I’m on my way back from being in Southern California as the guest speaker at two powerful Korean churches. The first church I spoke at was Thanksgiving Church led by Pastor Young Kim. The picture to the left is me with Pastor Kim as he interprets for me. Pastor Kim is the District Superintendent of the First Korean District, a fellowship of 140+ Korean churches throughout the United States. Thanksgiving Church is a powerful church of 2000 folks committed to expanding God’s Kingdom through planting many new daughter churches. Pastor Kim has sent out two planting teams already. Next month Thanksgiving Church will plant number three and later this year they plan to launch number four.

The pastor of “number three” is Pastor Peter Cho. Peter and his wife Shenha have been working diligently to gather a “launch team” of English speaking Korean young adults to build a bridge to the extensive SoCal population of 2^nd and 3^rd generation Korean immigrants. Thanksgiving Church has been a great “womb” for them during their “gestation” phase and on the first week of September they plan to birth “Great Harvest Church” just a few blocks down the road from Thanksgiving Church. So, yesterday, I had the privilege of sharing a word of exhortation and encouragement to the launch team of Great Harvest.

Pastor Peter and Shenha are starting Great Harvest with the idea that within 3 years they will give birth to another “bridge building” church. They are already thinking and praying about how they can identify and develop the leaders who can be sent out. They have benefited from being mentored by Pastor Kim. He will continue to serve as a mentor and coach for Peter. Peter is also forming a partnership with the Church Multiplication Network and will be a Matching Fund church. I’m truly excited about what God is doing in this great family of Korean Assemblies of God churches.

On a personal note, Pastors Kim and Cho were excellent hosts. I felt like royalty. After speaking at both churches, we enjoyed an authentic Korean meal together. The restaurant was so authentic it did not have forks which turned out to be a problem for me. As much as I hate to admit it, I have never mastered the use of chopsticks. I was quite a pathetic sight to see as I struggled to get the delicious food from the plate into my mouth. Most of it fell back into the plate or in my lap. I was like a slow motion disaster movie. Pastor Kim, being the gracious host that he is, had pity on me, summoned our server and made a request of her in Korean. A few minutes later she appeared with a special set of chopsticks…I don’t know what the Koreans call them, but I call them “training wheel” chopsticks. They had rigged them with a rubber band and some rolled-up paper . These modified sticks allowed me to squeeze the sticks together and grasp my food. I was soon eating like a pro with “training wheels.” Finally, I was able to enjoy the outstanding food. The rest of the meal was fun as I swallowed my pride and wonderful spicy servings of Korean specialties (including “Kimchi”). We laughed and shared together. I came away full of great food and even greater joy and appreciation for God’s amazing providence.

As I wrote in an earlier post about diversity, God is doing incredible things in America. We are moving rapidly toward the day where the ethnic “majority” is a large diversity of minorities. I’m convinced that the rich variety of people from all corners of the globe that have converged on this nation are part of God’s plan to heal the heart of this great land. I look forward to helping them in every way possible. I’m even more expectant that God is going to use the unique gifts these new friends possess to bless us with a fresh visitation of His love and power.