I have been reflecting recently about the relationship between Faith and Works. This topic is closely related to my current sermon series on “The Jesus Way.” In this first post I will introduce some of the key issues on this topic.The word “works” is used in Christian theology to describe our deeds or actions, especially what we do in obedience or service of God. Faith refers to an attitude of trust in and dependence on God.
There has always been a tension between these two ideas. On the one hand we know that our salvation is by “grace through faith” and that it is “not as a result of works” (Eph. 2:8-9). On the other hand we read in Scripture that “The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar” (1 Jn. 2:4). How can these seemingly contradictory statements fit together?
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I finally found the problem with the title graphic in Internet Explorer. Since the majoriy of my readers use IE 6, now you can see the “Reflections” title correctly instead of just the water graphic.
The title uses a .png graphic file with a transparent background. Until IE 7 is released, you need a workaround to get it to display properly. If you are interested, this is where I got the script to correct the problem.
Here is the introduction to my D.Min. dissertation proposal. Now that I am finally actually doing something about it I want to share it with my readers. Let me know your feedback. Now you all can help me with my dissertation 
(Please note that this section is designed to describe why this study is needed. I don’t want to be overly negative, but to give a balanced description of some of the tensions and challenges faced in ministry in a bilingual immigrant church.)
It’s not easy living in the gap. The children of immigrants find themselves torn between two cultures. They want to honor the hopes and aspirations of their parents, but at the same time they long for acceptance in the only country that they have ever known. They live out one identity at school and with their friends but put on a different one at home. Meanwhile their parents are concerned about the influence of American culture on their children and worry that they will abandon their native language and ethnic heritage.
These two forces often collide at church. The immigrant generation, after living in an English speaking, culturally American world all week long, look forward to experiencing a taste of their home language and culture at church. But for their children it is a very different experience. On Sundays they feel yanked backwards into a culture that they have worked hard to move beyond during the week so that they can fit in with their friends. Of course it is never that simple, because they often value many aspects of their parents’ culture. But the tension is there.
I have experienced this challenge first hand over the past twelve years at a bilingual Chinese church in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I serve as the English Pastor. Like most ethnic immigrant churches, Chinese churches in North America struggle to find effective ways to reach the children and grandchildren of the immigrant generation. Those serving in other Asian immigrant churches have reported similar challenges.
The phenomenon of immigrants moving to a new country and founding a church is nothing new. The challenges currently facing Chinese churches are similar to those faced by other immigrant churches in the past. I will draw on the experiences of those groups to discover principles that contemporary immigrant churches can apply in their ministry.
Tonight I have made several significant changes to my web site:
- I have moved the site to a new location: http://reflections.cyberpastor.net
- I have upgraded to Wordpress version 2.0.2
- I have changed the permalink structure.
I registered cyberpastor.net some time ago and I have been contemplating how I will use it. I decided to put my Reflections blog in a subdomain so that it would be easier to use the domain for additional purposes in the future if I want to. After a time of transition I will use kencarlson.org for more personal items.
What this means for my readers is that from now on you will need to go to http://reflections.cyberpastor.net instead of http://reflections.cyberpastor.net. The links to all of my posts will have changed to a more user friendly url format, which unfortunately means that any old bookmarks will no longer be valid.
I will try to set up some .htaccess redirects for a few of the most popular posts as well as some instructions about how to find things on the new site. I hope that it will not be too great an inconvenience.
For those of you reading this on my Xanga crosspost, this means that all the earlier links from my Xanga to my main site will no longer be valid. You will need to come to the new site and then find the post you are looking for. Sorry!
Update: The site was off line last night due to an error I created setting up url redirection.
After yesterdays sermon on Philippians 4:8 I have been thinking about practical steps that we can take to focus our thoughts on things that have the qualities listed in that verse. How can we influence what we think about during our “down time” each day?
Besides the obvious ones such as daily Bible reading and Bible memorization, I came up with a few others:
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