then there will be an easy way to contact UBF for ethics suggestions listed on the website in an easy to find place. And UBF will officially announce a policy, in an easy to find place, that we can read material critical of UBF without sinning and that we should not be punished by those in higher authority positions for such an action.

And finally, if UBF listens to me, they will unadopt or will not adopt any policy of not recruiting from outside organizations without a pastors permission. I think UBF should not make policies just so they get endorsements from groups like NAE. Instead, UBF ought to decide their policies on their own merit independent of peer pressure to get endorsements from organizations.

The big news in Christendom today. Acts 29, a national church planting group with 500 churches cofounded by Mark Driscoll, has removed Driscoll, the senior pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle and the church from membership, with seven board members urging in a letter that Driscoll “step down” from ministry and “seek help.” The letter is here.

5,000 church members in 8 years. In the mid-1990s, at age 25 Driscoll started a church in his house in Seattle with a dozen people. In 8 years, his church grew to 5,000 members when he was only 33 years old. Today, his network of five local churches boasts 18,000 members. He founded Acts 29, a church planting network that grew to 500 churches, and a Bible seminary. He is said to read one book a day. His sermons are downloaded millions of times by Christians throughout the English speaking world. He has authored many Christian books, including the popular and controversial Real Marriage. He is famous throughout the world with invitations to preach and teach in churches from many countries.

How did Driscoll influence me? Once at a Gospel Coalition conference, I heard Driscoll preach a 40 point sermon. I didn’t like the sermon (it had too many points and I don’t remember what he said!), but I was impressed. Since then, I decided to preach extemporaneously, rather than preach from reading off a typed prepared manuscript, which I did for decades. It was not easy for me to learn new tricks in my 50s. But through Driscoll, Tim Keller and others who preach without notes, I was inspired to give extemporaneous preaching a shot. I guess I can be proud of myself in that I could be regarded as having a “humble learning mind.”

Would Driscoll be a good sheep in UBF? I also thought that if Driscoll, as brilliant, gifted and energetic as he was, was fished by UBF, he likely would have left, since he would not allow himself to be subject to the “discipleship training” of UBF. He is far too creative and fired up to follow some kind of scripted Christian program of being taught the Bible one on one week after week, or going fishing, or early morning daily bread, or weekly prayer meetings and testimony writing, or receive “message training” and the like. So, Driscoll would likely be regarded by UBF as a “very proud and rebellious no-good” sheep because he refuses to receive humbleness training and “just obey.” I don’t think he would “marry by faith” either.

No accountability. What happened to Driscoll? Lord Acton’s famous quote comes to mind: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless reports online over the years have accused Driscoll of authoritarian abuse, of centering virtually all power to himself, and surrounding himself with elders who will unconditionally support him and not question his authority, disagree with him, or challenge him. He also removed and dismissed several elders who would not agree with him. As his church and influence grew, so did his refusal to be truly accountable to others, even when he said that he would. My contention has been that every Christian, including every Christian leader regardless of their tenure, status and fruitfulness, absolutely needs to be accountable to others. Driscoll’s removal from Acts 29 reveals that he has refused to be accountable to others. Basically, he has called the shots throughout his ministry, as this short video/audio clip suggests.

The internet is not going away. Even just a few decades ago, Driscoll might have gotten away with his authoritarianism and abuse of his power. But today, with the advent and explosion of cyberspace, almost any news can become a major news story almost instantaneously. Yes, some Christian leaders simply loathe the fact that anyone’s dirty laundry can be aired publicly for all to see and read. Nonetheless, this is the reality that is not going to change until Jesus comes again. I often think that the internet is fulfilling Jesus’ promise that “what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!” (Lk 12:3, NLT)

Regardless of his many inappropriate off-handed comments and authoritarian abuse, I generally like Mark Driscoll’s fire, energy, spirit and passion for Christ and the proclamation of the gospel. Yet, it seems that he allowed his fame, popularity, gifting from God, influence and power to get to his head in some way. Satan is crafty. May God grant him this time to come to Jesus newly and find new life in him.

Thoughts and reflections? Can we apply any of this to UBF?

I’ve come to the realization the past several years that following Christ and His teachings is far more about learning how to love than learning how to obey the commands found in the Old Testament. At first I felt guilty. Shouldn’t Christians be striving to obey the 10 Commandments? My answer now is an emphatic, guilt-free “no!”.  My “yes” is the gospel and my “no” is the Law. Here is why.

Seven teachings of Paul the Apostle

In the past four years or so I’ve done more actual study of the bible than I did for the prior 20+ years. I actually love the Holy Scriptures now. And I respect them deeply, striving to discern what the Scriptures are saying. I cannot say my current theology resembles what Spurgeon or Wright would approve. However, both Charles H. Spurgeon and N.T. Wright have deeply influenced what I’ve learned and how I approach Scripture.

Teaching #1 – Striving to obey the OT Law is a cursed way of life.

A full Galatians, Romans and Ephesians study is warranted here, which I did in my personal bible study a couple years ago. Galatians 3:10 expresses this teaching most clearly: “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.'”

Teaching #2 – The OT Law is no longer our supervisor for right and wrong

How do we know what is right and wrong without the Law? I’m not an anarchist, so I believe in laws in society. And I’m in favor of documented laws in churches. But in practice, as we live and how we determine those laws, those laws really should no longer be checked against the OT Law. They should be checked against love. Again, we must read and study all of Galatians and many more texts. But Galatians 3:25 and Galatians 4:21 express this clearly: “Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.” and “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?”

Teaching #3 – The OT Law been nailed to the cross

A full study of Colossians is warranted here. This teaching is a point of contention, even among the greats, as to what “nailing to the cross” means. Still, Colossians 2:13-15 expresses this clearly: When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

Teaching #4 -The OT Law has been fulfilled

I found that I didn’t really understand the word “fulfillment”. And thus I was confused by Jesus’ words. The OT Law was not abolished, so it does exist today. And the Law was not nullified, so it has a purpose (Romans). My contention is that the resolution to the Law not being abolished and not nullified is the teaching from Jesus that He fulfilled the Law. I find that Matthew 5:17-20 has been greatly misunderstood and misapplied. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Teaching #5 – The OT Law has a purpose to teach us about Jesus

In Acts we read the story of Philip being led by the Spirit to Gaza where he meets an Ethiopian eunuch, who was reading Isaiah. Did Philip or the Holy Spirit want this Ethiopian to learn about obeying the OT Law? No. He was taught the good news about Jesus. Acts 8:34-35 “The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.”

Teaching #6 – The OT Law is not for Gentiles to strive to obey

When the early church was confronted with what to teach to the Gentiles, what did they teach them? They shared only three (four) things. This was their letter:

Acts 15: 23-29  With them they sent the following letter:

The apostles and elders, your brothers,

To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

Greetings.

We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.

Farewell.

Teaching #7 – The OT Law is an all or nothing proposition

So suppose I decide to obey the OT Law. Which part of it? Many have tried to dissect the Law, breaking it up into manageable chunks. But always it is discovered that these chunks are not manageable at all. We cannot ignore any part of the OT Law. We must either obey all of it, or admit failure even for breaking the least of the commands. Again, Galatians says this best. Galatians 5:2-4 “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”

There are many other passages that teach the same thing: God’s Law is not binding nor unifying on Christians, but the Spirit of God is binding and unifying.

Two teachings of Jesus

Teaching #1 – Jesus’ standard is infinitely higher than the OT Law

Jesus turned the OT Law upside down in the Sermon on the Mount.  And after expounding brilliantly, what did He conclude with? Did he say “Now go and obey the OT Law?” For the Jewish leper he healed right after the Sermon, yes he did say that. But in the Sermon, the sermon He knew would be heard by millions of Gentiles, Jesus concludes with this “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” Matthew 7:24-29

Teaching #2 – Jesus’ standard is love for others

Who will be in Heaven? Jesus simply asks a question: Did you visit Me? “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’”  Matthew 25:31-46

Love is a full-time job

I am compelled to stop worrying about whether getting a tattoo is right or wrong. Loving your self, your neighbors, your friends, your family, your strangers and your enemies is a full-time job. There is so much to learn about how to love our fellow human beings, especially those closest to us.

What kind of world would this be if we all stopped worrying about what is right or wrong about other people and started to learn how to love?

I hear Jesus saying “Go and learn how to love. I’ve got your sins covered.” I’ve decided to do just that.

Reading the text

2 Corinthians 1:1-2:4

“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.” –2 Corinthians 1:3-7 ESV

Apart from “God” and “Christ”, the word “comfort” is most repeated in this passage.

A reminder of the Gospel

The study guide begins with a reminder of the gospel. We are pointed to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. The gospel is presented as being about Jesus the Messiah, his death for our sins according to the Scriptures, his burial and his resurrection three days later. These were real events to Paul, and the lens through which he saw the world. The gospel, to Paul, was a collection of events that were real, and rather then dive into some intricate meaning of those events, we find Paul often merely announcing those events.

Opening question

Before going further, the study guide opens with a question: Describe a time when you needed comfort. When did you need comfort?

This question seemed to be an eisegesisical opening. Isn’t N.T. Wright just planting his own ideology before addressing the text? So this made me re-read the Scripture. I could only conclude that indeed, this passage has something to say about comfort. Then I realized some important values being taught by this format.

Asking an opening question like this does at least two good things. First, the question keeps the study focused an obvious theme of the passage. How could we delve into what this passage says about other topics if we ignore the most repeated word in the passage? Second, this question opens the possibility of never getting to the study questions, keeping the focus on people. What if someone in your study group answers with a recent time, saying they need comfort now? Ramming through the study guide would be pointless if there were some immediate need among the people studying. This opening question gives everyone, including the study facilitator, the chance to share something about themselves.

So then, I can see three points of emphasis from Wright in his approach to Scripture:

• Remember the Gospel
• Pay attention to the repeated words of the passage
• Keep the focus on people around you

This approach is entirely refreshing and new to me. Shouldn’t we be learning about God? Shouldn’t we be dissecting the bible verses by now? I suspect Wright would say something like “Of course we will be learning about God. But we cannot learn about God at the expense of learning about the people around us. Unless you are in seminary of some kind, you have no business dissecting the word of God in such a disrespectful manner. Learn what the passage says. Learn about the people around you and their perspective on this passage!” Well ok, that is what I would say, after this first study. But that is what I hear Wright saying by his approach, which, as you can tell, is deeply important to me right now.

Study 

The study guide for this section has twelve questions. I would encourage you to get this study guide and work through your answers in a group setting. I’m using this group study guide as a personal study, so I’ll just share my answers to one question that stood out to me.

Question 2 asks us to describe the “pattern of interchange” between the Messiah and his followers and between the apostle and the church, as displayed in verses 1 to 7. Wright wants us to notice the back and forth nature of the relationship Paul presents. This is a new concept for me, to observe patterns about relationships between the people in the Scriptures.

In verses 1 to 7, I see respect for the lordship of Jesus over both Paul and the church. He is an apostle, yes, but only by the will of God. Paul does not own the people in Corinth, nor do the people own Paul.

What is exchanged between the Messiah and his followers? I see “mercies and comfort” being given by the Messiah to his followers. I see a sharing in sufferings.

What is exchanged between the apostle and the church? I see “concern and awareness” being given by the apostle to the church. I also see hope being exchanged. The apostle does not hide the fact that he is afflicted.

Prayer

After the 12 questions, the study guide urges us to pray for the “places in life where there is suffering and sadness” and to use the words of Paul in this chapter in our prayers.

A concluding note says that we cannot know for sure what was behind Paul’s change of plans in this passage. We do know his visit and trip did not go well. He was in distress. And  he was open and transparent about it. Often, in times of affliction, that is what we need– someone who doesn’t pretend to be “superman” but who is real and honest. Someone who shows compassion, concern and hope.

[This is a direct quote form my second book about my journey of recovery from ubf, “Goodness Found: The Butterfly Narratives” and further describes the ubf training model.]

The most important aspect everyone needs to understand about UBF ministry is the six-stage training process. When I joined in 1987, no one had ever documented such a thing. But as I look back, I can clearly see all six stages. Everyone’s experience is different. Yet all UBF people should readily recognize these six stages. The following slide describes the UBF training model, and has been shared publicly by UBF from their 2010 Fishing and Outreach Director’s Conference. This is the most accurate depiction of my 24 years at UBF I’ve ever seen.

It’s no surprise that the stages are presented in a circular pattern because every time the process fails, UBF missionaries just start all over with a new person. As I progressed through each of the six training stages, I had hoped to find the goodness UBF bible teachers promised. Instead, I found goodness re-defined. UBF became my “good”. And not only did I pass through all six stages of training, I then attempted to train other students in the UBF ways as a UBF shepherd.

The first three stages of UBF training may be categorized as “sheep training”. The goal is to secure a person’s commitment to the UBF ways. The UBF leaders seek to produce a person committed to weekly UBF bible study (Stage 1: Birthing), a person willing to adopt the UBF worldview (Stage 2: Rooting) and a person willing to continue the training and become a UBF shepherd (Stage 3: Growing).

The second three stages of UBF training may be categorized as “shepherd training”. The goal is to secure a person’s resources for the rest of their life. UBF leaders want a person’s identity (Stage 4: Disciple Training), a person’s obedience (Stage 5: Soldier Training) and a person’s lifelong loyalty (Stage 6: Leader Training).

The content of these six stages may be adjusted for each student UBF encounters. The overall plan takes about 7 to 9 years and is practiced with some degree of consistency by UBF chapters around the world. One question though: What do you do after Stage 6? The expectation is that you live as a lifelong UBF loyalist and recruiter.

[Appendix D is added here for clarity]

Sheep Training (up to 5 years)

Stage 1: Birthing (1 to 9 months)

Goal – commit to bible study

Starts after first bible study

Stage 2: Rooting (1 to 2 years)

Goal – adopt the UBF worldview

Starts after Sunday service attendance

Stage 3: Growing (1 to 2 years)

Goal – pursue more training

Starts after sharing Life Testimony

Shepherd Training (2 to 4 years)

Stage 4: Disciple Training (about 1 year)

Goal – identity as “Shepherd X”

Starts after joining common life

Stage 5: Soldier Training (1 to 2 years)

Goal – obedience to UBF authorities

Starts after college graduation

Stage 6: Leader Training (about 1 year)

Goal – loyalty for life

Starts after Marriage by Faith

Stage 1, the “birthing” stage, is often rather enjoyable. This stage begins with a chance meeting on campus with a college student. It is important to note that in the UBF heritage, the person must be a college student to be considered for the six-stage training. Other non-college people may hang around UBF chapters for a while, but will likely be seen as a distraction to the UBF world campus mission.

The random invitation to bible study on campus between a UBF bible teacher and a new student is seen as a divine birth-moment. The person who invited the student becomes the personal, life-long moral supervisor for the student, who is now referred to as his or her “sheep”. This process is called “fishing for men on campus” and is the pivotal moment that will be used year after year to convince the student that their old life was bad and their new UBF life is blessed and good. I was already a Christian before my “birth-moment” but this did not matter to UBF shepherds. They see any pre-UBF life in a mostly-negative, unblessed light. This enhances the perspective that the student’s new life at UBF is good and blessed.

In this first stage, the training amounts to a once a week bible study with a self-appointed, personal shepherd. Much emphasis is placed on finding a new life and new relationships through bible study. Because the bible is the focus of this new UBF life, some actual transformation caused by the Christian faith will normally also be taking place at the same time the UBF training occurs. This dual nature of UBF training and Christian faith awakening makes for an extremely complex entanglement. How can you discern what good came from UBF training and what good came from faith in God? Over time, this line becomes so blurred that UBF becomes equal to God in your mind.

Any student who is “birthed” into UBF bible study is carefully watched. UBF shepherds look to see if there is any interest in bible study and will pursue a new student aggressively. The acceptance of UBF bible study (called one-to-one study) is seen as some divine intervention and a sign for the UBF bible teacher to initiate invitations to more meetings and activities. During this first stage, the student is offered much good food and flattered with many good words. Often this stage has many fun activities, such as playing soccer or basketball. All this is done as every event in the student’s life is given proof-texted value from the bible.

The goal of stage 1 is to birth a committed bible student. The primary sign that a committed bible student has been “raised” is Sunday service attendance. When a student regularly attends both weekly bible study and Sunday service, the student is now deemed “faithful” and has been birthed. UBF shepherds often refer to real birth, quoting fertility rates and making analogies to birthing pains and motherhood, to explain what happens during Stage 1 to get a random college student to become a committed Sunday attendee and bible student. Sometimes this first stage takes several months but rarely will a UBF bible teacher wait longer than a year for such a commitment. If a student has not committed to UBF bible study and Sunday service within a year, the bible teacher normally moves onto find someone else. Some UBF shepherds severely challenge the students after a year passes. They want students to make a clear decision: accept UBF blessing or leave. This is often also framed negatively: If you don’t commit to UBF, you will be cursed. I heard many tall tales of accidents, disease and horrible events that were supposed to happen if someone leaves UBF, which is often called “running away”. In my case, the “running away” was additionally framed as “losing your faith” and “going to hell”.

Stage 2, the “rooting” stage, begins when a new student demonstrates a commitment to UBF bible study and Sunday services regularly. Stage 2 can last between one and two years normally. When a student is found to be committed to UBF, the flattery and praise the student experienced in Stage 1 slowly disappears. Now the UBF bible teacher begins to insist on the student’s attendance at other meetings, such as a weekly testimony sharing meeting and often several other meetings held throughout the week. During this “rooting” students are pressured to take on additional duties and roles at their UBF chapter. One of the famous roles is bathroom cleaning servant. Many other kinds of servant roles are made up, such as parking lot servant, Sunday report servant and morning prayer servant. The students are taught the supreme UBF values of loyalty, sacrifice, service and obedience in this stage.

During the rooting stage, students are typically also taught to forget about their pre-UBF friends and family members, who may be “bad company” for their new life. Because the Stage 1 flattery taught the student that UBF has blessings for them, and new genuine spiritual awakening may also be taking place, the student is more open to attending the new meetings and adopting the UBF worldview.

This second stage is where intense personal interest is shown by the UBF members. The goal of Stage 2 is to produce a sheep who understands and adopts the UBF view of life. UBF shepherds understand that Stage 2 often takes several years, so they are patient and oscillate between periods of high-demand pressure and low-demand, cooling off periods. A student will be pushed as far as they can take, and then the shepherd will back off. And then later the pressure will start again. The student thinks they are taking root in the bible, but the reality is that UBF ideologies are also taking root in the student. Almost every detail of the student’s life becomes known through the weekly sharing. The students’ family situation, job situation, hobbies, interests, girlfriends/boyfriends, sins, talents—everything is asked about by inquisitive UBF members. All of this information is fed back to the chapter director and the student’s personal shepherd by means of prayer topics, which are always written down and often compiled electronically. As a side note, one story I love to tell is that I was the first UBF shepherd in my chapter to compile my weekly bible studies entirely on a computer. More than one Korean UBF missionary told me this was an unspiritual way to answer bible study question sheets. They said that Satan was ready to “sift me as wheat” because I did not sacrifice my time to prepare my notes by hand.

The rooting stage normally culminates in the sharing of what UBF calls a “life testimony”. This is a special kind of testimony shared at a weekend retreat or other gathering of many UBF people. Those who do not share such a testimony are not called shepherds and are not permitted to proceed on in the UBF training. Typically the life testimony is a binary format, with titles such as “From a lazy, no-good sinner to a faithful, fruitful shepherd!”. The main requirement is a bold declaration that the person wants to become a UBF shepherd. A stark contrast is drawn between the student’s former, non-UBF life and the student’s new, blessed, UBF life. Often the goal here is to break down a student’s defenses, requiring them to stay up all night or to get up very early in the morning, so that the teachings of the UBF shepherd can be instilled into the person’s life testimony. Portions of the life testimony are routinely re-written or dictated by the UBF shepherd or chapter director.

In addition, the bible’s Old Testament teachings are usually heavily emphasized during these first three stages, so much so that the “obedience equals blessing and disobedience equals curse” is deeply ingrained in the student’s thinking. One main problem that arises is that no distinction is made between God and UBF.

Stage 3, called “growing” is the most vague to me, as it seems the only purpose is to convince the new bible student (“sheep”) that it is necessary and good for them to continue growing and accept more UBF training as a “shepherd”. The word “growing” is used a lot during this period. Are you growing? Why are you not growing? When are you going to grow? The word is vague and thus allows room for some unusual and confusing experiences. This “growing” stage can be volatile as you start to be invited to more and more behind-the-scenes meetings. I noticed the more committed I was perceived to be, the more gossip and information would be shared with me. During this stage, I often was the first person to a meeting and the last person to leave. I wanted to know for myself what was going on.

One common trait of Stage 3 training, for “growing sheep” or sometimes “shepherd candidates”, is something called common life. Sheep are asked to move into a house or apartment with other UBF sheep and shepherds (if the student has not moved into common life by now), all of whom are “growing” in different stages of UBF training. Often the chapter director will gather similarly-ranked sheep into groups. One such group I was in was called “The Rocky’s of Faith”. Another group of young women was called “Mary’s of Faith”. All sheep and shepherds are ranked and tracked by the Korean chapter director.

Stage 4, called “disciple training” is where the real training starts. This is the beginning of shepherd life, to use a UBF phrase. [Stage 4 often begins after a sheep begins common life, but sometimes begins right away after the retreat or conference where a person had shared his or her life testimony.] This stage is normally when a person notices the vicious UBF rumor mill, which was most likely hidden from them during the “sheep” training years.

During stage 4, the student’s UBF shepherd will continue to spend much time with the student. Daily meetings are typical of this stage. Weekly trips to the local college campus associated with the UBF chapter will become mandatory. I saw much heartache in my friends during this state. One of my friends couldn’t take the intrusiveness of his shepherd. So one night he packed up his bags and climbed out the window at night. He just disappeared, never to be heard from again. This stage lasts usually about one or two years and is very intense. Much is demanded from the student at this point because he is a “UBF Shepherd” and expected to set the example.

One of the things that kept me going during stage 4 training was the thought that I would graduate, get a job and move on with my life. But always the question was posed during this time: Will you serve God for the rest of your life? At this point UBF=God, so I spent many nights in anguish, thinking I was engaging in a holy fight like Jacob who wrestled with God.

Stage 5 is called “Soldier Training”. Typically, Stage 5 begins soon after graduating from college. Sometimes, the first 3 stages of “Sheep Training” take all the time of the student’s college years, however. UBF shepherds really want a student “sheep” to become a UBF shepherd during college years. This is a rare occurrence in my observation. So college graduation becomes an intense time of coaxing a “shepherd declaration” from a student, if the training has progressed too slowly. If the first four stages progress as planned however, the new college graduate is ready for Soldier Training.

Stage 5 is marked by all kinds of made up training, at the discretion of the shepherd. A common training is called marriage training (although a marriage “problem” can result in training at any stage). The strict “no dating” policy is made clear at this point. UBF leaders know that they risk losing a student who graduates. So sometimes UBF offers a “staff internship” or other “full-time shepherd” position in Stage 5. This is normally not a paid position but sometimes is paid from UBF offering money. The goal of the UBF chapter director at this point is to keep the student in his own chapter at all costs. The exception is if the student is too independent and stubborn then the chapter director will allow the student to move to another UBF chapter, but usually only if there is some commitment to a marriage-by-faith arrangement. Stage 5 is similar to Stage 4, but more intense. I would call “soldier training” to be “disciple training” on steroids.

My “soldier training” consisted of a plethora of meetings, early in the morning and late at night, conference leadership preparation roles, and doing various duties for the the chapter director. I became an “offering servant”, “Sunday attendance servant” and “cleaning servant”. The pressure in stage 5 is extremely high to go to your local campus and recruit new bible students (called fishing). This involves weekly reporting of your fishing results. During all this you have no time to date, and wonder how you will be married. So after being broken down, you allow your shepherd to choose your wife (called co-worker in UBF). In my first book I shared how I beat this arranged marriage system to marry the woman I wanted.

The culmination of Soldier Training (Stage 5) is a successful arranged marriage, called “marriage by faith” in UBF terminology. Any real leadership position or missionary-sending work is done by married men. Rarely does UBF allow single adults or women to hold significant leadership positions with any kind of decision-making authority.

Stage 6, “Leader Training” begins after “marriage by faith” and is marked by slogans such as “learn a father-like heart”. At this point all flattery is gone. Severe criticism and harsh rebukes are commonplace. UBF missionaries often seem to forget that the shepherd is married and is building his own family at this point. One of my friends got a phone call the day after their first honeymoon night to come to the UBF center for some kind of meeting. After my own marriage, I was asked to sleep at the UBF bible center in order to set a good example to unmarried brothers who were “cleaning servants”. I was supposed to demonstrate that I was not a family-centered man but was a mission-centered man. I refused and slept with my wife at home instead.

What options exist after Stage 6? Not much is documented after Stage 6 of the UBF training. I passed through all six stages and can share what I experienced. In some sense, married couples in UBF are slowly forgotten, their needs marginalized and their loyalty and participation assumed. At this point, you are spending 40 to 60 hours per week with UBF activities and trying to build a family while keeping a full-time job.

One option after Stage 6 is to become and official UBF member. I was shocked to discover that after 20 years of UBF devotion, I was not actually a member! UBF has a set of corporate by-laws, with official offices of President, Treasurer, etc. Such by-laws provide for the establishment of a council with nominated members who can vote on various topics. I believe all this is for show however. Real decisions in UBF are made by Korean missionaries. But in order to retain membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), which the Chicago UBF chapter joined in 2007, UBF maintains a council of official members. At no time during the 24 years I committed to UBF was I asked to be a “member” at this council. So the qualifications to be a council member are vague and likely subjective. Perhaps I was deemed too rebellious, independent, or not loyal enough.

Summary

In summary, the UBF training system can be explained by the six stages: birthing, growing, rooting, disciple training, soldier training and leader training.

Because about 2,000 UBF Korean missionaries have gone to over 180 countries the past 50 years, there are many thousands of stories to tell about the training methods of UBF. And thus there are many variations to the training. However I have found that the six stages I describe are strikingly common among UBF chapters around the world.

Transitions between the stages occur when a college student attend Sunday services, shares his/her life testimony, moves into a common life house, graduates from college and accepts the arranged marriage process. The training ends there, as you are then expected to be eternally loyal as a supposed world-class UBF leader. I found that I was only “world-class” in one thing: in my ability to sit on a folding chair and listen to the same regurgitated messages year after year.

One lesson of teaching in inner city St. Louis was this: students do not accept your authority by virtue of your position as a teacher. This was very hard for me. My mentor teacher remarked:

“You have a very old school style of teaching. You expect students to do what you say because you are a teacher and you expect them to listen to you. That may have been true 10 years ago but now a days this will not work. With these students you must gain their respect.”

My policy was to not treat them any different and continue to hold my standards high. I might relax on grading, but never on content. This was not accepted by my boss who said I should be playing games with them and “dumbing down the content”. One day a student told me a teacher had asked him about my teaching style. The student remarked “He teaches us like a regular class. If you don’t want to work he does not force you. He expects you to do your work.” My students over the course of the year came to respect me. I have been puzzled as to why, but their exit surveys revealed it was my honesty and consistency. Many teachers tried to fit in with the students to make their lives easier. This seemed not to work. They realized these teachers were “faking” to fit in. Students were used to family members lying and not holding promises but my constancy made them like me. It was not at all what I expected. They hated other teachers making content artificially easy.

This confirms an important truth, relevant to campus ministry in the 21st century that students will not respect until respect is given. This may seem obvious to you, but think of how it sounds when someone is told they have to run a decision though a leader. This is something that is likely only to be done to someone whom that person respects, and if you do something like lie, or tell someone they are going to do something without consulting him- this respect will not be given. It seems very offensive to me that someone could have a say in another man’s marriage when he has known him for a month.

Finally, I want to field an objection. Some people might feel like it is “common sense” to run life choices through their shepherd or chapter director because we do that with our parents. This sounds reasonable, and ignoring the question if we should or should not do that with our parents- we need to ask if that happens today. I know with my parents I barely talk, and I know in America many homes are broken due to divorce. The idea that a college student might run their life choices through their parents is outrageous to many people in my generation. Additionally the advent of the internet has shown many young people of my generation that their parents are many times wrong, and incredibly flawed. It has taught people not to take everything at face value. I can remember my mother telling me Dungeons and Dragons caused mental health issues. I went on Wikipedia and promptly informed her because she was wrong. Effective discipleship to Millennials cannot expect this any longer. If people believe this is biblical (and that is certainly very debatable), or even if they think it ought to be done- they need to realize this type of behavior cannot be assumed. It must be earned by respect.

Director Training Material

As a director at ubf, I expected to be invited to director meetings. I was not however. Not once was I ever invited to attend a director’s conference or even told what a director should do. It’s probably for the best however, because we all know that ubf director’s conferences are held in the Korean language and attended by Korean ubf people. So right away it became clear to me that I was not really a director, but just a figurehead. In Detroit ubf, it became clear to me that ubf HQ (as we called Chicago ubf) only wanted two things: 1) Weekly stats reporting 2) Staff conference attendance. I was rather surprised when no one cared about our $0 offering year after year. Stats and attendance seemed to be vastly more important to the leaders in HQ.

Still as a director I got on some high level email lists (which came in handy :) and was able to obtain some director training material. This material is not much, and mostly just the typical ubf nostalgic hagiography. But one presentation stood out. It described the ubf discipleship training model in stunning clarity. I suddenly began to understand what had been going on all those years at ubf. Why had I felt so much friction? What standard was I being held to? All the undocumented teachings I had vaguely bumped into became clear.

2010 UBF Directors’ Conference: Fishing and Outreach

The title of the teaching presentation I obtained is Fishing and Outreach. Note: This slide is publicly available, so contact me if you want the public link or search for yourself. This presentation is a prime example of how ubf directors are taught and trained.

The slides are grouped into four sections. Most of the slides are odd diagrams and goofy pictures.

1. UBF Growth Principles (slides 3 to 5)
2. Natural Principles (slide 6 to 8)
3. Fishing and Outreach (slides 9 to 21)
4. Motivation (slide 22)

The first group of slides presents various principles of growth. There is mention of “releasing the divine growth forces which God himself grows his church”. The apparent claim is that natural growth is the best way to grow, and that ubf has grown naturally so far. This section contains a confusing slide with a lot of world flags mentioning something written by Christian A. Schwarz from Germany.

High Quality

The second group of slides attempts to explain the natural principles behind natural growth. One slide lists 8 “quality characteristics”, such as “inspiring worship service”, “need oriented evangelism” and “loving relationship”. This section presents the infamous “minimum barrel” principle. So sheep in ubf had better make sure you are not the shortest plank in the barrel…

Disciple Products

This third group seems to start abruptly at slide 9 which is just labeled “UBF Ministry”. No I’m not mocking ubf here. Slide 12 literally shows the ubf process of ministry with the outcome labelled “Disciple Products”. All the normal activities ubf folks know about are listed, such as Summer Bible Conference. Apparently outreach is supposed to be just a lot of ubf activity, which makes up the largest section of this presentation. You have to see these slides, 9 to 21, for yourself. It’s a wild trip through ubf-land.

Shepherds Falling in Love with Sheep

Slide 20 however stands out to me. The title is “Relationship Developing Steps”. The steps are exactly how two people fall in love (maybe). But don’t think this is about dating. No way. This is about how a shepherd is supposed to fall in love!

Now go do it!

The final group is just one slide: Motivation. Only two motivations are given:

1. Absolute Gospel Power
2. Gospel Vision

Summary of the ubf Training Model

The most useful slide in this presentation for me was slide 10, which is titled “Ministry System”.

The goal of this system is clearly to break you down, shredding your authentic identity and give you a new identity as a shepherd. This ministry process was detailed quite well in an old newspaper article.

This is how the model is supposed to work. Six stages and about 7 years and out comes a ubf shepherd or shepherdess. However, because this model is about psychological identity remaking, it has to be an endless cycle of re-orientation and re-building. The model does not always work and has been adjusted at each ubf chapter for each ubf sheep. How does this model compare to what happens in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, China, Mexico, Canada?

The first three stages of UBF training may be categorized as “sheep training”. The goal is to secure a person’s commitment to the UBF ways. The UBF leaders seek to produce a person committed to weekly UBF bible study (Stage 1: Birthing), a person willing to adopt the UBF worldview (Stage 2: Rooting) and a person willing to continue the training and become a UBF shepherd (Stage 3: Growing).

The second three stages of UBF training may be categorized as “shepherd training”. The goal is to secure a person’s resources for the rest of their life. UBF leaders want a person’s identity (Stage 4: Disciple Training), a person’s obedience (Stage 5: Soldier Training) and a person’s lifelong loyalty (Stage 6: Leader Training).

The content of these six stages may be adjusted for each student UBF encounters. The overall plan takes about 7 to 9 years and is practiced with some degree of consistency by UBF chapters around the world. One question though: What do you do after Stage 6? The expectation is that you live as a lifelong UBF loyalist and recruiter.

Based on this director training presentation and my own experience at ubf for 24 years, I came up with this matrix that explains the ubf discipleship training model. One problem (as Forests already pointed out) is that this model does not do well with independent, critical thinkers. So the stages sometimes get messed up. In the past, that is where dead dog training would kick in (sometimes with physical violence) to “produce” a more tame sheep who could then be trained more easily in this system.

As a follow up to an article I didn’t write I think it only apt to say that Galatians Set Me Free From Legalism was the best article I never wrote. That aside, I brought this up with my friend Steven, a seminary graduate. We had a long conversation about my time in UBF and I discussed how I believed that my chapter supported a legalism that was not in line with Paul’s letter to the Galatians. I did not expect him to disagree with me.

The primary message of the gospel

Steven first mentioned that since the 1960s American evangelicalism has phrased the primary message of the gospel as “Jesus saves you from legalism.” He said it’s a major topic and on a whole different page from Paul’s intended meaning in Galatians, but he said there is a very real question we have to ask as a missionary “What do we first communicate to new believers?” He said in China saying “Jesus saves you from legalism” does not really mean anything, and so organizations like Cru have struggled. He said the message of gospel is phrased as “Jesus saves you from sin and death.” He goes onto say that this is usually how the message of Galatians is given. This sounded very familiar. In fact I can quote:

“I read Galatians dozens of times since 1980. I knew it was about freedom. I assumed it proclaimed freedom from sin.”

This is primarily the eastern approach to the gospel. I am not qualified to say which one is “right”, or even if one is “right” and one is “wrong”. But what I will say is that this explains to me immediately why UBF is mostly unsuccessful. They are preaching a gospel message that to anyone who has grown up in an evangelical church (such as me) appears contradictory at best and heretical at worst. I am not sure how exactly to solve this problem, I think writing articles for fine websites such as this one is a start.

The new perspective on Paul

Steven said that there was a current movement called “The new perspective on Paul” and it challenges the modern evangelical view, and beyond that Protestantism itself. The old perspective, as a more wizened man than I said:

“The freedom Paul spoke of was freedom from legalism–the idea that you must add or do something else in addition to believing in Jesus in order to be saved and to be regarded and welcomed as a complete Christian of good standing in the church.”

This view traces back to Martin Luther, who looked at the Catholic Church in the 15th century and saw a list of indulgences and said that this was clearly legalism. But the New Perspective asked an interesting question “Is what Martin Luther saw in the 15th century as legalism the same as what a 1st century Paul saw in the Judaizers? What was the problem with the Judaizers?” The thesis was that the problem with Judaizers was not that works justified them, but that works made them Jewish, and being Jewish justified them. Paul saw the law as a badge of the covenant. Luther understood Galatians 3:24 to illustrate the second use of the law. The new perspective says Paul envisioned the law as a custodian for the Jews until the birth of Christ but Luther reversed the argument to assert that the law is a disciplinarian for everyone.

Luther holds, as most Protestants do, that the law crushes our self righteousness and leads to Christ. Therefore, the law becomes God’s moral imperative having been written on our hearts. Stendhal, the author of the new perspective, accuses western thought of adding a level of introspection and self guilt onto Paul’s message. It seems that this introspection is largely a byproduct of St. Augustine’s Platonic roots. We might go so far to accuse western Christianity to be “Platonic Christianity”. Protestant reformers read Paul’s statements about faith and works, law and gospel, Jews and Gentiles “in the framework of late medieval piety” and the law became associated with legalism. “Where Paul was concerned about the possibility for Gentiles to be included in the messianic community, his statements are now read as answers to the quest for assurance about man’s salvation out of a common human predicament”.

What about UBF?

So does UBF (or at least its leadership) stand condemned under Galatians? Would Paul have opposed top UBF leaders to their face? Under the traditional perspective of Paul it seems as though it certainly does. Ubf may not actually believe they are being justified by their works, but they are communicating it their actions by defining spiritual growth as the list of things Ben Toh presented.

The question that follows is this- Does UBF stand condemned under the message of Galatians under the New Perspective? This idea that being Jewish saves you and the idea that you need to be Korean, or at least Koreanized, came to mind. Does UBF inadvertently teach in its actions that you need to be like a Korean to be saved? Certainly.

Native people are encouraged to marry by faith native Koreans. Second generation Koreans are encouraged to marry by faith other second generation Koreans. This would not be evidence to my claim if marriage wasn’t orchestrated and facilitated by UBF. When someone is married by faith the church teaches that the person introduced is “godly” so by always introducing someone to a Korean they are implying that Koreans are “godly”. Other examples I can cite include Korean chapters being unwilling to work with the native ministry and a high level of unwillingness to allow native leaders to lead. There is also explicitly taught ideas such as American Christians are “lukewarm” and “Sunday only”, Americans being “selfish”, and that America needs to become a “Kingdom of Priests and a holy nation” despite the fact that there are more Christians in America than Koreans in the world.

I doubt that anything related to either perspective of Paul will be discussed at the staff conference on Galatians. It is most likely that I am just not trained enough to see their wisdom. Whatever the case I hope that UBF can learn to present the message of the gospel in such a way that it does not clash with American evangelicalism. My time in UBF recently can be summarized as such:

“When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?”

I quoted Bonhoeffer: “God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community (wish dream) demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren…”

After the sermon I was asked, “Are you saying that the church should not have a vision or a dream? I thought it is always good for us to have a vision and a dream for the church.”

So is a wish dream bad? Bonhoeffer says, “Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” “He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.”

My random thoughts are these. Every person has some dream, vision or hope. My dream is that West Loop Church increasingly becomes a gospel community where Christ is preached and lived out, and where anyone and everyone is welcomed without prejudice and without being imposed upon. But this was not my dream in the past. Prior to West Loop starting in 2008 my dream, given to UBF by Dr. Lee, was to make America a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

UBF’s wish dreams are expressed in our “core values” (and in prayer topics and announcements). Our initial wish dream when I came to UBF in 1980 was to pray for UBF Bible teachers in 561 American campuses and 231 nations of the world. This dream gave me a motivation of how I could practically love Jesus with all my heart. I read the Bible once a year. Every week I spent hours studying and teaching Dr. Lee’s Sun sermons, answered the Bible study questions, prepared Bible study binders, wrote testimonies, and carried out an average of 10 1:1 Bible studies a week. I gave “message training” to my Bible students for decades. With Dr. Lee’s support, I helped dozens of them to marry by faith for UBF world campus mission. I did this for over 25 years. I have no regrets about any of this because I did so with a clear conscience to love Jesus.

What then is the problem? It was that my wish dream became my identity and my sense of self-worth. It became the core of who I was. My “wish” to fulfill my “(UBF) dream” became my will, my demand, my obsession, my sensibility, my imposition on my church community, and worst of all it became my Christ, my everything. I forget that human beings are NOT the ones to create the community.

Last week a friend shared with me a “wish dream” by a top UBF leader who said (I’m paraphrasing), “Being a 1:1 Bible teacher and testimony writing is absolute.” Besides violating the freedom taught in Galatians, such a wish dream according to Bonhoeffer is “a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive.”

Is wish dream a concept easily understood by UBF?

Can UBF stop propagating the UBF wish dream?

Can UBF understand why the UBF wish dream hinders genuine community?

Breaking the yoke of undue religious influence

Undue influence. What does that mean? Why does it become a yoke that is harmful to the human soul? How can someone break free from such a yoke? Such questions deserve much deeper thought, and will become the subject of my future books. In today’s narrative, I aim only to introduce the concept and then tell part of my life story.

Undue influence is influence by which a person is induced to act otherwise than by their own free will or without adequate attention to the consequences. The word “undue” is important in this definition. When some force is undue, that force is unwarranted or inappropriate because it is excessive or disproportionate to the object of that force. Sometimes that force is actually a weak force, like the tether on an adult elephant that had existed since the elephant was young. The power of undue religious influence may not be in its coercion but in its perception. Such influence may be carried out not by actual force, but by perceived force or imagined consequences.

Some undue influence might be easily identifiable because the influence is so over-the-top that no person would accept such influence under normal circumstances. An example of obvious undue influence would be a kidnapping of someone and taking them to a concentration camp. We can rather universally recognize this kind of undue influence as being harmful and wrong. Most undue influence in the religious realm however is more difficult to identify. The influence that one person can handle safely may in fact be undue influence on a different person who cannot handle that kind of influence at that time. Such confusion and subtlety often allows the perpetrators of undue influence to justify their abusive tactics because they can point to some examples of successful transformation due to their influence. In some cases, the influence falls into the blind spot of the perpetrators, so that they don’t even realize they are causing undue influence on someone.

My Unholy Devotion To Religion

After my father’s death, I threw myself into the UBF lifestyle. I adopted Ed and the Korean man as my spiritual fathers. The UBF community became my family. The leaders became my spiritual parents. This meant that I would submit my entire life to being trained by my UBF shepherds. That is the UBF way—every member must have a shepherd. The shepherds are self-appointed and choose the sheep they want. A chance meeting on campus meant that it was God’s divine will that you become the sheep of that person. This shepherd sheep relationship was meant to be lifelong, and would even persist into heaven we thought. So I would be eternally submissive to my UBF shepherd out of a desire to be a preacher for God. This provided me with the safety and security and protection I was looking for. I used the UBF community to replace what I lost in my father and to escape the dark reality of life around me. I hid myself in the UBF ideologies, escaping every minute I could to read the bible and avoid the real world. And so my desire to be a preacher for God was born.
Soon I wrote and shared my UBF life testimony, boldly declaring praise to God for my father who had found salvation in Jesus. And around this time I discovered the deep faith of my grandparents, especially my grandmother. She loved my life testimony. She made several paper copies and mailed them the friends and family all over the country. She also made copies of the video of my sharing and played it for all her friends at church. She told me I should be a preacher someday.

My grandparents became a foundation of Christian faith for me. I have always been encouraged by their faithful, devoted and explicit belief in Jesus and their unconditional love for people. They had opinions about politics, religions and the like, but for them, goodness reigned supreme. My grandma was therefore very concerned about UBF right from the start. She always told me that bible study is good, but too much bible study is like too much salt when you cook. God’s messages are about love. We can’t forget God’s love and we can never forget our family. Looking back I wonder how she and the rest of my family endured my 24 years of UBF life. But their goodness and their love was the buoy that always righted my ship.

New Friends, Bold Decisions, Restored Relationships

The big event of our lives happened in 2011. To make a long story short: We left UBF. This means nothing to most people. Leaving a church? Not a big deal. But leaving UBF is different. It equates to losing your salvation because UBF requires each person to be loyally submitted to a UBF shepherd, usually a Korean. But finally I had enough. I began to fear the bitterness, depression and anger in my soul more than any retribution from God or from UBF shepherds. So I resigned.

We sent shockwaves throughout the 6,000 member organization worldwide. I had not intended to leave UBF. I actually just wanted to find out some answers the problems a dozen or so of my friends in UBF had been confiding in me since moving to Detroit. But I finally had enough of pretending to be a holy soldier. So I sent a report into my shepherd telling him my honest feelings. That didn’t go over so well. Within two hours of receiving my report via email, he called me. I could tell he was angry. He told me any problems in UBF were none of my business. He further said that any spiritual deadness I had been observing was because I was the one who was spiritually dead. As soon as I hung up the phone, I experienced the Holy Spirit come alive in me like never before. I suddenly knew God had a purpose for me: expose the problematic dark side of UBF. I saw clearly that UBF suffered from the same authority-based problems that the Shepherding Movement did in the 1970’s in America. In an instant my mind was released from the bondage of guilt and all the abuses in UBF I had ignored or dismissed came to mind.

I then embarked on an amazing journey of recovery from the controlling, guilt-ridden, shame-soaked life we had lived in UBF. I was done with the holy soldier façade. This journey was not so different from the journey of Pi in the movie “Life of Pi” or Truman in the movie “The Truman Show” or the blind girl in the M. Night Shyamalan movie “The Village”. In fact I began watching many movies, especially children’s movies, because I found so many connections with the characters in the movies, such as Tangled. I felt I was Repunzel being set free from her castle tower! Finally I was at peace.

The most exciting part of this journey for me has been connecting with people at Grace Community Church in Detroit. That first lunch with pastor Bryan was an important reality check for me, one that helped me realize there are many Christians outside UBF (imagine that!). Attending the 6:00 am bible study led by pastor Wayne was eye-opening. It was his “Be Armed” series that corrected a lot of false teaching I had picked up. I realized then that for all my thousands of hours of bible study, I had never learned the basic doctrines of Christianity. Even as I continue go through a transformational paradigm-shift in my faith, those basic doctrines hold true and provide an anchor for my faith.

Pastor Wayne baptized me on April 29, 2012. I had decided to be baptized as a way to confirm that I had left UBF had given my life to be a Christ-follower. I’ll never forget pastor Wayne’s words to me just before going under: “You are now free form the teachings of one man.” Now I’m glad to be part of pastor Wayne’s intercessory prayer team, praying for Renewal Church and his new role there. Grace Community Church became a safe house for me and our family. Pastor Bryan was a God-send to my wife and I. His sermons were so full of love, goodness and humor—and so deeply drawn from the well of grace and love—that each Sunday my soul mended a little more.

My wife and I joined a bible study group with Pastor Bryan. And we were utterly shocked to discover what genuine Christian teaching was all about. We found that we had been taught a Christianized form of Eastern philosophy, which continues to be one of our biggest problems. Through Pastor Bryan’s help and the help of our newfound Christian community, our family is being healed day by day. Now my wife and I are renewing our relationship, going on dates, finding out each other’s character and making up for nearly 20 years of lost time.

Breaking the yoke of guilt

“We never taught that!”… words I’ve heard often after leaving my former religious organization. One of my most impactful and life-changing discoveries I made after resigning from my leadership position in a fundamentalist, fringe Korean religious group was that my theology was deeply flawed because we were holding onto implied gospel messages that were filled with holes and superficial, un-Christ-like ideologies. Of course the group leaders could claim they never taught the things I was renouncing and criticizing them for on my blog. Our flawed gospel messages were not normally taught explicitly. Most of the time, our shallow gospel was taught implicitly, taught underhandedly through a praise/shame system. We knew exactly what we were teaching, what kind of behavior we expected in ourselves and in new recruits, but we rarely documented such things explicitly. That way all those “R-Group people” (our term for former members) would not be able to prove anything.

I found that I had the facts of the gospel correct—the gospel is about Jesus, his birth, life, ministry, suffering, death, resurrection, ascension and future reign—but I had come to accept some very non-gospel messages. I accepted, for example, that I must remain loyal to my personal spiritual supervisor the rest of my life, checking with him for major life decisions to see if my decisions were “God’s will”. We called this “spiritual order”. I also accepted that it was not possible to leave the group I was in, or at least not if I wanted to be in Heaven one day. In fact we created an entire heritage system of implied beliefs—beliefs that are not taught by the bible text directly but that seem to be implied from the text. It was a grand biblical proof-texted ideology. Sometimes this heritage was then explicitly taught. Looking back, I see that I didn’t actually believe such teachings, but I accepted them. I overlooked the built-in contradictions and did my best to apologize for and to perpetuate the flawed theology.

Five Explicit Gospel Messages

In “The Explicit Gospel”, Matt Chandler eloquently articulates the content of the gospel, brilliantly describing the gospel as what he rightly calls “the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air”. In “Your Church is too Small”, John H. Armstrong earnestly and magnificently expresses the result of the gospel, as an exhortation to see the Church holistically, comprehensively, historically and missionally, and yet in a fresh, new light based on Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17. In “Eyes That See, Ears That Hear”, James Danaher repaints the theological framework of Christianity, expressing the fabric of the gospel so that we can perceive the gospel as we continue the epic transition from modernity to post-modernity and beyond. In “Fundamorphosis”, Robb Ryerse brings to life his amazing journey of transformation, renewal and regeneration that reveals the power of the gospel to change and transform in a personal and approachable way. And in “What We Believe and Why”, George Koch presents a masterpiece of theological constructs that connect ancient thoughts on faith with current discoveries in a grand panorama of the faith of the gospel, meticulously documenting the essentials and the basics, the origins and the foundational truths of what Christians believe in an accessible manner few have accomplished. These five books have profoundly shaped my narrative about the gospel, and ought to be collected in some sort of “modern to post-modern transition library” as five classic books that capture the Christian faith in our generation.

I have found these gospel messages to be immensely helpful in guiding my conversations on religious or philosophical discussions. And then suddenly the gospel began to come alive, unleashed from the yoke of my shallow, misguided, guilt-laden, proof-texted notions.

• The gospel is about the kingdom. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

• The gospel is about God’s grace. “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).

• The gospel is about the glory of Christ. “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

• The gospel is about salvation. “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit…” (Ephesians 1:13).

• The gospel is about peace. “…and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15).

Communal Salvation

It’s a small world after all. Our world today is smaller in that we are more inter-connected and inter-dependent than at any time in world history. Instant, global communication and rapid world-wide travel is commonplace. The worldwide Christian church is starting to realize that there is only one faith, one hope, one Lord and one body. Our theologies and gospel messages must now pass the test of global criticism. Perhaps we are on the verge of a new kind of uniting by the Holy Spirit that does not define boundaries? Clearly church communities have been ripped to shreds in recent years. Could the Spirit now be uniting entirely new communities, reforming the shattered body of Christ into a vastly more healthy and loving world-wide community?

Personal Liberation

Jesus did not come to bind believers to an upgraded law or to yoke us with a heavy mask to hide our real identities. Jesus said his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matthew 11:30). Jesus came to give rest for the soul of the believer. Do you believe that? For most of my life I tried to believe that, but in my mind I always concluded: “Easy and light? Yea right! You gotta be kiddin’ me! Christian life is anything but easy or light…” I believed the gospel Jesus taught, but I lived my life as if I were a donkey tethered to a millstone. My only claim was “Yes I’m tied to a millstone, but it is a better millstone than what Moses gave!” I thought, “My millstone came from Jesus, and I’m going to pull it by golly!” So I became weary in all I did. Everything became meaningless.

If we see the Sermon on the Mount and walk away sad or burdened with guilt or heavy laden with anxiety, we’re hearing implied messages that are not of the explicit gospel messages Jesus taught. Jesus’ yoke is not a new way to be tethered to the law. Jesus’ yoke is grace. Jesus’ invitation to find rest for your soul still stands open today.

I was drawn in by article after article and comment after comment. Initially I was taken aback by aggressive language and seemingly biased points of view. But as I continued to read, I have been impressed by the level of integrity and professionalism you have maintained throughout the website. The articles have not been offensive or slanderous but have been informative, honest, and real.

Due to the degree of honesty and open communication presented here, some of the emotions have been very raw, making some of the comments difficult to read at times. But we need to read and acknowledge people’s pain and hurt. I understand why some leaders may have boldly challenged people to leave if they are not happy. Maybe they wanted to show their strong confidence in themselves and UBF. Maybe it was easier to reject first before being rejected. Maybe love grew cold. But one thing is that the pain will not go away on its own. And the fact is is that no man is an island and we need each other desperately.

The questions I came away with were, “Where do we go from here?” “Is there any hope?” “Has everything that can be done already been done?” I would propose that someone who is trusted by the elders and staff, such as a fellow director who has shown outstanding ability to hold such a discussion or an outside professional, give a set of lectures educating leaders on the art of discussion. Maybe similar to lectures educating leaders on current trends of postmodernism and how it affects how people view and accept the gospel message.

I’ve been hearing in many comments the cry for open discussion, not vindictively, but earnestly. And not just privately, but in an open group fashion. I feel that a little bit of honesty and vulnerability would go a long way.

One of the fundamental problems is that as a group, UBF leadership and members have not been educated on how to moderate a discussion that touches on sensitive and painful issues, using skills such as listening without judging, being vulnerable, the language of apology, receiving criticism without taking it personally, handling conflict and pain in the discussion, handling emotions, etc. And these are not learned naturally. They are skills that need to be taught and learned. There is no blame that we were not equipped. We have to remember that UBF started as a grassroots organization dependent upon the passion and initiative of a handful of people. God used it, but we need to change and grow as do all people and all groups. I believe that the same spirit of initiative, bravery, and independence that God used to bring us here, God can use again to bring healing, restoration, and revival for Americans, Koreans, and all chapters around the world.

However, without a proper foundation, and the right tools to address difficult topics, we cannot expect to have an honest discussion at a larger scale. We need to lay the foundation first. Then, and only then, can each side meet the other from the same starting point and begin the process of sifting and picking topics for discussion without getting defensive or emotional. There would need to be an excellent moderator as well.

Let us wait on God in full expectation. “We can do as little toward the work as toward creating the world, except as God works in us to will and to do. God only asks us to yield, to consent, to wait upon Him, and He will do it all….To wait upon God, and have the heart filled with faith in His working, and in that faith to pray for His mighty power to come down, is our only wisdom.” Waiting on God, Andrew Murray

First, notice that sections of the italicized definition are pasted below and numbered, followed by questions/comments that can help expose the underlined errors therein and (perhaps incompletely) point to some more biblical perspectives.

Second, a much better definition of the church (by no means the only one), is provided. I adapted this definition from a class on Ecclesiology at Reformed Baptist Seminary with Greg Nichols. I loved his class because he drew on no other sources than the scriptures (as will be evident).

Third, I will suggest positive steps for UBF’s future, pointing out that UBF shouldn’t identify itself as a local church (in form) while it almost exclusively operates as a para-church (in function). Based on concepts from 9Marks, I suggest UBF either fully commit to para-church life, or reform into an association of local churches.

UBF is close to my heart, and I love many who still serve therein. So I write this to promote what scripture says about church life. Also, I write this not only to be polemical, but to promote a careful readership that refuses to take simplistic statements at face value, but rather puts everything under scripture’s scrutiny. My purpose is to stir the waters, so that what seemed clear becomes muddy, so that thinking Christians would once again “go back to the Bible.” I hope to encourage even more elaboration.

1. A Bad Definition of Church on UBF’s new Heritage Website

1) UBF definition: “Church is a group of believers.”

This definition seems true on the surface, but hidden beneath is an over-simplification. Believers all throughout church history have wrestled with whether a true local church only needs a group of believers, or whether there needs to be an ordained elder present who can perform Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. So this statement is overly simplistic, overlooking the sincere struggles of those in the historical church who grappled with this question. When I invite Christian friends over for tea and Twinkies, does that form a church? At the simplest level, a church is not only a gathering, but an assembly that performs the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (John 4:24; 1 Cor. 14:23-25; Heb. 13:15, Acts 2:41, 10:47, 48; 1 Cor. 10:16, 17, 11:25).

2) UBF definition continued: “So it is diverse in that every believer is unique, yet is one in that every believer has many things in common, notably faith (Eph. 4:4,5). The church was formed when Jesus ascended into heaven. About one hundred and twenty people gathered in Jerusalem, stayed in one place, and prayed together waiting for the Holy Spirit Jesus had promised (Acts 1:14). After the Holy Spirit came upon them Peter spoke boldly about Jesus in front of the public. On that day about three thousand were added to the church (Acts 1:41). The church bounded in number (Acts 2:47). As the church expanded, she faced many problems as well. For example, she had to care for widows that had not been the plan of the church. To handle many practical problems in the early church the Apostles appointed seven stewards (Acts 6:5). No Apostles had any blue print on running the church as an organization.”

This statement does not do justice to scripture or to church history. If there was no blueprint on running churches, why do the Pastoral Epistles exist (1-2 Timothy, Titus)? Why does Paul tell Timothy to “Guard what has been entrusted to him” (1 Tim 6:20) and proceed to give him and Titus instructions on church structure, elders and deacons, and procedures to guide church life? What was Timothy to guard? What else did Paul mean by “the tradition they received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6)? The apostles DID HAVE A BLUEPRINT, and they got it from the Lord Jesus Christ, the master architect of his church. From whom do you think Paul learned these traditions pertaining to the church? As professing Christians, we must seek to structure our local churches after that design, found not in our tastes, preferences, or imaginations, but in scripture.

Also, there is a scriptural contradiction by using Acts 6 in the above paragraph. If the apostles had no blueprint, then why were deacons chosen in order for the apostles to better devote their time to prayer and the word? Obviously there were some priorities and pre-defined roles for leadership already at this early stage in church history.

3) UBF definition continued: “The church was the outcome of their devotion to world mission.”

Again, an aspect of truth is here, but it is imbalanced and potentially misleading. Largely, this is a theological and biblical error, for the church was not the outcome of human devotion, but of Christ’s personal building project (Matt 16:18). God chose and gave to Christ the elect, the group believers of all time who would belong to him and believe in him (John 17:6, 24; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet 1:1-2). Christ himself planned and ordained and built his church, and had in mind certain aspects and features for its well-being, and he still governs and shepherds it today, in particular, tangible ways. So, the church and world mission was the outcome of God keeping his promise to Abraham, that his seed (Israel>David>Christ: the True Israel and True David) would bless the nations—NOT because of the devotion of the apostles to world mission.

4) UBF definition continued: “So the infrastructure of the church was flexible and adaptable as needed.“

Again, see #3 above. What scriptural support is cited for this statement? The church has been very INFLEXIBLE throughout the ages, again, because Christ has been guarding it. Hasn’t the church’s history been replete with heretics being thrown out, of reformations, of wrestling with and clarifying true biblical doctrines? If anything, one of evangelicalism’s biggest scandals is that it HAS BEEN TOO FLEXIBLE AND ADAPTABLE, often not in line with scripture by the leading of the Sovereign Church Director Jesus Christ. Rather, it has been FLEXED by the cultural prejudices, whims, trends, and tastes of the society around it. The apostles and church members are not those who “adapt the church as needed.” The Lord Jesus Christ actively administers and governs all true local churches today, and at any time He sovereignly chooses, He can remove a church’s lampstand (Rev 2-3).

5) UBF definition continued: “As time passed, the church took its own course and made its own shape. For example, it became the imperial state church by AD 400. At her climax around AD 1200 every person born in Europe was born into one church – the Catholic. Then the religious reformation came and the church was diversified into many independent organizations. The UBF has become one of them.”

See #4 above. Also, the church never “takes its own course.” This is a sad characterization of the church that is instituted, built, nurtured, and led by the Lord Jesus (c.f., Matt 16:18).

Furthermore, this statement jumps from the Protestant Reformation (the one that gave us Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Whitefield, Packer, Stott, Edwards, Owens—the rest of the puritans—Keller, Piper, Carson, etc.) to UBF! Shouldn’t we want to listen to how the Holy Spirit throughout the centuries taught and led these reformers to come to fuller, more biblical, and more Christ-centered understandings of the gospel? Wouldn’t it be arrogant to assume that we have the biblically true church design, while never having learned from these Bible teachers?

I think it’s a great disservice to the casual reader (who will not study church history beyond this paragraph) to say the reformation’s only effect on the world was to make “many independent organizations” (!). Calvin would cry at this. Luther would shout! The reformation GAVE US BACK THE GOSPEL that had been lost (sorry for the oversimplification).

One last thing: this bad definition of church neglects a discussion of CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, which, at the time of writing this article, UBF currently does not have. The word “member” is on the page 3 times, but UBF provides no guidelines/requirements for membership. This is very dangerous, since lack of membership creates difficulty for loving church discipline to be intentionally and consistently carried out, and it creates opportunities for those who hold heretical viewpoints to rise in popularity and influence within UBF chapters. Also, because

1. Scripture explicitly affirms church membership (Eph 4:25, 5:29-30)

2. Pastoral care mandates church membership (Acts 20:28-32)

3. Church discipline mandates church membership (Matt 18:15-18)

4. Joining the church mandates church membership (Acts 9:25-30)

Look up the references and study for yourself.

2. A Better Definition of “Church”—in one very long sentence (with scripture references)

What follows is a better definition of the church, adapted from an excellent class I took on Ecclesiology with Greg Nichols. It’s one LONG sentence. Be sure to study the scripture references.

The Church is Christ’s saved society…

… PURPOSED in God’s eternal plan and solemn pledge of salvation (Eph. 3:10; 2 Thess. 1:1, 4-5; Gen. 3:15);

which was PORTRAYED in supernatural creation; in covenant promises of salvation, and in John’s gospel commencement (Rom. 5:14, Isa. 54:9-10; Heb. 12:22, John 4:1-2);

which was FORMED through salvation accomplished and applied by Christ (Matt. 16:18, Acts 20:28),

in its Identity: God’s new creation (Christ’s body, bride, and posterity), the covenant community (his children, people, kingdom, temple, and priesthood), and Christ’s gospel assembly of glorified spirits in heaven and of his disciples on earth (Rom. 5:14-19, Isa. 54:9, Isa. 53:9; Heb. 2:13-14, Rom. 9:6, 24-26; Matt. 21:43; Col. 1:13; Eph. 5:24-33 Acts 11:26, 19:32-41);

in its Extraordinary form: structured collectively as one universal assembly consisting of many local assemblies and disciples (Gal. 1:13, 22)

and distinguished by seven prominent features;

instituted personally by Christ (Matt. 16:18);

composed evangelically of believers in Christ (Acts 2:47, 5:14, 14:21-23);

administered universally by Christ, his Spirit, and apostles, locally by elders and deacons (Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18, Acts 13:2, Acts 16:4; 1 Cor. 7:17, Acts 14:23, 20:17, 28; Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:8-13);

constituted solemnly by divine covenant with Christ’s blood symbolized in the Lord ’s Supper (1 Cor. 10:16, 17, 11:25; Heb. 8:6-13);

consecrated by endowment with God’s Spirit;

convoked weekly on the Lord’s Day (Acts 1:5; 1 Cor. 3:16, Exod. 20:8; Acts 20:7);

and commissioned to display God’s glory in Christian salvation and integration (Acts 11:26; Eph. 3:5-10);

in its Sacred vocation (upward, inward, outward), appointed and endowed by Christ

to draw near to God in worship, ordinances (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and prayer (John 4:24; 1 Cor. 14:23-25; Heb. 13:15, Acts 2:41, 10:47, 48; 1 Cor. 10:16,17, 11:25, 1 Tim. 2:1-8);

to love God’s people by nurture, benevolence, and discipline (John 13:34-35, 1 Tim. 5:16, Matt. 18:17; 1 Cor. 5:1-13);

and to love humanity by gospel evangelism (Matt. 28:18-20);

and in its Institutional relations  within the Nohaic covenant community, a compliment to family and state (Matt. 19:3-12; Eph. 5:22-24, Rom. 13:1-7);

which is PRESERVED throughout its militant history through the gospel application of salvation in every generation in spiritual warfare with the world, sin, devil, death, and hell, through great apostasy, and with a gospel recovery (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 3:21, 6:10-18, 2 Thess. 2:3-12; 1 Tim. 4:1-2, Acts 3:19-21; Rom. 11:17-32);

and which WILL BE GLORIFIED at its triumphant destiny in the completion of salvation with ultimate victory (1 Cor. 15:25-26), with translation unto glory, and with eternal life (Eph. 5:27; 1 Thess. 4:13-17).

Here’s a quick summary of the definition: The church is Christ’s saved society: purposed in God’s eternal plan and solemn pledge of salvation, portrayed in covenant promises of salvation, formed in Christ’s accomplishment of salvation, preserved through the gospel application of salvation, and glorified in the completion of salvation.

I hope that readers of this will at least go through the scripture references. If not even that, please take away from this that the first paragraph on the web page cited contains a biblically and church-historically inaccurate definition of the church. Then, the web site attempts to proceed in argument from this definition to justify the structure of UBF. However, careful readers should expose and question the errors of this definition, so that what proceeds from it may also be found biblically baseless. And it’s okay to publish an article on your organization’s structure. But it’s not okay to make it seem like your organization’s structure is supported by biblical teaching, especially when the way you use the bible verses and narrate church history is imbalanced and misleading.

3. My Hope for UBF’s Future

My wife and I lived with, cried with, grew with, and were nurtured by people in UBF for over 9.5 years! We love them, so everything written here should be understood from that viewpoint. So, in recognition of the scriptural definition of the church above, it is my sincere hope and prayer (I actually have been praying this for 3 years) that UBF refrain from identifying itself as a local church (in its outward form) while it continues being essentially a para-church organization (in its day-to-day function). (See 9Marks Journal, April 2011 issue for a distinction on church vs. para-church organizations.)

In particular, UBF should either:

1. Commit to being only a para-church organization. UBF should shift its major focus to protecting, supporting, promoting and nurturing nearby local churches, sending those it evangelizes on campuses eventually to nearby local churches; by sending out trained, seasoned shepherds/house churches to serve nearby local churches; and by requiring all UBF participants to have membership, or at least associate membership, in a local church; OR UBF should

2. Commit to being an association of autonomous local churches. UBF should “reform” into an association of autonomous local churches (UBF chapters–> local churches), each of which develops:

1) local church polity for members, deacons, and pastors/elders (a church constitution), ordination and preaching-license requirements;

2) membership requirements, and especially a church discipline covenant; and

3) a doctrinal confession that not only includes traditional evangelical beliefs  but articulates clearly and adduces scriptural support for all of UBF’s uniquely-nuanced-yet-unwritten practices. Provide written/published explanations of expectations for members, and scriptural support for terms/concepts like marriage by faith, fishing, one-to-one bible study, common life, the polarization of grace and truth, the use of the term “sheep” to refer indistinguishably to believers and unbelievers, etc.—so that expectations and concepts are explicitly and verbally articulated rather than only implicitly and nonverbally infused in the behavior/culture of UBF.

These are just (imperfect) suggestions that I’ve been thinking/praying to God about. I defer to God to do exceedingly and abundantly more than I can ask or imagine. But whatever changes take place, I pray that those who do them are motivated by the fact that the Church is wholly the possession and the executive responsibility of Jesus Christ, and His church exists to display his glory in its upward, inward, and outward vocation. Then UBF, committing either to Christ-centered para-church or to local church life, would have, I believe, a much greater impact in its intended mission.

Remember, when you write a definition of “church,” you are writing about Christ’s bride, whom He looks after, and is jealous for. I’d be careful how I write about someone’s bride. So, just stick to the New Testament’s teaching on it, which came from Christ himself (Jn 16:13; 14:26; 15:26, 27).

The New UBF Heritage saving website

Here is it:   http://history.ubfservice.com/

Factual history?

Will this new website contain any factual ubf history? Will it include the reform events of 1976, 1989, 2000 and 2011? Will there be any mention of Ben’s Westloop chapter?

The Purpose

“Our mission is to promote and facilitate the publication of UBF history. We have chosen Luke 1:1-4 as our guide. History is classified in various ways. For example, it is classified by age, geography, nation or topics such as politics and economics. We classify our history by four areas: reports, chapters, people and heritage. Reports are written documents on current events. Those become part of history as years pass. Chapter history is about its birth, growth and development. It is the building block for regional, national and world history. It includes evaluation of the past for future. People history is the biography of individual. Heritage is what happened in the past, remains today and shapes our future.”

The Heritage

If you don’t know the ubf heritage or wonder what ubf Koreans are doing, study this website.

“During the last half-century UBF has built its own heritage. It is well summarized by our mottoes – known as Samuel Lee’s Spiritual Legacy. For example, writing and sharing testimony have been unique to our church, since no other churches practice it as much as we do. When Samuel Lee ministered students, he helped them to write what they have learned from the Bible and his manuscripts on the Bible, and share it with others. It took time for them to pray, meditate and write testimonies, but they grew spiritually through writing and sharing testimonies. Many of us not only have witnessed its power, but also practiced it”

Good intentions?

“As time passes, we face new challenges in passing our heritage to next generation. For example, some do not view the testimony as effective and useful as before. What is worse, some view it as a means to oppress their life and suppress their critical and creative thoughts. It is quite the opposite to its original intention – to nurture their spiritual life, shape their thought world godly, and lead them to enjoy true freedom in Christ. In resolving unwanted conflicts, some prefer to use the word “reflection” to restore the original purpose and spur its practice. So it is worthwhile to have open discussion on its purpose and method.”

Fresh thought and critical review?

“We have accumulated wonderful heritage. But making it useful and effective in our ministry requires sometimes fresh thought and critical review. We would like to collect materials related our heritage and share them through our web site so that they are useful in guarding our heritage.”

Here is my critical review… I will explain more in my second book, but this shepherding ideology is dangerous and harmful. My further thoughts on the ubf heritage are on my personal blog.

My heritage summary:

Matthew’s Purpose

This book was written to directly address one question: How does the bible applly to same-sex relationships? The book is dedicated to “To all those who have suffered in silence for so long.” The premise is clear from the first chapter: The bible cannot be set aside in the discussion about same-sex relationships, based on John 10:35.

Matthew’s Case

With brilliant calmness, Matthew synthesizes every debate, discussion and argument I’ve heard in regard to LGBT people. Matthew exposes and examines arguments from both sides, and shows how some of the arguments from each side fall short of the biblical mandate. Here is an overview of the case he makes.

Good fruit/bad fruit

The foundational argument made in this book is a sort of end-game. What is the fruit of how LGBT people have been treated? Is such fruit good or bad?

“First is the harmful impact on gay Christians. Based on Jesus’s teaching that good trees bear good fruit, we need to take a new look at the traditional interpretation of biblical passages that refer to same-sex behavior.” Loc. 998-1004

Historical Examples

Next Matthew takes us on a journey of some examples from history where long-standing, multi-century teachings of the Christian church have been wrong, and re-adjusted based on new discoveries. Matthew shows how each time, the authority of Scripture was not compromised by the new scientific discoveries, but rather, enhanced. Matthew cites recent history too, such as the 2013 closure and apology of the ex-gay ministry, Exodus International.

Celibacy as a gift

One of the contradictions expressed by the church has been to re-define celibacy from being a gift for some to a mandatory lifestyle choice for many in their attempt to “save marriage”. Matthew expounds on the gift of celibacy amazingly well, and shows proper, but not undue, respect for the gift of celibacy.

The traditional clobber verses

About half of the book is devoted to painstakingly examining the passages of Genesis 19, Leviticus, Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 1. Matthew does this with many questions, references to multiple interpretations and excellent logic– all without coming across as a bully. Nowhere does Matthew forcefully exhort the reader to adopt his logic. Instead, Matthew gently and methodically presents his case, inviting the reader to journey along side him.

“Of the thirteen references to Sodom in the Old Testament following Genesis 19, Ezekiel 16:49–50 offers the most detailed description of the city’s sins. In that passage, God stated, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore, I did away with them as you have seen.” Sexuality goes unmentioned, both in the Ezekiel passage and in every other Old Testament reference to Sodom following Genesis 19. If Sodom’s sin had indeed been same-sex behavior, it’s highly unlikely that every written discussion of the city for centuries following its destruction would fail to mention that.” Loc. 1188-90

Matthew makes a real attempt to move the gay-Christian debate beyond the typical conundrum.

“Sad to say, though, that’s been the extent of many debates about the Bible and homosexuality in recent years. One side starts by quoting Leviticus 18:22 (or 20:13, which prescribes the death penalty for males who engage in same-sex relations), and the other side counters with verses about dietary laws and bans on certain combinations of clothing. We really do need to go deeper.” Loc. 1194-97

Brilliant Gospel Exposition

As with any book, I care deeply about how the gospel is presented. Matthew’s book shines brightly with the explicit gospel messages and was a joy to read.

“First, I’d like us to consider the reason why Christians don’t follow all the laws we see in the Old Testament, from its restrictions on food to its rules about clothing—and many more, including the death sentence for rebellious children. And then I’d like to look at the Old Testament prohibitions of male same-sex intercourse, as we seek to discern whether and why Christians should follow them today.” Loc. 1210-16

“Our freedom from the law, I should be clear, is about much more than one decision made by one church council nearly two thousand years ago. It is rooted in the saving, reconciling work of Jesus Christ. The New Testament teaches that Christ fulfilled the law. Colossians 2:13–14 says that God “forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” Christ’s death made it possible for us to be permanently reconciled to God. Before then, only temporary atonement was possible through the sacrifices of the Jewish priests. But as Hebrews 8:6 explains, “The ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.” Loc. 1231-34

“I am far from the only gay Christian who has heard the claim that gay people will not inherit the kingdom of God. That message is plastered on protest signs at gay-pride parades. It’s shouted by roaming street preachers at busy intersections and on college campuses. The result is that, for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, all they’ve heard about the kingdom of God is that they won’t be in it.” Loc. 1955-58

Same-sex Marriage

Matthew concludes with a humble examination of marriage. He admits that since he is single and young, he has little to offer and cannot teach about marriage. But he shares some incredible insight nonetheless. Matthew continues to ask profoundly good questions, as he does throughout the book.

“Granted, the Bible’s silence on committed same-sex relationships doesn’t necessarily mean those relationships are blessed. Even if you agree with my analysis so far, you may still wonder: Can loving, committed same-sex unions fulfill the Bible’s understanding of marriage?” Loc. 1982-86

“Perhaps the dominant message about marriage in modern society is that it’s primarily about being happy, being in love, and being fulfilled. Nearly everyone desires these things, of course. But what happens to the marriage bond if one spouse stops feeling fulfilled? What if one partner falls out of love, or they both do? For many in our society, the answer seems obvious: The couple should seek a divorce. Why should two people who no longer love each other stay together? But that is not the Christian message. For Christians, marriage is not just about us. It’s also about Christ. If Christ had kept open the option to leave us behind when he grew frustrated with us or felt like we were not living up to his standards, he may have abandoned us long ago. But the story of the gospel is that, although we don’t deserve it, God lavishes his sacrificial love upon us anyway.” Loc. 2132-38

Conclusion: Hope and joy

This book left me with tremendous hope and joy, and also with a somber and deep commitment to be a straight, Christian ally to all LGBT people. The three concluding personal narratives are beyond amazing and simply must be read for yourself. I conclude with one of Matthew’s concluding statements.

“Tragically, I hear from many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians whose churches also are convinced that they cannot take an affirming approach to same-sex relationships while remaining faithful to Scripture. I wrote this book to show that there is a third way. The message of Scripture for gay Christians is not what non-affirming Christians assume it to be.” Loc. 2415

Are you free from legalism?

How to make the apostle Paul very angry. All Christians say that faith in Jesus and the gospel is all we need for life and salvation. But practically some Christians and churches communicate–explicitly or implicitly–that faith in Christ is not quite enough. In Paul’s day, Jewish Christians (the Judaizers) taught the Gentile Christians that in addition to believing in Christ they must keep Jewish traditions–circumcision, dietary laws, special days–in order to become “fully Christian.” This so outraged Paul that he did not express any pleasantries or thanksgiving after his introduction (Gal 1:1-5), as he did in his other 12 epistles. Instead he immediately launched into them (Gal 1:6ff) by directly confronting and accusing them of deserting Christ and distorting, changing and perverting the gospel (Gal 1:6b-7). To those who taught that additions to the gospel were needed (which is no gospel at all), Paul cursed them with God’s curse…twice in two verses (Gal 1:8-9). Boy was he mad!

A junior rebuking a senior publicly. Compared to Peter, Paul was a “junior” apostle. Yet, in that orderly structured hierarchical Jewish culture, Paul rebuked Peter publicly (not privately). Then he openly shared and circulated this embarrassing and shameful account in a letter to be read in all the churches (Gal 2:11-14). Today it is like sending out a mass email to everyone in the church! Imagine Peter, the rock of the church (Mt 16:18), committing such a basic sin and getting publicly rebuked by a junior! Peter’s sin was “deviating from the truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14) when he withdrew from eating together with Gentile Christians. By his behavior he was saying that Jewish Christians were better than Gentile Christians because they kept the tradition of Jewish dietary laws. By making this distinction Peter communicated that the gospel of God’s grace was insufficient for salvation and good standing as a Christian. He was stating by his action that justification was not just by faith, but also by the works of the law (Gal 2:16).

For over 25 years, without realizing it, I added to the gospel whenever I taught the Bible. Basically, I added (strictly enforced!) all the activities of the church to the gospel: marrying by faith, no dating without permission, writing out answers to Bible study questions, preparing Bible study binders, writing testimonies, going fishing, feeding sheep 1:1, never ever missing any church meetings (don’t you dare!), always wearing a tie in church, addressing other Christians with titles, etc. None of these “additions” were necessarily bad or wrong. In fact, I thought I was a “cut-above” Christian, not a nominal Christian. But I inadvertently communicated that Christ alone or the gospel alone was insufficient and inadequate to be regarded as a good Christian. So today, I’m done writing testimonies along with being done with…

• fishing,
• going on campus,
• preparing Bible study binders,
• having 1:1 Bible studies,
• restricting dating among singles,
• teaching “marriage by faith,”
• giving “message training”,
• “training” people,
• attending “mandatory” church meetings,
• attending all Bible conferences,
• addressing fellow Christians with titles,
• “copying” messages and manuscripts, etc.

I’m not opposed to any of the above and would encourage some people to seriously consider them, if they are so inclined. But I am convinced that putting any undue emphasis or pressure to conform to any church practices and traditions would invariably teach what Paul calls “a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all” (Gal 1:6-7). To Paul, such “Bible teachers” should castrate or emasculate themselves (Gal 5:12). Worse yet, it invites an eternal curse from God (Gal 1:8-9).

Are you free from legalism? Or do you feel that something else is required from you in addition to your faith in the gospel?

There are countless good commentaries on Galatians. The books I have read and do not hesitate recommending are:

1. John R.W. Stott, The Message of Galatians: Only One Way, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1968).
2. Timothy Keller, Galatians For You, God’s Word For You (Epsom, Surrey, England: The Good Book Company, 2013).
3. Philip Graham Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing Company, 2005).

Celibacy as the only answer

Wesley begins his book by sharing various viewpoints regarding same-sex attractions. He present the idea that LGBT people who are not Christians can choose for themselves how to express their non-hetereosexual natures. He insists that his choice is to accept what he calls the Christian teaching that celibacy is the only answer for a homosexual person. He does all this cautiously, trying not to be offensive and trying to allow room for other people to make their own choices.

At times we are left to wonder however, just what Wesley believes. He is not persuaded by the traditional bible interpretations and church teachings. For example:

“At times, though, for me and many others, the weight of the biblical witness and the church’s traditional teaching against homosexual practice can seem rather unpersuasive. The list of Bible passages and the statements from the Vatican and other church leaders just don’t seem compelling enough to keep gay and lesbian people from looking for sexual fulfillment in homosexual relationships. In fact, not only are they not compelling; these biblical texts and Christian pronouncements appear out-dated, perhaps slightly cruel, and, in any case, not really workable or attainable.”  Page 56

Wesley’s premise is clear though:

“At the end of the day, the only “answer” I have to offer to the question of how to live well before God and with others as a homosexual Christian is the life I am trying to live by the power of the gospel.” Page 26

“For reasons I described in chapter 1, I do not think the option of same-sex, erotically expressive partnerships is open to the homosexual person who wants to remain faithful to the gospel. Which leaves the gay or lesbian Christian with few options, it seems.”  Page 108

Glimpses of the Hamster wheel gospel

As with any Christian book, I am highly sensitive to what kind of  gospel message is being taught. I was rather disheartened to hear the oft-repeated message that we Christians have to focus our energy on cleaning ourselves up. I call this the “hamster wheel gospel” because this belief makes you run in circles, entrapping you in a vicious cycle. This gospel attaches the concept of repentance to sin and views forgiveness as a constant struggle and search. Wesley writes:

“If we have failed in the past, we can receive grace—a clean slate, a fresh start. If we fail today or tomorrow in our struggle to be faithful to God’s commands, that, too, may be forgiven.”

Dark themes

This book was rather difficult for me to read. I felt depressed as I listened to the endless struggle, as if I was drowning and could not breathe. Wesley seemed to return to the “kamikaze” type thinking throughout the book:

“While taking a German class in college, I learned that in some old Teutonic and Scandinavian religions and mythologies there is an ideal of the “fated warrior.” This is the champion who heads into battle fully aware that doom awaits him at the end. “Defeat rather than victory is the mark of the true hero; the warrior goes out to meet his inevitable fate with open eyes.”  Page 71

“And yet we ache. The desire of God is sufficient to heal the ache, but still we pine, and wonder.”  Page 118

The other dark theme is what Wesley calls “a profound theology of brokenness”. I remember adopting this theology many years ago. But that theology proved to be only a transition into a wonderful new life when my theology of brokenness turned into the theology of transformation. As a young man in his 20’s, Wesley seems to be weaving a cocoon of brokenness around himself. I hope his journey continues and he emerges with the new life of a butterfly.

It is clear from reading this book that Wesley may have the gift of celibacy. But he presents celibacy sometimes as a gift and other times as a ball and chain. I appreciated listening in on his holy struggle.

Many quotes and poetry

Wesley shares many quotes from many people. He especially focuses on Henri Nouwen.

“For several years, all I knew about Nouwen was what I had read in these two books, The Return of the Prodigal Son and Adam: God’s Beloved. Then one afternoon, I was in the library at Luther Seminary in St. Paul and noticed a new biography of Nouwen. I picked it up and started to read, still standing in the lobby near the “new arrivals” shelf. I remember vividly the shock and ache I felt in my stomach, as if from acrophobia or a sudden lurch, when I discovered that Henri Nouwen had been a celibate homosexual and, as a result, had wrestled intensely with loneliness, persistent cravings for affection and attention, immobilizing fears of rejection, and a restless desire to find a home where he could feel safe and cared for.”  Page 88

Desire for companionship

In the end, Wesley asks the right questions and gives the reader a taste of what it must be like to live the LGBT experience.

“All our lives we’re searching for someone who will take us seriously. That’s what it means to be human,” a friend of mine once mused. Whether heterosexual or homosexual, people are wired, it seems, to pursue relationships of love and commitment. Maybe it’s possible to be more specific: it seems that we long for the experience of mutual desire. We’re on a quest to find a relationship in which we can want someone wholeheartedly and be wanted with the same intensity, in which there is a contrapuntal enhancement of desire.”  Page 101

“Is there any legitimate way for homosexual Christians to fulfill their longing—a longing they share with virtually every other human person, both heterosexual and homosexual—the longing to be desired, to find themselves desirable, and to desire in return?”   Page 101

• What are your thoughts, reactions, comments, questions, ideas about this book?
• Have you read Henri Nouwen? What do you think of the discovery that he was gay?
• How have you reacted to anyone around you who is homosexual?
• How will you reach out and be a friend to the marginalized people in your UBF chapter?

My name is Michael Lanier. I am a 23 year old math teacher in inner city St. Louis. I graduated from SIUE last may. I was introduced to UBF through my brother’s doctor John Lee. I was born and raised in Springfield, adopted out of a broken home with my brother when I was 10. My father had passed away when I was 4. My brother would frequently get into street fights and break his hand. The second (third?) time this happened his doctor John Lee invited him to church. I have never been to a bible conference. I have never presided. I have never delivered a Sunday message. I have never married by faith. In fact I purchased this book to know more about married life in UBF. The marriage question has been at the forefront of discussions with nearly everyone I know about UBF. Yes, UBF marriages tend to last, but are they fulfilling? The answer seemed unattainable from missionaries and leaders. This is who I am. This is why I bought his book.

As for the book- it is the story of the consequences of putting ministry over family. This was of genuine importance to me. Mr. Martin states “Family must come first over ministry.” (his emphasis, not mine). 1 Timothy chapter 3 agrees “If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions: A leader must be well-thought-of, committed to his wife…He must handle his own affairs well, attentive to his own children and having their respect” 1 Tim 3:1-4 Later in the book he mentions a pastor who actually stepped down from a larger church because he saw that the eventuality would be the destruction of his marriage. The consequence of this are family problems and eventually divorce.

Another major point Mr. Martin makes repeatedly is that his divorce was for the better. I agree, but I got the keen impression that he was really really trying to convince people of this. Perhaps it is that divorce is so common in my generation that I hardly blinked at the notion. Paul gives abandonment as a valid reason for divorce (1 Corinthians 7:15), and Mr. Martin mentions at least a half dozen attempts he tried to reconcile. His (now ex) wife refused.

The second half of the book recounts the events after his divorce– his reconciliation with his children, and God leading him to an amazing woman named Cora. They met through Genesis study thousands of miles apart! The book concluded with his return to UBF and his complete and utter rejection. The book comes full circle at this point.

One last point I ought to make is this. Mr. Martin makes his intentions clear up front. He does not mean his book to be an attack on UBF. He does this by changing names. The only name he mentions is Sarah Barry. He speaks well of her at this point. My last remark is one I feel he would agree with; that his story cannot be generalized to everyone. The answer to my question on marriage that I gained from this book was such: if God has granted you a beautiful family, perhaps you are called to be a “shepherd” to them first. Perhaps you are not called to be a bible teacher to others before your own family. Paul says in first Corinthians chapter 12 that we are not all called to be teachers. Perhaps this is what he meant by that.

As a personal note to conclude, I have always wanted to write something for this website. I love writing! Recently I was accused of “cult like thinking”. I decided I would rather not write after that. The reason I wrote this is because Mr. Martin himself asked me. I believe that God called me to read this; I am unsure what he thinks of my writing. I know I have not done it proper justice. The story of Cora is too beautiful for me to adequately describe. I am a mathematician at heart– not a poet. It was truly God’s work.

My hope is that his story will move you as it moved me, it will teach you as it taught me, it will reveal to you that nothing can be resurrected unless it first dies. When our world ends, then and only then do we see as Christ saw, feel as Christ felt, die as Christ died on Calvary all those years ago.

“Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

John Armstrong’s Article

In 2007, our friend John Armstrong wrote a series of blog articles about his interactions with ubf. I find it sobering, helpful and intriguing to look back on my comments and other’s comments in 2007. Here are my thoughts today.

John’s good advice

John gave us all wise words to consider back then. I find these thoughts to be quite sobering and true.

“If you are not extremely careful you will project your response toward UBF on to everything that you now think and do as a Christian, responding as if UBF is the whole story of your life.”

“Remember the examples of those who have learned to pray for their enemies as our Lord taught them and us. And recall that even he urges us to do good to those who have done evil to us.”

“This is a primary issue that counselors face every day with adult children who were abused by their parents. The child, who is now an adult, must finally come to grasp a simple fact—¬they may never be completely restored in a healthy way to their abusive parent(s). The child will eventually have to learn to let this go, step by painful step. And the child will also need to forgive the parent without agreeing with everything the parent says or does. Many parents will even deny that they ever did anything wrong at all in such circumstances. Christ wants to heal these types of pains in all of us but we must invite him to do so and pursue him for it in good faith.”

Former member’s comments

The comments by former ubf members back in 2007 were just too much for my small mind to process at the time. I had just finished 2 years of intense ubf defending (2004 and 2005) and thought all the former member stuff was over with. I was wrong. In fact, it was these very kinds of discussions that helped open my eyes to see that former ubf members were not so “evil” or “poisonous” but displayed love and serious concerns.

These comments were very helpful for me:

“Brain, again I recommend that when someone is communicating something regarding UBF, do not reframe it to fit your perspective. Do you think you are the Tom Cruise of UBF? You need to come off your UBF highhorse and stop trying to silence the incredibly apparent dark side of UBF. This is disrespectful, insincere and intellectually irresponsible. This is the same thing your late leader, Daniel Hong did and it is a bad attribute you picked up from him. I don’t need my words respun by you like you are superior to me. You have no idea what I have done since I left UBF so you need to stop trying to infer that we are not doing the work of God.”

“I have also seen UBF Bible students (some of them my friends) suddenly become fearful and suspicious and break-off their relationships with their UBF shepherds. Yes, some began behaving like enemies instead of friends, almost overnight. I know of many who even packed their belongings in secret and left their UBF housing secretly, were never heard from again, were hardly mentioned again except to say that they had “run away” from UBF (UBF leaders’ words, not mine). Why did they “run away?” Because of what they had “seen with their own eyes or experienced themselves” after years of a relationship with UBF. The breaking point was (and still is) often the surprise introduction of a “marriage partner” and the corresponding pressure to get married to this stranger.

And this was long before the Web, email or even fax machines.
The web sites that so trouble UBF leaders have been around only since 2001 and probably weren’t even on the usual Web search engines’ radars until 2002-2003. One might also ask why these UBF recruits are googling for “university bible fellowship a cult?” in the first place.”

My comments

Some of my comments, as I look back, were stupid. I was just plain wrong. One comment however that I totally agree with 100% today just as much as when I wrote it in 2007 is this:

“JCO, you make a good point. As Dr.Armstrong pointed out, love must prevail. Attitudes toward UBF will never unite anyone.

I do see the love of God here in some ways. I see the love of God in Dr.Armstrong’s allowing these conversations to take place on his blog, and by his wise and Godly words. I see the love of God in ChrisZ, JimSL, ExUBF and AndrewP who must care a lot to post such zealous words. I see the love of God in BenToh, JoeS and others from UBF who showed thankful minds and tremendous restraint in not replying with anger or bitterness.

So perhaps we can agree to be united in the love of Christ. In the end, Christ’s love is the one common denominator of Christianity.”

My identity was changing

I can clearly see my cult identity falling away and changing in some of my comments:

“My point of emphasis, and the reason I brought it up in the comment above, is that I strongly believe the Bible should be the center of my faith. I don’t think Luther’s words (or Dr.Samuel Lee’s words for that matter) should be the *center* of my faith. Certainly they are worthwhile for learning and maturity.

I welcome your attitude of love for us “evil, power-mongering, pyramid-scheming, abortionist, divorce-ridden good for nothing, going to hell” UBF members. (I don’t mean to dismiss criticims of UBF here, but at some point I can only laugh and cry at certain attitudes expressed on various comments here. At least I can take comfort in being upgraded from the “Bagdad Bob” of UBF to the “Tom Cruise” of UBF!)”

“When will it end? We in UBF already hear your points. We already are learning, growing and changing. What more do you want?”

My stupid comments

Some of my thoughts were just strange, shallow and borderline idiotic:

“Jim, you crossed the line here. So I will speak up. I respond to your writing below.”

“Another central problem to UBF is the financial unaccountibility.”
>>> Jim, you are on shaky ground here. Do you realize our books have been audited and approved? I don’t know about the Chicago chapter, but the Toledo chapter always gives offering reports and they match exactly to the penny. Please refrain from making generalizations about all of UBF when you only know part of the issue.

“>>> Jim, you are welcome to your opinion. You say UBF is evil. I wholeheartedly disagree with you.”

“As Amy mentioned, we need to consider “the whole counsel of God”.
When I see Matthew 18, the whole chapter, I see the following points:
1) I must learn the attitude of a child.
2) I must learn the attitude of a shepherd searching for lost sheep.
3) I must confront a fellow believer who sins against me.
4) I must not be an unmerciful servant.
What do you think?”

Thoughts about Change

We all are changing. I’ve found the following quotes about change to be helpful on my journey of change:

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” (Leo Tolstoy)

“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”
(Lemony Snicket, Horseradish)

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

(a sermon based loosely on Romans 1:18-32, delivered at Hyde Park on 9/22/13)

The topic for today is wrath. More specifically, the role of God’s punishment in understanding the gospel. This is a topical message, and I hope that you will bear with my ramblings, listen critically, and judge for yourselves whether or not I am being faithful to the witness of Scripture.

The gospel is summarized by John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16) The gospel is good news of love and life. But there’s a flipside to that in certain gospel presentations, that if you reject the good news, there will be “hell to pay.” Sometimes that flipside becomes the main story. As in that famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which depicts the non-believer dangling over a pit of hellfire, held up by only a spider’s web which can break at God’s whim. The message is that, unless and until we believe in Jesus, we are the objects of God’s wrath. ”For God was so ticked off at the world that he gave his one and only Son…” Now some people will say that the Church has gotten too soft, that we have become morally lax and ineffective in our witness because we’ve stopped confronting people with their sin and no longer warn them about God’s wrath. And others will say that we should stop up talking about wrath altogether, because it gives an ineffective and misleading picture of what the gospel is about.

Being raised as I was in the Roman Catholic Church, wrath and divine punishment were very much a part of my childhood education. I was taught that if I committed a mortal sin (such as missing Mass on Sunday) and then died before going to confession, my soul would go straight to hell. In the evangelical world, I heard that God is love, but he is also wrathful; he wants to forgive us of our sins, but he also has to punish every sin, so he decided to punish Jesus instead of us, which satisfied both his love and his wrath. Love and wrath were the opposing sides, the opposite poles of God’s character, as were grace and truth, and those opposing sides were brought together at the cross. Bingo! Problem solved.

That explanation sounded logical, and it was good enough to keep me from worrying about it for a long time. But after two decades of assuming that I had this gospel thing all figured out, I began to have doubts, and I started to notice some deeper contradictions. As I became more honest with myself, a terrible truth started to dawn on me. The truth was: I didn’t love God very much. All along, Christians had been telling me that the gospel brings people to “a personal relationship with God” and “a love relationship with God.” But I began to admit that I didn’t really have that. Don’t get me wrong; I was deeply involved in church activities, I was doing lots of things for God. I was carrying out my Christian duties. But I wasn’t in love with God in the sense that I wasn’t liking him. I wasn’t longing to be with him, to see him, to worship him, to know him. For the longest time, I had just assumed that the problem was me. I supposed that I had failed to grasp the deep truth of the message that was given, that I just hadn’t believed it enough, that I hadn’t tried hard enough, and so on. I put all the blame on myself, thinking that I, as an individual, was deficient. But as the years wore on, I began to notice that lots of other Christians – evangelical Christians, the ones who supposedly “knew the Bible” and had gotten the gospel “right” – were in essentially the same boat as I was. For all our talk about having a personal relationship with God, our experience of God was impersonal, driven by rules and principles and teachings; our worship was intellectual, abstract and sterile; all of that wonder and joy and heavenly sunshine that we promised people they would experience if they “just accepted Jesus as their personal savior” wasn’t fully there; it wasn’t being realized in our lives and in our community.

So I went back to fundamentals. I asked myself some basic questions like, “What is love?” and “Is it possible to love someone if you don’t actually like them?” I decided that the answer to that second question is “No.” If you claim to love someone but you don’t actually like them, then something is fundamentally broken; that love is retarded, it is stunted, and it can’t be fixed by reinforcing the status quo and doing more of the same. And I came to realize a truth I had never known before. That truth is that love requires freedom. If an expression of love isn’t given freely simply because the giver wants to give it, then it’s not love. Many of the gospel presentations that I’ve heard have more than a hint of coercion. “God loves you, and he has a wonderful plan for your life. And oh, by the way, if you don’t accept his offer, you’re gonna burn in hell for all eternity, so you might as well say, ‘Yes.’” Picture a man proposing to his girlfriend. He gets down on one knee, takes out a diamond ring, and says, “I love you more than anything in this world; I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? And oh, by the way, if you say no, I’ll find ways to punish you and ruin your life.” Would that marriage be off to a great start? If the purpose of the gospel is to bring us into a loving relationship with Jesus the bridegroom, then how could such a relationship be established by threats or by force?

The understanding that love requires freedom has enormous implications for how we live out our faith. One of my spiritual breakthroughs, a real “Aha!” moment, came when I read the classic book True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. Early on in that book, he makes a point that is profoundly profound. He say that if you are a Christian, it is not good enough for you to simply do the right thing; you have to do the right thing in the right way and for the right reason. What he means is this. It is possible for any of us to generate good behaviors by our own human strength and willpower. But that isn’t how God’s kingdom operates. To a pragmatist, motives don’t matter. A pragmatist would say, “What does it matter why you do something? As long  as somebody is doing something good, there’s no need to worry about why.” (Some will even support this with Scripture, as Paul wrote in Philippians 1:18: “But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.”)  But in Christianity, the why really does matter. In God’s kingdom, the good works that we do are of no value unless they are being brought forth through the living person of Jesus Christ who has made his home in us – or, in other words, by the active work of the Holy Spirit who is alive in us. The outward fruit that Christians bear must be the visible manifestation of the inner fruit that comes from the Holy Spirit, and according to Paul in Galatians 5:22, the most basic fruit of the Holy Spirit is love.

What I’m saying is this. Whatever we do as Christian life, the motive for doing it must be love. Not a sense of honor or duty. Not a sense of fear. Not peer pressure or groupthink or pleasing mommy or daddy. Not to make myself look like a leader and gain acceptance by people because I do what’s expected and follow the rules. My motive must be pure affection for God and pure affection for others, the pure affection of Jesus that flows like a river from the throne of God into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. That kind of pure love is not generated by our efforts; it is simply a gift. If the reason why we do what we do is not love, then what we are doing is not gospel work. This isn’t rocket science. This is Christianity 101. This is the language of the new covenant (Jer 31:31-34). This is part of what Jesus meant when he said that all the law and prophets, in other words, the whole teaching of Scripture, hinges upon love for God and love for our neighbor (Mt 22:40). The authentic Christian life is motivated by love, powered by love, experienced in love, consummated in love. Love reigns supreme.

I used to think that love was one of the many excellent qualities of God. In western Christianity, there’s a tradition of defining God by listing his attributes. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-sufficient, all-holy, and so on. Who is God? “Well, God is a being with all those attributes. If your walking down the street, and by chance you encounter a being with all those attributes, you have found God!” That understanding of God can be helpful up to a point. But it is impersonal and it falls short when we come to love. The Bible doesn’t merely say that God has love. Scripture says that God is love (1Jn 4:8). Love is not an abstract quality or attribute that a single person can have in isolation from other persons. Love manifests itself in relationships. Love is an other-centeredness that is realized only when others are present.  Unless multiple persons are involved, there is no love.

This is why it’s so important to understand that God is not a single person but a Trinity – three persons, distinct but co-equal, each one fully free and fully God, but living together in unity and dwelling in one another and delighting in one another. When some people imagine God, they picture him as one white haired guy sitting on a throne completely in love with himself and demanding that everyone love him too. But the God of the historic Christian faith is a Triune community of love. So when the Apostle John said, “God is love,” he really meant it.  God’s missional purpose, his plan for us and for the world, flows from who he is. His intention is to draw us into his loving community, to delight in Father Son and Spirit and be delighted in by them as they delight in one another, participating with them to the extent that we can as earthly human beings on in that amazing dance that has been going on in the heavenly realms since before time began. That was the reason why we were created. That is the reason why the kosmos  was created. That is the reason why God incarnated himself to become part of the kosmos to redeem us and all the kosmos. “For God so loved the kosmos that he sent his one and only Son…” (Jn 3:16)

If we want to explain the gospel well, we need to start in the right place. Some gospel tellings start with Romans 3:23, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Sin is a huge part of the story. But we won’t be able to understand sin unless we go father back to see what God was in the process of making before sin broke it. It’s hard to come up with a definition of sin that internally resonates with everyone because, although everyone has some sense of good versus bad, the way people understand good versus bad varies greatly from one culture to another. Western understandings focus on guilt: people sense they are bad when they as individuals break a rule or violate an objective moral standard. But Eastern understandings focus on shame: people sense they are bad when they fail to live up to the expectations of their group and bring dishonor to the family or community. In a guilt society, order is maintained by explicit rules and punishments for breaking the rules. In a shame society, order is maintained by marginalizing and ostracizing people who step out of line. These differences make it very hard for Easterners and Westerners to agree on how to deal with unethical behavior, or even on what constitutes unethical behavior.

The manner in which we understand sin will deeply affect our understanding of biblical terms like justification. Evangelical Protestants tend to explain the gospel in legal or forensic terms. We imagine a courtroom where God the Father is the judge, and we are on trial for everything we have ever done. The evidence is presented, and we are found guilty and sentenced to hell. But just before we are handed over for eternal punishment, Jesus bursts in and says, “I died for his sins! The price is paid!” and we are set free. In this framework, justification means that God declares us as individuals to be innocent of the crimes we have committed. Children of the Reformation tend to think in terms of law, because the Reformation was carried out by lawyers. Zinzendorf, Melanchthon, and Calvin all studied law. They inherited the Western tradition of Lex, Rex (“Law is King”) which supposes that people of all standing, even rulers and kings, must submit themselves to legal principles and be punished in a fair and impartial manner if they disobey.  Now if you take this western legal understanding of the gospel and bring it to eastern cultures which operate on a system of shame and honor, a great deal will be lost in translation. This is one of the issues that the UBF ministry has been wrestling with, and we need to better understand what is happening here if we are going to develop a workable ecclesiology, a system of church governance that sets the ground rules by which we operate. But I digress.

Kingdoms of the west maintain the social order by rules, guilt and punishment. Kingdoms of the east have developed elaborate systems of honor and shame. So what about God’s kingdom? How does it operate? If the kingdom of God is the realm of the Father, Son and Spirit, it must function as the persons of the Trinity relate to one another. Is the Father ever ticked off at the Son? Does the Father say to the Son, “Don’t ask questions, boy, just obey”? Do the Father and Son draw up rules for the Spirit and say , “Holy, we want you to go into the world and do this, because this is safe, but don’t ever work that way, because that way is too unpredictable”? In the first three centuries after Christ, the Church Fathers had passionate, heated debates about this, sometimes resulting in fistfights, because they sensed they needed to get it right. They were not arguing over esoteric abstractions. They were grappling with the most basic question, “How does the kingdom operate?” They looked carefully at the apostolic tradition, including the writings of Paul and the Upper Room discourse of John 13-17. They struggled to find just the right words to describe who the Father, Son and Spirit are and how they relate to one another. What they said, in essence, is that the persons of the Trinity never bind one another, never lord it over one another, never impose rules or obligations or guilt trips or manipulations of any kind. Their relationship is one of complete equality, complete freedom, complete openness and honesty, complete unity in the midst of creative diversity, to the point where they are not simply admiring one another from a distance but actually getting inside of one another and indwelling one another in an atmosphere that can only be described as pure joy.

The persons of the Trinity are doing the “happy dance.” As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Their delight in one another is so infectious that it bursts out of them in creative energy that produces new life. Think of what happens when a husband and wife who delight in one another and come together in freedom and just do what comes naturally; their passion leads to babies. Babies are amazing.  From the moment they come out of the womb, they are an explosion of joy and wonder. The are little autonomous beings who want nothing more than to just be with people and thrive on the receiving and giving of love.  We are the children of God, the babies of the Trinity. God’s whole purpose for us is to draw us into his everlasting happy dance and experience a baby’s pure love and joy and wonder.  The dance that God intends for us is not on some pie-in-the-sky heavenly cloud, but right here in this world, in this physical, natural environment that he created us for and that he created for us. Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In light of this understanding of how the kingdom operates, we start to realize that the views of guilt and shame that dominate the cultures of west and east fail to describe the full scope and tragedy of what sin has done. Sin is something like a cancer which has metastasized, twisting and distorting and injecting hurt and pain into every aspect of that happy dance for which the children of God were created – our relationship with Father, Son and Spirit; our relationships with one another; our relationships to ourselves; and our relationships to this created world. In our fallen state, we come together and try to perform damage control in these various areas using the tools of social engineering that our parents handed down to us. Some of our solutions are quite creative and work better than others. But in the end, none of our treatments can cure us or truly heal our relationships. And may I suggest that many of our deficient understandings and outright misunderstandings of the gospel stem from taking our personal and cultural ideals of what a good, orderly human society or church ought to look like – all of our creative strategies for sin management — and forcibly projecting those views onto God’s kingdom, rather than stepping back and asking God with open hearts and minds, “Lord, how does your kingdom operate? Reveal yourself. Show me how you work.”

When we ask that question and go back to Scripture, we gain insight upon insight. There are so many ways to describe about how God brings his kingdom to us and us to his kingdom.  Those insights from the Bible tend to come not so much in the form of doctrinal statements that we are told to just accept, but as colorful stories, narratives and parables that we hear and chew on and discuss with one another until they take root in us. The key figure present in all those Scriptural stories and parables is a single character, a man named Jesus, who has been revealed as the Messiah by virtue of his suffering, death and resurrection. When we approach Scripture as Jesus and the apostles taught us – a method that can be described as “forward and backward” – when we read it prospectively in its original historical context, and then re-read it retrospectively in light of the historical experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection and ascension – then we gain glimpses of how that kingdom is already breaking into this world and into our experience if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

God’s kingdom is already fully realized and fully present in the person of Jesus. Jesus is fully divine and fully human. He is all God, all man, all the time, and two natures in one person, and the divine and human are always in harmony, never in conflict. Where Jesus is, there is the kingdom of God, insofar as human beings can experience it. Since Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he is no longer here in bodily form. He has promised to return to us in the flesh, and when he does we will be together with him and experience the full reality of the kingdom in our spirits and our bodies. Until then, while we wait, we have his presence among us in the body of the Church through the activity of the Holy Spirit, whom Paul described as a seal, a downpayment , an arrabon (engagement ring), a foretaste and sure promise of the kingdom life that is to come (Eph 1:13-14).

Now when the Holy Spirit comes to us, his intention is not to throw us into a fog of guilt and shame. Nor does he want to terrorize us with fear. Nor does he come to us chains of slavery, with long lists of rules and conditions that we need to fulfill before we measure up to God’s standard. Scripture is very, very clear on that point. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Sonship, the polar opposite of fear, the one who unites us to Jesus and enables us to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Ro 8:15, Gal 4:6).

To conclude this sermon, I want to return to the subject of God’s wrath. That word, which basically means anger, appears in the Old Testament (NIV) 152 times, and in the New Testament 29 times. I believe Scripture is divinely inspired, and I believe that word is an accurate reflection of how human beings in our fallen state experience God as he works to reveal himself to us in our context. I find it extremely fascinating how often the psalmists use wrath in ways that, in light of the teachings of Jesus (for example, in the Sermon on the Mount) are distinctively unchristian. For example, in Psalm 79:6: “Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge you, on the kingdoms that do not call on your name.” And Psalm 69:24: “Pour out your wrath on them; let your fierce anger overtake them.” And Psalm 6:1: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” The psalmists appear to be totally in favor of God pouring out his wrath, as long as God does it on other people and not them. This is often how we feel, and it is an accurate reflection of how fallen human beings sometimes pray. But this is not the teaching of Jesus; he commanded us to love our enemies. I have found a similar spirit at work in certain kinds of gospel preaching: the idea that God’s wrath is being poured out on other people, on people outside of the fold, on people who are not seen as God’s people by virtue of their beliefs and behaviors.

But when we turn to the New Testament, we see a distinct shift in the frequency and manner that wrath appears. In the NIV gospels, Jesus used the word only twice: Once in Luke 21:23 when he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, and again in John 3:36, when he’s speaking to Nicodemus: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”  Colorful and intense preaching about God’s anger, the kind that appears in Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, is very rare in Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel. In Jesus’ parables, he does occasionally speak of God’s judgment, but it tends to be against God’s people who refuse to forgive and reconcile with one another (Mt 18:34), those who claim to be Jesus’ followers but refuse to show love and mercy to people in need (Mt 25:46), and against hypocritical religious leaders who misuse their positions if authority and abuse people under their care (Mt 24:51). I have not yet found anyplace in Scripture where Jesus applies wrath and anger against nonbelievers, pagans, Samaritans, Gentiles, tax collectors, public sinners, or anyone who lies outside the boundary of those who were considered God’s people at that time.

The most systematic development of God’s wrath that I see in the New Testament appears in Romans 1:18-32, where Paul declares, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” I won’t take the time to go over the details of that passage, but I will comment on the big picture. Paul says that God’s wrath “is being revealed.” He uses the present perfect tense to indicate that it is going on now. How is God now revealing his wrath? Is he bombarding us with pestilence, famine, earthquakes and tsunamis? As the passage progresses, Paul explains how God is pouring out his wrath. Three times – in verses 24, 26, and 28 – Paul says that God “gave them over.” In response to human wrongdoing, God gave them over to sexual impurity, to shameful lusts, to a depraved mind. The response is not an active, willful punishment by God, but a removal of his protection that allows people to go out from his presence to experience the consequences of sin on their bodies, their minds, their families, their society. If God’s loving design is to draw fallen human beings into joyful relationship with him, with one another, with themselves, and with the created world – and if love requires actual freedom — then it makes sense that God’s wrath would be to give wayward people what they are asking for, to remove his hand of protection, and allow the forces of sin to metastasize in them and in the world, leading to horrendous and deadly consequences.

I believe this picture of God’s wrath, a wrath that is more like the passive flipside of love than the active retribution, is fairly consistent with how God dealt with sin throughout the Bible. [Note to self: I don’t think it explains everything in the Old Testament; there are still difficult problems in the OT that none of us seem to understand very well.] I can see this picture in the Levitical system of animal sacrifice. Animals offered for human sin as a picture of atonement, but the animals were simply killed; they weren’t tortured to death. Above all, our understanding of God’s love and wrath must be shaped by what happened at the crucifixion. At the cross, God allowed Jesus to experience the full cup of suffering, to taste God’s wrath and experience human death. At the cross, I do not see the Father actively meting out punishments against the Son. I do see a Father who has apparently forsaken the Son, removed his hand of protection from him, and allowed the forces of darkness to take their course, as sinful human beings do unspeakably cruel things to Jesus.

In conclusion, I do believe that a violent form of wrath that we perceive as punishment is sometimes part of our human experience. It is how fallen people often deal with one another. It is how we may perceive (or misunderstand) God’s working as he breaks in to our lives. I do believe that God gets angry, but his anger flows when things and people he loves dearly are being devalued and destroyed. God is love. He is not equal parts love and wrath. His wrath flows from his love.

Our tendency to think of God as equal parts love and wrath may also stem from our tendency to “flatten” the Bible, to read the Bible as though every part of Scripture is equally important, that every verse no matter where it is reveals God’s character to the same degree and with the same clarity. We tend to suppose that every psalm, every chapter in Leviticus and Numbers and Judges and Jeremiah, carries the same kind of surface-level revelation of God’s character as, say, Jesus’ teaching in the Upper Room.  The Old Testament passages about holy war and genocide are read the same way and given the same weight as Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. But that is not the way that most Christians have always approached the Bible. Many Christians throughout history have understood the Bible as God’s progressive revelation of himself. As the story progresses, the portrait of God being painted through his written word becomes clearer and clearer, and culminates when he himself shows up as Jesus, the living Word.

And [I owe this insight to pastor Greg Boyd] we need to remember that the Bible is a story with a surprise ending. In a typical movie, the story marches along, and the plot takes various twists and turns. But some movies hit the audience with a big surprise at the end. A good example of this kind of movie is The Book of Eli. As you watch that movie, the plot unfolds, and there’s plenty of excitement and action. But in the final moments of the story, the last sixty seconds, something is revealed that is totally unexpected, and that revelation causes you to go back and reframe and reinterpret everything that came before.

The Bible is that kind of story. The Bible shows in human language how God works through the nation of Israel to reveal his salvation plan. But when the Messiah shows up, some things happen that are totally unexpected. First, he looks like a very ordinary man. Then he is rejected, he suffers and is put to death on a cross. Then he rises again; his body comes to life and bursts out of the tomb. He appears to his disciples and then ascends bodily into heaven. Then he sends the Holy Spirit upon the Church and the good news is spread to the Gentiles. All those happenings were totally unexpected, and what you then see in the epistles is the early church trying to make sense of what just happened; and  the authors of the New Testament go back and reframe the entire Old Testament in light of the historical realities of Jesus’ death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost. If we stop flattening the Bible; if we stop treating all passages in the same way regardless of their historical setting and genre; if we realize that God’s ultimate revelation of himself is not in the written word of a document but in the living Word who is a person; and if we believe that the kind of love that characterizes God is defined by the cross; then God’s wrath and love start to come into proper focus.

In closing, I believe, as the Scripture testifies, that the death of Jesus is a substitution; he died for us (Ro 3:25-26). But that isn’t the whole picture. Scripture also testifies that it is a union; at the cross, he died with us, and we died with him; on Easter he rose with us, and we rose with him (Ro 6:1-14). The Christian rite of baptism, the initiation into the family of God, has always been seen as a baptism into his death and resurrection, an initiation into a relationship where we die with him and rise with him. The atonement is“for” us but it is also “with” us. So that we may be “in” Christ and Christ may be “in” us. So that we may join with one another in that everlasting union, that eternal happy dance, with the Father, Son and Spirit. Glory be to God.

My Jonah moment

Translating the Hebrew. An interesting aspect of the book is that the author used his own translation of the Hebrew to more clearly convey its sense of poetry, imagery and flow. Though he “sacrificed the English to serve the Hebrew,” he made it a fresh reading of a familiar book. Also, the summary bullet points at the end of each chapter are very helpful and useful.

Highlights and insights. The exegesis often addresses our heart’s deepest motives. They are also foundational for a proper preaching of the gospel and teaching of the Bible.

All humans will be judged by the Law. “Their evil has come up before me” (Jon 1:2). God takes our sin seriously and so should we. God holds people accountable for their actions. Yes, God is the God of mercy and grace–toward Jonah and all people. But God’s grace does not remove his hatred for sin, nor erase his determination to punish those who persist in sin (Rom 2:6-8)–including Jonah. The right way to preach the gospel is to begin with this foundational truth. Only when people understand God’s holiness and see their sin in light of that holiness will they also understand their need of a savior.

The servant of God, Jonah, became stupid (Jon 1:3). None of God’s people are without sin. We will never be completely free of sin until Christ returns. When he fell into sin, Jonah became really stupid thinking that he could “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1:3). Though he knew the Bible and knew better, he acted in violation of everything he knew and believed. This is what sin does to our intelligence.

It is impossible to escape from God because God rules over all, including the forces of nature. When Jonah fled from God, God actively “hurled a great wind onto the sea” and “the ship considered breaking up” (Jon 1:4). The language is evocative. Nature does not act on its own. The power of nature and even the ship itself submit to God in putting an end to Jonah’s vain effort to escape from God. There is no situation over which God does not have control.

Our sins have consequences and we cannot escape the consequences of our actions. Jonah’s sin brought disaster to non-believers (Jon 1:5). His sin made him escape reality, become indifferent to the troubles he brought on others, and made him unable to pray (Jon 1:6).

The servant of God, Jonah, was acting irresponsibly and was severely rebuked by non-believers, yet he did not care (Jon 1:6-8). Christians should be a blessing to others. But when we fall into sin, as Jonah did, then even non-Christians seem far wiser and even “more spiritual” than us. This should greatly humble us.

The servant of God, Jonah, was evading responsibility and remaining silent for as long as he could (Jon 1:6-8).

Through non-believers, God helped Jonah to confess who he is, what sin he committed, and what should be done to him (Jon 1:9-12). Without any choice left, Jonah accepted responsibility and submitted to the punishment he knew his sin deserved (Jon 1:12). This is a fundamental gospel principle–recognition of sin and of the fact that our guilt renders us liable to punishment. Though this is an incomplete view of the gospel, it is often a necessary one at the beginning of our journey toward Christ. Before we understand the magnitude of God’s grace we need to understand the greatness of his anger and the weight of our own sins. Learning to recognize our sins is how God works in all of our hearts to lead us to know the depth of his love and grace for us.

Jonah repented when he realized that God did not destroy him by treating him as his sins deserve (Jon 2:1-10). In his distress, he remembered the Bible verses in Psalms that he knew by heart as a prophet of God. He realized that though he brought this trouble upon himself, God was merciful to him. He knew that though he should have died for his sin, yet God saved him. His prayer shows his understanding of salvation that is not due to man’s merit or effort but entirely due to the grace of God (Jon 2:9). Because of God’s saving grace, he also vowed to make good (Jon 2:9). Repentance is not simply a verbal acknowledgment of sin, but an actual change of one’s heart and actions.

When Jonah simply spoke the message that God gave him (Jon 3:1), a national repentance and turning to the Lord happened (Jon 3:1-9). Jonah’s message was a message of judgment: “Forty more days and Ninevah is destroyed!” (Jon 3:4) It is rather simplistic, unimpressive, rudimentary, crude and judgmental. But when he did just as God said (Jon 3:1), a national repentance and revival broke out (Jon 3:5).

Exemplary leadership from a pagan king: Repentance happened “from the greatest to the least” (Jon 3:5b). It is interesting that Nineveh’s king, a pagan ruler, exemplified godly leadership, by humbling himself before God and his people (Jon 3:6-9). The king did not think of himself, his dignity or his privileges. He approached God with a deep sense of sinfulness, in shame and sorrow for sin. “This is how things should be. Leaders are supposed to lead in spiritual and moral matters, although it is precisely those who lead that often find it most difficult to accept responsibility. It is hard to stand at the peak of the pyramid and admit your weaknesses. It is tough, when everyone’s eyes are on you, not to hide your sins. But in Nineveh, repentance began ‘from the greatest’ and proceeded ‘to the least of them'” (Jon 3:5b). “This should be the process in every context. Leaders and all who are looked up to need to set an example by leading others in the ways of God. They should be the first to accept criticism, the first to examine their ways, the first to admit their own faults and to correct them. A people, a church or a family will seldom be better than its leaders. Good leaders will strive for spiritual and moral perfection, and will seek purity of motive and action.” This quote about leadership is my favorite quote of the book, though it is not the main theme of Jonah.

The servant of God, Jonah, was so angry that God blessed “others” (Jon 4:1-11). Chapter 4 is the heart of the book of Jonah. It reveals the punch line, the book’s central lesson. We should learn what God taught Jonah and draw important conclusions for ourselves. Mainly, Jonah’s response to the grace of God on “others” (the world) was one of anger, resentment and bitterness (Jon 4:1-3). Is he any different from the the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son? From the Pharisees? From US?? With Ninevah’s repentance, “God repented of the evil he had determined to do to them, and did not do it” (Jon 3:10). But Ninevah’s repentance “was to Jonah a very great evil, and he was angry” (Jon 4:1). Jonah was furious. He was saddened. He refused to accept the grace shown to Nineveh and charged God as being wrong, though he knew exactly who God was. He prayed, “Please Lord, was this not what I thought when I was still on my land? This is why I at first tried to escape to Tarshish, because, I knew you were a merciful and gracious God, patient and full of grace, and that you repent from evil” (Jon 4:2). Despite Jonah’s horrible attitude, God is stubborn in his love and did not leave Jonah in his sin but continued to extend grace to him (Jon 4:5-11).

Some closing questions:

• Are we not often like Jonah?
• When God blesses those (like Ninevah) who have hurt you and others, are you angry? Do you have a right to be angry (Jon 4:4)?
• Is there anything that God does that you consider inappropriate or unjust?

I have very good news. One of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell, rediscovered his faith in Christ. He wrote What the Dog Saw, Outliers, Blink, Tipping Point and David and Goliath. I love this author because he is a true journalist and looks at the phenomena of the world without bias and prejudice. He looks for patterns and is not afraid to apply his findings from the beginning to the end. Many of his discoveries go against the ideas of society. For example, his book Outliers undermines the American definition of success. He claims it is not simply about hard work day in and day out; it is also about being born in the right place and right time. He is a superb writer and has refreshing perspectives on many subjects. Really everything and anything can be any interesting with a good writer/critical thinking.

I was touched by his return to the faith. It was while he was writing David and Goliath. The premise of the book is how David had all the disadvantages, but he still overcame Goliath. When Gladwell saw an ordinary couple doing super natural out-of-the-ordinary things, like forgiving the murderers and rapists of their daughter, it struck him. Where does this power come from? He came to the logical conclusion: supernatural power can only come from a supernatural force: God.

Recently, I read another book called, The 100/0 Principle. In this book the author explains the secret of success to every relationship. It is to take 100% of responsibility for the relationship and have 0% expectations from the other half. He shares multiple stories of times when this principle overcame icy relationships. Usually when people are treated this way they melt and change, but it is not easy. While reading it, I was persuaded by this counter intuitive approach to relationships and I want to incorporate in my life and my everyday relationships. But where does the power come from. How can I GIVE MORE AND EXPECT LESS?!

The math is lacking. There is no logic. Why should I give and give and give when others only take and take and take? I am going to run out of gas. A side note the author gave is that this principle might not work with those who lie and steal from you. He advises his readers to be wise when acting with people like that. But what about that couple from David and Goliath who forgave the murderers of their daughter? They had no expectations from the rapists. They forgave the people who deserve their love and forgiveness least of all.
Another principle the author, Al Ritter, constantly repeated is this: Our relationship is more important than who is right or wrong. The one thing that gives life meaning are relationships. Think of your favorite memories. Don’t they all involve people, those who are closest to you? What would it be like if all our relationships with those around us were healthy? It would be absolute heaven on earth.

I also like how he explains the difference between awareness and choice. I am aware of my judgmental and critical attitude towards others. But I have the choice to act according to my automatic response or to use the 100/0 principle. I thought this point was especially insightful because the 100/0 principle does not come naturally to me and it probably never will. This book has a freeing effect. It showed me that I don’t want things that happened 10 years ago to be affecting and intoxicating me now. Yes, there have been those who have harmed me, wounded, lied to and stole from me. But I want to practice this principle towards them (or do I?). I want to save the relationship, if it is redeemable. Life is too short and my sphere of influence is too small to burn bridges with anyone.

How is is even possible? I need to fill up on Jesus’ love. I know that I am the apple of his eye. I know that he is protecting me. He never allows me to go through something I cannot bear. I know that God is good all the time and that all the time God is good. I will leave room for God’s wrath. I also value my relationship with God so so so highly that I will not allow anyone or anything to get in the way of it. Recently I have begun to understand Lk 14:26. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” I love God to the point that my affection for anything else comes across as hate. It is hard to understand but out of my love for God I act kindly to those around me. Especially towards those who hurt me the most. I act cordially to them not out of a love for them, not for them at all, but only for God. They can perceive it as love and maybe it is love, but it doesn’t come from me naturally. Maybe in the future it will come naturally? Or maybe love really is a choice, as the saying goes?

I am glad that I am learning this now. Soon I will be moving to a new country (actually not a new country because it is my passport country, but I haven’t lived there for 10 years). It will be like a new beginning. I want to invest in good relationships. Another piece of good news is that one of my other favorite authors, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan (has nothing to do with the movie) is friends with Malcolm Gladwell. While reading Taleb I always wondered if he and Gladwell would get along because there would be some ideas in Taleb’s books that seemed to disagree with those of Gladwell. But they both share the courageous drive to write what others disagree with and disdain. They are not afraid to dispute the society’s pillars of thought and I admire this. Taleb talks about dealing with PhD’s and big shots of the world and how he enjoys watching them squirm and be uncomfortable. Taleb does not make assumptions about anything. He is ready to look at every topic freshly. I want to learn this. In life sometimes David does win (maybe all the time?). Goliath can huff and puff and sulk and pout, but in the end truth will be self-evident. Who will be left with their head on?

What do you think of the 100/0 principle?

There is a book making rounds among many churches by John Bevere called “Under Cover: The Promise of Protection Under His Authority.” It’s been some time since I left UBF, but I certainly do have heart for the many individuals that remain in this ministry, not to mention the many new believers whose first Bible study takes place in UBF. In this series I am simply going to present several short articles going through Allan Clare’s review of the “Shepherding Movement” from the 1970’s and its connection with John Bevere’s 2001 book “Under Cover.”

I hope this will help those who see this series understand some of the structural flaws that lead to spiritual abuse, and other issues in UBF.

In this first installment I will just highlight main points from Allan Clare’s review of the book, in particular the first two chapters. The full review John Bevere called “Under Cover: The Promise of Protection Under His Authority.” is relatively short:  Allan Clare Review (pdf)

I. A Little History: The Shepherding Movement

Anyone who has been in UBF for any time at all should feel there ears tingle when they hear something like “The Shepherding Movement.” It is a movement very similar to what is found in UBF. So similar that I’m amazed I haven’t seen UBF mentioned as a group that continues its practices. Hopefully we can learn from their mistakes. Here is some of the history that Clare provides:

The Shepherding Movement emerged as a nondenominational movement in 1974. Four Charismatic Bible teachers formed the movement, which spread and was taught by thousands all over the country.

The teachings of the Shepherding Movement emphasized: authority, submission, discipleship, commitment to covenant relationships, loyalty, pastoral care, and spiritual covering. One David Moore puts it, “…the need for discipleship through personal care or, as they termed it, ‘shepherding’ care… a believer was to submit to a ‘personal pastor’ [i.e. a shepherd] who would help the individual develop Christian maturity.”

The rise of the Shepherding Movement alarmed many, particularly because it produced stories of abusive authority, hyper-submission, and controlled lives.

The founders realized that their teaching produced problems and cases of spiritual abuse, and they openly repented and asked forgiveness from those harmed. Bob Mumford, one of the founders publically repented saying, “some families were split up and lives turned upside down. Some of these families are still not back together.” They admitted that the movement causes, “an unhealthy submission resulting in perverse and unbiblical obedience to human leaders.”

Moore again says the Shepherding Movement, “…created a propensity toward an abuse of spiritual authority, especially among young immature leaders, or leaders who lacked character and integrity… the emphasis on hierarchically oriented submission to God’s delegated authorities led to many cases of improper control and abusive authority throughout the movement.”

II. From Shepherding to “Under Cover”

[Still from Clare’s review]

Bob Mumford, one of the four Shepherding Movement founders, distributed his teachings through issues of New Wine magazine, which focused on the need for practical obedience to God and submission to his delegated authority in all spheres of life.

Despite the near history of the Shepherding Movement and all the issues it caused, in 2001 Thomas Nelson published John Bevere’s “Under Cover” a book which promotes Bevere’s own teaching on authority, submission, discipleship, commitment in covenant relationships, loyalty, pastoral care, and spiritual covering.

The book has spread through Charismatic churches and other church accustomed to top-down, hierarchical models of church leadership [i.e. UBF].

Mary Alice Chrnalogar writes: “…since many leaders in the Shepherding Movement admitted doing wrong, various people who continue to use the same methods have begun to give different labels for the same actions… The errors are covered in many different terms like delegated authority, covering, unquestioned submission, covenant, commitment to a fellowship, etc. Terms change from time to time. Submission may be called ‘commitment,’ ‘covenant relationship’ or ‘divine order’ [or ‘spiritual order’] in church government. Many times terms aren’t used at all; it is the actions that tell you what is going on.”

Although Bevere doesn’t use the term “Shepherding” in the book “Under Cover,” the main focus is obedience to delegated authority [i.e. church leadership].

These are the main points in the first two chapters of Clare’s short essay. Hopefully some interest was sparked about the Shepherding Movement and this book “Under Cover,” and how it relates to the methods practiced in UBF. We can learn much from other people’s mistakes. Sometimes our own errors are most obvious when someone else, like Bevere, promotes near identical teachings in a more direct way. This way we can see them as they are instead of in the hidden / subliminal forms they most often take. What do you think? Does the Shepherding Movement sound similar to church UBF style? Are you already familiar with Bevere’s book? If so, what can you share?

Previously, I reviewed The Social Network (friendship must communicate inclusivity), The Descendants (forgiving love in the face of betrayal) and Django Unchained (exacting justice where every bastard gets his due). Gravity examines grief and loss and the mastery of life in the face of impending death, which the movie presents with spectacular visuals and authentic human emotions portrayed by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Next weekend, I hope to review the second Hunger Games movie.

The unbearable pain of loss. (Spoiler alert. Stop reading if you have not seen the movie and intend to do so.) Sandra Bullock and George Clooney become lost in space after being hit by exploding shrapnel from another space station. Three others on their team were killed. Clooney, the seasoned astronaut who would retire after this final mission, was a good mentor (shepherd) to Bullock, since this is her first space mission, and she is freaking out. To help her calm down, he asked about her life. She shared that she had lost her four year old daughter in a freak accident. Ever since then her life as a scientist has been a blur. She just unquestioningly accepts her boring daily routine to pass the time without reflection so as to numb herself from experiencing the unbearable pain of losing her daughter. Being lost in space appropriately represents her life being detached and lost on earth ever since she lost her only child.

A sacrifice for the sake of another. During a critical moment where both of them might die, Clooney sacrifices himself so that Bullock might survive. He represents a seasoned person who has resolved his life issues, so that he has no hesitation whatsoever to lose his life so that someone else might live. It was a poignant touching moment that would resonate with any human being who still has breadth.

Facing death. Bullock has to now survive on her own since her mentor is no more. During another critical moment she cries out in prayer for her life and says, “..even though no one ever taught me to pray.” In desperation, she cries out for supernatural intervention. In the final climatic scene of the movie she would either survive and have a hell of a story to tell, or she would be incinerated in ten minutes. And then she laughs with a resolve that seems to say, “Here goes.” She has surrendered her life and sees both options–either surviving or dying–as totally acceptable and happy. I believe that this is how each and every person wants to die–delighted that we live, and totally content if we die or lose everything. It reminds me of Paul who said, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). Nothing and no one can ever defeat or demoralize or destroy one who has no losing option, since both options are a joyous gain and victory. It also reminds me of Shadrach, Meshah and Abednego before they were thrown into the fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 3:16-18).

Are you happy to live and gain everything, as well as equally happy to die or lose everything? Any answer short of an unequivocal “Yes!” will lead to fear and a suboptimal life.

Dear Cincinnati UBF and all in UBF:

It has been over a year and slowly God has revealed to me the truth about UBF and it’s practices. UBF is abusive to families and to children and to many students in the name of raising disciples and living under the dome of truth. I could write a fifth book about all the abuses that I have personally suffered under you as God’s servant and the bad theology and the anti-family mentality in the framework of UBF. It is hard to see this truth while living under the leadership of UBF but I saw it in Cincinnati and was afraid to speak out because of the control and because I was taught to never forget God’s grace which was more of a control mechanism than a love for God.

God is faithful. He is slowing healing our family and He has delivered all of us in healthy churches where children are not neglected in the excuse of doing ministry and spouses openly show affection to each other and the Bible is not used as a tool just to make people to be committed to UBF and its practices. God delivered me like He did Job after taking everything away from me so that I could finally see the truth. I have my ex-wife to thank for this and my daughters. I have a deep concern for the marriages and families in UBF. There is much pain and abuse in the name of doing God’s work. The abuse is real and I learned it from you as my shepherd. The UBF heritage is not God and there are so many healthy and vibrant churches all around who live in love not judgment and condemnation. God is love. The general atmosphere of UBF is like modern day proud religious leaders who need to repent.

I am currently writing a fifth book to set the record straight and to reveal God’s love and faithfulness. UBF only thinks of UBF not the millions of Christians around the world who are doing great work of God and not lording it over the flock. Once you told me that if I ever left, you would refund every penny I gave for offering in Cincinnati UBF. I feel the money was given to a very unhealthy ministry but I gave it first to God so please keep it. Yes, I met Christ in UBF and I learned the Bible much but the years of abuse and bad teachings under the UBF heritage eroded our family and your example on how to raise families is unacceptable. UBF is broken and many ways unhealthy for students, families, and even in the world. Those who speak out are branded as “evil” or “Satan” workers but in fact they are saving their families from more abuse and they are trying to show prayerful criticism which is healthy for a church if it wants to stop its abuses.

Recently, I learned that Dr. Samuel Lee even encouraged abortions which is wrong and contradicts the gospel of love and family. This mentality has carried over to you. Once you tried to stop me from having 5 children, now I see why because UBF does not believe in big families or even honor families. It is condoned to neglect your children to raise disciples even to this day. Meetings are so rigid and abusive. I remember the day you put pepper and onions in my brother John’s eyes when he did not cry during a testimony and I should have left then but I got so stuck in your way of serving God. This was wrong. My shepherd promised me a new truck on graduation and he never delivered. So many broken promises and I was so in love with God and the Bible that I overlooked these things but when my family was taken from me God opened my eyes. Since we left UBF, our family has been weighed down with much counseling and joining a healthy church has helped us to discover that there is no love in UBF but just unwritten rules left by a dead man, judgment on other Christians, and everyone there seems to be trying to work there way to heaven by numbers and raising disciples that they are truly out of the healthy balanced life of a true Christian. This is not the gospel of love. We have spent over $30,000 in counseling fees getting some assistance from the government. We feel this should be made good to us by UBF.

As far as your life, I do not believe you are healthy spiritually and that you are wrapped up in the UBF system that your prejudices are deep against other Christians and the body of Christ. The day you asked me to leave you said, “They teach bullshit.” As a man of God, I see that UBF needs healing and reform and needs to learn to love: beginning with the family unit and the children. Examine this area because there is a reason why God took us away. Please honor God’s family and don’t make parents guilty because they can’t make it to the meetings or can’t give large offerings. Stop making leaders to abandoned their children to attend all your meetings and to seriously restore the family units in Cincinnati and throughout UBF worldwide. God has made my life a voice of change and growth in UBF rather you like it or not. Stop trying to hide the abuses. You could not handle the truth of what happened to us so you sent me away and told me to keep my mouth shut. Big mistake because the gospel is larger than UBF and the church is wider and higher than the UBF heritage. God has set us on a path of peace and healing and He will finish what He has started and UBF must change. He has blessed me with an amazing new wife in His grace and He never stops working no matter where you end up. God is love.

I pray that you may reexamine your life and practices in light of the gospel and get rid of the abuse that is so much in UBF ministries world wide. I write you today as a voice of deep concern and pray that immediate action will be done for the sake of families. I write this with prayers and tears but deep concern for the families in the UBF system. It is time for UBF to repent and stop burdening those with your rules that you yourselves can’t bear. I pray that this Christmas the families may be honored.

In Christ,

bigbear

Though I do not know who Ronwad Thicke is, I usually enjoy responding to comments made about me, especially those that are not complementary, because they are simply a lot of fun. I especially love his statement that I “still cannot help but fall on (my) own sword for Samuel Lee.” By the way, I think that some traditional UBFers would love such a statement, though I seriously doubt that they would believe that it is true of me! Anyway, here is my brief response.

I attended the memorial service because I was personally invited to attend by a son-in-law of Samuel Lee who has always treated me graciously and warmly. Did I consider not attending this service? I do not know. But since I was personally invited I did not have any hesitation whatsoever to attend.

Besides being personally invited, why did I attend the memorial service? The primary reason would be the fact that God used Samuel Lee in countless ways to influence me toward a Christ-like life from 1980 when I first became a Christian to 2002 when he died. Though it freaked me out at the time, Lee helped me to marry by faith, which was the best thing I ever did, after accepting Christ as my Lord and Savior. Beyond that, Lee had the single most profound influence on my Christian life. Despite his authoritarianism, his life was the most formative, foundational, positive, spirited and inspiring Christian influence on me. He prompted in me my love, delight and study of Scripture (Ps 1:2). He repeatedly stressed an intentional life lived for the kingdom of God (Mk 1:15) through making disciples (Mt 28:19), which I love to this day. Therefore, in his mentoring of me over the last 22 years of his life, I am profoundly grateful and thankful for his endless and tireless labor, love and prayer for me, my family and my fellowship (1 Th 5:18).

Yes, there are things that I do not agree with nor approve of that were done by him or other UBF leaders, such as recently shared about in Toledo or Yekaterinburg or the way some leaders think that it is their absolute God-given right to dictate and control the marriages of their members in the name of marriage by faith, as though that is an absolute non-negotiable biblical mandate. From time to time I will seriously address them in person, privately, publicly, unashamedly, clearly and repeatedly (much to the chagrin of some current UBF leaders!). UBF should know that they taught me doggedness to the point of death (Rev 2:10)!

I know full well that I am threading a very delicate and fine line. I love my brothers and sisters who are still in UBF. I also love those who were hurt by UBF and have since left UBF. More and more I also wish to get to know and love non-UBF Christians and especially non-Christians. Obviously, I do all of the above imperfectly, poorly and quite messily.

In my mind, I believe that my participation at the memorial service simply reflects my love, gratitude and respect for my former mentor, his family and current UBF people.

I do not believe that I compromised my Christian faith nor advocated bad and unbiblical practices. Am I? If I am, then I stand to be corrected and exhorted (as Ronwad Thicke did).

How An Older Christian Can Be An Effective Member In An Intergenerational Mission Team

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35).

In June 2013, I was blessed to be part of an exploratory team to Northern Canada to explore the feasibility of sending missionaries to the Aboriginal people. There were five of us. Two of the members, the pastor and myself, are in our forties. The other three were in their mid twenties. We were all from the white, middle class suburbia of a Midwest university town nestled in the midst of corn fields. The trip lasted for eight days. We drove together for 15 hours, stayed in hotels, in two cabins, road in a train for 18 hours, and drove home 15 hours. We were in close proximity. We had many things in common, like a common faith in Jesus and a common calling to the North and a desire to serve Christ in the region. But there were differences. There was a generational difference; a difference in our theological training, the pastor has a Phd and heads up a 300 member non-denominational Bible church. I am a lay person in the church having experience in “tent making” and “house church” ministry, and the younger people are Campus Crusade for Christ grads and receiving missionary training at a missions agency. We are different and we would never have to face these differences and grow through them unless we were flung into a mission together, by God. The eight days of being in close proximity was indeed a blessing and a growing experience which I thank God for. I profoundly learned so many lessons about being an older Christian on an intergenerational gospel mission team and I was inspired to share what I learned through my experience. This article will touch upon nine areas that people need to concern about when they become part of such a team. They are:

1. Realize that there is a generational gap;
2. Find God’s will;
3. Be  a team supporter;
4. Serve others;
5. Be ready to sacrifice;
6. Think about the needs of other members in the team;
7. Have a spiritual relationship;
8. Build honest and sincere relationships;
9. Control your sinful nature.

May God establish countless intergenerational Gospel mission teams so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ may spread throughout the world.

Part 1: Biblical Foundation for Operating In an Inter-generational Gospel Team

As a key verse for this article, I chose John 13:34-35. I think this command is the basis for any ongoing team effort to reveal Jesus to an unbelieving world. In this passage, Jesus gave his disciples a new command. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disci­ples, if you love one another.” (ESV) Until now the disciples had concentrated on their personal relationship with Jesus. Each one had formed an intimate relationship with Jesus. But now it was time for them to learn to love one another. It was time for them to care for one another, overcoming any self-cen­ter­edness. Jesus wanted them to love one another as he had loved them. This is the power source of loving other believers that we are called to work with.

It was not easy to love each other. The disciples had come from varied backgrounds. They were from different age groups. They had different preferences and pet peeves. They were living in close proximity for over three years. It might have been very hard to learn to love one another. Peter and John competed with each other to receive Jesus’ love and to be recognized as leaders. They would both have to learn how to humble themselves to love the other person and build him up. Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot were natural adversaries. But Simon would have to learn to curb his patriotism and Matthew would have to learn how to sacrifice for the sake of others. How could they possibly learn to love one another? The key…remembering Jesus and how he had loved each of them.

Jesus’ command to “Love one another” is not an option as a Christian. They had to struggle to love one another as an absolute command of Jesus. In other words, in any circumstance they had to love one another. We live in a generation that is motivated by feelings. Many people are will­ing to love others when they feel love in their hearts. But we cannot obey Jesus’ command only when we feel like it. We must obey this com­mand even when we don’t feel like it.

By loving each other with God’s love, all people will know that they are disciples of Jesus. When the love of Jesus circulated within and among them, they could have Jesus in their midst and thus reveal Jesus’ love to the world. Even though Je­sus would not be with them in the flesh, the Spirit of Jesus, which mani­fests the holy love of God, would be with them. The Spirit of Jesus’ love would mark them as unique among all people in the world and people would take notice. And that is why, loving one another with God’s, unconditional, holy love, is so important. It is the way that God wants to advertise the gospel to those whom we are called to share it with.

Part ll: Learning How To Apply Jesus’ Command In An Inter-generational Team

I thank God for the opportunity to learn some of these principles of living as a team of Jesus’ disciples, when I went on the eight day exploratory journey to Northern Ontario. The nuances of team building became very real to me. I discovered many things about myself and areas that I need to grow in. I want to share the things that I learned, as an older disciple, with you.

1. Realize that there is a generational gap.

To all you older Christians, you are not as “in the know” as you think you are. There have been advances in technology that I am not even aware of. The younger people had constant access to their smart phone. If we were having a conversation, it was a matter of seconds before the correct information was accessed on their phones. When a question came up they reacted quickly with the exact answer backed up by a web site. If directions were needed, the exact directions are summoned within seconds, by the young person. This can be very disconcerting, even threatening, to an older person, who is used to being the expert in knowledge among younger people.

There is also other media. In the truck we were sharing our music. I didn’t know I could hook my iPod up to the stereo system. To the young people, it seemed like second nature. It made the older person feel a little more out of the mix. I need to realize that the young people are more capable than someone twice their age in many areas. Be up on the latest technology. Young people will spend hours to try to find a connection. They will walk in a rain storm to find a connection. Respect that. They will be able to find any street in any town, anywhere on planet earth. They will be able to do things with car stereo or a smart phone that you would never dream could be done. What does this mean practically? Allow yourself to be humbled by their accuracy and quick answers. Just look, listen and learn. Determine to be on a continual, lifelong learning trajectory. Learn to be quiet…listen and learn and realize that you are in need to be taught by young people.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reads, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:” There are seasons even in your life in ministry. You may not think that you are on the way out…but you are. In one sense we are on the way out in a certain season in our lives, but entering another season. We tend to think that we will always be the leaders blazing the path. But we are being phased out of certain areas of ministry to become engaged in another. That is good news actually. Be aware of what season of life you are in and serve God accordingly. Beware of always remaining in the same season decade after decade. The more mature Christians may be able to offer things like advice, counseling, and wisdom, and serve in supportive functions, that comes from being twenty years or more ahead of others on the journey of life.

There is a certain season that you are in, that God wants to use you in a unique way.  People in the 70’s are now using their connections and relationships they have built over the years to introduce younger people to the mission field.  They are providing the expertise, the recommendations, the education, the cultural sensitivity training. The people in the 40’s to 60’s are forming the new networks. They are supporting the younger missionaries. They are opening up the roads to the mission field and in some cases holding out the vision and providing the support.

I know from my own family, the kids are learning from experiencing life with us. But they are more interested in their parents playing supportive roles and learning from their example. That could be a good way to think about how to mentor a new generation of missionaries. Borrowing an analogy from a friend’s description of Native ministry, mentoring could be like taking off in an airplane. The younger Christian is in the driver’s seat. They take off. They fly the plane and land it. The more mature Christian is in the passenger seat with his hand ready to take control in case of danger or an emergency and to give advice when asked. What do you think of this analogy? Is it appropriate in mentoring this new generation of missionaries?

Being aware of the generation gap, we need to make efforts to bridge that generation gap. Take time out to listen to other peoples’ music and appreciate it. The preferences you have are formed by your experiences. They grew up experiencing other things. They may not feel the same way about Eric Clapton or Keith Green as you do, nor should they. When we were riding we were listening to the Trews. (http://www.thetrewsmusic.com/) The younger people listened to a whole Eric Clapton album.  Be willing to let go of control of the music to the younger people. Don’t impose your preferences too much. Listen to others and respect them their choices. Give honor and deference to those whom God is raising up. And to be certain, that person will be younger than you are.

Don’t just groom a young person so they can be just like you to take your place of leadership in your idea of ministry. They do this in countries like Cuba. Let the young people be who they are. The world is different place than when you were a young Christian leader. The culture is changing. The younger Christian knows how to navigate the culture, without compromising the gospel, better than you can. They are coming onto the scene with a whole bunch of skills that the mission desperately needs. (That you can not even conjure up.)

Accept the fact that there will be different ways to live out a devotional life while on a team. I come from two decades of group, formal, morning, prayer meetings, singing out of a hymnal and praying from lists of prayer topics. My choice in doing devotionals is group oriented and formal. On the exploratory team I brought a hymnal with me. I was expecting to sing with others. But this was not the case. I discovered that young people are not into singing hymns together from a hymn book. And do you know what? That is OK. I need to be broad minded and accept all forms of personal devotion while living as a member of a team. I just took my hymn book, went to the edge of the forest and sang to God, the birds, the insects and the trees. It was very comforting.

Don’t become angry when faced with generational preferences being expressed. I have known a church dividing when the younger generation wanted to express their faith in a new way. The older generation became inflexible and even angry at the prospect of change. This turned off the young people. I think it is because the older peoples’ reaction robbed them of hope. The church lost 40% of their members because of the older generation’s lack of flexibility. In the words of the band REO Speedwagon, “turn the page and roll with the changes.”

2. Find God’s will

We must find the Missio Dei, for each of us, personally, and engage in it. God is growing his church and be content and patient with what God is doing in your life and you ministry. Don’t get ahead of the Spirit. Trust God and pray through each step of the next leg of your journey.

Don’t push your own personal goal and agenda. I mean, don’t project your own dreams for your ministry on others. Accept what God is doing in the hearts of the people who have been brought into your team. Accept what the people are offering. This is a very personal to me. I am a father of five and I was heading up a single family house church ministry for twelve years with my family members being the main players in ministry. I was projecting my own hopes for my ministry on them, with no concern about what God wanted for them. I cared very little about their personal calling. The end result of this venture was constant demands, judgment and criticism. It led to broken relationships with those close to me.
But God came to my rescue. A very wise, senior missionary lady gave me advice. When I was inquiring how to apply basic rules in my home, she told me to let go of my rules. She meant to be graceful, trust God and let people be free to follow the Lord as they have been called. I was so enmeshed in my old way of thinking that it literally took me two years to get out of it. At first I was losing all hope for ministry. But God helped me to stop projecting my hopes and dreams on others. On this last journey I could begin to understand God’s purpose in all of this. By his grace, I could become a more graceful mentor to younger Christians. I could be used by God to nurture what He is doing and not what I want to happen. I can let God be God and let people grow according to his grace. I still have a long way to go, but I praise Jesus for leading me on this path and using this exploratory journey to teach me why all of this was happening to me over the past two years.

3. Be a team supporter

Like I touched up in the previous section, maybe God has been preparing you, as an older Christian, to mentor and support young missionary teams with much prayer, grace, service and support. This is an excellent way to be team supporter. Listen to how Paul and his team supported the new believers in Thessalonica, “You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. ¹¹ For you know how, like a father with his children, ¹² we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.” 1 Thess 2:13-14. (ESV) Not that the other members of the team are children, for they are not, but the point is, older Christians are called to certain role within a team.

Older Christians can be good counselors. I saw the importance of this on trip. Young people want someone to talk to. They are searching for their calling. They want to know how and where to devote their energies. They want to bounce their ideas off of someone. They want feedback. Who doesn’t want all of these things? That is why they will benefit from older Christians to talk to. Older Christians need the confidence to be able to talk to the young people, meeting them where they are and helping then to talk through various issues. They must know they have something valuable to share and engage in conversation. After all God didn’t infuse 40 to 50 years of experience into your life for nothing. Share it with others.

If you can not counsel, then you have to make a supportive environment.  Set the example for others. Participate with your whole heart in worship, prayer, evangelism, outreach and giving. The young people are watching and learning from the older Christian.

Find your unique roll in the mission. The older Christian may not be called to go to an inaccessible region (or maybe they are), but they may be very effective in creating a home base for further operations. The years of experience will have made them better diplomats. They may be very effective in networking with area Christians and churches. I could see this as my role as an older Christian.

The older Christian may be used to be a visionary, planting that vision in other peoples’ hearts. Act 2:17-18 read, “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; ¹⁸ even on my male servantsand female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” We can see these verses working out among the members of our team. God’s spirit is being poured out on all. The young members of our team are full of vision to see the Gospel expand to remote places in Northern Canada. The older members of the team also have visions to see a vast network formed and a mission’s movement formed among the members of the local churches. Both groups want the word of God preached to the people of this present generation.

As we follow the Missio Dei, we may frequently ask ourselves, “What next?” The older person may be the one to present informed options and direction as to where to turn next. They have the experience.

4. Serve others

The older Christian has a great opportunity to serve others on the team, learning of Christ. Luke 22:25-27 reads, “And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. ²⁶ But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. ²⁷ For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” (ESV) It is easy for the older Christian to expect to be served while on a team. After all, they have spent decades being served by their spouses, children and possibly even the church. After a while, serving may not come naturally. They may even feel that serving in certain ways may be beneath them. But Jesus says that the greatest among us is the one who serves, no matter what the age. Being on a team is an excellent opportunity for the older Christian to serve the younger members of the team. One should be ready to serve, taking up the humble role. Here are some examples I learned to serve on our team: make the hotel room a home away from home. Make the whole experience as comfortable as possible. Wash the dishes without being asked. (even the pan nobody wants to touch.) Clean the grill. Cook a meal.  Offer to buy coffee or a doughnut for someone. Pray with other team members. Provide counseling or a listening ear. Carry some bags. There are countless ways to serve others in Jesus’ name.

5. Be ready to sacrifice

John 15:12-13 reads, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Laying down your life for your friends involves denying yourself. There are ample opportunities to practice this while on a team. I am the kind of person that easily goes into sensory overload. When I do, I want to shut down and retreat to a quiet place to recoup. When I am networking with other people, sometimes I feel like I cannot engage in another conversation or visit another person. But that may not be possible on a team. Sometimes I didn’t feel like going to visit another person. I just wanted to do back to my hotel room and rest. But I learned that one way I could lay down my life is to remain engaged when necessary, going that extra mile. What about denying your own ideas and opinion and plans?

Give of your money. It is going to cost you to engage in mission with a team. There is not only providing for your needs, like housing, food and transportation, there are also costs like paying for dinner with someone you hope to network with. When one person is going to pay for the meal, God may be moving your heart to contribute to covering the cost. On one visit, $40 was given to the coffee fund of people whom we visited. There are offerings at the churches we visit. You will need a lot of money. The older Christian usually has more resources and income. The younger members are trying to raise support. Stinginess is not conducive to being an older member on a Gospel mission. Be willing to sacrifice. Give it up older Christians!

6. Think about the needs of other members in the team.

There are intergenerational needs.  If you are older you need to consider yourself like an older brother or sister on the team.  With this in mind, try to relate and talk, engaging individuals in conversation.  Pray for others. Don’t be isolated or individualistic. After all you are part of a team and the greater Christian family.

Keep your shared living space clean. You are not living by yourself. You are living temporarily with someone you barely know. Think about that.

As an older Christian, consider your snoring. If you are older and little over weight the chances are you snore and the other younger people do not. Tell the other person, “It is ok to hit me with a pillow if I snore.”

Be mindful of others family relations. If you are driving by the town of a team member ask them if they want to visit their family member. Take a little time out to think about their social needs.

7. Encourage one another in a spiritual relationship

Team members could encourage one another spiritually. 1 Thessalonians 5:10-11, “who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. ¹¹ Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” and Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (ESV)

A team is a perfect place to encourage one another. We were in close proximity for eight days. Matt, my roommate, prayed together for several nights. We could encourage one another by setting the example for others. Set the example in prayer, in worship and in participation. Get into discussions. Get into the group. An older Christian may provide printed learning material, but don’t push it on others. Develop it and present it and allow people to digest it as they desire.

8. Build honest and sincere relationships

If there is one thing that younger Christians want are open and honest relationships. Older people don’t want to share their struggles with younger people. But especially in regards to a team, they need to.  Share about your personal struggles. Be real. People appreciate authenticity. They may even identify with you in your struggles and your struggles may help to show them the way.  After all you are 20 years plus ahead of them on their journey. I was blessed when one girl asked my “Story” while were eating. It was a way that I could share my life testimony on how I met Jesus. I could also share my feelings. When I felt like “shutting down” I told others how I feel. I think they appreciated that.

Don’t always be so serious. I believe Jesus laughed a lot. Laughing is from God. Laughing is good for you in so many ways. On the team we had a lot of good laughs. We shared about some awkward experiences in ministry. We laughed about mosquitoes. We confessed what was on our I-pods. There were times when we laughed until we were in tears. As an older person on a team, show your humorous side. Cut a few jokes. If you don’t know any equip yourself with an internet search. A little humor goes a long way.

Sometimes we feel awkward communicating. But my advice is keep communicating. God will help you to relate.

9. Control your sinful nature

When we are on a Christian mission, there is always a spiritual battle going on. 1 Peter 5:8 reads, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (ESV) Every team has a prayer and goal to reveal Jesus and to proclaim the kingdom of God. But be aware that there are spiritual forces that want nothing more than to destroy the fledgling work that God has begun to grow through your team. Paul says it well when he states in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ^“ (ESV)  We need to always be aware where the battle is being fought. The schemes of the devil almost always occur in the battleground of our own hearts and minds. The arena can be within the interpersonal relationships of our own team members. But there are some ways to thwart the devil’s schemes.

Some ways are revealed in Ephesians 6:10-13 which read, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. ¹¹ Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³ Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”(ESV)

First, Ephesians 6:10 reads, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” This battle is between powerful spiritual forces. We can never stand our ground without depending in God. We must know the fragility of what you are trying to accomplish through our team. For example, harboring negative emotions like, pride can bring everything down. One moment of expressed anger can ruin decades of future co-working. These are things that we find hard to control and may well up in a moment’s notice. Paul exhorts the Ephesians to be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Our God is the Almighty Creator of the heavens and the earth. He is alive and active in his creation. He has a deep concern for his people and listens attentively for their prayers. He is ready, willing and able to help us be spiritually strong. It is his might working in us. May we always depend on the Lord.

Second, we must put on the full armor of God. Look at verse 11, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” It would require a whole other article to describe each piece of the armor. But the point I would like to make here is that God provides pieces of spiritual armor that are effective in protecting us from forces of evil. They are put on through faith. The armor that God prescribes is complete and we must don the whole outfit. Again, we must depend on God and what the Lord has provided.

Third, “Having done all”. Look at verse 13, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”  Knowing that God is there to defend us and knowing that the armor he provides is all sufficient in defending us against the devil’s schemes, does not excuse us from engaging ourselves in the spiritual battle. Verses 13b, “…and having done all, to stand firm.”  God does not just want us to lay there like dead fish floating downstream. He wants his people to be like living fish, swimming upstream. We can stand by engaging our faith. This involves many things, but some basics are prayer, which should be like breathing for us, studying the word and putting it into practice, reversing the trend towards isolation by building relationships, loving and serving one another in Christ’s name, trusting in God, seeking his wisdom and so on and so on. We should not do these things sluggishly or casually, but “Having done all”.  Apply your God given passion.

Fourth, be strengthened in the grace of God. Read Paul’s advice to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1-3, “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, ² and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful menwho will be able to teach others also. ³ Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” (ESV) Be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. We must take deep root in the grace of Jesus. What has Jesus done for each of us? He has granted us the complete forgiveness of sins. He has brought us into his kingdom and with it, eternal life. He is guiding us along the most blessed, fruitful path as we are passing through this world. He floods our hearts with, love, hope, truth, revelation and meaning. He brings convergence in our lives. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! God is good. Knowing the gifts that have literally been poured out on us, though we are undeserving, is pure grace. Being able to be part of an intergenerational team is pure grace. Knowing what we have been saved from, were it not for the grace of God, and being filled with thanksgiving, is part of being strong in the grace of God is all about. This is one way to stand against the devil’s schemes.

When we are on a Christian mission with others we must know ourselves and our sinful tendencies. Know that you have a tendency to be judgmental, competitive, and attention seeking. Here are a few of my spiritual weaknesses that I discovered in myself as I participated on a Christian team.

Don’t compete. I wanted to compete with others in my heart. Don’t do this. Those with 20, 30 or 40 more years more experience with the gospel may be more skilled and have more experience, but you must know that you are not the future of the mission, the younger person is. Anyone with a PhD knows that the more they learn the more aware they are of what they don’t know. Greater learning should make one more humble and dependent on Christ. The younger person’s passion and exuberance, along with their vision and ability to navigate the culture will trump your experience. God will move in the hearts of those we are called to minister to better than you can ever do. For example, I have heard it said that the average age of people in First Nation’s communities is fifteen.  Who are they going to relate to better, the 40-60 year old Christian or the 25 year old Christian couple? The answer is obvious.

Don’t envy. The young person may be more formally trained. They may be getting more attention from the other leaders (for they are the hope of the future), but don’t envy. The older Christian’s role is very important. It most likely will be a “behind the scenes” supportive role. But it is vitally important. Even if you don’t receive the recognition that you think you deserve, you are appreciated and are helping to lay the foundation for future missions. You may be in a different season of life. God wants to use you in different ways. Accept that. Don’t be envious of others whom God is using in different ways. They are in another season of life. They have another calling. Don’t reminisce about the past. Be content with how God is using you now and wants to use you in the future.

Don’t project your own hopes and dreams on others. Here is a big one that has tainted relationships for me in the past. Don’t push your own goal and your own agenda on the younger believer. Accept what God is doing and what people are offering. If you have your own goal and time table, you may find yourself pushing people with unreal expectations and even becoming angry, judgment and disappointed with other people on a daily basis. The younger person will sense this and become resentful or feel pushed into doing something that is not actually from God. They may do things to simply to please the older Christian. That will never be a lasting work of God. It is artificial. You may be projecting your own goals even while losing touch with the culture that is developing around you. Remain humble and keep in step with the Spirit.

Trust God’s Timing, and not ours. Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed. Matthew 13:31-32 reads, “…The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (NIV) When a farmer plants the seed, he plants in faith. He knows that the seed has such great potential. He trusts God, that when he plants the seed and waters it, it will produce a crop. But time is needed. “When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.” (1 Cor 15:37) God gives the seed a body as he has determined. It happens in his way and in his time. A few seeds have been planted. Now God is making it grow. We need to just pray and wait in the Lord to unfold things as he has determined. Now is the time to enjoy watching the seeds that were planted as they bear fruit. That is the attitude we must have in regards to our approach to being a member of a Christian team. We must be patient with what God is doing on the mission field and also in peoples’ hearts, especially in the hearts of each team member. Always remember the words of Paul, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (ESV; Php 1:6)

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I want to refer once again to our key verse John 13:34,35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (ESV)  On a Christian mission we are all part of a team. We are disciples of Jesus called to proclaim the kingdom of God together. The best way to do this is to love one another. If we love one another with Christ’s love, then we can have unity and as we serve the mission, the whole world will know that we are disciples of Jesus. We can present the Gospel with a united front and the world will listen. Coming into close proximity, in a Christian team, makes loving one another more difficult. Having people from differing generations adds to that difficulty. But when we come together with faith in our hearts and with a desire to glorify Jesus, God will help us love one another and glorify the name of Jesus together.

A Clear ubf Teaching: more work=more blessing

This ubf teaching is “based on the Bible”. Matthew 25:21 says, “His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord”. The ubf chapter director taught us many times that:

“The kingdom of God is not communist, it is capitalist. It is a kingdom of justice. So the more you work the more you have. The more you do to feed sheep the much reward you will receive from God in heaven. There is no equality in the kingdom of God. The more one served on the earth the more he will have in heaven. The more you serve on the earth the higher you’ll have the position in the kingdom of God. And who serve God more than ubf missionaries? Nobody! Many have become even enemies of the cross. But ubf missionaries sacrificially serve God’s world mission. They will have the highest reward in the kingdom of God and will be the rulers over many”.

I want to provide some practical application of this ubf teaching which the director also gave us. Once I fished a new sheep. And the director told me “to give the sheep to the missionary because he will serve the sheep better than you”. I asked a simple question, “Why?”. So there was a special meeting in the chapter to help this proud shepherd. Four Korean missionaries and one proud Russian shepherd participated. The director asked the shepherd, “What do you think who is higher and better before God: a missionary or a native shepherd?” The shepherd answered, “I believe that a man can become a shepherd or a missionary only by God’s grace and in this grace missionaries and shepherds are equal”. The director said (or rather yelled)…

“What?! How could you even think this way?! You are proud like Satan! A shepherd can never become equal to a missionary, never! Every missionary sacrificed his homeland, left his country and went to another country as a missionary. This alone makes every missionary much higher than any shepherd before God. And what, do you think that a shepherd can become equal with a missionary in the kingdom of God?! Never! Missionaries sacrificed more and that’s why before God whatever you do you will always be lower than missionaries! You are just a shepherd, a low soldier, and missionaries are like generals”.

Then the director explained to me that because I cannot become equal to a missionary then it doesn’t matter if I give my sheep to the missionary. I should devote myself to more fishing (anyway my heavenly reward will be low no matter what I do).

Another missionary told me that if I give a sheep to the director then God will give me two other sheep instead. This missionary had already given his two sheep (who were shepherds at the time) to the director and was never able to fish a new sheep since that. The director never had a sheep whom he fished himself. He simply took all the sheep in the chapter to himself. And he said very often that he raised many disciples in Russia, “not like you, lazy shepherds who are busy with I don’t know what! You are cursed because you are not fulfilling your mission and are more busy with your jobs!”.

A servant among you?

Another basis for the teaching is John 13. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. Then He said, “Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet”. And “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him”.

The director taught us in this way:

“Look, I serve the whole chapter with the word of God and deliver the messages every Sunday. So I am like a servant among you. You are like masters. But who is higher before God: you or me? Of course it is me because I serve you”. Then, “Look, the servant is not greater than his lord. It is the same as in a family. Father brings his son up. He wants his son to grow up well. But whatever the son does he will be always the son. He will never become equal to his father. He will never become greater than his father. I see that you can become a great servant of God but for me you will always be like a son and I will always be like a father for you. I can have peace and not be afraid of your spiritual growth because you can never overgrow me. And you can grow only when I grow and train you well. So if you grow that means that I grow even more and train you well”.

The kingdom of unity and equality and love

Last week we had a group Bible study about the kingdom of heaven. And we talked about the beauty and attractiveness of God’s kingdom. We thought about the unity and equality and love in the Trinity of God. The kingdom of unity and equality and love is very attractive. Everyone would want to live in such a kingdom. It is the true paradise. And if a church is at least like a shadow of this kingdom of God then many people would want to be part of the church, part of the brotherhood of love. But I said, “You know, Korean missionaries believe that there must be hierarchy in the church and there will be hierarchy in the kingdom of heaven. They believe that they will have very high positions in heaven and will rule over many simple people like we are. So if that be true would you like to enter such kingdom of heaven and live there forever?”.

Guess what the reaction was… Everyone agreed that such a kingdom with Korean rulers would be very unattractive. And everyone agreed that this hierarchy and lording over and pride of Korean directors led the native people out of the ubf chapter. (btw if you make a google search for Presbyterian churches in Moscow you will find about 60 of them and absolutely all of them have Korean pastors/directors and mostly each of them consists of only the Korean pastor’s family. These churches with Korean pastors don’t attract anyone in Moscow and it is not difficult to guess why).

As I thought about this ubf teaching, I began to understand why ubf directors act the way they act. They will never wish to “let the natives lead” and will never wish to let the Holy Spirit lead and will never wish to let Jesus be the King and the Lord in the life of believers because if they let they will lose their reward in heaven. If they lose their high directors’ positions on earth then they believe they will lose their high positions in heaven. If they lose their authority on earth then they will be simply losers, in this life and even in the life everlasting. I understand why ubf directors like being in photos so much (in the special places of honor and leadership), why they like reports so much. I understand why there is such a competitive atmosphere in ubf. I understand why ubf like to pray about numbers.

Do you share the Korean missionaries’ beliefs about the kingdom of God? Do you think these beliefs are based on the Bible? Would you like to participate in the competitive and number seeking labour and other ubf activities? Is the kingdom of God more like capitalist or communist?  Is the kingdom of God more like the Trinity or like an eternal hierarchy? Is the kingdom of God more like Christian or Confucian? Would you like to join or stay in such a Korean church with such a teaching and beliefs?

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path

Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, has two prominent features. First, it is an acrostic poem. It has 22 stanzas corresponding to the 22 characters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each verse within a stanza begins with the appropriate character. Second, nearly every verse of this psalm contains a reference to Torah. The psalmist refers to Torah by various terms which, depending on the English translation, are rendered as God’s word(s), his law(s), precepts, commands, statutes, decrees and promises.

Among conservative evangelical Christians, Psalm 119 has two common and related interpretations. This psalm, together with other passages such as 2 Timothy 3:16 (“All Scripture is God-breathed…”), Isaiah 55:11 (“…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire…”) and Psalm 19:7 (“The law of the Lord is perfect…”), are often used as proof-texts to establish doctrines of the Bible’s divine inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy. Second, this psalm is often used by pastors and teachers to exhort people to read, study, memorize and meditate on the Bible. The psalmist is held up as a positive role model for us to follow in our attitude and approach to Scripture. Psalm 119 is seen as a Christian love poem about the Bible.

Indeed, the psalmist’s relationship to the written word seems to be nothing short of infatuation. Consider verse 48:

I reach out I reach out for your commands, which I love, that I may meditate on your decrees.

Or verse 62:

At midnight I rise to give you thanks for your righteous laws.

Or verse 97:

Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.

Constant study and meditation on scripture is said to yield countless benefits in the life of a believer; it leads to purity, delight, wisdom, strength in the face of opposition, comfort in suffering and trial, the sure promise of salvation, and so on.

Before I continue, please allow me to say this. It is an excellent thing for Christians to read, study and meditate on Scripture. I believe that a life immersed in Scripture, when done in a sensible and proper way, is a truly blessed life. Regular Bible reading, Bible study, Bible-focused prayer, and Bible-focused worship are invaluable spiritual disciplines that draw us into fellowship with God. My intention is writing this article is not to discourage anyone from studying the Bible, but to promote a deeper understanding of Scripture and encourage Christians to approach the Bible with greater care, thoughtfulness, and respect.

Having said that, I will now raise some objections to the traditional understanding of Psalm 119 as a declaration of unbridled love for the Bible.

I have discovered that, as Christians read this Psalm, they often perform a mental substitution. When they encounter one of the synonyms for Torah – God’s word, his laws, commands, precepts and so on – they automatically replace each of those terms with “the Bible.” And without thinking too much about it, they simply assume that the author must be talking about same book that evangelicals refer to as “God’s instruction manual for our lives.” Reading “the Bible” into the verses of Psalm 119 can be helpful up to a point. But it distorts the poem and misrepresents how it would have been understood by the original hearers, because the Bible simply did not exist at that time. The Old Testament as we know it did not exist at that time. Scholars agree that the books of the Old Testament were not arranged into a fixed, authoritative canon until the final centuries before Christ. Even the Torah (i.e., the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible) may have undergone some editing during and after the period when this Psalm was composed. The process and timing by which the books of the Old Testament were compiled, edited and fixed is not fully understood. Regardless of how it happened, we may be certain that whenever the psalmist referred to God’s word, God’s commands, God’s law, and so on, he was not talking about the Scriptures that Christians have today. Inserting “the Bible” into each verse of Psalm 119 is an anachronism. It extrapolates beyond the author’s intent. It assumes that whatever role the Torah played in the spiritual life of the psalmist, the Bible should play an equivalent role in our Christian lives today. Whether or not that assumption is correct, it deserves to be recognized and examined.

I believe that the best guide to how Christians are to understand and apply the Old Testament is in the New Testament. Jesus taught his disciples that the Old Testament is all about him (Luke 24:27). The New Testament authors describe Jesus as the fulfillment of the Torah (Matthew 5:17), as the Word made flesh (John 1:14), and the exact representation of God’s being (Hebrews 1:3). I would argue that, if Christians are going to perform a mental substitution as they read Psalm 119, it would be more appropriate to insert “Jesus” rather than “the Bible” into every verse.

Another reason why I resist inserting “the Bible” into every verse of Psalm 119 is that it may promote unhealthy and unbalanced approaches to Christian discipleship. The greatest positive contribution of evangelical Protestantism to the larger Body of Christ has been its high regard for Scripture and its emphasis on Bible study and Bible teaching in community and individual life. But the movement’s strength can also be a weakness. If study of Scripture is emphasized to a degree where other spiritual disciplines and crucial aspects of the Christian life are neglected, believers can get stuck in an overly intellectualized, impersonal, principle-driven and non-experiential faith that substitutes abstract learning for personal transformation. The evangelical passion for Scripture can morph into a kind of Bible-worship that has been called biblicism, Bible-only-ism and bibliolotry.

Disciples of Christ are supposed to model their lives after Jesus, not after the Pharisees, scribes or teachers of the law. Jesus certainly knew the Scriptures. The Old Testament figured prominently in his childhood education, worship, prayer and teaching. But the gospels do not show Jesus or his disciples devoting endless hours to private or classroom-style exposition of the Bible. Jesus modeled a healthy Christian life that kept the necessary spheres of work, study, rest, worship, compassion for the poor and needy, contemplation, recreation, etc. in a healthy balance.

When we approach Psalm 119 – or any other chapter of Scripture – I think it is best to view the passage in light of the great themes of the Bible, in light of the whole sweep of God’s history from and the continuous experience of God’s people from Genesis to Revelation. When viewed in that way, Psalm 119 is much, much more than a love poem about the Bible and an exhortation to study Scripture. I will attempt to explain this in my next installment.

I cared. I still do. I love each and every one of these people deeply. I love each and every person in Toledo UBF deeply. It pains me even more deeply to see the flesh of the Body of Christ torn asunder by the abuse of power and authority and by the apathetic attitude of the very people who call themselves shepherds. 

I also care deeply about the “giants” who also left. The last leaders to leave Toledo UBF were the “ancestors”–the Gambers and the Wilsons (If they or others share something with me I reserve the right to post a “part 3” here)

My resignation as director of Detroit UBF came after over 4 months of intense discussions. I tried everything I could to bring attention to the problems these friends were expressing. I sent over 500 emails. My wife and I met SB in person for over 6 hours. I drove to Toledo. I later drove to Chicago.

I couldn’t believe I was witnessing the same pseudo-religious, political manipulations I had witnessed during the departures of 13 prior leader families who had left Toledo UBF from 1990 to 2007. In fact, I was stunned to see that I was watching the 1990 events all over again.

During  my last UBF worship service in Toledo UBF, I left early. Before I left, I said to the person sitting next to me who had experienced much anguish over these events: “I won’t let this go”. To this day, two years later, I’ve kept that promise. So without further ado, here is our story. Please listen. Please do not pour salt on our wounds. Please see our concerns.

A 14 Page Letter

“See previous 14 page letter and Emily’s letter. We did it, it wasted my time.”
–submitted by TF

Letter to the Committee 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Recently it was asked in the Committee meeting what issues I have that have led to my decisions and current separation from Toledo ministry. I would like to share those reasons clearly with you. I share them in the spirit of love and hope.

My primary concern with Toledo UBF is the ministry of God’s word. Since November, I have had a large burden on my heart about the word of God that was being preached in the Sunday worship service. On many occasions, I felt that the gospel was not being made clear and that God’s grace was often overshadowed by our works. Frequently the emphasis is on our response, what we do. It is often expressed using words like “must” “need” “absolute.” The problem is that these words are condemning unless the focus remains on the love and grace of Jesus. Because as we all know, our works must flow out of love, not even out of obedience. It is a careful balance that must be maintained every day.

For example when we studied John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” the emphasis was on the command “do not” instead of God’s invitation to trust in him instead of worrying. The idea that we can “not” worry by our own effort, by our faith, by our strength, by obedience to God’s command, takes away our very need for a Savior. God knows our hearts are troubled so He invites us to trust in him. Similarly, when we studied John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” the focus was on the word “must” not the word “love.”

As Paul writes, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2). Even if we could never worry or constantly even treat everyone well by our own behavior, Paul makes it clear, it is worthless without Christ’s love being at the center. The focus on what we should be able to do by faith, out of obedience, becomes a source of condemnation if it is not intimately tied to Christ’s love. These may seem like small semantic problems but they are not small when the result is an unclear gospel and feelings of burden and condemnation.

I believe that the balance of faith and works and love in our ministry is in trouble and I think that the root of that problem is in the ministry of God’s word. For several years, we have gone from messenger to messenger as Pastor Paul has travelled. While this in itself is not a problem, the inconsistency and the lack of time people have to meditate the passage, but more importantly the amount of freedom that messengers have in allowing the Holy Spirit speak to them and deliver the message that God gives them. Instead, an oppressive control seems to restrict the work of the Holy Spirit in our messages. My burden about this and its effect on Toledo ministry became so large that Tuf and I addressed our concerns with Pastor Paul a few months ago. However, this issue has not been adequately addressed or changed yet.

This is also true to our bible studies. A few Saturdays ago, I realized how unacceptable it is to continually reuse the same question sheets year and year, often giving and receiving the same answers. I often here “senior” leaders saying things like, “I have studied this so many times. I did not really receive anything new.” But as we know, 2 Timothy 3:16 reads: “All Scripture is God-breathed” and as Peter writes: “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). The word of God is alive and it works in us to grow and change us. But when we restrict the Spirit in the word of God, we lose that living aspect. Instead, we sit bored in bible study, surfing the internet and writing down the “answers” to the questions. Bible study should be a lively and refreshing Spirit-filled discussion.

I see the issue of the ministry of God’s word as both a cause of our current situation and a result of our current situation. My recommendation is that reviving the ministry of God’s word becomes a priority. New, fresh, open, discussion based question sheets need to be written. Messages need to be fresh and truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. Also, I believe that it would be most useful for a few people to work on this together and the messages given by a few consistent people in addition to Pastor Paul because it is too serious and too difficult a task for people to undertake randomly.

Which leads directly into my second major issue, the viability of a lay ministry the size of Toledo. I am not sure how anyone could pastor a ministry the size of Toledo while also working full-time. The work to meditate God’s word, to minister to students, families, men, women, high school students, children. To lead the ministry forward so as to remain alive and vibrant and an influence on campus. These are things that people could be devoted to full-time.

I feel like a major problem at the moment is that we have to much to do and as a result, we do not do things well. Instead of being able to move forward, we are spinning our wheels in place. We are “maintaining.” Many people have spoken of the need for true mentors in our ministry. Younger leaders struggle with how to live this life—kids, work, ministry—with joy in our hearts. I know this is true for me in the absence of TP and MP. But I think that what we also need to see is that this is more than giving advice to one another. While I appreciate Mark Gamber’s desire to meet and work with young families, I think we should also ask, based on what? Just experience? While that is valuable, it is not enough. We need to grow in our understand of how to grow personally and how to raise up others. We need to open our hearts and minds and become new wineskins. There are so many books, organizations, workshops, outside ministries that could inform what we do. Why are we not using these things as a resource? And in fact, often seem to have a suspicion and wariness towards them?

I think the conversation of how we can more effectively serve students and each other is a very important conversation to be had in our ministry. And a continual conversation, as we never reach the end of our growth, and just when we think we have it figured out, it all changes.

My final concern is our attitude towards student ministry. Not long ago, I was thinking and praying about the kind of church I would like Tabor to find in Ohio University. My desire is for a vibrant, active, meaningful ministry that students really want to be a part of. Then I realized that this is what we are supposed to be but in many ways we are not. I am not suggesting that we have nothing to offer students because we do. But I am suggesting that what we want often takes precedence over what would be best for students.

A recent example of this has been with our praise bands, easily one of the best aspects of our ministry at the moment, maybe the best. Students are engaged. They are clearly filled with a spirit of praise for God, a spirit they hope to help others find. They are full of ideas and passion and creativity but for some reason we are reluctant to let them actually be leaders and use those things. For example, the tight restrictions on the amount of new songs that they do and the requirements on old songs that older members want to hear is just strange. The praise band should be allowed a lot more freedom than this. And people who don’t like the new songs need to open their hearts to what students like and to what students are listening to. I’m not sure what exactly it is that we are afraid will happen if the student leaders actually lead praise band and are able to make choices for themselves. I am not suggesting that there is not some oversight, but let’s just see what they do. Let’s let the Spirit lead and work instead of keeping such a tight leash on the possible work of God that can be done through and in them.

Our Friday night is an excellent example of how things can be changed to be more engaging and interesting and student-friendly. I thank God for those who have been involved in restructuring and reviving that meeting. The same thing should be done with our Sunday worship service. Right now it is long, dry and boring. It needs to be revived.

In the educational conference I attended last week, an expert on designing and innovating for the future led us through a creative problem strategizing session. It was excellent. But interestingly, the very first step to designing an innovation solution to a problem began with empathy. We need to understand our audience, who we hope to appeal with, and empathize with them. We need to consider them. And we need to do this with students. We need to listen to them, get to know them, and ask THEM what they want, what they like. Again, I feel like this is also often approached with a sense of fear and wariness. This pride that our ministry is superior to other ministries and the distrust of outside ideas is no different than the pride of the Pharisees. It is what Jesus explicitly preached against time after time.

The bottom line became that I do not feel like I can serve God’s mission here. I am not comfortable bringing students into our ministry at the moment. I need to be able to bring students to a place that I have no question that the word of God that will be preached and its practices are biblical and sound. And since I know a lot of students who are ready to be ministered to, I feel like I need to take this problem very seriously.

I want to finish by saying that I do believe that Toledo ministry will be restored. I believe that God’s word and Spirit are here and will be revived. I believe that God is working and will continue His work to the end. I thank God for Mother Barry’s visit and for her message, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14). God will do this. We are invited to be a part of it but it is not contingent on our works. However, whether God is calling me and my family to be a part of this revival in Toledo ministry, we are not sure about yet. We are waiting patiently (trying!) in the confusing in-between and have great peace that this is exactly where God wants us to be at this moment. We have been attending Cedar Creek and North Point services and may explore other churches. If nothing else, I am learning a lot about what other ministries are doing and it has been a valuable source of information. Tuf and I are praying deeply for God’s direction and will do whatever God wants us to do. If it is to stay and serve with you, I will gladly join you. But for now, I needed some space in order to receive God’s word and really be able to hear God’s direction.

I pray that these words may be helpful and encouraging. I offer them in a spirit of love and open coworking. Feel free to forward this email to anyone who may want to read them.

With great love and hope,
Emily

“We left Toledo UBF in August 2011 for several reasons. Fran and I both agreed that this was not a ministry to raise a family. Despite the efforts put forth by families we love and care about, our children were not learning and growing. There was no real support for children’s ministry by the church as a whole. Primary emphasis was on college students. So much so that families and children were over looked. The phrase family centered still upsets me. I personally gave up attending Friday meetings regularly a long while before we left because my wife and kids needed my attention more than the church.

We also left because we knew in our hearts that God was calling us elsewhere. We no longer had the college student mission as a family with three young children. God gave us three precious kids for special reason. They became our focus.

Furthermore….

We both were torn up emotionally from seeing all of our closest friends leave. With exception of a couple families, our nearest friends were hurt, betrayed, and not cared for. It broke our hearts. It started with our fellowship falling apart after one brother was mistreated by ubf leaders in Korea and Toledo. All the sudden our entire fellowship left. One family stayed for a short while but they too were hurting. Then, Fran and I accepted role of fellowship leader. This should have never even happened. In hind sight we should have said no and been taken in and loved by the ministry. Instead we were looked at as a exemplary family of faithfulness. We were broken. Fast forward to 2011 and more of our friends were hurt and left. It was too painful to stay.

Finally, Sunday worship became very dull and burdensome. Particularly i was not receiving from the messages for the most part. If I could circle back to the lack of family support. During a Friday meeting in august 2011, after several families and friends left Fran asked a sr. Leader if we could pray for our family and children’s ministry with all the pain and suffering. This so called leader said “no, tonight is student night, let’s not burden them with that.” This floored us and might have been the last straw. Contrary to popular belief we did not leave due to burdens of this life, but burdens from a ministry that hurt so many people that we loved and cared about, with no attempt for reconciliation. We could not grow there nor did we want our kids to continue to be involved where so much hurt and pain persisted. We pray for those we know there and pray God can bring about whatever His plan is for UBF.
–submitted by the Ellis family

“I left because rules were stressed over grace and obedience over love. UBF’s way of doing things were attributed to God’s way of doing things and obedience to leaders in UBF was considered obedience to God. This was evident in the messages. It was evident in the environment, where charts with stars and the traditions of UBF were more prominent than anything related to love or grace. It was evident in social interactions which became increasingly contentious even among leaders. The result was that while I spent all of my time to help children in CBF meet Jesus, and to show the high school students I taught professionally the love of Christ, I was made to feel guilty because I was not feeding sheep, even though I was doing what I felt called to do. In addition, my involvement in UBF took away time I needed to show my wife and children the love of Jesus, a tension I was never happy with. When I brought up any of these issues, no one listened. T and E were much more vocal than I was. They, in love, let ph know that the ministry was in danger and pleaded with him to institute changes. His response was that he did not care if everyone left, he could start over with one family. Then I knew that UBF traditions were more important than people to UBF leaders. I began to see the hollowness and deception inherent in UBF theology. And finally I began to see that leaders in UBF did not mind committing grievous sins in order to protect a man-made organization and its silly traditions. This was the end. I was completely embarrassed that I was ever a member. I needed to love my family. I needed to experience grace and freedom in Christ rather than condemnation. I needed time to rethink everything I had been taught. Most of all, I needed to learn to develop a personal relationship with Jesus and to find His path for me, rather than having a path imposed on me by an institution that I found to be arrogant, inflexible, obtuse, and insensitive. I could no longer follow Jesus in such a context. I love many UBF people, but hope the institution as I experienced it dies so that it can no longer present a perverted Gospel, justify the neglect of children and give Christianity a bad name.”
–submitted by the Muehling family

“I believe it was shortly after attending the European conference in the spring of 2011 that we began to question whether or not we were in the right place. In our eyes, the state of the ministry was becoming somewhat dark. At the time, we likened it to a cloudy fish tank where the fish in the bowl were blindly swimming around. To us, the cloudiness was some sort of spiritual darkness. In that environment, no one could really see the state of one another or help each other. And no outside Christian community (UBF or otherwise) could see inside either.

To us, the main problem was that Sunday messages did not sit with us well. At first, it was just that God’s word wasn’t able to speak for itself and messengers seemed to be emphasizing an idea or a point that they just wanted to make. Eventually, we heard unbiblical, heretical statements from the pulpit. Most importantly, the gospel wasn’t being presented clearly and human effort and works were being emphasized instead. Ultimately, the things that we heard on Sunday planted a sense of mistrust and we came to the point where we couldn’t worship God freely.

In July of 2011, we presented this issue as well as two other unresolved issues to the pastor and our fellowship: (1) The ministry was disjointed with no co-working between the pastor and the ministry as a whole. Key relationships of “senior” leaders were damaged and broken so that the ministry couldn’t function fully. And they weren’t being resolved. We felt limited in what could be done for God’s work and we felt that our full involvement was condoning unresolved issues and broken relationships to continue. (2) Two other families had recently left because they were legitimately mistreated and there was an absolutely silent response to it. Sure, people hurt people. But these families had been part of the ministry for a long time, were truly hurt, and nothing was done. To us, losing a part of the body and not apologizing or doing anything about it immediately was wrong. We didn’t hear any public prayers or see any acts of love go out to those who left and this broke our hearts.

While presenting these, we privately prayed for the spiritual health of the UBF community, including our pastor. But we also began attending two worship services — Saturday evenings at a local church and Sunday mornings at UBF. We did this for about four months and we prayed. We participated in helping the Leadership Council be established. But the items we had brought up were not addressed.

In November 2011, we received the final tug from God for us to go in another direction. Of course, we still have friends in UBF. We’ve heard of changes and of things being different. But we haven’t considered going back because God has led our family in a new direction. Our family still has the same calling. We’re just in a different community where we are safe, we can worship God, and we can be involved in great and beautiful things for God.”
–submitted by the Roth family

Simply put, I left UBF because God led me out. I prayed and agonized for months, open to whatever God wanted, until the Holy Spirit moved me, made me know it was time to go. I even attended two worship services during my final year in Toledo UBF, the UBF service and a service at another church. I was in UBF for eight years, and the longer I stayed, the worse the problems became and the more aware of them I became.

There were several problems with Toledo UBF.

First, I was always made to feel like I was never good enough. Despite helping to lead HBF, running tech for Sunday services, meeting with college students, and doing several other things, none of that was good enough because I wasn’t teaching the Bible one-to-one. I wasn’t good enough because I wasn’t disciplined enough, spiritually or physically. I didn’t attend early morning prayer meetings, and SH told me I needed to go at least one morning a week, as she said, “to show people.” (I told her I had no need or desire to prove my faith to anyone.) I was already a self-conscious person, but I became even more so during my time in Toledo UBF. I felt judged. I was almost always on edge, ready for the next critique. While it’s true I will never be deserving of God’s grace, the Holy Spirit finally broke through to my heart shortly before I left and reminded me what I had learned when Christ saved me: God loves me as I am. Christ died for me long before I even knew him. I am loved enough to die for. To feel crushed almost all the time is not what God wants for me.

Second, I became offended by “shepherding” as practiced by Toledo UBF. I value my relationship with the Holy Spirit. His guidance has been of monumental importance in my life. But UBF puts the “shepherd” in the place of the Holy Spirit. You’re expected to talk to your shepherds before making any decisions, rely on them, take direction from them. Instead of encouraging relationships with the Holy Spirit, people were expected to be puppets manipulated by their “shepherds” and “leaders.” And the Holy Spirit was seldom talked about, seldom preached about, if I remember correctly. In addition to this idea of “shepherding” was this idea that “leaders” knew what was best for others in the ministry. For example, at one time, I was up for a promotion at work, which would have moved me to a store a little over an hour away from Toledo. I had been praying very specific prayers about this job, even about the opportunity to interview for it, and God had been answering very specifically, and he was opening doors. It was really an amazing experience. I had also already decided to commute if I got the job. I was pretty quiet about it while I was interviewing because I felt I would be judged by my Bible teachers for making what would seem to them a stupid decision. When I did tell someone in the ministry, it was JP. I asked him to pray for me. He told me no. He said he couldn’t pray for me because then I would leave sisters house. He had no idea what God had already done, how he had already opened the door. JP didn’t bother to inquire about anything, just simply refused to pray for me because of one “negative consequence” he was certain would occur. I didn’t even tell my Bible teachers when I got the job. They found out weeks later and, as predicted, they thought I had made a poor decision.

Third, Toledo UBF operated on the understanding that there was only one way to do things, that every Christian had to be the same. Everyone had to be a Bible teacher. Everyone had to do the same kind of daily devotion (and the time of day you did it either increased or decreased its worth somehow). There was little-to-no real appreciation of individuals’ gifts, unless they were gifts already deemed beneficial and worthy, like musical gifts. Instead of allowing God to work through the uniqueness of his creations, Toledo UBF had this mold that it worked very hard to force people into.

Fourth, there was a mentality among many – maybe not all – that UBF was THE ministry. There was this sense, this idea, that no other ministry could do what UBF was doing. JP said to me, when I told him I was considering leaving, that I would never find another ministry that delivered the word of God the way UBF did. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I hoped that was true, which leads me to my next point.

Fifth, messages were tragic. GL delivered a message at a spring conference in 2011 (I think that’s the right year), in which he declared that we needed to pray for God to glorify us. I couldn’t believe it when I heard him say it. Then PH got up to deliver prayer topics and announcements and tried to justify it! What?! PH’s messages also appeared to be directed at rebuking certain people sometimes. Additionally, we studied the same passages repeatedly, and there were really only a handful of “lessons” that were constantly recycled and inserted into these passages. Messages conformed passages into the points the “leaders” wanted to make, as opposed to letting the Holy Spirit work freely through God’s word. (I will say that not everyone’s messages were like this, but most of the messages were or appeared to me to be so.)

Sixth, I was sick of people being judgmental and manipulative. SH became my Bible teacher later in my time at Toledo UBF. She explicitly taught me that women needed to be more spiritual because often or most of the time when people left the ministry it was because of the wife. She used MP as an example. SH also worked behind the scenes, manipulating people.

You know, on my final Sunday at Toledo UBF I really tried to pay attention to the message. I knew I was leaving, my decision was made, but I was listening, half-hoping for some sign that PH had changed, even a little. I was looking for some reason for the Holy Spirit to call me to stay. I was sadly disappointed. I forget now what the message was, but in it PH spoke of people leaving and problems within the ministry. He spoke of his own part and said he accepted responsibility, but it was obvious he didn’t mean it. It was obvious he had no sense that he had done anything wrong at all. It was heartbreaking. When I approached JW afterward to tell him I was leaving, he just looked at me with such sadness and said, PH doesn’t get it. And then we hugged each other and cried. Then I left.
–submitted by KB

“After living the UBF heritage, defending the UBF heritage and examining the UBF heritage for the past 26 years (since 1987), I have concluded that anyone who adheres to this ideological system will eventually build a cult. I left UBF because I wholeheartedly rejected the UBF 12 point heritage system. I find this system to be so severely flawed and full of contradictions that any sensible human being ought to reject the UBF heritage because full implementation of the heritage can only lead to severe misuse of authority, improper ennoblement of power and abuses of many kinds. Every Christian ought to reject the UBF 12 point heritage system as heresy that undermines the gospel of Jesus Christ by enslaving people to ideologies and behaviors that become extreme entanglements and hindrances to personal freedom and human well-being. I left UBF ministry because the UBF 12 point heritage has caused massive division among Christian brothers and sisters of many nations for over 50 years, tearing at the very sinews of the Body of Christ. I left in order to save my wife from such entrapment and to spare my children from ever knowing such burdens. And finally, I left in order to preserve my sanity, to restore broken relationships with numerous relatives and friends, and so that I could begin my long road of recovery as I follow Jesus Christ my Lord through the promptings and leading of the Holy Spirit who speaks through the Holy Scriptures. All praise, glory, honor, power and authority belong solely to our Lord Jesus Christ in whom is found all supremacy, necessity and sufficiency for a full, hopeful, joyful and amazing life.”
–submitted by Brian Karcher

The picture of crisis in UBF

Based on 2 Timothy 3:1-17, David Kim, the director of Korea UBF, presents the crisis facing UBF. David Kim agrees with Joe on this point: UBF is in a crisis. Here is the picture David Kim paints in his Shepherd-Missionary Seminar 2011 Closing Message, which he titled “Terrible Times and the Bible“.

“They don’t like the good. Even though they are alive, they are actually dead. When it comes to the last days, there will be more people like them and they will make their generation terrible. But these kinds of people are not only in the world. The verse, “having a form of godliness but denying its power,” says that these kinds of people are also inside the church. The fact that they have a form of godliness means they look like men of faith and spiritual leaders outwardly. But the fact that they deny the power of godliness means that they have no spiritual power and inward strength to follow and obey the truth, and faith that they confess with their mouth.

This is the picture of the crisis that our church community confronts today. Nowadays, people love themselves and money. They love pleasure more than God. The waves of sin flow into the church community and infect our souls. Being infected by sins due to the powerful work of Satan, we gradually lose faith in the truth and the power of godliness. Co-workers who were once great in their faith fall into the temptations of sin. Some become tempters to knock down the faith of others. Those who once stood firm on the gospel faith and were once a good influence for their faith are rather influenced by sin and the value system of the world. They envy worldly people and begin to follow them. Many are losing their identity as a royal priesthood and a holy nation.”

How to respond to this crisis?

David Kim presents two directions as his suggested response to this crisis.

1. “Have nothing to do with them”

“Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth; men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected (8). They are not the ones who serve God with sincere faith, but those who live hypocritical and superficial lives before people. Their folly will be clear to everyone. Paul clearly warns Timothy to turn away from them.”

2. “Continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of”

“Timothy learned the Scriptures and had faith in the truth of the Scriptures. “Continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.” This is the word and spiritual direction that God gave to Timothy who was in trouble with serving the new generation.

I believe that this is also what God says to us. We are living in a world which changes rapidly. The circumstances in which we are living are totally different from those of the 1960s when UBF was founded and of the 1970s and 80s when our campus ministry flourished. We encounter difficulties and limits in serving the new generation who follow the popular trend of life infected with sin and go with the mainstream of sin. For this reason, we began to wonder if we should look for alternatives and changes different from what we had in the past. If there are better ways and alternatives to serve this generation, we should try to find them. From the 1990s, we made every effort to find better ways and alternatives to serve the rapidly changing generation. New programs were sought out. Some chapters tried to implement the spiritual movement, giving up raising disciples through one-to-one Bible study because it was so difficult. Other chapters tried to live a religious life without the burdens of sharing Daily Bread and writing testimonies. There were also some chapters that tried to attract the attention of the young through singspiration, rather than focusing on profound Bible studies or testimony training. However, we have not found alternatives better than one-to-one Bible study, Daily Bread, testimony writing, a life giving spirit with five loaves and two fish, a pioneering spirit, a community spirit, and a self-supporting spirit that we have had from the beginning of UBF history. Nobody can deny that those works are the best ways to raise disciples and missionaries who can preach the gospel.

If the spirit that worked in the UBF ministry for the past 50 years came from human efforts or ideas, we don’t need to continue in them. Those that come from human thoughts and ideas are limited and will change or disappear someday in the future. However, the spirit that worked in the UBF ministry for the past 50 years didn’t come from the ideas of Dr. Samuel Lee or Mother Barry. It was not a typical UBF spirit, but the eternal truth of God’s words. Living according to the teachings of Scriptures, a life-giving spirit, a humble mind, raising disciples, one-to-one Bible study, writing testimonies, and sending out lay missionaries are the truths we learned from the Bible. We learned and became convinced of the truth and obeyed the truth that God taught us, and God blessed us abundantly for the past 50 years. Therefore, we should continue in the truth that we learned and stand firmly on it. Those who do not continue in the truth will lose the power of godliness and will join the sinful trend of the world. But if we continue in the truth we learned and became convinced of, we will get the power of godliness. We will be able to challenge and serve the sinful generation with the power of godliness.”

Questions to ponder

Do you agree with Joe’s picture of crisis or David Kim’s picture?
How do David Kim’s thoughts make you feel about your friends who left UBF recently?
What is your opinion of the state of UBF ministry after 50 years?

Many will disagree with me. “Stop exaggerating,” they’ll say. “Don’t worry, have faith! Focus on the positive. Remember what God has done. Great things happened at the ISBC. Many people accepted Christ. If even one lost sheep repents, there is great rejoicing in heaven.”

But for those who are willing to look, the situation looks grim. One major piece of evidence is that the attendance at the recent ISBC dropped by about 20% from Purdue ’08. UBF leaders have always assumed that their numbers would go up. They believed that if they just worked hard enough and prayed enough times and kept going and stayed with the program, then God would bless their faithfulness and the ministry would grow. But this time, the numbers went down, and they did so dramatically.

I’ve heard various explanations for the drop in attendance, and I have offered a few of my own. It is a symptom of malaise and low morale. Over the last three years, many natives have left the ministry, and the conflicts that led to their departure have not been addressed. Attendance at conferences can no longer be considered mandatory; chapter directors have realized that the days when they could simply command people to come are over.

None of these trends will be reversed by hope or wishful thinking. Praying more and praying harder isn’t going to work. “Just believe” won’t do. Tweaking the organization (e.g., appointing some new committees) won’t fix the problem either. Without major structural change, the decline is going to continue. UBF is in a downward spiral, and there’s a long way to go before it bottoms out.

I predict that most leaders will ignore this evidence. They will try to stay upbeat and apply positive spin. Some will point the finger of blame at Brian, Ben, me, and other infamous heretics and villains. They won’t take a long, hard look at what actually happened and why.

But suppose they do decide to take it seriously. Suppose they are stunned and begin to ask with real sincerity, “Brothers and sisters, what shall we do?”

If that happens, what would you tell them? What do you think the leaders need to focus on as their highest priority? What would you say are the top three action items (1, 2 and 3)? And what activities should they put aside to focus on those items?

I’ve been thinking about that question for a while. In the remainder of this article, I will give my answer.

In terms of high-priority items, I won’t list a 1, 2 and 3. I think there is only one. I believe that from now on, all the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly activities that take place (e.g., the work of the ethics committee, preparing Bible study material, staff training, meetings and conferences and workshops and retreats, etc.) need to be aligned toward one main goal. If a particular activity supports this goal, then we should proceed with it. If the activity delays, hampers or detracts from this goal, we should put it aside indefinitely.

In my opinion, the goal should be this:

Everyone needs to work together to revise the story of UBF. People must help one another to set aside propaganda and freshly discern what has happened in the community, to understand what God has done thus far, what he is doing now, and what he may want to do in the future.

This is not something that leaders can do in secret by themselves. The process must involve everyone. Leaders will have to stop talking about their own ideas, close their mouths, open their ears, and listen to all the current and ex-members. They will have to create space for honest, open-ended and freewheeling discussion of everything, no holds barred — including the kind of discussion that takes place on UBFriends, which they hate so much. They will have to engage in ethnographic listening for an extended period of time. If they are not capable of that (and, I’m sorry to say, many of them aren’t) then they need to just get out of the way and allow younger and more capable people to do it.

Why are listening and storytelling so important? Because the crisis in UBF is ultimately not one of shrinking numbers, falling income, criticism on UBFriends, bad relations between Americans and Koreans, unchecked power and authoritarian abuse, etc. Those things are all present, of course, and they are serious and troubling. But at the end of the day, those are symptoms of something more fundamental. Those problems could be handled if UBF was healthy. The fact that those problems are not yet solvable demonstrates that the community doesn’t understand what it is. Leaders and members don’t have coherent, credible and compelling reasons for why the organization should exist or why it should do the things it does.

The present crisis is an identity crisis. There is a large and growing disconnect between the story that loyal members have repeatedly told themselves and the evidence that has been accumulating year by year. The old UBF narrative is no longer believed, except perhaps by a small group of people who live in bunkers and cling to their convictions no matter what.

The old UBF narrative goes something like this. (I wrote the following paragraph for another article last year.)

In the early 1960’s, God began a great work in South Korea. A young female American missionary left her missionary compound and lived among the poor. Together with a young Korean pastor, they taught the Bible to university students. Instead of relying on outside funds, the movement became independent and self-supporting. Students overcame their “beggar mentality” and sacrificed everything to support this work. In absolute obedience to Jesus’ world mission command, they went overseas to preach the gospel. God blessed all their sacrifice, hard work, simple faith, etc. and transformed Korea from a nation that receives outside help to a nation that sends missionaries throughout the world. Unlike other churches and movements, this group raises highly committed disciples who are extremely disciplined in Bible study and prayer. They marry by faith, support themselves on the mission field, excel in their studies and become leading doctors, engineers, diplomats and professors. Although they seem highly intelligent, their success is not due to their intelligence but to their self-denial, their boldness in proclaiming the gospel, their absolute obedience and their uncomplicated, childlike faith. Their unique disciplines (Daily Bread, testimony writing, obedience training, marriage by faith, etc.) and their pure, inductive approach to Bible study are extremely potent, and other churches could learn a great deal from them. As they faithfully continue in this special calling, God will use them to send thousands more missionaries and raise countless disciples on university campuses throughout the world. And this is going to transform the nations. For example, it will turn the United States from corruption to its former glory as a nation of people who trust in God. As disciples are raised and missionaries are sent out, each nation will become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

That story is told over and over in UBF publications, at conferences, in Bible studies and private conversations. It was a nice story, and at one time it may have been somewhat believable. But today, the story has been debunked. There is such a huge body of contradicting evidence that very few people (if any) still believe the story, even though in UBF settings they might speak and act as though they do. The younger generation certainly does not, because they have very sensitive B.S. detectors, and because the internet gives them instant access to all the counternarratives.

There is overwhelming evidence that Samuel Lee abused his authority, routinely crossing the boundaries of what a pastor ought to do. SL collected, managed and used ministry funds with no oversight, deciding entirely on his own how to use those funds. He exercised undue influence over the personal lives of UBF members. The most obvious example of this is that he decided whom you could marry and when, but there are many more examples, some of them quite nauseating. Often SL did not tell the truth. Many of the stories and accounts about people that he told through his announcements, manuscripts, newsletters, personal letters to people, etc. contained exaggeration, distortion and fabrication. The list of SL’s questionable practices is very long and damning. Many ubf members will testify that they were deeply loved by him, but many others will testify that they were severely hurt and damaged by him. To trumpet the former without acknowledging the latter is blatantly hypocritical. Older Koreans can tolerate this contradiction, because they have a penchant for honoring their elders. But younger people cannot stand it. Americans cannot stand it. Above everything else, the present generation craves authenticity. If UBF doesn’t stop its mythologizing about the character and actions of SL, if it doesn’t stop presenting a one-sided and distorted picture of its own history, the organization in North America has no future.

There is undeniable evidence that UBF is not impacting society as the leaders imagined it would. UBF’s trademark brand of rigorous, high commitment, high loyalty, obey-at-all-costs discipleship training (what you might call martial-arts Christianity, Green Beret-ism, Just Obey-ism…) is not sweeping the world — not because people haven’t seen it, but because they have seen it and have rejected it. Perhaps it could have limited success in certain non-western cultures, but in North America and Europe it just doesn’t work. Where it has been tried, the disciples it produces do not look like healthy, happy, well adjusted, thoughtful, kind, attractive or loving human beings. They act strange and sound weird; they lose sight of who they are and become imitators of the Koreans who lorded over them, lending credence to the allegations that UBF is a cult. The traditional UBF discipleship program ignores too many aspects of spiritual formation. It damages family life. It keeps people from developing meaningful relationships with people outside of UBF. It prevents people from experiencing the full range of freedom that they have in Christ. It replaces the creative work of the Holy Spirit with principles, rules, behaviors and expectations. In a nutshell, it is too legalistic. If UBF doesn’t stop mythologizing its training methods, the organization in North America has no future.

There is undeniable evidence that UBF’s Bible study materials and messages are not nearly as great or effective or inspiring as UBF’s leaders have believed. The material published by UBF Press is not of sufficient quality to be accepted by any reputable publishing house; if it were, there would be no need for UBF Press. The format, content, language and style of UBF’s materials are peculiar to the community, reflecting parochial UBF customs and values, with little or no appeal to anyone on the outside. The messages delivered at UBF conferences (except for The Well) are designed to please the elder missionaries. They reflect what the elder missionaries want to hear, and what the elder missionaries think the younger generation needs to hear, but they are not connecting with and capturing the imagination of Americans. UBF leaders are proud of how many hours they spend preparing Bible study materials and messages, but based on the results, it is obvious that this time is not well spent. If UBF doesn’t stop mythologizing its Bible study materials, the organization in North America has no future.

I could go on and on about how UBF has been unsuccessful at raising indigenous leaders, about stubborn missionaries who should have ceded control decades ago but are still running the show, about the rogue chapter directors who are mistreating people, and so on. But I’ll stop here.

My point is not to prove that UBF is terrible. My point is that UBF has very serious problems, problems that threaten its existence but which leaders have never been willing to face. They seem to think that acknowledging these problems is akin to giving up or losing their faith. Some would rather die than let go of their illusions about UBF. This has been, and still is, the single biggest obstacle to healthy change. Leaders and longtime members do not want to lose face. They don’t anyone or anything to mess with their precious story about who they are and what they have done.

But the bitter irony is that, as long as they hold on to this narrative, they will continue to lose face and lose credibility. That story of UBF is fading away. Indeed, it has already expired. We need to just let it die. We must allow that kernel of wheat to fall to the ground and disappear, so that it can give birth to something new and vital and fruitful.

Members of this generation do not want leaders who appear to be strong and perfect. We don’t care if people make mistakes, as long as they fess up to their mistakes and learn from them. We want leaders of integrity, genuine human beings who have realistic opinions of themselves, who are upfront and honest about their shortcomings and fiascos.

The challenge that UBF faces is this: How do we come to our collective senses, admit our failures, and own those failures? How do we weave those failures into the fabric of the UBF story to make it into a new story, one that is honest and credible and inspiring and gospel-centered? How do we incorporate the stories of all the people who have been hurt by UBF and left UBF over the years, not demonizing or marginalizing them, but validating their experiences and making them an integral part of our understanding of what God wants to do in the UBF community?

Here are some things that I believe. Please read these carefully.

1. I believe that God loves UBF people very much. He always has, and always will.

2. God’s love for UBF people is not rooted in anything they have done for him. God’s love for UBF people is rooted in what Jesus has done for them.

3. God has plans for UBF people. Those plans are great and glorious. But God will never force his plans on UBF. If UBF acts in foolish ways, then God will adapt and revise his plans as often as necessary to make something good happen, something that glorifies Jesus and blesses the Church and all nations of the world.

4. For a while, I believed that God’s plan coincided with the “old ubf narrative” that I wrote above. It’s conceivable that God was willing to make something like that happen (minus all the tribalism and Korean cultural imperialism and triumphalism), But that plan has been neutered and derailed. That story is too self-aggrandizing and unrealistic. It ain’t happening, folks.

5. If UBF stubbornly clings to its old narrative, in the same way that the people of Israel clung to their own tribalistic narrative, then the organization will experience epic failure. That failure may come sooner rather than later.

6. If there is an epic failure, God will still have a plan to use the organization. He might allow UBF to go down in history as a textbook example of
* how not to do evangelism
* how not to raise disciples and train leaders
* how not to attempt cross-cultural ministry
* how not to study the Bible
* how not to interact with the Body of Christ
and so on. The epic failure of UBF may help other Christians to avoid our mistakes. It may bring mission-minded evangelicals to a new and deeper understanding of what the gospel is, and what the gospel is not.

7. If UBF lets go of its old narrative, allowing that story fall to the ground and die, then it may yet experience a resurrection. That death will be very painful to some, but ultimately it will bring new life.

8. If UBF experiences a rebirth, the story of New-BF may become a textbook example of
* how to listen to one’s critics and truly *hear* what they are saying
* how to apologize to people that you have hurt and reconcile with them
* how to corporately repent and join the rest of the Body of Christ
* how to build a loving church that ethnically diverse and truly multigenerational
* how to build a loving church that is theologically diverse, maintaining a foundation of orthodoxy while fully embracing people with different views on sacraments, miracles, gifts of the Spirit, inerrancy of Scripture, ..

9. The most likely scenario for what lies ahead is not a complete epic failure or a complete rebirth, but some mixture of the two. There will be mysteries and surprises.

10. If UBF and its leaders are slow to act, there will be many more people who, for valid reasons, cannot and should not hang around to wait for change. God will call them to go elsewhere. That has happened again and again. Many of the people who have left UBF over the years (in many cases, they were driven out) were the most gifted and qualified to lead the ministry. How many times have missionaries prayed for God to send them disciples who would become their ancestors of faith, their “Abraham” and “Sarah”? I believe that every single one of those prayers has been answered. I believe that God has sent countless Abrahams and Sarahs to all those UBF chapters across America. And the vast majority of those Abrahams and Sarahs were driven away by lack of love, bad ministry practices, and because those disciples would not or could not adapt to their shepherds’ ethnocentric expectations.

The Summit

The summit was, in simplistic terms, 16 hours of sitting and listening to 13 speakers. My wife and I attended (for the first time) from our church in Detroit, which is a satellite host for the summit. However, I can’t remember even 1 minute of boredom or of wanting to fall asleep or of wishing I was somewhere else. I soaked up every speaker like a sponge. The summit was exactly where God wanted me to be for those two days.

In addition to the highlighted speakers, there were several others who made appearances in between. Comedian Michael Jr.  shared some of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard. He might just be the funniest man on planet earth right now. David Garibaldi shared an amazing painting experience, preaching the gospel with no words.  William Close played the “earth harp”, an astounding instrument set up inside the Willow Creek auditorium.

The nature of the leadership talks seemed to me to blend academia, business and religious backgrounds, with the explicit Christian gospel themes woven through each one. The official summit link is here: http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/schedule.asp

It is difficult for me to express my “take-away’s” from this summit. Breathtaking. Exhilarating. Amazing. Astounding. Life-changing. Christ-centering. It will take some time to process, and I plan on ordering the DVD’s.

The Speakers

Bill Hybels. Founder and senior pastor, Willow Creek Community Church. Bill’s church has 24,000 weekly attendees. His opening talk set the tone for the summit. I was surprised by one of his opening statements: “This leadership summit will be unashamedly Christian. We will pray. We will quote from the bible. And we will sing. But this summit is not for Christians only. We welcome anyone of any faith and anyone who has not made faith part of their life story yet.” I had not expected this. And since Willow Creek has more than 24,000 weekly worshippers, I was surprised to hear Bill talk about how the leadership team overcame a time of being a toxic environment in recent years. Bill’s team reached out to an external party to gauge how they were doing. The external survey showed they scored in the toxic range of organizational health. So he sounded the alarm and they made the tough decisions to get back on track. This year they scored a rare high-mark in organization health. I learned that leaders have to sometimes say goodbye to other leaders in order to make the organization healthy. And leaders must define the core values of their organization.

General Colin Powell. Speech title: “It worked for me.” Former U.S. Secretary of State, senior level advisor to four Presidents, served U.S. Army for 35 years. Colin was surprisingly human and open. I expected an army general to be stiff and cold. He is nothing like that. One story he told was how he once complained a long time to President Reagan. Reagan said nothing until Colin was finished. Finally Reagan said “Look there’s a squirrel outside the window!”. Later Reagan taught him the lesson. You can sit there and tell me all day about your problem, but until I have a problem, don’t get me involved. I hired you to do a job. Now go solve your problem and let me know when I have a problem.”

Patrick Lencioni. Speech title: “How to lose your best people.” Founder and President of The Table Group, best-selling author. Patrick shared a high-energy, hilarious talk about a serious subject. He noticed over the years that people left jobs and churches for one or more of three primary reasons, regardless of culture: irrelevance, immeasurement or anonymity. He admitted that “immeasurement” is not a word. But it fits what he called a lack of feedback or sometimes improper feedback. People want to know how they are doing, and be able to tell for themselves. Human beings don’t want to wait around for “how their boss feels” or wait for the numbers to come in. Human beings want the gratification of knowing they did a good job. In other words, people are looking for fulfillment. And leaders want to know right away if they failed. He told of how leaders who are afraid of failure or think failure is not an option are bad leaders. For example, several successful companies actually measure how many times you fail, as a measurement for success. If you are not failing enough, you aren’t learning how to succeed. Some venture capitalists won’t fund you unless you failed at least 3 times for at least $1 million.

Liz Wiseman. Speech title: “The Multiplier Effect”. President of the Wiseman Group, best-selling author. Liz’ talk was not flashy but was perhaps the most thought-provoking. She shared with compassion and a genuine love for humanity. She talked about leaders who are multipliers and leaders who are diminishers. A diminisher is someone who gets very little effort or talent out of people around them. They are the empire builders, the tyrants, the know-it-alls, the decision makers and the micro managers. A multiplier gets double and triple effort and talent. They are the talent magnets, the liberators, the challengers, the debate-makers and the investors. Diminishers will kill off their organizations while multipliers will always eventually find their way to success.

Chris Brown. Speech title: “Right title…wrong kingdom”. Co-Senior Pastor and Teaching Pastor at North Coast Church. This was tied for my favorite talk of the conference (Andy Stanley’s being the other one). Really, Chris Brown gave a sermon, not a talk or a speech. I cried the most during his sermon because he spoke so powerfully and every word he spoke rang so true. Based on Mark 10:42-25, he obliterated the Moses or Elijah style leadership models. Jesus said “Not so with you”. Jesus turned leadership upside-down. If you model Moses, you model the world’s way of leading now that Jesus has demonstrated His style of leadership. Even a Pharaoh who didn’t know the Lord knew Jesus’ style of leadership (in dealing with Joseph) better than Saul, the anointed king of Israel. You just have to listen to this one.

Bob Goff. Speech title: “Love Takes Action”. Founder and CEO of Restore International, attorney. Bob Goff gets the prize for the most energetic and fanatical speech! He told humorous stories about his life on an island (yes he lives on an island). And he also spoke with passion and compassion about one of the most heart-wrenching events I’ve ever heard in a long while. He was the attorney for Charlie, the child attacked by the infamous Koby. Bob told of amazing acts of kindness, as well as unimaginable forgiveness. Bob’s point is that “love does stuff”. Love demands action. Love requires us to get involved in the terrible evils of the world. His talk was similar to an earlier talk he gave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo1jHeIn3TE

Mark Burnett. Speech title: “Unscripted Leadership”. Four-time Emmy Award winner, Executive Producer of Survivor, The Voice and The Bible TV shows. Mark’s time was not a speech but an interview with Bill Hybels. I enjoyed the dialogue-style speaking between them. This style was used several times during the Summit. Mark talked about how he courageously took his fame and fortune and poured it into the Bible series project recently.

Joseph Grenny. Speech title: “Mastering the skill of influence”. Co-founder of VitalSmarts, best-selling business author. Joseph gave a detailed talk about influence, one of the key abilities leaders need to understand. He talked about how leaders tend to focus on motivating people instead of influencing them. Motivating is important, but teaching skills is the primary influencer. He used God’s preparing of Moses in the palace and God’s preparing of Joshua learning from Moses as examples that God’s ways are about teaching skills first and then motivating people at the right time. Joseph taught from both a “heavy” example of behavior change involving changing the behavior of third-world prostitution and a “light” example of influencing the behavior of traffic laws. One amazing example he gave was about a traffic law enacted in some state in the U.S. A lot of people ignored the law until the officials posted a sign that said “Report violators, call 1-800-be-a-hero” (or something to that effect). The point was when people know other people are watching them, their behavior is influenced.

Vijay Govindarahan (“VG”). Speech title: “The Innovation Challenge: Getting it right”. Top 50 Management Thinker, Professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. Vijay gets the top award for the most complex talk. He talked a lot about ways leaders can sustain an organization. He used a “three box” model. He taught that leaders need to manage the present, selectively abandon the past, and create the future.  He talked about how organizational leaders must create separate (but loosely connected) team that plays by different rules than the “box 1” (or performance engine) part of the organization. Leaders need to create innovation teams. Leaders and organizations must re-invent themselves regularly in order to stay alive.

Dr. Brene Brown. Speech title: “Daring Greatly”. Research Professor at University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Brene is a ground-breaking researcher into the topics of shame, worthiness and courage. She talked about how she once was invited to speek to a group of C-Level people. At first she was comfortable with this because she thought the term was “sea-level” people, meaning ordinary, down-to-earth people. She shared how she overcame fear when she realized “C” actually meant CEO, CIO, CTO, etc. She shared how leaders are human, how vulnerability is essential for any leader and how courage is so needed among leaders. She had a life-changing moment after reading the famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt about daring greatly.

Oscar Muriu. Speech title: “Viral Leadership: Multiplying your impact exponentially”. Senior Pastor of Nairobi Chapel, Kenya. Under his leadership, Nairobi Chapel grew from a 40 person local church to a network of 30 churches with 14,000 weekly worshippers. Oscar shared based on 5 life-changing principles. They sounded very familiar to me and were based on the command to “go into all the world and preach the good news.” He talked of sending African missionaries to all parts of the world, including America and Asia. He told the story of how he would pray for leaders without telling them he was praying for them to be leaders. One by one, people would come to him saying “I feel compelled to be a missionary”. He told of one couple who asked if they could devote the next 25 years of their life to being a Christian missionary in Oscar’s church network. He talked of how their missionaries train for 1 or 2 years. They stay in a country for 5 years to plant a church and then leave to plant another church, following Apostle Paul’s example.

Dr. Henry Cloud. Speech  title: “Reversing the Death Spiral of a Leader”. Acclaimed leadership expert, best-selling author, Clinical Psychologist and Businessman.  Dr. Cloud has experience in executive coaching of CEO’s. He has been a frequent contributor to CNN and Fox News Channel. Once Henry asked a CEO about culture problems in a company. As the CEO mentioned reason after reason about why the problems existed, Henry kept asking “Why?”. Finally the CEO concluded that he was in charge of the problems, whether he created them or not. Here are some quotes from Dr. Cloud: “In the end, as a leader, you are always going to get a combination of two things: What you create and what you allow”. Leaders are “ridiculously in charge” according to Dr. Cloud, and so they are prone to being burned out and depressed. He talked about examples from Wall Street when the financial markets crashed around 2008. He talked about why the culture of an organization exists the way it is. He says it is because of the way the leaders behave. Dr.Cloud gave some behavior research examples, which I think made the audience a bit uncomfortable, because the research was from many years ago when animals were used. One example was of a monkey alone in a cage subjected to lights and sounds meant to induce stress. The monkey’s stress level was very high when he was alone. But when a second, familiar monkey was in the cage with him, their stress decreased by 50%. Dr.Clouds’ point was that people need a friend to get out of the downward spiral. He talked about principles to get out of the death spiral.

Andy Stanley. Speech title: [Andy gave a closing sermon just entitled “closing session”]. Founder and Senior Pastor at North Point Ministries. Andy pastors one of the largest churches in America, with over 33,000 worshippers each Sunday in his network of church campuses in the Atlanta area. Andy’s sermon was based on Matthew 16:18 “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” It was a sermon of sermons, a sermon so inspiring that I believe he just re-ignited Christianity in North America.

Here is a list of the second part of the ubf heritage. These slogans become a kind of hamster wheel for ubf members.

Section II – Behavioral slogans
the ubf lifestyle
8. House churches
9. One to one Bible study
10. Disciple-making ministry
11. Daily Bread
12. Testimony writing & sharing

House Churches

A house church is a family who has gone through the arranged marriage process (marriage by faith), left their home ubf chapter, and gone out to another campus through the process called pioneering. A house church often refers to a ubf member’s dwelling that is used for UBF activities. Many small ubf chapters meet in leaders’ houses. Leaders often make analogies between this and the practice of the early Christian church meeting in members houses. Note that “house church” can sometimes have a more specific meaning, namely it can describe the union of those who are married in ubf and have not actually “pioneered” yet.

One to One/1:1 

This is the core element of the UBF indoctrination and manipulation system. Bible study is always done in a hierarchical setting with one person acting as the Bible teacher (shepherd) and the other one as the Bible student (sheep). All initiates have to go through this one-to-one Bible study every week, often for many years, and often continuing with a senior missionary as teacher even after they have become shepherds themselves. In addition, there are also group Bible study where usually the chapter director acts as the Bible teacher. UBF Bible studies are always based on a questionnaire. UBF uses human effort (i.e prayers and repetition) instead of historical, intellectual or spiritual study of the Bible. In this way, Bible study often becomes an idol. After many years, a UBFer cannot stop Bible study even if a friend or loved one is in need.

Disciple-making ministry

“Raising up disciples” is what UBF considers to be their main task. This means parenting young converts like little children and giving them “obedience training” until they comply with how UBF expects them to behave. ubf shepherds and missionaries are taught to be the new parents of college students, often replacing the role of their natural parents.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread is the title of a UBF devotional that members are required to buy every quarter and that is used in UBF early morning prayer meetings. “To write daily bread” means writing a UBF type sogam based on a passage of the Daily Bread booklet. UBF likes to claim they have invented Daily Bread devotionals, but in fact the material was copied from the Scripture Union booklets, and even translated directly from the Scripture Union Daily Bread. Later, UBF replaced the Bible comments and prayers with their own Bible interpretations. UBF’s version of the booklets are sold to UBF members at a much higher price than the original booklets. Recently, UBF created UBF Press, a publication department, to publish and sell Daily Bread booklets and other material.

Testimony/Sogam/Reflecting writing/sharing

A sogam is a Korean term meaning one’s impressions, opinions, thoughts, feelings and sentiments about something. This term is used in UBF for the written statements based on Bible passages that UBF members are required to write and share every week (see testimony writing and sharing). The idea behind this practice is that members don’t just read a Bible passage, but interpret it in the sense of UBF and give a personal response in front of the group about how they intend to apply it to themselves. Usually this happens by repenting for not having done enough UBF activities or for not being obedient enough, and the promise to do better in the next week, often setting concrete targets. That way, members are able to indoctrinate each other, and leaders are able to closely monitor and control the spiritual growth of their members.

Self-Supporting Work

This heritage point is perhaps the most redeeming. However, it appears only as a sub-point in the condensed heritage list:

“Jesus gave up his heavenly glory and was born in a manger of a stable. He had no religious title or position such as the Pharisees or the Sadducees or a Rabbi. Apostle Paul also considered all positions and whatever was to his profit as rubbish, and served the work of God as a self-supporting tentmaker missionary. This is the spirit of self-supporting lay mission, which the UBF ancestors wanted to have.”

“Now we know that there are countries that do not allow a pastor to enter as a missionary, but open their doors to self-supporting lay missionaries. Thus most theologians kept insisting that world mission must be done through lay movements. God gave this direction to our ancestors, and our self-supporting lay missionary work became an exemplary movement among the Christian world. In spite of these kinds of fruit and recognition, we, as lay people, will have to bear all kinds of pains and temptations. But I pray that we may treasure manger spirit and self-supporting lay missionary spirit rather than worldly positions, power or glory.”

source: ubf history

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– Lay mission enables a much broader scope of the body of Christ to participate in mission programs.

– Lay mission embodies much of what Jesus taught and emulates several of Jesus’ own mission methods.

– Lay mission opens doors that might otherwise be shut to officially sanctioned missionaries.

Bad (change it)

– The risk here is to shun the orthodox history of Christian mission, such as ordination processes, robust liturgical processes and/or funded missions programs. All of those are valid options for Christian mission work.

Ugly (stop it)

– The ugly happens when “self-support” is taken too far and becomes “business mission“. When that happens, ubf members’ lives become wholly entagled in the ubf heritage (church at ubf, family at ubf, work at ubf).

– Stop turning “self-support” into “no support”. Missionaries are humans too, and need all kinds of support, not just getting “re-charged” by visiting Korea.

– Stop demanding everyone to be a “lay missionary”. There is a huge need for robust, ordained, educated, non-ubf trained people who can shore up the holes in the ubf ideology.

Meaning #1 – God>Man>Creation

I studied all 50 chapters of Genesis 4 times in my ubf tenure. Every time, “spiritual order” was explained as the order of creation. The original order was that God created the earth and the animals, etc and created Man last. But because God gave Man a mission to “be fruitful and multiply”, the “spiritual order” became: God>Man>Creation. And then I was taught that without ubf mission, I lose “spiritual order” and become an animal.

Meaning #2 – God>Shepherds>sheep

The second meaning was taught to me from just about every bible passage we ever studied in ubf. All the bible teaches that we must submit willingly and joyfully to authority, first submitting to our lifelong, personal, human shepherd as our expression of love and submission to God. I heard the term “benevolent dictator” often. I was trained and taught to be a “benevolent dictator”.

Meaning #3 – God>Man>Woman

I was surprised to find a third meaning from this message (link is below). This lecture makes it clear ubf noticed a misuse of meaning #2, and tries to correct the  meaning.

“Within the church there must be spiritual order based on the word of God and spiritual love based on Jesus’ sacrifice.”

“Women should cover their heads to keep spiritual order (3-6). The term “spiritual order” has been used frequently in UBF. What does it mean here? Look at verse 3. “Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” Here, “head” signifies the one in authority. Jesus Christ is Lord of all and he is the authority over every person in the church. Each church member should enjoy a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and live in submission to him, the head. The same word, “head,” describes the position of a husband in a family. The husband is the head of the family. His wife should submit to him to keep spiritual order in the family.”

Note: this message goes on to also teach my meaning #2 above:

“Spiritual order is not a synonym for Confucian hierarchy or another way of saying “dictatorship.” It means there is mutual love and respect, necessary authority and willing submission.”

Some may raise an issue here, for many abuses have happened in the name of “spiritual order.” Paul is not condoning abusive relationships. Rather, Paul refers to the holy example of the Father and Christ as the model for us all to strive for in learning submission to Christ and one another.”

source: Chicago UBF message in 2008

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– ?? I’m at a loss on this one. This one is so confusing that I can’t really say anything is good about it.

Bad (change it)

– Clarify what this means. Don’t have multiple meanings.

Ugly (stop it)

– Stop using this slogan.

A self-supporting spirit

“At the beginning of UBF ministry, Koreans were accustomed to receiving something from others. After the American G.I.s came to Korea, the first English expression they learned was, “Hello, give me chocolate, give me gum.” The Korean government could decide its annual budget only after the American Congress approved of the amount of aid to Korea. In addition, Korea received aid of a large amount of food and goods. Soon we began to think that we could not survive without receiving aid from others. In this atmosphere, the UBF ancestors struggled furiously to overcome Korean fatalism, to learn the spirit of giving and to live the life of giving.”

“Then a remarkable and historical event in UBF history happened. In 1963, one day when we needed to print something, Mother Barry suggested that we collect the expenses from students. Then Dr. Samuel Lee rebuked her, saying, “How do you expect poor students to pay for it? Since you are rich, you pay for everything.” But Mother Barry insisted, “We must collect it for the sake of education.” Their argument continued until Mother Barry broke into tears.”

“That night Dr. Samuel Lee could not sleep because he made a woman cry. He began to read the Bible. He realized a great lesson that the Bible teaches. God gave his One and Only Son for sinners. Jesus also came to this world and gave everything for sinners and finally gave his own life for us. Jesus taught his disciple a giving spirit, saying, “You give them something to eat.” Apostle Paul accepted Jesus’ word, “It is more blessed to give then to receive,” and practiced a giving life and became a self-supporting missionary.”

source: ubf history

Forced giving

“In May 1966, the world mission offering work had enrolled 162 members. With this offering we could procure centers at Jeonju, Daejun, Daegu and Seoul and send out shepherds. There is a legendary event at the time of pioneering Daejun. One day Dr. Samuel Lee visited the Daejun UBF center and took out the door of the Kwangju UBF center and loaded it to a truck in order to give it to Daejun UBF. One man who saw this got angry at Dr. Samuel Lee that Dr. Lee took out the door without discussing with him.”

source: ubf history

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– As the bible says, it is indeed better to give than to receive.

Bad (change it)

– The bible does not say “never receive”. All human beings need both giving and receiving. Leadership requires sabbatical-type periods of inactivity.

– Realize and accept that we are not living in 1960’s war-torn Korea.

– Realize that in many countries where Korean missionaries have gone for ubf, they have much more than “5 loaves and 2 fish”. Don’t break them down until they pretend to have nothing when they have much.

Ugly (stop it)

– Stop treating human beings like perpetual resources. Stop squeezing the lifeblood, the energy, the creativity, the happiness out of ubf members. Stop suffocating students.

– Stop demanding the money and other resources to flow into a headquarters chapter. HQ has a “hands off” approach to satellite chapters, expecting them to give to the central chapter. In other words, support the self-supporters.

– Stop forcing people to give and to sacrifice. People will be far more willing to give when they choose to do so of their own accord. Stop doing illegal activity in order to “bless” and “help” people.

• Can certain aspects of the “gospel of mission” be good? Why or why not?
• How has the “gospel of mission” influenced your Christian walk? Your church?

This is the first article in a series I’ve entitled “Sophomoric Musings”. I view my musings as sophomoric for two reasons. The first is that the word sophomore is Greek in origin meaning ‘wise fool’. I’ve lived as a Christian for a little over ten years now. While I feel as though I have amassed some experience that may deem me as relatively wise, in reality I’m still a pretty foolish person. I don’t see things objectively, so my musings are infused with a bit of quackery as well as insight due to just having lived up until this point. Secondly, the term sophomore refers to a stage just above the novice or freshman level. These days, I feel as though I’ve entered into the second phase of my Christian life. I’m not sure if I can say exactly when or where the transition happened (the Red Line stop at Belmont on July 10^th… nah forget it), but I definitely feel as though I’ve had a major paradigm shift as of late in terms of how I relate to Christ, His church and the world around me. This post is an articulation of what I’ve been feeling as of late. Hope you enjoy or even cry preferably tears of joy, but I’m not averse to those induced by sheer terror either; all I can say is that Dr. Ben taught me well in this regard.

On www.ubfriends.org we’ve all been struggling to articulate what exactly it is we desire to occur in UBF. We all have dreams and wishes and quite often, they fail to come to fruition in this lifetime. However, the process of imagining them unfold perhaps keeps us somewhat sane. A dream I’ve conjured up has to do with the beginning of change. Actually change occurs beneath the surface and behind the scenes but usually it burgeons forth in some kind of inaugural moment. So what I’m imagining is that particular moment. It would be in the form of a sermon given by a prominent pastor/leader in UBF (insert any figure you have a preference for).

Some Like it HOT

It’s a hot, stuffy, bright day in the afternoon; the sun is shining through the windows and brilliantly reflecting off of the adjacent wall, illuminating all of the intricate crevices etched into the stucco over time. The sun light almost looks heavenly, angelic as it configures into a neatly ordered, splayed-line pattern due to being fractured by the window blinds. The ceiling fans are spinning quietly while the AC motor is pushing cooled air through the vents at a low and steady hum. Hot, but bearable; to my dismay, not hot enough for me to doze off. The sanctuary is packed with about four hundred people or so, stuffy with must and all of those peculiar summer scents; the smell of perfume and cologne become amplified in this heat and that sneeze smell seems to travel at least ten times more now than it does when dispersed in cold air. The pastor is supposed to be delivering a sermon on the Great Commission in what would be an otherwise predictable lecture for most UBF members. I’m about to go into autopilot mode, thinking about what I have to do to get ready for work on Monday. I also keep fixating on this unsightly stain on the back of the chair of one of the parishioners. “What is that?” I ask myself, maybe a smear of chocolate or something less savory. Man, I would like some chocolate right about now, I think to myself. Looking up at the Pastor in his three piece suit and tie, with my eyes ready to glaze over, I listen to the words slowly tumbling out of his mouth, more like slow pouring molasses on a warm summer day. I notice that his demeanor is somewhat hesitant, uneasy this time around, which is unusual. He looks very forlorn but determined to stand in the pulpit and deliver his message. He seems to have a one thousand pound burden weighing him down. This makes me perk up and open my ears to listen. He begins to speak (the rest of this post is his sermon).

Today, I was prepared to give a sermon on the Great Commission. Throughout the years this has been the linchpin of UBF ministry. Many people have come to our ministry because of it and also many have left because of it. Well today, I’d like to take a little detour from what I initially began to write about Jesus’ statement in Matthew chapter twenty eight, verses eighteen and nineteen. For some time, the Gospel, the pure grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and all of its implications has been working in my heart in a new way. I’ve been struggling with how to articulate my feelings about this, but today I believe that I have something very important to say that will perhaps shape the context of our ministry for years to come.

I’ve thought about some of the misguided things that our ministry has done in the past, things which I used to justify.  And while over the past few years I’ve apologized somewhat for these things, I know in my heart of hearts that a genuine apology has never been given from me or others in senior positions. This truth came to a head recently when somehow the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to see how injurious many aspects of UBF’s ideology actually are. While God blessed us in many ways with a unique mission, we have also egregiously sinned against God and against His precious sheep in various ways. Not only do I have a deep sense of anguish and remorse about this, but many others, both former and current members, are coming forth baring their hearts and seeking some semblance of remorse from long time UBF leaders. I deeply apologize that both I and they have been silent for so long. Perhaps in private conversations we have even vented our angst concerning the ministry and even apologized, but publicly we have never attempted to disclose such things. I stand before you today and state with a spirit of deep contrition, repentance and earnestness, that our ministry is indeed very broken. (He pauses as if on the verge of shedding a tear; the sanctuary is captivated in stunned silence).

In the rest of my talk today, I’d like to share my thoughts on why this is the case and some possible remedies. To be honest, I don’t have this written down in sermon form; what I speak to you today is from my heart and I would like to engage all of you in the most genuine manner possible. Shep… I mean John (authors’ note: not actual name of a person), (at this moment, John looks up at the pastor, mouth agape and eyes widely transfixed upon him) I want to do away with these foolish titles, what I’m saying is that I’d like to talk to you today… to you… to all of you from the earnestness of my heart. It’s time to shed all of these facades. Let me continue with my train of thought on some of our problems.

Yes, We Admit it, Soylent… Green… is… Made of People

(An Admission of Gross Wrongdoing)

Specifically, I believe a significant portion of negative aspects in our ministry stems from our narrow definition of the word ‘ministry’ (he makes quote signs with his fingers as he’s saying this). Particularly, we’ve relegated our ministry mainly to the campus setting. Focusing on campus ministry is what worked for us in the past; as you all know, it is the very foundation of our ministry. But the problem is that we trusted in and chose the foundation of campus ministry more than the foundation of Christ and the Gospel. Not only this, but we’ve enforced our view of ministry with an uncompromising, iron-like fist. We have abused our positions of authority in order to keep our legalistic view of the gospel intact. Because of this, many espoused and suffered from an injuriously myopic view of ministry. The stories of personal tragedy are simply gut-wrenching and in some cases too much to bear without shedding many tears; the abuse is on a catastrophic level that no one should have to bear; in fact, Christ died in order to take up such wounds and burdens. Not only that, but because we have never sufficiently acknowledged or addressed this problem, these tragedies still occur today, though perhaps unbeknownst to many here, even to some of our young leaders who should be in the know. This being the case, more than anything, I would like our ministry to focus on inward healing as well as conscientiously contacting those who have left the ministry in the hopes of building bridges aright with them.

Before we hold another international or staff conference, I would like us to focus exclusively on this effort. Even to those who are in foreign mission fields, I’m not asking that they stop doing missions, but that they partner with us and acknowledge that our ministry has grave problems that can no longer be ignored. One thing I have in mind is redefining what UBF’s mission is. At the website www.ubfriends.org, as on online community in Christ, former and current members have been sifting through and trying to interpret the good, bad and ugly aspects of our UBF heritage, it’s really quite interesting. Anyway, upon reviewing some of the former statements about these heritage points by our own UBF leaders (www.ubf.org/node/155) in conjunction with reading ubfriends blogs and comments, I have concluded that our internal doctrine is woefully, woefully misguided and needs immediate revision. Surely, there is some truth contained in them, but the first and foremost heritage point should be adherence to the gospel of God’s grace. I’m not sure about how to redefine the rest of our heritage points and to be honest I don’t really care. For far too long, the gospel given by Christ has been overshadowed by these eight or twelve heritage points. If I were to take a page from Martin Luther’s legacy, I would post one thesis: the Gospel of God’s grace.

I Don’t Want Your Money; I Want Change

I’m not sure how all of this will unfold, but I believe that this is the very long, overdue and necessary starting point to rebuilding UBF’s foundation rightly. Just to give some specifics of what necessarily has to change, I want to give some directives that I hope you will find beneficial. First of all, today, you may or may not choose to stay after service and pray two by two; you can pray in groups or however you like (some in the congregation let out a snicker, a chortle or nervous laughter, looking at each other as if to confirm that they all heard what the pastor just said). In terms of ministerial practice, if you have conviction about seeing your home or your workplace or any other place as your mission field, please with our blessing serve with the grace of our Lord Jesus there. You are no longer relegated or tied to the campus to do ministry there; please feel free to serve anywhere as you see fit. (literally a millisecond after the pastor is finished, one of the older missionaries shouts out, “This is heresy!” and storms out. The pastor momentarily loses his composure, but regains it and continues on with heightened resolve). Moreover, if you believe that God has called you to do social justice ministry, we will wholeheartedly support you in this endeavor. Actually, we would like to do something revolutionary. We would like to have committees to oversee each of these areas, that is the home, workplace and urban evangelization. Not only these areas but any other area you propose, we are willing to let you have the freedom to build up these ministries under the UBF banner. Also, we would like to encourage you to visit other churches and build relationships with those outside of UBF. You don’t have to come here every Sunday; take some time to explore the rest of the Christian world. This may come as a grave shock to many of you, but I’m telling you, get out and get to know other people besides UBF people (at this, the crowd begins to stir and talk to each other in disbelief at the statements coming from the pastor’s mouth). In all of this, we just ask that you not use your freedom in the Spirit as an excuse to do evil, but rather to love. In this way, we want to become a multi-faceted, healthy church which is what many have vied for and advocated in the past as well as present.

In the coming weeks we would like to launch a series entitled, “What is the Gospel?” For many years, we have presumed to know what the gospel means but it is obvious that we need to go back to the basics and learn the truth about the very crux of Christianity. We will also hold workshops on how to practically apply the gospel in all of our various relationships. We will not look to UBF heritage to define the Gospel; rather we will look to the Bible, church history and also the current work of many contemporary theologians and pastors who have exclusively focused on this issue. Any major conference will have this theme from now on. I don’t know for how long, perhaps until Jesus comes. But by the authority given to me by the Chief Shepherd Jesus Christ, as a lowly under shepherd of His church, I am resigned to teaching you only about His Gospel, as explained by the whole of Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments, until the day I die. If I ever, ever step out of line and Lord authority over you or try to take the place of the Chief Shepherd, I will submit to church discipline and if need be resign; this is how seriously I take my commitment to purity and integrity in leading you.

Chicken Wings and Drinks On Me

Lastly, some practical advice, not a command, to you today is this: If you have children or family that you have not seen for some time because you have been so busy with ministry, please go home and hug them. Tell them that you love them and that they are more important than any mission, that in fact they are the mission; your mission is to love them with the love of Christ. For older missionaries who have strained relationships with children who have either left the church or have remained in a begrudging manner, please call them and apologize to them; tell them that you are sorry and that your only desire is for them to know the grace of our Lord Jesus. I give this advice to any shepherds who have wounded young students in the past. Also, for those who are peers, if you have any grudges, please don’t delay coming to the cross to reconcile; this is much more important than the work of campus ministry or any other endeavor that you wish to undertake.

From now on, we will listen to any and every story of abuse or misfortune you have suffered because of UBF. In fact, we want to hold both open and private forums for such dialogue to occur. We can do this over a meal in someone’s house or in the sanctuary right here before this giant cross emblem. Yes, as leaders, we might initially become defensive or even angry at some of the assertions, because these things are very difficult for us to face and own up to. But we give you our word, we will hear you out and we will seek real reconciliation to the best of our ability. We will shed tears with you and talk for many, many hours. However long it takes, we will seek to understand you and come to a solution at the foot of the cross.

These are very trying times for our ministry, but something such as what I laid out today absolutely must take place if we are going to do right by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May the grace of our Lord Jesus be with you today.  Oh and lastly, if you want to go out and have a beer, drinks on me at Hawkeyes near UIC; can’t beat the ten cent wings either. We can ride my purple dragon, Bubbles there (author’s note: hey, I did say this was a dream). Thank you and God bless you.

On the Verge of Waking Up

Many of the parishioners are clueless as to what to do; even the piano player is at a loss as to what hymn to begin playing. “How about we just end service right here?” the pastor says. Some people remain in their seats in shock, others begin to file out and discuss what they have just heard. At the same time, a long line forms beginning at the podium where the pastor once stood and terminates at the rear sanctuary door. Personally, I’m puzzled as to what exactly just happened, but at the same time I feel as though precisely what I dreamed of wanting to transpire just came to fruition. It’s hard to believe this because dreams are often illusory and hard to remember, seemingly impossible to grasp. I think to myself, perhaps this is just another one of those dreams. I sooth myself with the notion that whatever occurs on this side of heaven will always be imperfect and bittersweet, but what will happen on the other side is in fact beyond our wildest and most imaginative dreams for it is a reality grounded in truth and perfect justice, authored by God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit in whom there is nothing false or malicious.

Concluding Remarks

Some may not appreciate the humor put forth in this article; I haven’t tried my hand much at it so maybe it’s a bit off… or way off. But the reason for the levity is captured best by a quote from Elton Trueblood in his wonderful little book entitled The Humor of Christ,

“Any alleged Christianity which fails to express itself in gaiety, at some point, is clearly spurious. The Christian is gay not because he is blind to injustice and suffering, but because he is convinced that these, in the light of the divine sovereignty are never ultimate. He is convinced that the unshakeable purpose is the divine rule of all things, whether of heaven or earth (Eph. 1:10). Though he can be sad, and often is perplexed, he is never really worried. The well-known humor of the Christian is not a way of denying the tears, but rather a way of affirming something which is deeper than tears.”

1. The top seven symptoms of Emotionally Unhealthy Spirituality

# Ignoring the emotions of anger, sadness and fear

Like most Christians, I was taught that almost all feelings are unreliable and not to be trusted. They go up and down and are the last thing we should be attending to in our spiritual lives.

I concur with the author. I accepted the word from 2 Timothy 1:7 “self-control” deeply in my young age and even despised “emotional” people. I became very stoic, unemotional person.

# Denying the past’s impact on the present

Our marriage bore a striking resemblance to that of our parents: Gender roles; the handling of anger and conflict and shame; how we defined success; our view of family, children, recreation, pleasure, sexuality, grieving; and our relationships with friends had all been shaped by our families of origin and our cultures.

Even though we had been committed Christians for almost 20 years, our ways of relating mirrored more our family of origin than the way God intended for his new family in Christ.

To understand one person is not easy, including our spouses because our ways of relating mirrored more our family of origin than the way of God.

# Dividing our lives into “secular” and “sacred” compartments

It is so easy to compartmentalize God to “Christian activities” around church and our spiritual disciplines without thinking of him in our marriages, the disciplining of our children, the spending of our money, our recreation or even our studying for exams.

There is no dichotomy between “sacred” and “secular” in God. God is the Lord of all aspects of our lives. Our church, family, study and work are ALL equally important and they are all our ministry.

# Doing for God instead of being with God

Work for God that is not nourished by a deep interior life with God will eventually be contaminated by other things such as ego, power, needing approval of and from others and buying into the wrong ideas of success and the mistaken belief that we cannot fail.

We become “human doings” not “human beings”. Our experiential sense of worth and validation gradually shifts from God’s unconditional love for us in Christ to our works and performance. The joy of Christ gradually disappears.

We should overcome our works and performance oriented ministry and the competitive comparison among us.

# Spiritualizing away conflict

Blame/ attack/ silence treatment/ become sarcastic/ tell half the truth.

Quoting bible verses to silence others without compassion and deep understanding is unhealthy. I practiced this to my wife many times in the past.

# Covering our brokenness, weakness and failure

The pressure to present an image of ourselves as strong and spiritually “together” hovers over most of us.

The bible does not spin the flaws and weaknesses of its heroes.

King David: Psalm 51:17

Paul: 2 Corinthians 12: 7-10 thorn in my flesh that keep me from becoming conceited. My grace is sufficient.

We are all deeply flawed and broken. There are no exceptions.

It is OK to acknowledge our shortcomings and weaknesses and failures freely before God (Ps 51:4) and receive the grace of forgiveness. In this way Jesus alone can be honored and glorified among us.

#  Living without limits

I was taught that good Christians constantly give and tend to others. I wasn’t supposed to say no to opportunities to or requests for help because that would be selfish.

Jesus did not heal every sick person in Palestine. He did not feed all the hungry beggars.

Living without limits can bring burn-outs and exhaustion. Acts 20:35 was the first bible verse I learned in UBF. This verse was a blessing to me and many others. But I also learned from Gittins that giving and receiving are both important.

2. Radical Antidote: Emotional Health and Contemplative Spirituality

The author gave the radical antidote to the emotionally unhealthy spirituality in two ways: emotional health and contemplative spirituality. Regarding the contemplative spirituality, this is journey inward; silence, solitude and a life of unceasing prayer. Constantly live in the presence of God. This is a lifelong journey and a character building that will take life time. Unfortunately, there seems to be no other way or short cuts for the solutions for the emotionally unhealthy spirituality.

# Emotional health is concerned with:

Respecting and loving others without having to change them.

Accurately self-assessing our strengths, limits and weaknesses and freely sharing them with others.

Learning the capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions that consider the prospective of others.

# Contemplative spirituality focuses on classic practices and concerns:

Practicing silence, solitude and a life of unceasing prayer

Resting attentively in the presence of God.

Understanding our earthly life as a journey of transformation toward ever-increasing union with God.

Loving others out of a life of love for God

Living in committed community that passionately love Jesus above all else.

In their own words

Again I find it helpful to simply share ubf’s own words on “manger spirit”.

The ubf mindset of “worldly=non-ubf and godly=ubf” has much to do with this slogan of “manger ministry”, imitating the actual manger instead of Jesus himself.

“Though Jesus is the Creator God, he became flesh and was born in a manger of a stable in order to save all the people of the world from their sins. Jesus gave up the glory of the heavenly kingdom, humbled himself and gave even his life as a ransom for sinners. The UBF ancestors struggled hard to imitate this Jesus and to dedicate their possessions and youth without reservation for Jesus and his gospel. Wherever they went, they were noticed as UBF people. Especially, women did not put any make-up on their faces, wearing low-hill shoes and carried large handbags. In their large handbags, they carried their Bible, Bible study notes and cookies. What distinguished them from worldly people was not just their outward appearances but also their noble inner characters, which came from a manger spirit.”

Surprisingly, much of the elitism may stem from “manger ministry” as well, and is often difficult to distinguish from another heritage point called “lay missionaries”.

“As the fruit of manger spirit, our ministry was inclined to raising up self-supporting lay shepherds and missionaries who had no religious position and power. Dr. Lee was called a shepherd as the first person in world history. The title, “shepherd” meant nothing to worldly people, and had no authority or power. Because of this title, we suffered a lot. After introducing ourselves as shepherds, we had to explain what a shepherd meant for a long time. Because of this unfamiliar title, people misunderstood us as strange people who belonged to a strange group. Some criticized us sharply, saying, “You did not graduate from a seminary. How can you dare to teach the Bible to others?” Others gave us friendly advice, saying, “Since you are eager to study the Bible and serve the work of God, why don’t you enter a seminary and be a pastor? We are willing to help you to do that.” In spite of all these difficulties, we took great pride in being called shepherds.”

source: ubf history

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– I learned the value of sacrifice and humility.

Bad (change it)

– Instead of focusing on the “manger”, I find it far more life-giving to focus on Jesus directly.

Ugly (stop it)

– Bad financial decisions. Over the past 20 years, I’ve often made terrible financial decisions. Why? Because I was taught to have “manger spirit” which meant (in my mind) always driving a junk car on purpose, not taking care of house repairs and spending money first and foremost for ubf activities.

– As the ubf history page points out, the “manger spirit” slogan may apply more to women in ubf. Stop pretending to have a “manger” appearance.

In their own words

Before I share my thoughts, here is a published description of “Campus Evangelism”. This matches what I was taught.

In this way God gave our ministry the specific mission of raising students as spiritual leaders. A broken shepherd heart and a burning love towards students became the spirit of our ministry. Because of this we had to see ourselves as permanent students. Those who graduated from college and got a job did not think of themselves as salary men but took pride in being shepherds of students. Whether others recognized us or not, we loved students more than the president or the chancellor or professors.

 

We believed that we owned the campus. With this sense of mission and pride of being shepherds, we dedicated our youth and possessions to God. Especially, married women spent their time more on campus than at home, more in taking care of student sheep than their own children. Those who could not graduate from college came to our ministry and accepted campus mission. Though they were older than average students, they entered the college in order to shepherd college students. Moreover, even though the rent around the university was more expensive than other places, we wanted to live near the campus and feed student sheep with the word of God.

 

Maintaining the status of a permanent college student and campus shepherd is a peculiar way of life and required constant struggle. When old people kept on coming and going through the campus, they became the objects of suspicion and investigation. Some was accused of being a kind of criminal. To make matters worse, some missionaries were even put into prison, including Dr. Joseph Chung of Chicago UBF, who was imprisoned for a few days. In spite of all these hardships, we did not abandon campus mission because it was God who gave us the specific mission of campus evangelism, and this mission became our reason to live and the purpose of our lives

 

God did not call us to be ordinary people who does ordinary work. Among all peoples of all nations, God called us to be shepherds for students. Our mission does not end in gathering students. God called us to be disciple-makers who raise up spiritual leaders and shepherds. May God help us to keep this spiritual heritage of God’s specific calling to us as disciple-makers among college students to the end.

Source: ubf history

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– Nothing good comes to mind about the slogan campus evangelism. I am too jaded by this one. Anyone?

Bad (change it)

– I cannot think of anything to change in this one. I can only think of things that must be stopped.

Ugly (stop it)

– I was taught to believe that we owned the campus. Note the statement above “We believed that we owned the campus.” This led to things like marching around the campus 7 times like Jericho, which I personally did not do but it was reported several times from other chapters. But I did walk on campus much and participated in ubf prayer meetings on campus. Some claimed they would bury their bones on campus.

– I was taught that ubf is a college ministry, and it is. But they also extend the ubf context to all ages of life. The have BBF (for babies), MBF (for middle school/elementary), HBF (for high school), UBF (for university). Then after that you go through MbF (marriage by faith) and start the whole cycle over again. The ubf people who become 60 or 70 years old are pressured to become “silver missionaries”, usually accompanied by a joke about “retire” meaning “put new tires on”. So ubf presents as a campus ministry, but tries to enforce all ages to conform to the campus ministry paradigm. You can’t have it both ways. Either ubf must choose to actually be a campus ministry only or create unique programs suited for various ages.

– I was taught to “be part of campus life” my whole life. As ubf’s own words say, “Maintaining the status of a permanent college student and campus shepherd is a peculiar way of life and required constant struggle.” ubf demands that you stay a permanent student. So ubf should not be surprised when many leaders in ubf eventually leave.

So to “do” world mission meant you go out into the world (i.e. the closest campus) and fish. To “fish” means to invite students to one-to-one bible study. This seemed to fit nicely with point 1 of the ubf heritage, “go back to the bible”.

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– The world mission slogan helped me to expand my thinking beyond my own little world. Growing up as a country boy from a small hick town, this idea of serving the world was helpful.

– I learned to tolerate and accept people of different cultures and language than me.

Bad (change it)

– Emphasizing “Jesus’ world mission commands” lead me to ignore Jesus’ other commands, many of which are more important.

Ugly (stop it)

– I learned quickly that even though I was to think about many countries around the world, Korean culture was supreme.

– World mission taught me to lose my identity as an American and adopt the ubf version of Korean culture.

– I gave up all my dreams and sacrificed much in order to be a missionary to Russia, only to be told this would not be possible in ubf. I found out ubf is not a missionary sending organization. ubf is a Korean missionary sending organization. A small number of non-Koreans have been sent by ubf, but those actions seem to me to be just an appeasement.

Don’t spend too much effort interacting with culture or worrying about former members or thinking of ways to change the Sunday worship service or spending time with your family. I was taught that I could actually do these worldly things from time to time, but I had to make sure I always got back to reading the bible to get my mind and heart “cleaned up”. Go to your bible study appointments. Read the bible day and night. Read your bible as you work and eat. Memorize bible verses. Recite your memorization in front of various groups.

“Back to the bible” was ingrained in my mind through being reminded of several bible verses, especially: Deuteronomy 11:18 “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” Psalm 19:10 “They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.” Deuteronomy 8:3 “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

I was taught to read the bible every day, to choose a key verse for my life, for each year and for my marriage, my children, my jobs, and every facet of my life. I was taught to assign a bible verse to every endeavour of life. I often memorized the key verses of the ubf daily bread booklet, in case someone asked me if I did daily bread that day.

The good, bad and ugly

Good (keep it)

– I learned many things about the bible characters and stories from verse by verse exposition. This was the normal, methodical method of reading the bible in ubf.

– I overcame a fear of reading bible in public.

– I began thinking seriously about doing what the bible says to do, and attemtped to live according to the bible.

– I learned to wrestle with God, spending much time thinking about how to apply bible verses in my life events.

Bad (change it)

– I was expected to only use the NIV translation of the bible.  This reveals that my study was shallow. Any serious bible student will use multiple versions, and spend time learning some Greek and Hebrew.

– I was taught to use the inductive approach only. This is where you observe facts of a passage in the bible, and then draw conclusions from those facts. However, most of the time I was told what the conclusion was supposed to be. Any serious bible student will use a combination of both inductive and deductive approaches. If you draw a conclusion from some verses, for example, that conclusion should be checked deductively with many other passages to see if it holds true.

– The emphasis of going back to the bible is on going to the Old Testament books. It means going back to the Moses or Joshua style of leadership. Any serious bible student however will study both the Old and the New, and Christians will emphasize the New Testament normally.

Ugly (stop it)

– Going back to the bible was a daily exercise in ubf. So much so that we neglected our children and family to attend bible study. This thinking taught me to choose bible study over children.

– Back to the bible thinking also means “back to UBF question sheets and lectures only.” Rarely if ever did we make connections with the mainline churches. I was taught that my “pure” inductive method with just the bible and ubf material was superior to any commentary or other church pastor’s opinion.

– Back to the bible means putting yourself back into the bible story. I was taught to put myself into the bible story and imitate the bible characters. I began to live in a fantasy world, thinking I was Joshua or Abraham or whichever character we studied.

– I spent much time reading the bible, but I was taught to treat my shepherds’ authority as greater than the bible’s authority. If there was a conflict between the bible and my shepherd or director, I was to listen to my shepherd.

– I began over-prescribing the bible for every life problem and situation. The bible became like a drug, soothing away all problems in life.

Result after 24 years

After more than two decades of living with “back to the bible” thinking, I find that I have lots of knowledge about the bible texts. However, I have little understanding of the meaning of the bible texts. I have little knowledge of 2,000 years of Christian history. I am just now discovering the Christian “greats” such as Charles Spurgeon. Just after leaving I found that I was a shallow, empty, heartless man.

What will happen if the bad is changed and the ugly is stopped?

If ubf people remove the bad and the ugly, they might feel as if their pure bible study is being infected. But I think it will be your emptiness being filled, your shallowness becoming deeper and your superficial relationships becoming more real. Removing the bad and ugly parts of “back to the bible” could be the first step on the road of healing and reconciliation.

How has UBF responded to such heartfelt accounts of spiritual abuse? Sorry to say that the loudest response is most often SILENCE. Next, the “typical” response from many in leadership has been quite defensive, as though the abuse experienced was somehow justifiable, if not acceptable. Why is this? Might this be because UBF has consciously or subconsciously apotheosized, revered and venerated her leaders?

The following are some common responses to allegations of spiritual abuse in UBF:

* “There are two sides of the story.” This may be the single most common excuse or reasoning for defending abusive UBF leaders. It acknowledges that the leader may have said or done some bad things. But the sheep who complained has also some very serious problems and sin issues that the abusive leader knows about. The implication of “two sides of the story” is that the abusive UBF leader is NOT fully responsible for the abuse of their sheep. Why? Because their sheep are also terrible and horrible “worse” sinners who in some way—known to the abusive UBF leader—deserved that abuse. Really?

* “Aren’t you also a sinner?” The horrible logic here is that because you are a sinner too, so how dare you accuse your UBF shepherd of sinning!! Aren’t you being a hypocrite?

* “You must forgive!” This skillfully and craftily shifts the burden of responsibility from the abusive UBF leader to the sheep who is addressing the spiritual abuse of UBF. It is like a husband who beat his Christian wife. After that he comes to her with a Bible and says, “As a Christian, you must forgive me.” Somehow, some in Christian leadership buy this logic.

* “You were blessed by UBF, so how dare you complain!” Such planting of indebtedness by some UBF leaders practically takes credit for the work of the Holy Spirit. When a sheep becomes a Christian (or a renewed Christian) after Bible study, this is clearly ONLY the work of the Holy Spirit. The Bible teacher/shepherd was ONLY the instrument. So if the shepherd made the sheep feel indebted, they have robbed God of his glory. Such a thinking is sadly ongoing to this day. “UBF taught you the Bible. UBF introduced your spouse. We fed you meals. You are so ungrateful. You are bitter and unforgiving.” It is the classical ad hominem argument that the problem of UBF is the problem of the person addressing the issue.

* Because God blessed UBF, UBF is OK. It is as though the bad of UBF is OK because God had blessed UBF for 50 years. This is very subtle and very flawed theological thinking.

Perhaps others have heard more creative and ingenious reasons to justify and defend the UBF leader for longstanding patterns of abusive behavior. But at its core do you think it is because UBF has apotheosized her leaders?

In this book, “The Only Necessary Thing” Nouwen mentioned his own experience of hurt and pain. He confessed like this, “I am struck by how I cling to my own wounded self. Why do I think so much about the people who have offended or hurt me? Why do I allow to have so much power over my feelings and emotions?”

Most of these quotes are from the section of “Forgiveness” in this book.

We are all wounded people. Who wounds us? Often those whom we love and those who love us. When we feel rejected, abandoned, manipulated or violated, it is mostly by people very close to us: –Those who love us wound us too. That’s the tragedy of our lives. That is what forgiveness from the heart so difficult.—Forgiveness often seems impossible, but nothing is impossible for God. The God who lives within us will give us the grace to go beyond our wounded selves and say, “In the Name of God you are forgiven.”

In our context, those whom we love can be trusted shepherds and bible teachers.

Forgiveness means that I continually am willing to forgive the other person for not being God—for not fulfilling all my needs. I, too, must ask forgiveness for not being able to fulfill other people’s needs.

Our heart—the center of our being—is a part of God. Thus, our heart longs for satisfaction for total communion. But human beings, whether it is your husband, or your wife, or your father or your mother, your brother, sister or child, they all so limited in giving that which we crave. But since we want so much and we get only part of what we want, we have to keep on forgiving people for not giving us all we want.

We have certain expectations from others and when these things are not met we feel betrayed and hurt. But even that we can accept positively from God’s point of view. There is reason to celebrate.

The interesting thing is that when you can forgive people for not being God then you can celebrate that they are a reflection of God. You can say, “Since you are not God, I love you because you have such beautiful gifts of God’s love.” You don’t have everything of God, but what you have to offer is worth celebrating. By celebrate I mean to lift up, affirm, confirm, to rejoice in another person’s gifts.

One of the solutions to overcome our hurt feeling is to detach a person and sin in him or her. Bible teaches us to love a person but hate the sin in one’s heart. This is the way to true freedom in God. We have to make decision not to allow the hurt feeling to overpower on us. Then we can make the first movement in our dance with God.

Healing begins not where our pain is taken away, but where it can be shared and seen as part of a larger pain. The first task of healing, therefore, is to take out many problems and pains out of their isolation and place them at the center of great battle against the Evil One.

As we create the space to mourn, we free ourselves little by little from the grip of the Evil One and come to discover in the midst of our grief that the same Spirit who calls us to mourn stirs us to make the first movement in our dance with God.

–We have to forgive our church and civil leaders for their ambitions and manipulations. Beyond all that, we have to forgive all those who torture, kill, rape, destroy—who make this world such a dark place. And we, ourselves, also have to beg forgiveness. The older we become, the more clearly we see that we too, have wounded others deeply, and are part of a society of violence and destruction. It is very difficult to forgive and to ask for forgiveness. But without this, we remain fettered to our past—unable to dance—

Forgiveness is the great spiritual weapon against the Evil One. As long as we remain victim of anger and resentment, the power of darkness can continue to divide us and tempt us with endless power game. But when we forgive those who threaten our lives, they lose their power over us—Forgiveness enables us to take the first step of the dance.

Forgiveness is made possible by the knowledge that human being cannot offer us what only God can give. Once we have heard the voice calling us the Beloved, accepted the gift of full communion and claimed the first unconditional love, we can see easily—with the eyes of a repentant heart—how we have demanded of people a love that only God can give. It is the knowledge of that first love that allows us to forgive those who have only a “second” love to offer.

All our human love is “second” love comparing the great first love of God.

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We do not know what we are doing when we hurt others. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour unceasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family. The voice that calls us the Beloved is the voice of freedom because it sets us free to love without wanting anything in return.

But each time you pray really pray for your enemies, you’ll notice that your heart is being made new. Within your prayer, you quickly discover that your enemies are in fact your fellow human beings loved by God just as much as yourself. The result is that the walls you’ve thrown up between “him and me” “us and them” “ours and theirs” disappear.

I find it difficult to conceive of a more concrete way to love than by praying for one’s enemies. It makes you conscious of the hard fact that, in God’s eyes, you’re no more and no less worthy of being loved than any other person, and it creates an awareness of profound solidarity with all other human beings.

A Reflection on Genesis 22

When my wife and I were about to face separation, our lives shook. Our marriage shook. But no one asked, “How is your marriage? Are you okay? How can you handle this event?” We had been married less than one year and were expecting a baby. As I participated in UBF ministry activities during the four months that we were separated I told myself it was okay because of Genesis 22 or similar thought control. However, deep in my heart I was torn up because it was not a comparable test of faith. I want to explain best a brief look at Abraham’s test of faith, my family’s personal struggle and the impact of ministry.

As Genesis 22 opens it had already been some time after Isaac had been weaned and Ishmael had been sent away with his mother. Verses 1-2 read, “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’”

Typical UBF messages emphasize that Isaac was most precious to Abraham. By interpretation this means that Isaac, God’s promise and blessing to Abraham, was an obstruction (idol) to serve and follow God. (So, the natural action is to remove the idol.) But God was indeed testing Abraham and did not intend to take Isaac, but rather wanted Abraham to demonstrate his love for God. So, Abraham almost sacrificed his son – But he didn’t! Before he could bring the knife down an angel of the Lord stopped him. When Isaac was spared and a ram was to become the offering it revealed God as our provider. But we need to remember that Abraham returned having proven his faith and love for God, while his son Isaac was still under his care. This reveals that Abraham had a lasting encounter with God – a turning point in his faith. Abraham’s obedience helped him to experience God even more. God would not let anything happen to Isaac for the value of life and the promise. So, after leaving Abraham had both his faith in God and his son.

Understanding Our Separation

In my own example I had to let go of my wife – my wife had to let go of me. My wife and I married by faith, but also because we did love each other. Even though we did not know each other at all in any way, God gave us opportunities of our era – internet: fb, skype and email. During our private time no leader or chapter director could prohibit our frequent communication that helped us to later become a solid married couple after marriage. I was not desperate to marry, but was willing to do so in UBF after a lot of personal prayer. This did not happen because of my chapter director and his carrot and stick, but because I believed, trusted and loved God.

Let me explain our crisis: My wife is Korean. During a mad rush to do everything well, effectively and in a timely manner at the time of our marriage I accidently submitted the wrong application for immigration sponsorship into Canada. I will say just one thing, even though this has hurt my family in the short term, I believe that it was God’s grace and will that led us out of an abusive chapter in such a way. When we discovered our situation most of the chapter members were out of the country, leaving just my family and one other member. When I discovered our reality I arranged to meet with an immigration lawyer immediately to see exactly what our options were according to Canadian laws. Did I consult with the chapter director at that time? No, his absence did not help us at all and we also needed to be clear about the facts before we prayed.

Interference From Our Chapter Director

Our main priority was to get my wife out of the country before it could hurt her chances to be accepted as a sponsored immigrant to Canada. We messaged the director and his wife after we could explain the facts about our situation and what options were available. First, the director said we could discuss further once he returned to Canada. (There was no time for discussion, but he wanted to be in control.) Second, both he and his wife encouraged a foolish plan to go into USA and then try to reenter Canada – the theory was to extend possible visiting visa. Our problem was not my wife’s allowance time for being in Canada it was the application forms we had submitted. The Canadian government believed I was in Canada and that my wife was in Korea, but actually we were both in Canada. The government was processing everything for my wife at the embassy in Seoul. Within ten days of discovering our situation and taking the necessary steps to understand our options my wife was back in Korea.

Once everyone had returned to Canada and talked openly about the situation my family became divided property of the chapter. The director did not show concern about what this crisis was doing to my family. All he cared about was his power and authority over the members in his church. My wife became a political object so he could find favour among Korean co-workers in her chapter. He prepared gifts and a card which we were not to have anything to do with accept for delivery. He enforced a prayer meeting for the sending off of my wife the Sunday before she left without our consent or input. His prayer was not about our family – it was about his chapter and how he could maintain power over us. This was one event he could not control. He was not more powerful than immigration Canada. The following Monday my parents and I accompanied my wife to the airport early in the morning. I refused any coworkers to be in attendance.

All during this time my wife had just entered her second trimester for pregnancy. So, in addition to the stress of sponsoring a spouse into Canada, we faced four months separation during her pregnancy. The days leading up to her departure my wife cried and cried. I had gone through a breakdown several years before, so it was naturally difficult for me to do the same in times of intense sorrow and disappointment.

Life in Canada Separated From My Wife

During the four month period there were two aspects that bore heavy on me. First, inside our chapter my prayer topics were given to me. I was told that my wife had to return as soon as possible to Canada for the sake of our chapter. What!?! Nobody had any sense!! A pregnant woman well advanced should not be travelling long distances by air. My wife also had no status in Canada and would be subject to the worst environment along with the baby to be born into. Over and over again, during meetings, daily bread, bible study, Sunday worship and any event which caused us to gather I listened to the prayer that demanded my wife return to Canada. Her return was not about uniting our family, but about maintaining numbers and events in our small chapter. The second aspect that bore heavy on me was during any event which gathered several chapters together. I attended one wedding, the summer conference and also a leaders conference before the school year began. On all occasions I met with people from across Canada and explained our situation without stating the facts about chapter politics. Everyone outside of my chapter said the same thing: Go and teach English in Korea! Be united with your wife, because it is not healthy for you two to be separated like this. When I returned home I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. I asked myself (and God), “Why couldn’t the people in my own chapter think like that? How could I allow myself to get stuck in this bondage to a UBF chapter?”

Well, I took matters into my own hands one evening. After chatting with many Canadian leaders over the period of a couple months I contacted the chapter where my wife had been in USA. Through this communication I could get assistance from Chicago. My director received a call from JJ giving guidance that I go to Korea for a short term period (6 months). This was at least until the processing for immigration could be completed. However, my chapter director wanted me to go only for the delivery of the baby and support my wife in the immediate and then return. He had no choice but to accept that Chicago leaders had stepped in and given a new direction. He still tried to keep his control because a director from a chapter in Korea had just visited Canada and he wanted me to study with that director so to keep his influence over me. (That director is a neighbor to our present UBF chapter.)

When I did leave I had prepared to work as an English teacher in Korea giving me more than a one year contract to fulfill. In addition, my parents were the only ones to see me off at the airport – I threatened my director with the police if he should come near me or my parents while I was away. Since then I have had no active contact with the chapter director except for what he has emailed to me. In fact, he has well hidden that things changed radically after I left.

Our Marriage Defined and Challenged in Korea

There is one more thing that occurred after the birth of our baby. The director’s wife came to Korea without any notice and tried to visit while I was working. She almost got past my wife, but I stood my ground and a fellow co-worker had to meet and send the director’s wife away without even leaving the train station. Let me explain since it was a very difficult action I faced while I was still shaken from the chapter in Canada.

I took a leap of faith and warned my wife that if she kept contact or allowed that woman to come into our home and touch our baby I would leave her and start all over without any conscience of our marriage. While talking with my wife I had even called my mother and told my parents that I would leave my wife and baby if this event occurred. I did all of this by faith, because that family had used, manipulated and bullied us. Did I want to leave my wife and baby? No, but I handled this event as I did to demonstrate what the chapter in Canada had done. During the four months of separation my wife had been in a loving and warm chapter, but I hadn’t and I could not pretend that everything was okay and allow them to exhort power over our family anymore. Forgiveness is in my heart, but that does not mean I will allow myself or my wife and children to suffer any longer.

Closing Comments

In closing there are many co-workers in Canada, USA and Korea whose help I received and for that I am truly thankful and hope that God’s blessings can pour out to them. But there are those in the chapter that I left who still need to be called to account. There are still others who share their condolences, but will do nothing about what has been happening in that chapter or others of its kind. It has almost been two years since I came to Korea and God has taught me that his divine training can be done anywhere, anytime under his authority and by the Holy Spirit. God has also taught me great humility with every step because I had no time to prepare anything, but had to adapt beyond my sense of time and abilities. We still do not have clarity for our situation, but we are taking each day and leaving it to God. That chapter director tried to keep me in Canada without ever suggesting I go to Korea for the remainder of application processing. It is a perfect illustration of an abuse of power.

Some in UBF may ask me, “Why has this been added to the pile of negative reviews?” My answer, “I am adding this here, because if I don’t it will always be left unsaid. When I share my life testimony I must be graceful and encouraging – that means do not say anything that may discourage new comers.”

I was taught this passage from the NIV, which reads:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

²“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
³ I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you. (emphasis mine)

In the Bible study, I was encouraged to respond to God’s call like Abraham did, to leave my connections to my pre-UBF life and go to “…the place [God] will show [me],” which meant UBF ministry and campus mission. If I obeyed, I was told “…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” When I married, Dr. John Jun delivered our wedding address from Genesis 12:3, exhorting us to be a family of blessing who not merely enjoys God’s blessing but becomes a blessing to others. I was encouraged, “Become a source of blessing to other people like Abraham.” Of course, the best method of being a blessing—we were taught—is to go to the university campus and invite students to 1:1 Bible study, shepherding as many of them as possible so that they too may “become a blessing” by doing the same. The best method of being a blessing certainly did NOT involve much consideration for my own family.

But how correct is our interpretation of Gen 12:3? Did the Bible translation affect the way this verse was interpreted? Consider the way the NASB translates verse 3:

And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (emphasis mine)

Notice that the word translated “people” in the NIV is translated “families” in the NASB. It is also translated “families” in the ESV, NLT, NRSV, and KJV. In fact, among the popular English translations, only the NIV uses the generic word “people” instead the more-specific word “families”. The Hebrew word is mishpachah. It occurs 301 times in the Old Testament, 177 times indicating family or families, 100 times indicating clan, and only 4 times indicating an unspecific group of people. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on Biblical Hebrew or exegesis, isn’t it interesting that the NIV, which is the main-stay English translation of UBF in North America, does not use the word families? Is it merely a coincidence that this arguably most-popular text in UBF avoids the word “family,” preferring to use “people”? Considering the accounts of Chris, big bear, myself, and others of how families in UBF have sometimes been neglected, abused, and disregarded, it begs the questions:

• Does our choice of Bible translation affect the way we interpret certain passages?
• Could the choice of Bible translation contribute to the pressure felt by many present and former UBFers to “…sacrifice family on the altar of UBF campus mission”?

Instead they are taught that “the disciples of Jesus are not born they are made through training by UBF shepherds” (and they are destined to be UBF shepherds all their lives and be forever thankful to their UBF missionaries even in the life everlasting). The young Christians are not encouraged to learn the will of God and to follow that will, to actually have Jesus as Lord. They are encouraged to obey or even to “just obey” their UBF shepherds “by faith” in hope that this way they will “grow spiritually” and become mature Christians, “good disciples” of Jesus and even the Green Berets of Christianity.

 So while in UBF any member can hear about “Jesus is our Lord” but can he/she experience that and understand what it actually means and live up to it without hindrance? Often the so called “former UBF members” testify that they could hear the voice of the Lord without any hindrance only after they obtained freedom from the many human (authority) voices of UBF missionaries and the very “busy” life in UBF activities. Often it is only then he/she makes the first step to being obedient to the Lord.

They say that an interpreter is good when nobody notice he is there. (The translation comes smoothly and nice). The interpreter is bad when he makes mistakes and/or makes everybody notice him. The Bible teaches us that the same is with God’s servants (pastors/shepherds/angels, etc). True servants of God serve the Lord. They make themselves unnoticeable to people, they never rob the Lord of His lordship and power and glory, they are very meek and humble and fearing the Lord. They just serve the Lord and do their best to bring people to the Lord and they speak the word of God, not their own inventions. They don’t want praise and worship, they want people praise and worship the Lord only. They are like good interpreters. But there are also bad interpreters and bad “servants of God” who actually are the servants of the Devil. The servants of the Devil want praise and worship from people and continually rob the Lord of his lordship and power and glory.

Let’s take some biblical examples. Once Peter the apostle came to a Roman officer Cornelius. “And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet, and worshipped him. But Peter took him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:25,26). Another similar event is described in Revelation 19:10. “And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”. On the other side, the Devil said to Jesus, “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine” (Lk.4:6,7).

Augustine wrote much on what is the difference between the servants of God and the servants of Devil, between the prophets and the false prophets, between the true angels of God and evil spirits. And he calls this attitude toward praise and worship the main difference by which we are able to know who is before us. So it doesn’t matter how “the servants” call themselves. What matters is how they serve the Lord.

Who is your Lord? Whom are you personally serving? Have you ever been deceived by a false “servant of God” in your life? Have you heard mostly what a servant of God would say or a servant of the Devil? Whom are you thankful for your salvation and the new life?

Evidence of Godly Sorrow

I seek evidence of godly sorrow. And yes, I have sought this in myself for many years. Here is part 1 of a 3-part series in which I present some thoughts on this sermon from the Prince of Preachers. Spurgeon has done much to correct my highly flawed theology, and this sermon in particular fills a gaping hole in the fabric of my mind.

Scripture

I highly recommend reading the Scripture text first: 2 Corinthians 7:5-13.

Spurgeon’s Introduction

Many years ago, and indeed in some measure to a later date, preachers of the Word seemed mainly to dwell upon the inner experience of men. They both preached sermons and wrote books in which they set forth the condition of convinced sinners, describing what they usually felt before they found peace with God. They were very strict in their search for the genuine tokens of true repentance, and the internal evidences of regeneration. They preached continually upon the work of the Spirit of God in convincing sinners of their lost condition; but they were not accustomed to say to them so baldly and so boldly as we do now, “Believe, and live;” and the consequence was, that a large number of truly awakened persons were kept in bondage, and did not come into the liberty wherewith Christ makes believers free, – at least, not so soon as they do nowadays. I believe that, under God’s blessing, those experimental preachers were the means of producing very sturdy Christians. They did a great deal of deep plowing, with a very sharp plowshare, before they began to sow the good seed of the kingdom. They took care to use the pointed needle of the law to make a way for the silken thread of the gospel, so that what they did sew was well sewn, and the garments which they made did not rend and tear quite so easily as much of the spiritual raiment does which is made in these days of more showy, but less substantial, labor.

Still, there was this defect about that style of preaching, it led men to look too much within instead of looking away from self to Christ. No matter how faithfully they proclaimed the grace of God, they preached some sort of preparation for the reception of that grace; and, therefore, sinners often looked to themselves to see whether they had that preparation rather than to the grace which it was most desirable that they should seek. I believe you may say so much about the disease of sin that, instead of leading the sinner in despair to turn his gaze to Christ, as the bitten Israelites looked to the brazen serpent as the only remedy, – you may merely make him sit down, and study the disease, and look, and look, and look again for the various symptoms you have described; and though he will be well acquainted with the disease, he will not in that way find a cure for it. You may dive as far as you like into the sea, but you will not find any fire there; you may rake as long as you please in the burning fiery furnace, but you will never reach any cooling blocks of ice; you may hunt, for many a day, in the human heart’s natural death, but you will not there discover any signs of life; and, within the charnel-house of man’s corruption, you shall never be able to discern any remedy for a sin-sick soul. It was in that particular that the experimental preaching lacked an important element.

But, now, times have changed, and very many of us, who are ministers of the gospel, do very plainly proclaim to sinners the message, “Believe, and live.” This plain declaration rings out from almost every part of our land, – not yet quite in every place, I would that it were so; but, still, there is a large company of Evangelical preachers continually repeating the apostolic message, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” I am sure that much good must result from this proclamation of the truth, for this is God’s ordained way of blessing the souls of men; and yet, – and yet, – I sometimes fear lest there should be all sowing and no plowing; – lest there should be the preaching only of the remedy, with almost an entire ignoring of the disease; – and lest the message “Believe, and live,” should take the place of that other great truth, “Ye must be born again.” It will never do for men to be led to think that they are healed before they know that they are sick unto death, or to imagine that they are clothed before they see themselves to be naked, or to be taught to trust Christ before they are aware that they have anything for which they have need to trust him. It would be a happy circumstance if, in our preaching, we could have a blending of these two elements, so that we could have somewhat of our forefathers’ deep experimental teaching, and with it, and growing out of it, a plain, unfettered delivery of the gospel declaration, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

“How are the two things to be reconciled?” someone asks. My dear brother, I have long ago given up trying to reconcile friends who never fell out. These two truths are both taught in Scripture, and therefore they cannot be at variance with one another. You would be as much puzzled to prove where they differ as I should be to show that they agree. I am confident that they do agree, because I find them both in the Book. Therefore, let them both be preached. Somehow, we are constantly coming across truths that lie side by side, like the metals on which the railway carriages run. If we only preach one of them, it will be like trying to run the train on a single rail. You know that there are often two truths, if not three, closely connected with one another. I am frequently led to see that there is a trinity of truths as there is a Trinity in the Godhead; and if they are all preached, in due proportion, they will balance one another, and prevent any one truth from being too prominent. Luther, with his free justification, by faith, is apt to go too far unless there shall come in Calvin and Zwingle, with their balancing truths, to set him right. Even Paul’s inspired words might have been the means of leading some men astray unless James had also been inspired to write on the practical side of truth so that Paul’s meaning should be the better understood. There is nothing wrong in the teaching of either Paul or James; they are both right, the two together bring out both aspects of truth.

(Source: Godly Sorrow and Sorrow, a sermon by Charles H. Spurgeon delivered on 9/9/1900)

1. Godly sorrow is not fear-driven. A certain amount of fear is healthy for us. But fear does not produce godly sorrow. In fact, the opposite is true: godly sorrow produces fear. Spurgeon speaks well to this in his first point: “Many are sorry for sin because of its temporal consequences; and many more because of its eternal consequences. They are afraid of hell. If there were no hell, they would like to continue to live in sin. They would be delighted if it could be proved that there is no God. Nothing would please them better than to have the law of the Lord and all its penal consequences abolished. They are as fond of sin as ever they were, but they sorrow because they see that it is bringing them down to the gulf of perdition. Now, that kind of sorrow is not repentance. A moth may burn its wings in the candle, and then, full of pain, fly back to the flame. There is no repentance in the moth, though there is pain; and so, there is no repentance in some men, though there is in them a measure of sorrow on account of their sin. Do not, therefore, make a mistake in this matter, and think that sorrow for sin is, or even necessarily leads to, repentance.”

2. Godly sorrow is not void of human sorrow. Repentance does indeed mean simply “a change of mind”. But what a total, complete change of mind! Godly sorrow is not the opposite of human sorrow and certainly not the absence of emotion. Here again Spurgeon shines: “Here is a man who says, “I repent.” But are you really sorry that you sinned? “No,” he replies. Then, my dear sir, you cannot have truly repented; for a man, who has not got even so far as repentance, is often sorry for having done wrong. When a man is convinced that he has transgressed against God he ought to be sorry; and if you tell me that there can be such a thing as Spiritual repentance, and yet no sorrow for having broken the law of God, I tell you that you do not know what you are talking about.”

3. Godly sorrow is not self-loathing. Some take godly sorrow too far, saying we must see ourselves the “worst of sinners”. But is this what God intended for his “new wine” creations? A realistic review of history, filled with tyrants and mass killers should quickly enlighten us that we are not the worst of sinners. Spurgeon corrects this thinking well: “There are some persons who seem to think that we must reach a certain point of wretchedness, or else we are not truly penitent. They imagine that we must grieve up to a certain point of temperature, or we cannot be saved; and they watch the convicted sinner to see when he gets near to what they consider to be a sufficient measure of brokenness of heart….   ….I will not waste time by dwelling upon it, because it is altogether a baseless supposition. We admit that many, who come to Christ, have passed through very great terror and agony before doing so; but a large part of their suffering was the work of the devil, and not the work of the Spirit of God at all. A great part of it might have been spared if they had not been so ignorant, and a still larger part of it they might never have suffered if they had heard the gospel preached with greater simplicity, and had not been muddled and handled so roughly by some who put their own experience into the place of the Savior After all, we are not saved by any feelings or alarms that we may have.”

4. Godly sorrow is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Some may get the meaning of godly sorrow, but err on the side of experience, claiming you only experience godly sorrow once. Scripture upon Scripture, and life itself, should readily expose the fallacy of this thinking. Spurgeon dismissed this idea: “Then, again, there is another mistake made by many, – that this sorrow for sin only happens once, – as a sort of squall, or a hurricane, or thunderstorm, that breaks over a man once, and then he is converted, and he talks about that experience all the rest of his life, but he has nothing more to do with it. Why, dear friends, there is nothing more erroneous than that.”

5. Godly sorrow is not a miserable feeling. When we hear the word sorrow, we are often turned off immediately. Is it more godly to walk around with a sour face all the time? Spurgeon corrects this too: “I want also to correct another mistake, namely, that sorrow for sin is a miserable feeling. The moment the word “sorrow” is mentioned, many people suppose that it must necessarily be grief of a bitter kind. Ah! but there is a sweet sorrow, a healthy sorrow. In honey, there is a sweetness that cloys after awhile. We may eat too much of it, and make ourselves ill; but in repentance there is a bitter sweetness, or a sweet bitterness, – which shall I call it? – of which, the more you have, the better it is for you.”

Spurgeon’s Questions

In this first part, I leave you with Spurgeon’s own questions which convict and pierce the soul:

“What have you been doing that is wrong, brother? Are the consolations of God small with thee? Is there any secret sin that is keeping thee sad and sorrowful? Shall I help you to find out the source of the evil? Have you been neglecting the reading of the Word? Have you been lax in private prayer of late? Have you been getting covetous? As you have grown richer, have you grown tighter in the fist? Have you been getting more worldly? Do you speak less about Christ than you used to do, and more about vanity? Have you been mixing up in bad company? Have you been entangled by a so-called friend who is no help to you, but who really hinders you greatly in spiritual things? Have you been forming some associations that you know Christ does not approve of? Have you been letting things go a little amiss in your business, – only a little amiss?”

The Shepherding Movement was fraught with problems. Some of those problems, displayed in several pseudo-Christian organizations that grew out of the movement, have been discussed openly for many years. Most notable in this discussion is Ron Enroth’s book, Churches That Abuse.

The face of the failed Shepherding Movement was Bob Mumford, who became a sort of poster-boy of the movement. In 1989, Mr. Mumford offered a public apology to those hurt by the movement’s teachings and practices.

In his formal statement of repentance Mumford said:

Accountability, personal training under the guidance of another, and effective pastoral care are needed biblical concepts. True spiritual maturity will require that they be preserved. These biblical realities must also carry the limits indicated by the New Testament. However, to my personal pain and chagrin, these particular emphases very easily lent themselves to an unhealthy submission resulting in perverse and unbiblical obedience to human leaders. Many of these abuses occurred within the sphere of my own responsibility.

The movement began to disintegrate in 1986 when its magazine, New Wine, folded due to steady loss of revenue. In the latter years of the 1980s Baxter, Basham, and Mumford officially “released” their disciples from their previous pyramidal authority structure-Prince had already severed his formal ties with the others in 1983.

Yet even with Mumford’s public statement of apology-and in spite of Buckingham’s obituary of the “discipleship era”-the abuse of discipleship and spiritual authority continues unabated by other men (and women) in other churches and movements. (source)

Here are some excerpts from another blog that describe two main reasons why the original Shepherding Movement failed in the United States. One of the failed doctrines taught by the Shepherding Movement was covering theology.

“Most of the Christian church doesn’t believe in covering theology. It appeared on the scene in North America about 40 years ago through something called the shepherding movement. That movement was completely discredited and some of the leaders have publicly repented of their involvement.”

Reason 1 – They replaced Jesus as master.

“In this context, a group of older, more experienced charismatic ministers came together to bring a corrective. The occasion of their meeting was a moral failure of a ministry in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Believing themselves to be equally vulnerable to moral failure apart from better accountability they mutually submitted themselves to one another. When this happened, they described themselves as having a supernatural experience binding their ministries together for life. Initially the group was made of Derek Prince, Don Basham, Bob Mumford, and Charles Simpson. Eventually, former Branham campaign manager Ern Baxter was added to the group, and they became known as “The Fort Lauderdale Five.”

“The five very talented men immediately began to teach on authority, submission and discipleship. Although there were a number of important doctrines, the central doctrine—the one that reshaped the church—was that every person must be submitted to another person (Shepherd/Pastor/Discipler), and that all of your major life decisions should be submitted to this person. Effectively, if unintentionally, this put the individual in the position of having two masters– Jesus and a personal shepherd. With time the personal shepherd gains more power, as Jesus gets less. And in time, this creates a system where those who have unquestioning obedience to man are promoted. All kinds of ungodly things came in through these doors. Several books have been written detailing the kinds of abuse suffered as a result. The scary thing about the whole system is that it started out with the intent of promoting accountability, and eventually enslaved people.”

Reason 2 – They made their shepherd/sheep relationships permanent

“The second dangerous doctrine had to do with “Covenant” relationships or “Spiritual Family.” If being absolutely submitted to another person was an imprisonment, then the covenant relationship was the iron padlock on the door. The idea here is that when you enter into these discipleship relationships, they are permanent, and more broadly that your association with a specific group of believers is permanent. You were in a “Covenant” and if you left the relationship or the fellowship group, you were breaking a covenant. This quickly becomes a very dangerous situation: no matter how terrible your experience becomes with a group or person, you can not leave, and if you do, you believe that you’ve broken a covenant with God, so to get right with God you’d have to go back to the abuse! You slowly become enmeshed with the other members of the group and separated from the outside world. Your “spiritual family” becomes more important than your natural family or other believers you’ve had relationship with. You slowly become more and more isolated and more and more dependent upon the group or leader. At a certain point if your leaders do not check the pattern, it becomes a full fledged cult. Normally, however this pattern is held in tension with Biblical expectations so these groups rarely become true cults, while still exhibiting cult-like features. Scary.”

Result – The fruit of absolute obedience to human authority

“After a couple of years, the fruit of these doctrines became obvious to those outside of the movement such as Jack Hayford, Pat Robertson, Demos Sharkarian and others, and they confronted the “Five” in the infamous “Shootout at the Curtis Hotel,” in 1975. The result was that the Five issued an “apology” which did not really represent repentance on their part. They rejected the excesses of some who had followed their teachings to their logical conclusions, without accepting that the doctrines they were teaching had been the direct cause. Their persistence created a split in the charismatic movement between those who accepted the authority teaching, and those who did not.”

“This split is still evident today but under different names. No one dares be associated with the “Shepherding Movement” by name because it was so discredited. But many still believe in the basic principles to some degree or another, and find support in classic authors such as Watchman Nee. The “Prophetic” stream of the church became the branch of the church that did not accept authority teachings, and the “Apostolic” branch became that which did. The tragedy is that the basic observations of the Five were correct (i.e. need for discipleship, accountability) but their solution of hierarchical personal submission was not. Therefore the “prophetic” stream still tends to reflect the lack of authority that the rebellious hippies brought into the church through the Jesus Movement. Chaos in the meeting is welcomed and even praised as spiritual, and generally everyone does their own thing, hears from God totally in isolation, etc. On the other hand, those with the Shepherding heritage value “order” over all else. While they speak in tongues and claim to be charismatic, often in practice, the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy are not welcomed, because order is valued over the moving of the Spirit. Or prophecy can only come through an established authority in the church hierarchy.”

Jesus is Lord

“In summary, the Shepherds were right right to raise the issue of authority, but they were wrong about submission to other men. Christ is Lord of all, and each should be in submission to Him by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Because we need order and peace, we should submit to those who lead ministries over us just like we would to our bosses at work. But this is far different from owing them allegiance in our personal or spiritual lives. And when we come to the place where following them violates our conscience, it’s time to move on.”

Questions:

Do you see or experience anything in your UBF chapter that resembles something above? Are there similarities between the Shepherding Movement and UBF ministry? What should be done about this?

In Christ alone we live and move. He alone is our Head. We are the Body. The parts of the body have different function but shared value. The Holy Spirit guides and grows. Fruit of the Spirit blesses and enables. God the Father alone is worthy to be praised. He alone may be worshiped and glorified. To do otherwise is to our own detriment.

The father of the prodigal son is an exact representation of God. We proudly demand our inheritance early and squander it quickly on wild living. But God loves us more than money, so he not only accepts us back, he welcomes us. All we have to do is come to our senses and return to God.

We are not (and never were) worthy of God’s forgiving love; however, God is full of loving concern. When he sees us, he runs to hug us. He robes us and declares a feast to celebrate our return. We were led astray by the enemy, but then rescued by God. The older brother doesn’t understand the father’s love.

The enemy is sin, especially self-righteousness. The prodigal son sought pleasure, possessions, and especially position in a faraway place.

God planted a vineyard and let us cultivate it. But we want to own the vineyard and use it for our own purpose/benefit. We are not worthy/able to rightfully manage anything without God’s help. Servants/prophets come to collect God’s fruit, but we abuse/kill them. God sends his son thinking surely we will respect him. However, we do not, for we desire worldly benefits instead.

Regardless, God marvelously makes Jesus, the rejected stone, the living cornerstone of his building. By grace he helps us repent and believe so we can be built into his spiritual house. Let’s produce fruit for God through his Holy Spirit working in and among us! Let’s be part of God’s vineyard.

True righteousness and holiness

Look at what Paul wrote to the Ephesians. Eph 4:22-24 “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, (23) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, (24) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Notice the phrase true righteousness and holiness. In order for Paul to speak of true righteousness and holiness… he must have been aware of false righteousness and holiness.

If there is anything lacking in Christianity today, it is real… true… transformation. Real, true transformation is genuine spiritual transformation brought about by a deep abiding faith in redemption. Current evangelical doctrine causes this transformation to be still born before it can ever take a hold. The reason is that most evangelical assemblies demand “read and do” obedience. “Read and do” obedience is fleshly obedience. The current way that evangelicals are taught about transformation motivates fleshly reformation rather than spiritual transformation. Look at the two words and compare and contrast them. Reformation is the act of one reforming themselves and is primarily a fleshly endeavor. Transformation happens as the result of an outside force. In the disciple of Christ, the outside transforming force, is the radical love of God manifested in the gospel of grace. The gospel is the only thing that will bring about true transformation.

When Paul penned the words “and be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” what did he mean? Renew the mind to what? The answer… renew the mind to the gospel! Renew the mind to the mercies of God. How then does this work? How is it transformative? Well, quite frankly it is simple when you think about it. When one focuses on God’s mercy, love and grace… especially in view of humanities great need… it actually causes one to love God very deeply. It produces peace from the realization and experience of forgiveness. This love and peace operates to cause us to feel closer to God. We acknowledge our connection to God via the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is precisely the way that we begin to participate in the divine nature. Participation in the divine nature is the source of transformation… real transformation.

Unfortunately, far too many saints are caught up in reformation… trying desperately to meet the standards set up by other saints and their particular denomination and leaders. This effort is 99% fleshly and this causes spiritual burn out and anger. It seems to me that so many saints end up being judgmental and very angry. They lack the life of Jesus in their day to day demeanor. Again, the reason is that they can only be *truly transformed* by their faith in the gospel. It never changes. We cannot outgrow this. It is not a one time thing. We did not get saved spiritually and then begin to reform ourselves by self effort after reading the scripture over and over again. Instead, we must realize God’s mercy and grace… really experience it over and over to have love consistently produced in us. God’s love for us is the transformer. It transforms us into loving people.

Here is where the body of Christ becomes important. When we meet it should be to reinforce the knowledge of God’s love and grace. That’s why Paul was determined to not do anything except preach the gospel. Yes, “Jesus Christ and him crucified” is another way of Paul saying I determine to teach and preach nothing but the gospel. We will look deeper into this transformation process over the next few posts.

Exploring the righteousness of God

Take another look at Ephesians 4:22-24 “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, (23) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, (24) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” Notice the phrase true righteousness and holiness. In order for Paul to speak of true righteousness and holiness… he must have been aware of false righteousness and holiness.

True righteousness is the righteousness of God or, more accurately stated, it is imputed or accredited righteousness. One of the interpretative rules for understanding the scripture is called the rule of first mention. This rule is especially instructive with the term righteousness. The first mention of the word righteousness in the bible is found in Gen 15:6 “And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.” Here we see that God accredits, accounts, imputes righteousness to people who believe what he tells them. God made a promise to Abraham. Abraham believed God’s promise. God then, accredited righteousness to Abraham based upon his faith in God. Imputed righteousness is very important in true transformation and true holiness. Imputed righteousness is the foundation of our trust in God.

Paul said this about Israel; Romans 10:1-4 Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. (2) For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. (3) For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. (4) For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Israel was ignorant of the way God declared Abraham righteous. Being ignorant of God’s righteousness is in reality, not understanding imputed righteousness. Seeking to establish one’s own righteousness is practicing self-righteousness.

I could say what Paul said about his fellow Jews today about most of evangelical Christianity. I wish that they could be saved; I wish they could rest in God’s righteousness… His righteous provision. I wish that they would rest in the righteousness of God. If they would trust in imputed righteousness it would make them truly love God with an incredible, indescribable love. This love would then be spread abroad to others. Any obedience, any good works, any brotherly love would be the result of spiritual transformation brought about by believing in God’s love. The saint, resting in imputed righteousness is set free, given peace that translates into love works that are the result of faith.

The world needs to see Jesus

It is not that God does not desire transformation in his children. He most definitely does and, he has provided for that transformation in the gospel. One must believe the gospel no matter what…. no matter what one sees in fleshly behavior on any given day or at any give period of time. Transformation is a process that *will* happen over time if faith in the gospel remains all the time. Resting in and trusting in imputed righteousness is the foundation of transformation. If the world needs to see anything in these times it is the love of Jesus being manifested in transformed saints that exhibit true righteousness and holiness.

Check out Joe’s blog for many more insightful articles: www.paradigmshift-jmac.blogspot.com

Why able and capable young leader’s leave

In judging fairly who the person is should not matter. In my sermon on Deuteronomy chapter 1, The Words Moses Spoke, Moses also taught us that good leaders MUST judge fairly without partiality (Deut 1:16-18). This means that a good leader’s judgment should not be affected by any consideration other than the truth. Practically, it should not matter in the least if one person is an Israelite and the other is a foreigner (Deut 1:16). Ajith Fernando writes eloquently:

“Applying this to the life of the church or nation today, it would mean that sometimes a judgment may be made against a loyal member for the benefit of an outsider. In our cultures there is a strong sense of community solidarity that goes to the extreme of protecting one’s own when outsiders are involved. To do otherwise is considered an act of disloyalty and betrayal. But Moses instructs the judges to judge against members of their own group if necessary.”

“Pronouncing judgment against one’s own and in favor of an outsider is very hard for leaders as sometimes it looks like ingratitude and disloyalty to one who has worked so loyally and hard. But though there will be hurt at first, in the long run such thoroughgoing commitment to justice will reap good results.”

In judging fairly favoritism and partiality should not be shown to the one with status. Good and fair judgements must also treat the small and the great alike (Deut 1:17a). Sadly, in many societies and in some churches too, people with influence are considered to be above the law or immune to prosecution. But showing favoritism or partiality in judgment toward anyone, regardless of who they are or what they have done, will invariably result in a sick nation or a sick church, because it blurs the fact that God is always fair and just (Gen 18:19, 25; Prov 31:9). Therefore, a good leader fears no one but God (Deut 1:17b; Prov 29:25; Mt 10:28).

Have you experienced fairness and justice when judgments were made by your leaders?

Does UBF teach an effort driven sanctification?

UBF is not incorrect. UBF is correct in acknowledging that sanctification is God’s work (Phil 2:13). UBF is also correct in teaching that a Christian must work out their sanctification (Phil 2:12b). The problem that I take issue with is that the emphasis and take home message is the latter, while the former is either assumed or glossed over and not clearly explained or emphasized.

Why does UBF (over)emphasize man’s work in sanctification? Perhaps, I understand why UBF does this. The thinking may be that if UBF emphasizes that sanctification is God’s work, then UBF people will become “do nothing” Christians. UBF fears that UBF Christians will not do anything until God does something. That is a legitimate concern. Sadly, churches may be filled with such Christians who are just warming the pews waiting for God to work. This is hypercalvinism. The book of James addresses Christians who have become complacent and are “not doing anything” because they believe that their faith has already saved them.

The sad results of teaching a man/effort driven sanctification. There is a down side to emphasizing sanctification as being what a Christian must do. It produces subtly smug Christians who base their self worth on their effort, hard work, good intentions and sacrifice for the church. It produces Pharisees. It produces “older brothers” who think they deserve or have earned their father’s goat or calf (Lk 15:29). It produces a deadly legalism that kills the life of the entire church. Paul wrote Romans (his magnum opus) and Galatians (his first of 13 epistles) to combat this prevalent wrong teaching that grace alone is not enough.

What can UBF do? Here is a feeble attempt to put God as being the primary force in sanctification. Let me also answer with an excellent quote from the renowned theologian Louis Berkhof (1873-1957) who says that sanctification is God’s work and not man’s work, even though man works in grace following God’s work in the Christian:

“Sanctification is a work of the triune God, but is ascribed more particularly to the Holy Spirit in Scripture (Rom 8:11, 15:16; 1 Pet 1:2). It is particularly important in our day, with its emphasis on the necessity of approaching the study of theology anthropologically and its one-sided call to service in the kingdom of God, to stress the fact that God, and not man, is the author of sanctification. Especially in view of the Activism that is such a characteristic feature of American religious life, and which glorifies the work of man rather than the grace of God, it is necessary to stress the fact over and over again that sanctification is the fruit of justification, that the former is simply impossible without the latter, and that both are the fruits of the grace of God in the redemption of sinners. Though man is privileged to cooperate with the Spirit of God, he can do this only in virtue of the strength which the Spirit imparts to him from day to day. The spiritual development of man is not a human achievement, but a work of divine grace. Man deserves no credit whatsoever for that which he contributes to it instrumentally.”

Am I describing fairly how UBF has taught sanctification?

That saying, “Go back to the Bible,” features the word back. But this juncture, we have no choice but to move forward. No matter how much we pine for familiar comforts, we press on to a future that is strange and uncertain.

In this climate of postmodernity, we hear questions that  a generation ago were unimaginable. In my undergraduate days, people were asking, “How can I know that Christianity is true?” The words know and true needed no explanation. But today, many are asking profound, unsettling questions about the foundations of truth and knowledge. If we cling to old ways of speaking about the Bible without understanding the ethos of the times, we risk alienating an entire generation, rendering ourselves and our message irrelevant.

Is going back to the Bible an appropriate direction for today? That depends on the context.

Imagine you are speaking to Christians who have little or no engagement with the Scriptures. Telling them to go back to the Bible might be the best advice that you could give, and if that advice were taken, it could lead to genuine renewal.

On the other hand, suppose you meet someone who spends so much time in “spiritual” (translation: church-related) activities that he becomes detached from reality, ignoring his wife and children and the emotional, relational or financial problems that may be ruining his life. Telling him to go back to the Bible might be the worst advice imaginable. It would only encourage him to retreat deeper into an abstract religious fantasyland where the people in his life are summarily dismissed and the conflicts in his life are spiritualized** away.

[**Spiritualize: the practice of minimizing, dismissing or avoiding problems based on the misguided idea that this is what Christians are supposed to do.]

Or suppose you find a community that invests a great deal of time in Bible study. And suppose the community has cultural, generational and ideological conflicts that threaten the community’s health and existence, but leaders don’t want to talk about those problems, because they find those conversations too awkward and uncomfortable. I imagine that if Jesus were standing before them, he wouldn’t be telling them to go back to the Bible. Rather, he would tell them to put the Bible down for a while and start to act on its teachings, especially the teachings about relationships and conflict. Problems in a community cannot be solved merely through personal Bible study; they need to be faced by the community.

A few years ago, I asked a ministry leader, “Is it possible to study the Bible too much?” The leader immediately responded, “No, I don’t think so.” Yet I have seen people study the Bible too much. I’ve watched them retreat to their comfort zones when, in my estimation, they really ought to be doing something else.

Bible study is important. Hearing God’s word is essential. But more of a good thing is not always a good thing. Sooner or later you cross a threshold where studying becomes a cheap substitute for doing. James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” If we are not careful, long hours of Bible study can become self-deception. It becomes what author Peter Scazzero has called, “Using God to run from God” (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Chapter 2).

I’ve spent a great deal of time studying the Bible over the last thirty years, and sometimes it’s been wonderful. The experience of sitting down to read and discuss the Bible with believers whom you love and respect can be exhilarating. But Bible study can also be boring. It can be depressing or even infuriating.

The outcome of Bible study depends on our attitudes toward Scripture. And it depends on the happenings of our lives and the drama of our interpersonal relationships. I have found that it’s very difficult – actually, it’s impossible – for Bible study to be effective among people who are in serious conflict. If participants do not openly acknowledge the conflicts and start to work them out beforehand, buried problems and suppressed emotions start to come out in inappropriate ways. Leaders start to use Scripture as a tool to suppress opposition. Pastors use the pulpit to stifle dissent and advance their agenda. I have watched people do this (including myself), and it gets very ugly.

Another set of problems arises when the entire community aspires to be Bible teachers. At times, we have placed such heavy emphasis on teaching that we spoke of spiritual leadership and Bible teaching as if they were identical. Not long ago, someone in our ministry noticed that, in Ephesians 4:11, the apostle Paul mentions five different kinds of leaders (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers). This young man asked his elders, “What is an apostle?” He was told, “An apostle is basically a Bible teacher.” Then he asked, “What is a prophet?” He was told, “A prophet is basically a Bible teacher.” Then he asked, “What is an evangelist?” Again he was told, “An evangelist is basically a Bible teacher.” Every type of leader was portrayed as a Bible teacher, despite the fact that Paul’s intention in that passage was to distinguish the offices and highlight the diversity of gifts.

We have at times artificially inserted this emphasis on Bible teaching into the Old and New Testaments. Some have claimed that Jesus, in his three-year ministry, spent the vast majority of his time teaching the Scriptures. And that Jesus’ top priority for his disciples was to train them to carry on his work of teaching the Scriptures. But in fact, very little of Jesus’ ministry was devoted to expository preaching from the Old Testament. Jesus engaged in fresh storytelling through parables and all kinds of imaginative discourse.

Throughout the four gospels, the followers of Jesus are referred to by the Greek word mathetes which we translate as “disciple.” A disciple is not primarily a student of books or writings but a follower of a living person. The distinction is important. Writers of the gospels do mention some who could be regarded as the Bible teachers of their day. They are called scribes, teachers of the law, and experts in the law, and the manner in which they are portrayed is usually negative. Despite all the time and energy they had spent on Scripture and all of the knowledge they had accumulated about God, they failed to recognize the Son of God when he walked among them. Jesus delivered to them a devastating critique in John 5:39-40: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

Is it possible to immerse oneself in the word of God while becoming disconnected from God? Not only is it possible, it is exceedingly common.

In a thought-provoking book titled What We Believe and Why, author George Byron Koch explains it this way (Chapter 22). Before us stand two doors. The first door is labeled, “The Way to God”; the second door is marked, “Lectures About God.” Going through the first is extremely frightening, so most of the time we opt for the second. In our study and in our worship, we talk about God, expounding on his attributes and discussing principles and doctrines. We speak of him in the third person as if he were not there. Rarely if ever do we address him directly. Encounter with God is buried under layer upon layer of abstract teachings. Over time, we cling to our ideas and imagine that they are the real thing, that in possessing them we have God himself, to the extent that we begin to worship our ideas. Without realizing it, our Christian faith mixes with religious idolatry which becomes extremely difficult to detect and root out. Our ideas, principles and doctrines may be good and correct. But by focusing on them rather than God himself, we become detached from him and from one another. And we begin to identify ourselves not by our common love for Christ, but by the unique teachings and practices that distinguish us from other groups.

When Samuel Lee advised people to go back to the Bible, I’m not entirely sure what he meant. But I have heard this motto used to reinforce practices which are thought to come directly from the Bible but are, in fact, just expressions of our local tradition. The misconception that we are purists who simply follow the Bible alone is common in the evangelical world. The New Testament scholar N.T. Wright wrote eloquently about this:

Most heirs of the Reformation, not least evangelicals, take if for granted that we are to give scripture the primary place and that everything else has to be lined up in relation to scripture. There is, indeed, an evangelical assumption, common in some circles, that evangelicals do not have any tradition. We simply open the scripture, read what it says, and take it as applying to ourselves: there the matter ends, and we do not have any ‘tradition’… But I still find two things to be the case, both of which give me some cause for concern. First, there is an implied, and quite unwarranted, positivism: we imagine that we are ‘reading the text, straight’, and that if somebody disagrees with us it must be because they, unlike we ourselves, are secretly using ‘presuppositions’ of this or that sort. This is simply naïve, and actually astonishingly arrogant and dangerous. It fuels the second point, which is that evangelicals often use the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ when they mean the authority of evangelical, or Protestant, theology, since the assumption is made that we (evangelicals, or Protestants) are the ones who know and believe what the Bible is saying. And, though there is more than a grain of truth in such claims, they are by no means the whole truth, and to imagine that they are is to move from theology to ideology. If we are not careful, the phrase ‘authority of scripture’ can, by such routes, come to mean simply ‘the authority of evangelical tradition…’

[Quotation from “How Can the Bible be Authoritative?” by N.T. Wright]

To go back to the Bible in the best sense could mean to put aside our notions, biases and traditions and approach Scripture as if for the first time to learn something new. Over the last three decades, I have frequently heard our leaders encouraging people to do this. I believe that we want to do this. But we overestimate our ability to put biases aside. Everyone who reads Scripture does so through lenses tinted by prior beliefs, experiences, traditions and commitments. It’s hard to take our lenses off because, most of the time, we are not even aware that we are wearing them. Despite our best intentions to read the Bible in a fresh way, our assumptions and habits are so deeply entrenched in our character that we can’t identify them anymore. At that point, it becomes impossible to get something out of Bible study that we haven’t gotten in the past. As the saying goes, if you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.

Let me say that again. If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.

Which leads to a paradoxical truth. In order to really get back to the Bible, we sometimes need to get away from the Bible.

When I came into this church three decades ago, I was taught a particular style of Bible study, a style that, perhaps with a few minor changes here and there, is still practiced by most UBF chapters throughout the world. For the first ten years, that style of Bible study helped me to grow. After twenty years, I was no longer learning from it. And after 25 years, it was actually making me worse. Not everyone has experienced the same problems that I have in the same manner or degree. But I have been around long enough to see that there are indeed some common elements to the ways that we do things. There are good habits and bad habits that have spread throughout the community. And some of the bad habits that I picked up were hindering my spiritual growth. Whatever bad habits I acquired, it is ultimately my fault that I acquired them. But I did pick them up in our community, and I spread them to others, and the community reinforced (or at least did not discourage) them.

My Bible study had become self-focused and moralistic. I approached every passage with the intent of finding and extracting the right principles and then applying them to my life. The point of every Bible study became, “What am I supposed to do?” In every passage, I tried to locate the tasks God was directing me to do, the sins I was supposed to repent of, the bad habits I was supposed to avoid, the promises I was supposed to claim and believe, and so on.

Over time, this reduced my Christian life to a to-do list. That list became so long that I could never, ever fulfill it. I constantly felt like a failure, because I was never living up to the standards and expectations that I had set for myself and that our culture had set for me. So I did what I had been implicitly taught to do, what others had taught me to do: Keep choong-shim. Maintain soldier spirit. Keep up appearances as an exemplary servant of God at all costs. I hid my weaknesses in order to save face, so that I wouldn’t become a “bad influence” on others.

As I treated the Bible so mechanically and hid my weaknesses so effectively, my soul withered; prayer became ineffective and my personal relationship with God almost nonexistent. But as long as I continued to say things in my Bible studies, testimonies and messages that sounded good, people continued to praise me, and no one seemed to notice that I was adrift. We had put so much emphasis on mission and so little on friendship, relational honesty and intimacy that no one could tell that I had any serious problems. No one, that is, except my wife, who saw what was going on and was greatly concerned.

For me, the keys to coming out from this difficulty were: (a) opening myself up to Christian influences in the greater body of Christ by reading articles and books and by making friends with committed Christians outside of UBF; (b) becoming honest and revealing my weaknesses, allowing myself to express doubts and ask tough questions about the Bible — the kinds of questions that raise eyebrows and make people uncomfortable in traditional group Bible studies, because they are considered too volatile, controversial or off-topic; (c) taking time off from my habitual Bible study to read, think, contemplate and pray, and just to be with God, and to be with God’s people; (d) to stop beating myself up over the fact that I never pray enough, never study the Bible enough, never work hard enough, and am always falling short of standards and expectations; and (e) to take seriously what the Bible says about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, opening myself up to living by the Spirit’s power rather than by self effort.

And thus it was by getting away from the Bible – more precisely, by getting away from the only kind of Bible study that I knew – and taking time to read, meditate, pray, and interact with people in other settings, that my Bible study was greatly refreshed. Although I spent less time in the Bible than I had done before, I got more out of Scripture than ever before. I began to own my faith. I began to write and speak with genuine conviction. I became an honest student of the Bible rather than a role-player and imitator of someone else.

Getting away from the Bible in that way wasn’t easy. Rumors began circulating (and still circulate to this day) that I had gone off the rails, given up my mission, and denied God’s grace upon my life. The biggest obstacle was my own fear that, if I stopped doing Bible study and testimony writing in the usual way, that God would become very disappointed in me and I would lose his love and blessing. But those fears were unfounded. I discovered the basic truth that God does not love me any more or less based on anything I do. And, quite ironically, when I stopped trying to live up to the challenge of Psalm 1 to meditate on God’s word “day and night,” I suddenly found that without trying I was, in fact, ruminating on Scripture and spiritual issues a great deal of the time. By apparently doing less, I learned to depend on God’s grace and experienced his love and blessing all the more.

On more than one occasion, different people said that those who joined West Loop (WL) UBF were simply coerced by me. It implied that they had no will power or decision making ability of their own. Or when some decision is made, the sentiment was that it was my decision, which I imposed on the collective majority at WL. When WL began in 2008, it was said that I was not wise in “choosing” people to join me at WL because the people I “choose” were not those who could prosper the ministry. This implied that WL people had no power or will to choose for themselves (because I choose them), and that they were not productive or fruitful people who can grow a church. Wow! Were some of my dearest friends just thrown under the bus?

Can you understand why this is my “worst” infuriation? What might yours be?

Dear Bibleman,

[Okay, I lied. The reader didn’t call me Bibleman. But please indulge my superhero vagaries.]

I was wondering if someone can write an article on UBFriends regarding John 15, specifically mentioning John 15:2. Do you mind explaining to me briefly the meaning behind Jesus’ words? I want to clarify what that verse actually means. I was told often to cut of certain things in my life that did not bear fruit. To a certain degree, I agree with that. For example if I habit of lying and end up hurting people, that does not produce in me Christlike character. At the same time, this verse is often used or implied as you need to get rid of your girlfriend, job, whatever, because it doesn’t bear fruit! If you don’t mind explaining that verse to me, I would appreciate it!

Dear Reader,

If I someone gave me a nickel for every time I have been asked that question, I would have five cents!

I’m sure that many of our readers have encountered that interpretation of John 15:2 before. Let’s call it the “We should prune ourselves” or WESHPRO interpretation.

Before going any father, let’s agree that, in many cases, pruning yourself may be a perfectly good thing to do. Suppose you are running a business, and some of your investments are failing to generate profits. Sooner or later you have to say, “Enough!” and cut your losses by eliminating the unprofitable ventures from your portfolio. WESHPRO is often a reasonable principle to follow in business and in your personal life, because it is good, common sense.

But WESHPRO is not found in John chapter 15. To claim that WESHPRO is being taught there, we have to ignore what Jesus actually says.

Here are the words of Jesus in John 15:1-4, quoted from the New International Version.

1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes* so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

* The Greek for he prunes also means he cleans.

The first thing to notice in this passage is that there’s a whole lotta prunin’ goin’ on. But who is being pruned? Jesus. And who is doing the pruning? The Father. To squeeze WESHPRO out of this passage, we would need to replace both Jesus and the Father with ourselves. Is that an accurate and responsible way to read the Bible?  Not on your life, or my name isn’t Bibleman!

The second thing to notice here are the instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples. If WESHPRO is an acceptable meaning, then I suppose that, somewhere in the passage, Jesus would actually tell his disciples to prune themselves. But that is not what Jesus does. There is only one command that Jesus gives to his disciples in this passage, and that command is: Remain in me.

The third thing to notice here is that the Greek verb translated as he prunes also means he cleans. In verse 3, Jesus brings his disciples into the metaphor, depicting them as branches attached to the true vine. The disciples are, in some sense, being pruned or cleaned. But Jesus says this action has already taken place. The disciples have already been pruned. From now on, their job is simply to remain in Jesus, to stay in a life-giving union with him as branches attached to a vine, and if they do, the fruit of the saving work of Jesus Christ will be borne through them.

To really understand what Jesus is saying, we need to carefully consider the context. Jesus is not speaking in a vacuum. This teaching, which is part of the Upper Room discourse (John chapters 13-17), must be understood in light of his imminent suffering and death. And this teaching is shaped by the historical context of first-century Judaism and the language of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament often depicts the nation of Israel as a vine. For example, consider Isaiah 5:7:

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty  is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah  are the vines he delighted in.

And consider this passage from Psalm 80:

7 Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

8 You transplanted a vine from Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

9 You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.

10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.

11 Its branches reached as far as the Sea, its shoots as far as the River.

12 Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes?

13 Boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.

14 Return to us, God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine,

15  the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself.

16 Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.

17 Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself.

18 Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name.

19 Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us that we may be saved.

Psalm 80, which appears to have been composed during the Babylonian exile, is a collective cry by the Jewish captives for God to save them and restore their kingdom. Jews of the first century prayed the psalms every day. There is little doubt that the disciples. when they heard Jesus’ metaphor of vine and branches, would immediately connect it to this psalm. The disciples, who were raised in Jewish homes and steeped in rabbinical traditions, held great pride and confidence in their heritage as God’s chosen people. Their identity was defined by their historical connection to Israel, which they viewed as God’s true vine.

Against this backdrop, the teaching of Jesus in John 15 becomes profoundly shocking. Notice his claim at beginning of verse 1: “I am the true vine…” What Jesus is actually saying, in Bibleman’s paraphrase, goes something like this.

Hey guys. I know that, for all your lives, you have taken immense pride in your identity as Jews. That’s okay. I’m a Jew too, in case you haven’t noticed! But I’ve got something important to say, something that will rock your socks. From now on, I am the True Vine. I am the source of all life and all nourishment. My arrival is the fulfillment of the psalmist’s cry for redemption and restoration. In fact, Psalm 80 is actually about me, even though the psalmist probably didn’t realize it. Haven’t you noticed, for example, that in verses 15 and 17 of that psalm, it talks about the “son” and “the son of man”? Well, that’s me. God has worked powerfully through the nation of Israel. That work was preparation for my arrival. From now on, your primary identity will be shaped by your connection to me.

“But Bibleman,” you may ask, “what does Jesus mean by pruning?”

Bibleman thinks that pruning is a complex metaphor with multiple meanings. Your English teacher may have taught you to avoid mixed metaphors. But Jesus never took your English class. He used language in ways that were common in the first century, and the authors of the New Testament enjoyed mixing their metaphors.

Bibleman thinks that, in John 15:1-4, Jesus is trying to convey the following points.

• The Father is about to prune the Son. The Father will cut off the Son’s earthly life by sending him to the cross. But this pruning will create new life and new fruit after his resurrection.

• The death and resurrection of the Son will become a means of wrath and judgment against those who have rejected him. Those events will cause some branches — some parts of the Jewish nation and aspects of their traditional faith (for example, the sacrificial system and temple worship) — to be cut off and destroyed.

• The death and resurrection of the Son will clean the disciples (in fact, it already had!) and firmly establish their identity as branches of Jesus, the True Vine.

“But Bibleman,” you may ask, “what does this passage mean to me? What is this passage saying about what I’m supposed to do?”

Bibleman thinks that, whatever this passage meant to Jesus’ disciples in the first century, it means essentially the same thing to us today. Two millennia have passed, and our situation is somewhat different from that of the apostles. But Jesus is still the True Vine. He is still our source of life and nourishment. Our primary identity must still be grounded in him.

And regarding that last question, “What am I supposed to do?”, Jesus answered that himself. The command is clear: Remain in Jesus. Later in the chapter, Jesus clarifies what that means. It means to remain in his love. It means to love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

And that, says Bibleman, is enough.

How did I teach Joseph? I emphasized the goodness of Joseph and the evilness of his brothers and that Joseph was pure, innocent and naive, which is all true to a degree; that Joseph had dreams, while his brothers had jealously and evil schemes; that Joseph faithfully carried out his father’s errands, unlike his irresponsible brothers. In brief, Joseph was good and his brothers were bad. Therefore, be like Joseph, have dreams, and live responsibly. Also, don’t be like Joseph’s brothers, who had no dreams, and who were filled with murderous jealousy.

What’s “wrong” with teaching Joseph this way? It does not make Joseph out to be a sinner, who desperately needs God’s mercy, grace and deliverance just like everyone else. It is as though Joseph had no real sins, and just some mild innocent naivete, and that he was simply better and a cut above others. It creates a false dichotomy as though Joseph’s brothers needed salvation more than Joseph himself. It could cause people to think that we can just be better like Joseph and not become like his evil brothers by our own resolve.

How should we teach Joseph? A key is in Gen 37:2, which says, “he (Joseph) brought his father a bad report about them.” I taught this as Joseph being a good steward who simply reported the bad things that his bad brothers did. Is this correct? The Hebrew word for “report” (dibbah) denotes news slanted to damage the victim. It suggests that Joseph exaggerates the bad things his brothers did. Dibbah or “tales” is always used in a negative sense of an untrue report. It indicates that what Joseph did was to misrepresent his brothers to his father. Thus, what the author of Genesis is communicating about Joseph is not his innocence and naivete, but that Joseph is quite an unlikable character: he is immature, tattles on his brothers, and exaggerates their flaws. In short, the narrator sketches the young Joseph as a fool: he is unwise. Joseph acts in similar foolish fashion in telling his two dreams of his own exaltation, and thus infuriating his brothers to the point of murderous jealousy. {Greidanus, Sidney, Preaching Christ from Genesis. Chap. 18. Joseph’s Sale into Slavery (Gen 37:2-36). Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmas Publishing Co. 2007, 335-356.}

What is the difference in these two ways of teaching Joseph? Teaching Joseph in the former way communicates that some people like Joseph (and perhaps ourselves) are better than some other people who are like Joseph’s evil, jealous and malicious brothers. We Christians know that this is not true (Rom 3:9-11,23). When I taught Joseph as though he is good, pure, naive, and innocent, I did not show how Joseph himself needed the gospel of salvation. But teaching Joseph in this latter way as a foolish brat and a self-centered tattle tale leads us to understand how Joseph (and ourselves) urgently and desperately need Jesus and the gospel.

I am not saying that everyone in UBF teaches Joseph the way I did. But is this “adjustment” helpful and/or necessary in the way Joseph is taught?

1. A dad, not a pastor.
2. Conversation, not sermons.
3. Your interest in their hobbies.
4. To be studied.
5. Consistency from you.
6. Grace to fail.
7. A single moral standard.

1. and 2. A dad who converses. Am I first a dad to my kids (rather than their “shepherd and Bible teacher”)? Do I converse with them, or do I give them my sermon outline and my Bible study bullet points? Since I have taught the Bible for over three decades, it is easy to “tell them spiritual truths,” rather than listen, which is my life long fault (Jas 1:19). Also, being Asian, I do not easily connect emotionally with my kids, unlike my wife. It is awkward for me to say to anyone in my own family, “I love you.” I have been slammed for this and rightly so. Thankfully, my kids are now all over 22 years old, and they are my dearest friends, confidants, and even counselors. Grade: C-D.

3. Hobbies. I have little interest in my kid’s hobbies, except for watching sports together on occasion. Grade: E.

4. Study. I think I do study my kids to try to understand them and their personality. Grade: C.

5. and 7. Consistency and morality. Am I the same person at home as I am in church? I think that I am…most of the time. My kids know of my deficiencies and weaknesses: impatience, being reactive, talking back aggressively, and defaulting to an attack mode. They know I avoid doing household chores and am an expert at delegating, that I am picky about my food, that I know numerous inconsequential movie and sports trivia, and how badly I messed up when I lost $1,000,000. Despite my blatantly obvious failings, I believe they know that I love Jesus and their mom, and that, in spite of myself, I want to live to testify to the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24). Grade: B-C.

6. Grace. For many years, I expected my kids to live up to what I expected of them, which is to live honorably as a Christian before God and man. As a result, I inadvertently promoted some legalism, by compelling them to behave well publicly and to live before people. As I began to understand the grace of Jesus more myself, I am also able to extend grace to them, rather than expectation, and thus entrusting them to God. Grade: B-C.

How would you grade yourself if you are a dad? If you are a son or daughter, how would your dad grade?

These days I have been increasing my reading to help answer such questions. I took a friend’s suggestion to read “What We Believe And Why” by George Byron Koch. The first point in the book is that we should differentiate between essentials and non-essentials of our Christian faith.

I would hope all Christians would agree that the gospel of Jesus is an essential. I believe the gospel is the one great, unifying rally cry that should permeate our lives. In my mind, the gospel is so essential that over the past three years I have been rebuilding my entire theology, bibliology, christology, pneumatology, cosmology, hamartiology, soteriology, ecclesiology and eschatology all on the gospel. I have thrown out all my beliefs and will accept no belief unless it stems from the gospel. I am defining my faith based on an articulated defense of the gospel of Jesus.

Remember Jesus Christ. From a Biblical standpoint, we don’t have to look very far in the text to find the clear definition of the gospel: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained”  (2 Tim 2:8-9).

A more common, more detailed version is 1 Cor 15:1-5: “1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. ”

Clearly the gospel of Jesus stands on two pillars: 1. Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. 2. Jesus died but came back to life. So in my mind, the basic articulation of the gospel (the “good news”) of Jesus Christ is this: Jesus is the promised Christ who fulfilled the Law and the Prophets through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension.

Forgiveness, not condemnation. I love the titles of Koch’s sections in his book. In the one entitled “Being Sanctified is not Forcing Correct Behavior on Others”, he writes (Kindle edition, location 1796, Chapter 7: Living With Unbelievers):

“I have seen people brought to tears by the forgiveness of God, who came to the altar in surrender, and who shared there the struggles that had brought them to the church and to the altar. Instead of being welcomed, they were told how terrible their sin was. The accuser had his theology straight but lacked love. The point of the Gospel is forgiveness, not condemnation. It is out of the soil of forgiveness that holiness grows, not out of the venom of condemnation.”

The “gospel of” statements. If the Bible declares the gospel, then certainly the Bible must define the gospel? Yes, I believe it does. I found numerous verses that explain the meaning of the gospel. What does it mean that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, died and rose to life according to the Scriptures?

Here is what Scripture says the gospel is about…

• It’s about Jesus

“The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1).

• It’s about the kingdom

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14).

• It’s about God’s grace

“However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me–the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).

• It’s about the glory of Christ

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4).

• It’s about salvation

“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit…” (Eph 1:13).

• It’s about peace

“…and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15).

Questions to initiate the dialog:

1. How would you articulate the gospel in 7 words or less?
2. What is essential to understanding the gospel?
3. What are the effects of the gospel on a person or community?

A fish in a fishbowl. During my struggle, I began to read many books and to explore what other churches and ministries are doing. I was blown away. I thought my Bible knowledge was superior, since I have read the Bible cover to cover once a year for many years, wrote testimonies every week, and taught many the Bible. But I began to read books by contemporary and dead Christian authors. Now I am ashamed of my Bible knowledge, or rather lack of it. I thought UBF Christians really worked harder than other Christians. But when I read about others’ devotion to Christ and the church, I found countless other Christians of many stripes who were perhaps more sacrificial, and who worked even harder than UBF Christians, not just intellectually, but also in physical labor. I was ashamed and humbled. I came up with a phrase: “A fish living in a fishbowl does not know that there is an ocean out there.” I freely acknowledge today that I have lived in my own Christian bubble of UBF for decades. Perhaps, I was like the poor inept polar bear who did not know how to be a polar bear. I was like a Christian who only knew how to be a Christian in UBF, and not with other Christians, or in other churches, communities or circles. Why? I thought I was doing just fine.

Teaching the God of your church culture is idolatry: it taught me to worship UBF. Over the last few years, I had to learn how to be a polar bear in the Arctic, and not just remain a polar bear in a London zoo. There is a helpful quote from the book by Leonardo Boff: “Not a single missionary was aware that the God the church proclaimed was a cultural image. The essence of idolatry is the identification of the reality of God identified with the image of God produced by a culture.” Without a doubt I was taught many priceless things in UBF: love God, love Jesus, love the Bible, love people, love discipling, love mission, hate sin. But I was also taught cultural elements in UBF, mostly implicitly, that were placed on the same importance and  emotional level as the essentials of God and the Bible. As a result, for decades, I was greatly offended when anyone said anything critical or negative about UBF, as though UBF is the closest thing next to God. I had worshipped God and UBF on the same importance and emotional level. UBF had become my idol, and my functional savior. I felt I needed UBF and that UBF needed me to defend her. I did not know how to practically and emotionally function in any other way.

I could go on about the sad polar bear drowning. But how does this story resonate with you?

Basically, I was taught to examine short portions of Scripture – a few verses or a chapter at a time – and then carefully notice the details, deduce the meaning, and strive for personal application. It was assumed that every passage had a self-contained message aimed directly at my situation today. I was supposed to ask myself: Are there promised to claim? Commands to obey? Sins to be repented of? The outcome of every Bible study was supposed to be some kind of revelatory, life-changing experience (accepting “one word”) that could be shared in a written testimony. If that experience didn’t happen, it was because something was wrong with me, because I hadn’t tried hard enough, gone deep enough, repented sincerely enough, and so on. To strive for anything less than a personal revelatory experience in each Bible study was to demonstrate a lack of faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God.

I don’t think this method is categorically wrong. It can sometimes produce useful results, especially when applied to portions of the New Testament. But it is not the sole, divinely-ordained and God honoring way to approach Scripture. This method has plenty of shortcomings. For example, it ignores the fact that Scripture was written as books, and focusing on short passages tends to obscure the message of the book. And the focus on personal interpretation tends to neglect the role of Christian tradition. In effect, it substitutes one’s local community tradition for the understanding and testimony of saints through the ages.

This method can be unhealthy when applied to parts of the Old Testament. When studying the OT, the temptation to treat every passage as timeless commands and principles must be resisted. No Christian can sensibly treat the OT as commands to be obeyed today. To do so would create a religious system full of legalism, nationalism (us-versus-them thinking) and violence. I was taught to interpret the OT commands allegorically, adapting them to my church’s understanding of its present mission in the world. For example, God’s commands to Israel to conquer the land of Canaan became a metaphor for conquering college campuses with the gospel and our church’s specific brand of discipleship. At the time, I thought this was a reasonable way to honor the OT as the inspired word of God while making it relevant to my immediate situation. But now I believe that there are much better ways to approach the OT that are more consistent with the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Now I am striving to read the OT not as a series of commands and principles, but as the colorful, beautiful and sometimes disturbing story of how God interacted with the nation of Israel. I try to remember that the OT story is a progressive revelation that reaches its fullness in Jesus. The religion of the OT is only a murky shadow of the reality of God revealed in Christ (Col 2:17, Heb 10:1). God’s full, authoritative self-revelation is not contained in written words of the OT but in the living person of Jesus Christ (Heb 1:1-3)

In the remainder of this article, I’d like to explore some ideas about how to read the Pauline epistles in a way that is both realistic and honoring of their central place in the theology and life of the church. Specifically, I want to ask these two questions.

First: Did Paul possess some kind of infallibility that came from his God-given position as an apostle? Or was he a sinful, fallible leader who often made mistakes?

Second: If we accept that Paul did make mistakes, how would that influence our approach to reading his Epistles and applying his apostolic teachings to modern life?

To me, that first question seems straightforward. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life, but his followers did not. The four gospels paint an honest, transparent and somewhat embarrassing portrait of the apostles during the three-year ministry of Jesus, highlighting their numerous mistakes and failures. After the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples (on all of the disciples, not merely the apostles) and empowered them to be living witnesses of the risen Christ. The Holy Spirit worked through them but did not wipe out their sinful nature. The apostles’ positions of leadership did not give them any special exemption, and throughout their lives they needed to learn and receive correction. One obvious example is described in Galatians 2:11-14, where Peter was distancing himself from Gentile Christians and Paul publicly rebuked him for it.

Paul too must have made mistakes. Despite his best efforts and intentions, he remained a sinful man living in sinful times. When God appointed him as an apostle, he did not magically wipe out Paul’s failings but worked powerfully through Paul despite his failings as a testament to grace.

The Roman Catholic church maintains a doctrine of papal infallibility. In that view, the pope’s pronouncements are considered reliable and true when he is making decisions in his official capacity as leader of the church. Protestants reject the notion of infallibility. However, it is worth pointing out that even in the Catholic view, infallibility pertains to only one person, the bishop of Rome, and only when he is speaking ex cathedra, in his official capacity as pope. Moreover, Catholics claim that the first bishop of Rome was Peter, not Paul. So even if one were to accept the Catholic view, Paul would not have any special infallibility.

The book of Acts presents Paul as a strict Pharisee who persecuted Christians but then underwent a profound conversion on the road to Damascus. Almost immediately, within a few days, he began to zealously preach in the name of Jesus, but is preaching stirred up a great deal of opposition. Paul retreated into a quiet period of personal growth. Some years later, Barnabas brought him to Antioch where he became a prominent teacher. From there, he and Barnabas received a special calling and commission from the Holy Spirit and were sent out on their first missionary journey. I believe that Paul’s walk with Christ was always a work in progress.  There was no point at which he magically became an infallible leader. Rather, he must have been actively growing throughout his life, seeking God’s guidance in his weakness and continually learning from his mistakes.

That first question was easy to answer, but the second one is more thorny. If we acknowledge that Paul was a sinful human leader who made mistakes, how should that influence our reading of the Epistles and their application to us today?

One possible answer is to ignore this and act as though the limitations of Paul didn’t impact his Epistles at all. For many conservative evangelicals, admitting Paul’s limitations would be a scary thing, as it would seem to undermine the authority of the Bible as the inerrant, infallible word of God.

For the record, please understand that I believe the Bible is authoritative and that it testifies to its own authority. Scripture says that it is Spirit-inspired, a God-breathed living system capable of dynamically speaking with Christian individuals and communities (2Ti 3:16, Heb 4:12). I believe that God continually breathes new life into us as we seek to hear his voice through Scripture.  I believe that if we approach the Bible in a reverent, careful and honest fashion, that what it can teach us is truthful and trustworthy. But I do not believe that Scripture claims that it is inerrant in the plain English meaning of that word. To plausibly argue that Scripture is inerrant requires a great deal of nuanced and careful explanation of what that word actually means.

To suggest that Paul’s sinfulness and human limitations did not make their way into the Epistles is, in my opinion, not a plausible stance. To believe this, we would have to think that Paul operated in two different states or modes. We would have to think that, most of the time, as Paul went about his daily business and spoke and interacted with people, he would exhibit the characteristics of a fallen sinner in need of God’s redemptive grace. But on the few occasions when (unbeknownst to him) he was composing a letter that would later become part of the canon of Scripture, God miraculously covered up all his sinful or mistaken tendencies and produced written works with no marks of human fallibility. In effect, there would be two versions of Paul: the fallible human Paul who lived in a fallen world serving in a fallen church,  and the infallible superhuman version of Paul who spoke through the Epistles.

If we imagine that Paul spoke through the Epistles without error, it would suggest that the all the teachings he gave to his readers were (unless he specifically stated so) coming directly from the mouth of God, as if they were spoken by Jesus himself. There would be no question that all his teachings were absolutely binding on the early church. Then the only question would be, “Are all of these teachings equally binding on us today?” To my knowledge, there is no sensible Christian who would answer yes and keep that with any degree of consistency. For example, I know Christians who believe, based on 1 Timothy 2:12, that women should never be allowed to teach men. But these same people do not insist, based on 1 Corinthians 11:13, that women must keep their hair long or cover their heads when they pray. Everyone who reads Paul’s instructions as God-given teachings makes judgments that some teachings are local, limited to Christians in specific times and places, whereas others are universal, meant to be obeyed by all Christians for all time. Many of these decisions appear to be subjective and haphazard. The impulses and standards by which they make these decisions are rarely explained and usually come down to gut instinct.

It seems to me that, if we imagine that when Paul is writing the Epistles that he is issuing instructions to his readers directly from the mouth of God, then we are immediately placing ourselves in the position of having to decide which instructions we are to keep and which ones we are allowed to discard. This is a position that I find awkward and uncomfortable.

Is there a way to read the Epistles that is less awkward and more realistic, a way that recognizes Paul is an imperfect man weakened by his own sinfulness and by the limitations of his culture, and yet still honors those writings as canonical and God-breathed?

I believe there is. I suggest that we can approach the Pauline epistles in a way that is not radically different from how we ought to be reading the narratives of the Old Testament. The Epistles are something like narratives. They are letters from an apostle to the churches of his day. These letters open for us a window into the life of the first-century Christian community. We can treat them as divinely inspired first-person accounts of how one man, who is a great apostle and yet a fallible sinner, is doing his best to faithfully shepherd the flock that God has entrusted to his care.  God is working powerfully through Paul, but he is never speaking through him in a way that overrides Paul’s humanity. In some respects, Paul is unique. As the first apostle to the Gentiles, God has given him special insight and a special task of helping to define many of the basic doctrines of the early church. But in other respects, Paul is not so different from other church leaders at other times. He makes mistakes. He has personal opinions, cultural biases and character flaws.  As we read the Epistles, we strive to keep in mind both his uniqueness and his ordinariness. The main question on our minds is not, “Do these God-given teachings apply only to Paul’s audience, or do they also apply to us?” Rather, we continually ask ourselves, “What do these dialogues between Paul and the first-century church teach us about the character of God, the nature of the gospel, and the purpose of the church?”

Maintaining a primary focus on God, the gospel and the church does not mean that we will never have to face tough questions about what the implications are for us today. Those questions will eventually have to be asked. But it seems to me that they are secondary and should be brought up later, after we meditate long and hard about the first things first.

Also, we have stopped going to the campuses to invite students to Bible study. We may have lost our initial “fire,” zeal and enthusiasm, because of the many burdens of life. There is surely also truth to this.

Work Harder. So is the solution simply that we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and repent of our “family-centeredness,” laziness and worldliness, and just work harder to re-devote ourselves for evangelization, “fishing,” and proselytizing? Perhaps, so.

But is this it? Just try harder? Study the Bible more?

Might I propose reasons that some (not all) might find uncomfortable or disconcerting?

Let Local Leaders Lead. David Garrison, in his 2003 book Church Planting Movements, says that once a missionary has established a church among the native people, the task is to instill in them a passion for starting new churches, not under the direction of the missionary, but by the indigenous leader’s own authority and with their own resources. Could this be a reason why the work of God in UBF has stalled for the most part, except for a few places? Our missionaries are still the ones in authority wherever there is a UBF chapter in virtually all countries. Is this bad?

Authoritarian leadership. UBF has an authoritarian leadership style, which Jesus explicitly says that his disciples should not do (Mt 20:25-27; Mk 10:42-44). Both Peter and Paul say the same thing (1 Pet 5:3; Phm 8-9). “Lording our leadership over others” just kills the spirit of those lorded over sooner or later, even if they may welcome it at first when they are new “naive” Christians. After 50 years of UBF history, authoritarian leadership is only now being gradually addressed. Surely, everyone agrees that a leader should not “bully” his members in the name of love, shepherding, or “training.” They should gently persuade others, as both Jesus and Paul did in the NT, and as God Himself did in the OT.

With prayer and respect, everyone in the church should be able to freely speak whatever is on their heart and mind. Once someone asked me, “Can we say this in the church?” I was surprised at her question, because the answer is “Of course,” since we are among Christians who love each other. But the reality is that if she vocalized an objection or posed a disapproving question about a leader’s decision, she would be regarded negatively and unfavorably. So, she “shut up.”

There must be friendship, equality and justice. Jesus, our Lord, calls us his friends (Jn 15:15). David Garrison says that a priesthood of all believers among Christians (1 Pet 2:9; Ex 19:6) is the most egalitarian doctrine in the Bible. But when a missionary is the one in authority over indigenous people, equality is only a theory but not a reality, because the missionary who planted the church will always be “a notch above” his converts and disciples.

Staff education must remove cultural and personal elements as much as possible. Every culture is blind to its own eccentricities and uniqueness. In Korean culture, hierarchy and order is perfectly normal and few would question it. In the U.S., equality, fairness and justice is the norm. When a UBF missionary disciples his American convert, he will inadvertently impose his own cultural values on his American disciple. Unless he consciously “denies himself” to not do so, he will be converting his American disciple to become like a Korean Christian.

Missionary mistakes. According to Roland Allen’s classic Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, a major mistake of missionaries is that they did too much. The book is available online here. Rather than simply sowing the seeds of the gospel and entrusting the native converts’ growth and development to the Holy Spirit, they over-trained them, thus re-making them into the missionaries’ own image and culture, rather than allowing them to grow into the indigenous Christians that God would have them become. Even after years of ministry, the missionaries continued to impose strict discipline and tight control over the affairs of the native Christians. They did not leave the church in their hands, for they regarded them as immature and “not ready,” compared to the missionaries “high” standards.

False sense of importance and indispensability. Let me conclude with a paragraph from Allen that explains why missionaries have prevented the growth of indigenous Christian leaders (Chapter 8):

“The secret of success in (Paul’s) work lies in the beginning at the very beginning. It is the training of the first converts which sets the type for the future. If the first converts are taught to depend on the missionary, if all work, evangelistic, educational, social is concentrated in his hands, the infant community learns to rest passively on the man from whom they receive their first insight into the Gospel. Their faith having no sphere for its growth and development lies dormant. A tradition very rapidly grows up that nothing can be done without the authority and guidance of the missionary, the people wait for him to move, and, the longer they do so, the more incapable they become of any independent action. Thus the leader is confirmed in the habit of gathering all authority into his own hands, and of despising the powers of his people, until he makes their inactivity an excuse for denying their capacity. The fatal mistake has been made of teaching the converts to rely upon the wrong source of strength. Instead of seeking it in the working of the Holy Spirit in themselves, they seek it in the missionary. They put him in the place of Christ, they depend upon him.”

After 50 years of UBF history, many indigenous converts may have already adopted UBF traditions and methodologies, which are culturally Korean, as their norm of Christian life. Can they still be autochthonous? What can we now begin to do as a global ministry for the next 50 years?

This is my response to your report “How to Read and Study the Bible” which you gave at our 2005 summer conference. Please accept this as constructive criticism from an informed source. I know a great deal about you, more than you realize. And my existence and prosperity depend on you.

When you said those things in your report, you spoke with an air of certainty and conviction. You tried to sound as though you were declaring absolute truth directly from God’s mouth. Face it: those declarations were applause lines. To that audience, they made your message “powerful.” But none of them are absolutes. For each of those statements, an informed reader of the Bible could give counterexamples. Real life and the Bible are more complicated than you suggest.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about you, Joe-2005. Whenever you give a message, you talk about principles. You seem to think that the Christian life is about identifying biblical principles and mixing them together in just the right proportions. Don’t get me wrong. The Bible does contain principles. But a principle-based approach to Scripture grows tiresome and stale, because that’s not how people really think. The human mind is a processor of stories. That’s why most of the Bible is written as narrative. The Pentateuch is not a list of laws; it’s a story of how Israel was given the law, and that story is more important than the laws themselves.

I could go through your message and critique all your principles, but I won’t. Instead I will make some general observations about story.

Observation #1: Your message affirms your community’s story.

Why did the people in your audience like your message? Was it because you got your principles just right? Of course not. As they listened, they were reading between the lines. What they heard was a well educated American man validating and promoting a story that is very dear to them, a story for which they sacrificed their lives.

All your messages have this same basic quality. They are built on the story that’s told again and again at through UBF messages, testimonies and mission reports. The story is based on actual events, but it’s a selective and subjective shaping of those events. To longtime UBF members, that story sounds beautiful and exciting. It evokes powerful memories and makes them feel privileged to be a part of it. They see it as the great story of their lives, and they long to see others adopt the story and live in it too.

In a nutshell, the story goes like this. In the early 1960’s, God began a great work in South Korea. A young female American missionary left her missionary compound and lived among the poor. Together with a young Korean pastor, they taught the Bible to university students. Instead of relying on outside funds, the movement became independent and self-supporting. Students overcame their “beggar mentality” and sacrificed everything to support this work. In absolute obedience to Jesus’ world mission command, they went overseas to preach the gospel. God blessed all their sacrifice, hard work, simple faith, etc. and transformed Korea from a nation that receives outside help to a nation that sends missionaries throughout the world. Unlike other churches and movements, this group raises highly committed disciples who are extremely disciplined in Bible study and prayer. They marry by faith, support themselves on the mission field, excel in their studies and become leading doctors, engineers, diplomats and professors. Although they seem highly intelligent, their success is not due to their intelligence but to their self-denial, their boldness in proclaiming the gospel, their absolute obedience and their uncomplicated, childlike faith. Their unique disciplines (Daily Bread, testimony writing, obedience training, marriage by faith, etc.) and their pure, inductive approach to Bible study are extremely potent, and other churches could learn a great deal from them. As they faithfully continue in this special calling, God will use them to sent thousands more missionaries and raise countless disciples on university campuses throughout the world. And this is going to transform the nations. For example, it will turn the United States from corruption to its former glory as a nation of people who trust in God. As disciples are raised and missionaries are sent out, each nation will become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

This was the story told by Samuel Lee. When he spoke, he told stories that made people smile. Those stories were repeated over and over and became community folklore. The details of his stories were not always factual. He often stretched the truth to make his points. But people didn’t mind because, even if the details weren’t true, those stories supported the larger community that they believed. This, I think, is a key reason why the disciples he raised are so strongly committed. People won’t sacrifice their lives for a principle. But they will give anything to support a person whom they love and to advance a story that deeply inspires them.

And this, Joe-2005, is why you get invited to speak so often: because you affirm the community story and enhance its credibility. You are a feather in their cap. You are an anomaly, a white North American with a Ph.D. from Harvard who has remained in this Korean-led church to live within its story and advance it. Within UBF, you are a mythical hero who has done great things. Those stories don’t really reflect who you are and how you live. But you aren’t willing to reveal your true self yet. You still want to enjoy that recognition and acceptance.

Observation #2: That community story cannot explain the Bible.

When I say that your church’s members are living in a story, I’m not saying that they are deluded. They are just doing what human beings do. Every person has a story, and every community has a story. Those stories get shaped and revised over time. Stories are the means by which people make sense of their lives. Stories are the stuff of human culture.

The Bible is also a collection of stories about specific people in specific times. The Old Testament is about Israel and the Jews. The New Testament is about Jesus, the apostles and the Church. But taken together, they declare the Great Story, the metanarrative that tells all people what life is all about. It explains how we came to our present state, and it reveals where the world is headed. Protestants tend to describe this story into four great acts: Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. Redemption was achieved through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Now we are living in the time of Restoration. It is the age of the Church and the Holy Spirit, bearing witness to Jesus until he returns to fully unveil his kingdom. To be a Christian is to accept that Great Story as true and to live within its context. Christian communities must maintain their own stories, but they need to understand how those stories fit into the Great Story. Their need to keep putting that Great Story in the front and center and make their own stories subservient to it.

In your approach to the Bible, Joe-2005, you haven’t been doing this. Here is a revealing quote from your message: “It is when we study the Bible within the context of our own purpose and mission that the application becomes relevant and the word of God really comes alive” [italics yours]. You are resting on your local community story and confusing it with the Great Story. When you read the Bible, you instinctively focus on elements that support your community’s activities and values. All the elements that don’t fit your paradigm are glossed over; your eyes don’t see them anymore.

You read into the Bible your community’s categories. Your community has a category called “Bible teacher.” This is an idealized person who finds sheep and engages in one-to-one Bible study, which means sitting down with a sheep, reading short passages of Scripture, and discussing those passages by responding to questions typed on a sheet of paper. That activity may work well in certain contexts. But none of the characters in the Bible did that. You said that Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles were all Bible teachers. Those men engaged the word of God and taught others. But none of them resembled your community’s category of Bible teacher. If you could travel back in time and ask them, “What is your mission?” none of them would have said, “I study the Bible with sheep and help them to do what the Bible teaches.” They couldn’t think in your terms. The Bible as you know it didn’t exist at that time. Bible teacher is your category, not theirs. Please hear me out. I’m not saying that becoming a Bible teacher is wrong. I’m saying that when your church members hear “Bible teacher,” they have a specific concept in mind. And when you state that characters in the Bible were Bible teachers, you treat that community concept as a divinely inspired principle that work for all people at all times. You state that with such conviction and certainty, even though there is not a single example of anyone in the Bible who fits your image of a Bible teacher.

And you insert into the Bible your community’s language. Here is another quote from your message: “Jesus was not merely a teacher; he was also a trainer.” That statement would be okay if you understood training as what Jesus did with his apostles. But that’s not how your church members use that word. For them, training is a loaded term. It includes all the methods that Samuel Lee used to fashion disciples, first in Korea and then in the United States. Whether you realize it or not, you are implicitly lumping together all those practices that your church members think of as training and then suggesting that Jesus did it all. But Jesus didn’t do many of those things. Is there any record of Jesus or the apostles acting as matchmakers and arranging marriages for anyone in the church? No, there isn’t. Matchmaking is not found in the New Testament. Nor is testimony writing, testimony sharing, and so on. When you state with conviction that Jesus was a trainer, you plant the idea that your church is doing exactly what Jesus did. You equate things that are not equal. Your message is full of sloppy language that results from sloppy thinking.

This is what you have done. You have canonized your community’s story and are reading the Bible in light of that story. It’s a provincial approach to Scripture that resonates with members of your church but sounds strange to outsiders. How would your message be received by Christians outside of UBF? They would sense that it is infused with the values of a small, insular community that they do not understand. They would sense that you think your community’s story is superior to theirs. You have gotten so wrapped up in your community’s story that you no longer critique it.

You’ve shrunk the Great Story into a handbook for how to be a successful campus evangelist. Nothing in the Bible surprises you anymore. Nothing in the Bible disturbs you anymore. You’ve stopped wrestling with fundamental questions because you’re convinced that you’ve got the big picture figured out.

How do you read those passages about the military conquest of Canaan? You treat them as allegories for living a victorious Christian life and conquering the fallen world with the gospel. Once upon a time, you didn’t know what to make of those passages. You were horrified that God’s people were apparently being commanded to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocide. You had no idea how to reconcile the cruelties of the Old Testament with the gentle image of Jesus and the apostles. For two thousand years, Christians have tried various ways to address these and other problematic aspects of Scripture, and they haven’t been able to agree on any single approach. In so many respects, the Bible remains enigmatic and elusive. But you’ve taken those difficult aspects of the Bible and allegorized and spiritualized them away. You’ve stopped asking tough questions about the Bible because others have suggested to you that raising those questions could weaken your faith and distract you from your mission.

In your allegorical reading of the Old Testament, you place yourself and your group and the Church in the position of God’s chosen people and identify the outsiders as Canaanites. Those are dangerous waters, Joe-2005, and you don’t have the experience or maturity to navigate them properly. Isn’t that the essence of what the Pharisees were doing? Isn’t that the fatal mistake of Constantine which eventually led to Crusades, colonialism, and missionary triumphalism?

Ideas have consequences in real life. Those ideas about how to approach the Bible are influencing you more than you realize.

Your approach affects how you relate to the people in your life. Based on your reading of the Old Testament, you’ve concluded that the ideal Christian is a courageous tough guy who always soldiers on, staying on task even if some people get hurt along the way. Broken relationships have become acceptable losses along the road to victory. You expect people in your fellowship to stay in line and keep marching no matter what. You treat them as fellow soldiers and coworkers but not as friends.

Your approach makes it hard for you to relate to other Christians. You’ve invested so much in your community’s story that you can’t understand people whose stories are different. Do their stories have the same validity as yours? Does yours supersede and override theirs? Those are tough questions, and you don’t know how to process them. For now, you avoid those people and the questions they raise.

And your approach shapes how you relate to God. You read promises into Scripture that aren’t really there. You think God has been saying to you, “Joe-2005, if you just stop being a wimp and live as a one-to-one Bible teacher and help me make America into a kingdom of priests and holy nation, then I will bring you into the promised land and make you prosper.” You assume that all the problems in your life stem from the fact that God is not pleased with you, because you’re failing to live out that idealized mission of your community’s story.

Your present approach to the Bible isn’t categorically wrong. It did help you for a while. But you’ve gotten stuck in this approach and, as a result, you’ve stopped growing. You’ve locked up Scripture into a box and aren’t experiencing its creative power. It’s been a long, long time since your reading of the Bible challenged your fundamental understanding of God and the gospel. That, my friend, needs to change.

“Tass Saada is a former Muslim and the founder of Hope for Ishmael, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to reconcile Arabs and Jews. Born in 1951 in the Gaza Strip, Saada grew up in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He worked under Yasser Arafat as a Fatah fighter and sniper. Years after immigrating to America, he became a Christian.”

“A story of redemption. Once an Arafat Man’s sub-title couldn’t be a better synopsis of the book in general, “The true story of how a PLO sniper found a new life.” The opening sequence of the book reads like some of the best action oriented fiction out there, but you have to keep in mind that not only are the related events actual parts of our world history, but they are also a first-hand account of the man writing the book.”

http://www.amazon.com/Once-Arafat-Man-Story-Sniper/dp/1414334443

Tass has devoted his life to perhaps the biggest, ugliest and deadliest conflict of our time: the Arab-Jew conflict. Tass writes: “I believe that if there were a political answer for this awful deadlock, some bright statesman or scholar would have thought of it by now.” (chapter 18)

Here is the “peace plan like no other” that Tass proposes. I find it based solidly on the gospel of Jesus Christ and deeply moving. I see his Arab-Jew struggle for peace as a model for anyone dealing with division between two groups.

A Peace Plan Like No Other

1. We must understand that the house of Ishmael has a divine purpose too.

In this section, Tass uses sound Bible text reading to present the plain truth taught by the Bible: God wants Isaac and Ismael to stop killing each other and live in peace. Genesis 17:20, Genesis 21:13, Genesis 47:27 (chapters 17, 21 and 47)  make it clear that God wants to bless both Isaac and Ishmael. The prophet Isaiah testifies to this also (Isaiah 42:11, Isaiah 60:7).

The lesson for us? Peace can begin when both sides accept that there is one Lord who has a divine purpose for both sides. God has a divine purpose and blessing for UBF and ex-UBF.

2. We must understand that the real bone of contention is not land; it is rejection.

In this section, Tass contrasts the approaches most politicians and leaders use to the middle east: real estate. Most try to figure out how to divide up the land, using some clever ideas. But none of them work. The conflict continues. Tass stresses that rejection is the key factor that has not been dealt with, and must be dealt with openly, if peace is to be found. Not even 100 million acres of land would bring peace, he claims, if the issue of rejection is not addressed.

The rejection of Arabs, Tass rightly points out, started with Abraham’s rejection of Hagar and Ishmael (Genesis 21:14). But God did not reject her. To the Arabs, Abraham was a cheapskate! Ishmael, as the older son, should have received a double-portion. Instead he was outcast, and left to die with his mother Hagar. To this day, the Jewish message to Arabs has been rejection. Tass describes the Jewish mindset toward Arabs like this: “You don’t belong. I don’t want you around. Just get out of here, will you? I don’t take you seriously. If you starve to death or die of thirst, I don’t really care. Get lost.”

Tass also points out that even Christians join in this rejection. Burning Korans and hatred toward Muslims and Arabs in general is rampant among Christians, especially in America. Tass stresses that we cannot leave out God’s intent to bless Ishmael and his Arab descendants. And the violence in the middle east is a cry by Arab’s: “What about us? Don’t we count?”. Again Tass points out the Bible’s answer: “Yes you matter.” by pointing us to Genesis:

17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.  18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”  19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.  20 God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.  21 While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.  –Genesis 21:17-21

The lesson for us? Ex-UBF people are like the Arabs. We just want to be taken seriously. Our main issue is that we have been rejected, cast out as if we don’t belong to God.

3. We need to stop pigeonholing Yasooa (Yeshua, Jesus) as merely the “Christian” voice in the debate. He is the Living Word for all sides.

This point really needs to be understood after reading the book. But Tass’ point here is that Jesus cannot be put in a box. Jesus is the hope for Jews and Muslims, both of whom share a common history with Christians. Tass calls for civil discussions based on John 7:46 and Mark 1:22, instead of the all-too-common “my God is better than your God” mentality among all 3 groups.

Tass claims, rightly in my mind, that reconciliation is possible in the Arab-Jew conflict. The solution is Jesus Himself. The present day conflict is not so different from the same conflict when Jesus walked the earth. If reconciliation was possible then, Tass claims, reconciliation is possible today, because Jesus is still alive (Ephesians 2:14-20).

Tass speaks of reconciliation simply:

“Jesus is not so interested in building a religion as he is in building relationships that honor his plan for the world. These relationships are both vertical, with him, and horizontal, with our fellow human beings. When my heart is clean and I have a relationship with Jesus, it is easier to have a peaceful relationship with my neighbor.”

Tass admits that the middle east may never be a “melting pot”, but still he believes the peoples can live in peace. (Some say America is a “melting pot” but it is often more like a “tossed salad” but at least we also live in relative peace with each other.)

The lesson for us? I would contend that we need to stop trying to fit Jesus into our UBF or ex-UBF box.

4. Finally, we need to begin feeling each other’s pain.

Based on Matthew 5:4-9, Tass claims we should be peacemakers and “see the Jewish Jesus stopping to care for a Gentile centurion with a critically ill servant.” (Matthew 8:7).

The lesson for us? Both UBF and ex-UBF need to feel each other’s pain and see each other as human beings for whom Jesus died and people who Jesus loves.

He makes a heart-wrenching appeal to close his book. And he points us to Genesis 25:7-9 to see the beautiful picture of Isaac and Ishmael working together to bury their father, Abraham.

Questions

Do you think this could work in the Arab-Jew conflict? Does the peace plan Tass suggests have any merit or bearing on conflicts you are facing?