This past Saturday, our homegroup went to McClure Convalescent Hospital & Rehabilitation Center for our annual Valentine’s Day of Compassion event.  This is a tradition that Gracepoint Fellowship Church began in 2006 as a way to give love on the day associated mostly with romantic love and, for many people, feelings of self-pity for not having a Valentine.  So on Saturday, we started off in the morning baking cupcakes, making decorated cards with Zephaniah 3:17, and practicing songs with full-0n Joyland moves.   When we went there, we had a great time meeting and talking with the many residents there.

Kelly Kang had a great insight regarding our visits to the various convalescent homes and shelters that came directly from the DT text that we were meditating on this past week: Luke 8.  In that chapter is the story of Jesus healing the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.  After He heals her, He gives her the opportunity to tell her full story to the entire audience.  He gives her dignity and respect by letting her speak and hearing her story, a story that she probably had not been able to tell anyone all those years.  As we went to the convalescent home and spoke to the residents, we really gave them that opportunity to be heard and to tell their stories, stories that many of them don’t get to tell to anyone because there is no one there to hear it.  But for one afternoon, they got a chance to have some young college student be there and hear their whole story.  It was an opportunity to follow Jesus’ example and a scene that was probably very pleasing to God.

I don’t know if it was intentional or a really neat coincidence that Dr. Craig Hazen came to speak at Gracepoint Fellowship Church in the year of our key verse, 1 John 1:3-4, which includes, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard…” This verse and Dr. Hazen’s talk remind me that gospel is not a spiffy mantra to live by—it’s the truth. Dr. Hazen shared with us about one of his students at Biola, who was ecstatic to find out that the gospel was “true true.” By this he meant that it wasn’t just “true” for him as a lifetime church-going person, but that hard evidence points to the resurrection as the most probable explanation for Jesus’ empty tomb.

Though I laughed, I could definitely share in the sentiment of finding out that Christianity is, “true true.” That’s what I thought when I first heard Pastor Ed’s Bible studies. I saw how he tackled the tough questions that used to stump me. I used to think that these questions were unanswerable, and that the humble Christian would obediently close her eyes to them and just “have faith.” So whenever my smart atheist friends asked questions about my faith that I couldn’t answer, I wondered why I believed in Christianity without having answered these questions for myself.

I reencountered the gospel in college through Course 101 and was stunned at all the evidence out there for Christianity. It made sense to me, though, that God—wanting us to know him—would reveal himself to us in a way we could understand. In Christ, God became knowable, touchable, and even vulnerable to our sin. Now that Jesus no longer walks among us, the question for our generation is how to know this God. Reading the Bible is one way, but Jesus said, “Follow me,” to all Christians so that the world could know God. How incredible that God would choose to reveal himself through us, too! So we need not to merely admire, but to imitate him. It’s hard to fathom, but as I consider my present heroes of faith, I see how God uses ordinary people to reveal himself in tangible ways that words alone could not. None of them would count themselves worthy of the call, but they embrace it nonetheless.

And that brings me to my personal key verse for the year: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Cor 4:7). So let’s take on this call, broken as we are, so that God’s glory can shine through our brokenness.

This week, if you had a Cerebro-like machine that could keep track of the immediate whereabouts of each of our church members, you would have noticed a peculiar thing. You probably would have seen 130+ of them in cafes, libraries, workplaces (during lunch breaks, of course), and North Loop church buildings, frantically studying and poring over a little green reader called Course 101, preparing for the quizzes, drilling, and lessons in humility that would come later that evening.

Course 101 is an 8-week intro to Christianity course that Gracepoint Fellowship Church offers each semester to both Christians and non-Christians. The course material gives answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about Christianity, addressing many misconceptions about God, Jesus, and the Bible, and offers an intellectual basis for the Christian faith. And this week, all 130+ of us, from college freshmen who just took the course this past semester, to our young adult Praxis members, are being trained to teach this material in our church’s first ever Course 101 Training Camp!

Each session begins with a 20-minute quiz on two weeks’ worth of the material, followed by drilling in small groups by some of  our highly-trained staff, including our resident homegroup2 lawyers, Joe and Roy. (Incidentally, I heard that one of the groups cheered when they found out that Joe would not be drilling them. More incidentally, I believe it was Carol’s group that cheered, though to her credit, she wasn’t there when it happened.) During the drilling time, we are posed some tough questions that teach us to not only master the material, but to also be able to handle other related questions that might come up during a Course 101 discussion group. Some examples include, “How could a loving God send people to hell?” and “Why should I trust what the Bible says?” Personally, drilling has been my favorite part, because it teaches us to think clearly about these questions and present answers in a logical and winsome manner, which requires a lot more work and thought than just reading the material.

Drilling is followed by snack time, during which many (except the homegroup2 interns, Carol, Arie, and Jon, of course) bemoan their dismal quiz scores or talk about how their driller worked them during drilling time, while comforting themselves with Costco yogurt and granola bars. Finally, we wrap up with a Q&A time, where Daniel Kim, our resident apologetics expert and leader of Acts2Fellowship Gold, answers any questions that we have from that day’s material. Then we head home to start frantically studying for the next day’s session.

For many of us, Course 101 was instrumental in laying down the intellectual foundation for our Christian faith. So learning to teach it to others is such a privilege, in hope that through us, God might be able to bring one more person one step closer to salvation and fellowship with God and others. God has even been able to use Course 101 out in Taiwan, where our GFC-Hsinchu church has translated the material into Chinese, so that Taiwanese college students can study it and learn about Christianity. For me, having led Course 101 with four different people in the past, I’m still learning through the training camp new arguments and ways of presenting Christ in winsome ways. And it really is exciting anticipating all of the fruit that will come out of this training.

On New Year’s Day, Koinonia and Kairos got together and had a dumpling making party.

Dumplings!

We made dumplings of all varieties and sizes.  The prize for biggest dumpling went to Richard Yen, who made a humongous one out of a tortilla.  Eddie shows us a regular size dumpling for comparison.

The Mother of All Dumplings

After eating our fill of food, we burned off the calories by getting into teams and playing a rousing game of Yut Nori, the traditional Korean game for New Year’s Day.  Here’s  a picture of Steve Suh explaining the game with a jumbo size game board.

According to Chris Gilling, it’s the best game ever.  We played to until we had one champion team.  The winning team members got a grand prize of either a Koinonia t-shirt or a nifty USB stick MP3 player!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you had an enjoyable New Year’s Day, reflecting back on the past year and looking ahead with new commitments and goals for this upcoming year.  We had our Watchnight New Year’s Eve service on Wednesday night where we heard the Deuteronomy 8 reflections from various people, a message by Pastor Ed Kang on 1 John 1:8-10, Lord’s Supper, and then snacks and fellowship late into the first day of 2009. 

I wanted to let you all know of Gracepoint Fellowship Church’s new key verse for 2009.  It’s 1 John 1:3-4

3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.

Kelly Kang wrote a short explanation of the verse and why we chose it on her blog site, which you can check out here.

In addition to a new key verse, this is also a time of New Year’s resolutions.  I’ll share with you mine: 1) pray at least 15 minutes every day, 2) do some kind of excercise every day (e.g., sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, basketball, etc.).  Did any of you guys make any New Year’s resolutions?  Why don’t you share yours on our comments section.

Most of the team from Gracepoint Fellowship Church – Austin came to Berkeley this past week to visit and spend the new year with us.  We had a potluck on Tuesday night at the Central apartments with some of the team members,  many of whom are former residents of Central.

We had fun time of fellowship, especially with many of the team members who were a part of Koinonia and HG2.  Here are some pictures from the night.

Joanna, Margie, Helen, and Sarah

It’s hard to tell which baby belongs to which person.  As you can see, Sarah Song is already up and running about even though she just gave birth to Chloe less than a month ago.

DL, Henry, Ken, Kenny, Mike, and Andrew

Here’s picture with a lot of our former HG2 staff (Henry, Ken, and Kenny).  Just six months ago they were all here together with us in the homgegroup.  Wow, a lot has happened and changed during the course of one year.  One thing that hasn’t changed is that these guys like to eat.  They look like they are really enjoying the food (especially Kenny).

Afterwards, some of the brothers extended the fellowship by going to play basketball at Jammy’s school gym, where we had several round robin games by class peers.

Merry Xmas Christmas everyone!  I hope we all survived the holiday shopping season in one piece.  I found this funny article by C.S. Lewis on the difference between Xmas and Christmas.  You can read it off Google Books here.  Well, I thought it was funny, but by all means judge for yourselves!

Wow, the semester has already ended and I hope everyone is enjoying their time during the break with family and old friends.  Although finals were still happening throughout all of last week, things were as busy as ever.  On Wednesday night, we had a few of the frosh and sophomore guys over at our place for dinner. We also had some present and past homegroup members (i.e., Jasper) sing us Christmas carols.  Then we chowed down a delicious meal Annie prepared.  Afterwards, the students hit the books (well, actually only the frosh studied while the rest of us played Bang.)

Finals Week Feast

We also had our final Bible study of the semester by homegroups.  So we had H2 over at our apartment for a potluck dinner and Bible study, where we went over the DT text of 1 John 4.  We also gave an encouraging farewell to Elaine as she left for the Taiwant mission trip.  After the Bible study, we packed in our cars and headed for San Francisco.  We took pictures at the big Christmas tree at Union Square.  The tree was mighty impressive, so impressive that several people refused to believe it was a real tree.

Christmas Tree at Union Square

Finally, we finished off the night at a Taiwanese dessert place in the Richmond district.  It was a packed and fun night to cap off a packed and fun fall semester.  Wesker felt right at home there!

Wesker, Jon, Carol, Jane, and Sean enjoying dessert.

On top of that, we also had our Angel Tree party, where family members of the three children that our homegroup was sponsoring came out and met some of our homegroup members.

Whew, what a whirlwind last week!

We had our H2 gift exchange last week!

It was a fun time full of eating yummy desserts, challenging people for the best gifts, and singing Christmas carols by candlelight together.  Here’s a picture we took at the end of the night.  In case you’re wondering, the front row people are posing as reindeer.

H2 Christmas Party

I ended up with a pretty nice gift from the gift exchange: a Frisbee.   How did you like the gift you ended up with?

We had a great time at our 2008 Thanksgiving Celebration. Here are some of my favorite moments of the night. Which picture do you like the best?

Jisup the Cucumber

Pilgrim's Paradise

Pretty Nasty