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. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I had the privilege of being part of an amazing meeting. It was a gathering of all of the Superintendents of the Assemblies of God language districts along with the Presidents of the Ethnic Fellowships in the U.S. It was awesome to see and hear what God is doing through the wonderful diversity of people He has brought to live in this nation. I sat with leaders that people groups from all over the world. Besides the 8 Spanish language districts that represent 1400+ churches in America, 18 other ethnic groups had representation in the room. Collectively, the represented a ton of vigorous church planting happening all over the place!

What is especially encouraging for me is that these friends are the fruit of decades of labor by AG missionaries in every corner of the globe. From the beginning, our missionaries were determined to plant the seed of the Gospel in the hearts of indigenous people and then empower them develop leadership to lead themselves. It is a strategy that has clearly worked. Currently, the AG has self-governing General Councils in 212 countries and territories. Much of what is now happening globally was catalyzed by missionaries who obeyed the call of God to sacrificially GO to take the Gospel to all nations. Now the fruit of their labor is coming back to bless America in our time of great spiritual need.

These leaders are passionate and faith filled and they are working diligently to reach lost Americans of all ethnicities. I’m optimistic that they are part of God’s plan to heal this nation. And the reality is that these folks are the future of America. According to a recent article in the
New York Times, America will be composed of a “minority majority” by 2039. In other words, over the next thirty years, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites which now comprise about 66% of the population will rapidly decrease to 49% in 2039. We must plant churches that are multi-cultural as well as cultural specific to reach folks of differing languages and cultural with the powerful Gospel of Jesus.

The bottom line is that God has positioned the AG well to reach lost Americans regardless of culture, language or nation of origin.

I’m writing this as I’m seated in a meeting of the AG General Presbytery. If you don’t know, the “GP’s” are made up of leaders from across the fellowship…pastors, superintendents, college presidents and other key leaders. These meetings are typically very focused on business that needs to be conducted so the fellowship can work collaboratively to be with Jesus on his mission.

Today, God interrupted the planned agenda. It was awesome. Slavic Radchuk shared a devotion in which he thanked the Assemblies of God in America for sending missionaries to the nations. But he pointed out that now God is sending the nations to America to bring revival to us. After he spoke, it was obvious to everyone that God desired to speak to us. We waited. We listened. Leaders rose to prophecy, pray and repent. We wept, we sang, we waited. One prophetic word was that we needed to dig holes in the ground to hold the water of revival that God is sending. The “holes” were acknowledged to be new churches. The theme of this meeting has strongly leaned in the direction of keeping the starting of new churches a strong focus of the AG and this visitation of the Lord seemed to affirm our determination to partner with Jesus in building His Church.

I think some really good stuff is going to come out of this. There is a rumor going around that many of our young leaders are becoming frustrated with the bureaucratic hoops of this mature family and are thinking about finding other groups to affiliate with. Believe me…I understand frustration with bureaucracy, but NOW is not the time to let organizational imperfections be the reason you decide to affiliate somewhere else…a perfect, frustration free organization does not exist! And if you go out looking for one, you are going to be even more frustrated than you feel right now. Be patient. Do the right stuff for the right reasons. God is working through us and it’s especially cool when we let Him work through us together!