Comments on Albert's Facebook Page About The Last Post

Hey guys,

Albert just friended me (strange, I thought we had been Facebook friends already :P), so I just got a chance to look over the great discussions you guys were having on Facebook. I have to say, as cynical as you see I've become about the church organization, reading your thoughtful comments there filled me with renewed joy and hope. Maybe where generations in the past, including mine, have failed, yours will succeed. "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

One thing you've no doubt noticed is that it takes me a loooooong time to communicate things in writing. At work I'm known as "the guy who writes 50 page emails". But I do that for a reason. We live in a sound-bite world, where no matter what kind of person you are your entire life is judged these days by a 5-second sound bite or a 140-character Tweet. But life is a lot more complex than that. So I try to lay it all out. Why? For one thing, if I feel inspired--whether it's by the Spirit or my own human efforts I'll let you decide--I feel obliged to lay it all out and leave nothing out. Plus, I don't give anyone a chance to quote me out of context because I can always point back and show them what I really meant.

Just for fun, I went through my post and started to think...if I didn't agree with what's in my post and wanted to discredit it ad hominem instead of engaging with me on the battlefield of ideas, what would I do? I might send a "warning" message to people saying...

This brother says that our church is sick, but he's really the sick one. He failed at a job the church entrusted him to do and the church deservedly fired him and now he's finally found his chance to get "revenge". All he does is complain. He says our sermons are boring. He says our Bible studies are fruitless. He's a hypocrite because all he does is sit back and point fingers and yet he himself doesn't come to church to help us. 

Is this a true statement? Yeah, maybe it is. But again, context is important.

Yes, I did whine about being fired from my job in the IA. But there was a point in that. First of all, while of course not to the same degree of severity, I can see there were parallels between what happened to me and what happened to Pr. Yang from the same group of people. Where was the due process? Where was the transparency? Where was the "gentle correction"?

And second, today I'm someone who, thank God, is pretty successful in his career. Last year I did the SEO for one of the largest energy companies in the world and within a year they're already generating over $7 million worth of search traffic where they had none before (and no, I don't get a cut of that). Currently, I've been entrusted with working on sites for one of the largest pharmaceutical brands and one of the largest CPG brands in the world. I've gotten compliments from some pretty high-level executives in the corporate world.

I don't say this to boast, because I know full well that whatever gifts and talents I have come directly from above. Perhaps one day I'll write a 50-page blog post about the miracles that resulted in me getting to this point in my career. But I mention it only to make a point. What if this "bruised reed" were properly nurtured and encouraged instead of snuffed out? I'll tell you one thing, tjc.org probably wouldn't still be an 800x600 site and looking identical to the way it looked the day I left the IA. And similar to the brother I mentioned who wanted to help us 12 years ago and was rejected, if the church at any time had only asked me I would have gladly volunteered my talents to building a new Web site for them. But no, I'm evidently on the ol' Do Not Fly list. And so in some ways I think this blog is my last gasp attempt to try to use whatever talents I have to serve Him instead of burying them (incidentally, I first came up with the idea for this back in 2009, which explains why it's on blogspot.com).

As for my comments about the sermons being boring and the Bible studies being lifeless, again in a vacuum it looks like I'm just a whiny jerk. But if you read it in the context of the overall post it makes a liitle more sense. I know a full-time minister of the church whose sermons for the most part kept me engaged and awake. And this same person was someone who actively encouraged people to work out their own faith instead of always getting instruction spoon-fed to them. At a time when the church is struggling to find answers to these very things, I would have thought that such a minister would be lifted up as an example for us to learn from. Instead he was lifted up and had his head cut off. Again, under really bizarre circumstances.

This "preamble" is ending up turning into another of my tomes, so I'll stop here. I'll just conclude by saying while I was once a teacher to some of you, my comments (just as my blog) are NOT meant to "teach" you. It's just to provide food for thought. I'm sure someone, somewhere, is working on how to communicate with you that what I'm writing is dangerous and subversive and that by daring to visit this URL you'll fall under my evil spell. But I think just by reading your comments, most of you guys have already surpassed me in terms of spiritual maturity and wisdom, and so I have confidence that the Spirit will help you discern if what I'm saying is from above, below, or right here. I encourage you to test my words, but not just my words but the words you hear from any minister, brother, sister, or human being you encounter in this life. Measure them and test them with the Holy Spirit, who will really be the one to lead you into all truth, not some individual or committee.

Thanks to Albert for sharing my link. As I wrote in the first post I really did this more as an exercise for myself but now that it's out there, if there's anything in here where we can help spur each other on to love and good deeds, thank God :)

Thanks,
Steve

Now, onto your comments. Albert did an awesome job of answering most of these on my behalf exactly the way I would have (and no, we're not conspiring behind the scenes), but just so you have some of these answers with my insights, I offer them here:

David Liu My observation as a church interpreter: I get a LOT of "suggestions" (rightfully so). A lot of "You should have used this word instead of..." and "The correct terminology is...") They always come from people who never interpret on the pulpit. I also noticed that interpreters never criticize each other, but they are quick to point out a great interpreter. It's easy to point out other people's flaws when you've never done it before. 


The same with sermon speaking. We may be able to give a heart-felt sermon once in a while, but when you have to do it week after week, it gets difficult to consistently come up with riveting topics each time. It is completely wrong to say that "Nobody inside the church is asking what could be done better." I guarantee you 99% are thinking it. No one enjoys giving sermons to people sleeping in the pews. Not many of us give sermons 50+ times a year and have all of them be touching and thought-provoking. If so, maybe we are in the position to criticize. Or better yet, TTP is still recruiting...

Hi David.  I understand your frustration. Remember, for a couple years I was on the hook to give a sermon every month or so in multiple churches, so I know what it means to run on empty and watch helplessly as eyelids droop. I remember regurgitating some sermons so many times that eventually even I was practically falling asleep during them. 

Criticism is tough to hear, but please remember that it's not an attack. But it is a challenge, especially if you get into a church leadership position, to start thinking "out of the box" instead of accepting the status quo as it's always been. 

For example, what if sermons were 25 minutes instead of 45 minutes? Right there that doubles the number of sermons you can give, forces the sermon giver to be more focused and get to the darned point, and keeps a larger percentage of congregants awake to boot.  Not only that, it provides more time for fellowship, especially with those teachers or board members who are always sequestered in meetings. 

What if a sermon speaker were to talk about matters more practical to the congregation's daily needs in addition to the usual methodical Bible exposition week after week? You'd still have topics like "Jesus is the Bread of Life" or "The Relationship Between God and Malachi" some weeks, but maybe they could alternate with topics like "How to Help Someone Going Through Depression" or "How to Handle Workplace Conflict using Bible Principles" . Of course, if you do start doing the latter, those "repetitive platitudes" have got to go too. For the topic on depression, "Pray harder" and "Do more holy work" isn't going to cut it. You'd need wisdom from the Holy Spirit to really find Bible-based solutions, and maybe even tap resources outside the church. 

And speaking of researching outside the church, what if instead of the church's current practice of warning members not to look to material from other Christian groups and churches, we actually encouraged it, trusting the Holy Spirit to guide us? I remember there was a sermon I gave 13 years ago where I ended up drawing from other Christian ministries for some of the inspiration. After my sermon I had people coming up to me telling me that they loved the sermon, and I could see it even brought some to tears. And when I re-read the sermon today (whose contents I incidentally still agree with 100%) I find the 33 year old me teaching the 46 year old me brand new things. But that wasn't me, of course, it was the Holy Spirit that spoke, and continues to speak, through those words--words that weren't just recycled TJC content. 

And of course, like I said above, what if ministers and members who had these gifts but, oh let's just say, didn't go to church for a while or married an unbeliever or had failed one time in his life but has since repented--were allowed to come back and share with the congregation instead of being used as a shameful example of what you can become if you veer from the "straight and narrow" of the church? 

These are just four ideas off the top of my head, smarter people than I can think up a whole lot more. But you see where I'm going here. We need new wine, and we need to do away with the old wine skins. The biggest challenge is breaking the status quo, though. These are all things I tried to do back in the day but I always got rebuffed. "We've always done it the way we're doing it" .But maybe your generation will have a better chance. 

As for your thinly veiled suggestion that I should join TTP, I prayed about that for a long time but God's answer to me was no. Evidently He wants me to focus on other things. If you have an issue with that, I'd suggest you take it up with Him. :P

Kimber Oats I only skimmed as it got way too long, but it sounds like promoting 1 specific person. To truly belong to Christ is to follow Him, not any one person. It always bothers me when people say "I prefer Preacher so and so" because why should it matter? Listen to Him not him/her/it/they/whatever

Hi Kimber. Just to be clear, the same thing bothers me too. I remember from time to time in the old NYTSes, there'd be conversations about certain preachers as if they were rock stars and it'd drive me crazy. So you're absolutely right. Those who do that are like the ones who say "I follow Paul" or "I follow Apollos" and are completely missing the point. 

The only reason I called this minister out specifically, and spent a bit of time expounding upon my personal experiences with him, was because I wanted to lay out all the things that I observed that went into my judgement of his character as a person and his faithfulness as a preacher. I have to admit I still perceive that there was something very much amiss in the whole process of kicking him out--as Albert said because so much of the details were obfuscated it's hard to judge rightly. I actually quite deliberately titled the post "Why the TJC is Wrong" and not "Why Pr Yang is Right" for a reason. I certainly don't consider him a saint. I see he has a lot of flaws, as do we all. But I also don't feel at all comfortable with the lack of transparency during that whole process. 

As I wrote in my most recent post, I really thought about it and prayed about it before I posted it. While some may perceive my post as me hating the church, it's just the opposite. I love the church and hope that something in these fifty gazillion words will somehow help her. Whether you think Proverbs 15:31 or Proverbs 16:28 applies to me is something you and the Holy Spirit will need to decide. 

But if something truly is amiss, I would hope our current church leaders can open their eyes and fix it, but if not it's your generation who's eventually going to have to. I'd only hope and pray the damage by that time will not be too great. 

As for the length of my post, note that if you read the entire thing front-to-end, it'd be about a third of the length of one of our sermons. :P So if you can keep awake for one of those, you can certainly get through reading the post. I promise there's some good stuff in there :) 

John Chiang "God will not hold you guiltless if you fail to speak." ...meaning what, exactly?

John, Albert's explanation hit the nail on the head, but just to give you a little more background, the quote is from a pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who foresaw and stood up to the Nazis during World War II when the vast majority of members in the churches of Germany were oblivious and content to follow their church leaders, most of whom were content to not "rock the boat". Bonhoeffer was eventually martyred for Christ by the Third Reich only about a month prior to the end of the German surrender. I'm probably going to write a blog post about this at some point so I won't pontificate, but  I really suggest reading this book to find out more if you're interested. 

And no, I'm not comparing anyone anywhere to the Nazis.

If you prefer, James said pretty much the same thing: If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them.

Hsuanwei Fan You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness." Mmmm. /  The first post was amazingly written though. I think some people find post #2 to be less palatable because the issue is contentious and people may have already picked sides, but post #1 is really worth reading

Hi Hsuanwei. Not sure how to interpret your first comment. If I've appeared disingenuous or hypocritical in any way, I sincerely hope you can point out where so I can improve. Heaven knows if I can dish it out I need to be able to take it in. The one thing I can tell you is that I know I'm certainly not perfect, but I did try to write all three of those posts out of love and in as constructive a way as I could. 

Regarding the concept of "picking sides", I think my latest post addresses that a little. There really shouldn't be "sides". Or rather, there should be one side. Everyone is quick to say "God is on my side", but everyone (myself included) should really be asking, "am I on God's side"? Not sure how many of us are doing that. 

Geoffrey Chu I only ask because my sentiment on certain parts has been the opposite. I feel like there is definitely introspection. Both as an organization and as individuals. Whether in local, regional, or national meetings I haven't ever felt that there was no introspection. These meetings consistently ask "what can we do better next time" or "what should we be doing instead" or "how can we be more effective". And with individual sermon speakers I can't speak on behalf of everyone, but no one goes up to the pulpit to speak with the intention of doing a poor job. If anything, I've suspected the issue to be more of actions (or lack thereof) that follow introspection. But perhaps we need more of both. 

Then again that is also completely anecdotal to my own experiences as well.

Hi Geoffrey, yes, I agree that follow-through to introspection is of course important. But regarding introspection itself, I just wanted to point out something about the hypothetical questions you gave: 

What can we do better next time?
What should we be doing instead?
How can we be more effective?

One of the challenges I've noticed (and again, it's because I've asked these very questions myself) is that these questions are really vague. For example, what is meant by "doing better"? What does "more effective" mean? 

I've been in those meetings too--locally, regionally, and nationally. The measure of "doing better" is more often than not internally-focused metrics and rather mundane ones at that. Do we have enough sermon speakers to fill a schedule? Do sermons start and end when they're supposed to? I've rarely seen really contemplative discussions about the contents of a sermon, the style of a sermon, and most importantly whether a sermon is really reaching its intended listener--is the listener being engaged and do they take away things of practical value? Is there someone looking at the congregation and finding what points they fall asleep during, whether time-wise or subject matter-wise? All that can be used as data as part of the "introspection". 

I remember I used to go to "sermon speaking seminars" run by the church and with all due respect they were really not very useful. Each time it was yet more methodical approaches to biblical exegesis (or whatever you call it) where you'd learn to break down Bible passages and basically give the same kind of sermon that has been helping make the term "Sabbath rest" quite literal for 30 years. 

Honestly, I'd rather potential sermon speakers just sign up for Toastmasters or a public speaking class, or for the church to recruit speakers who are insightful, know their Scriptures, AND happen to do a lot of speaking and communications in their jobs (i.e., have a natural God-given talent for speaking). The Spirit will help with topics and content, but learning how to speak and communicate to humans comes with lots of innate talent, experience and practice. 

Christopher Suen I was a lot less interested in the bits on Pr. Yang, and much more fascinated by his commentary on TJC's org structure/norms and operating culture - insular, repressive, and perhaps even boring, in his view. It would be fascinating to have Deloitte or some other third party consulting firm assess TJC's approach and likely effects on membership growth and membership engagement across different markets and demographics. I suspect that TJC will have to change its approach or risk bleeding membership amongst western-born millennials.

Hi Christopher, I love your thinking here. It might freak out some people to hear anyone considering "secular" approaches to looking at deficiencies in church operations, but the bottom line it'd definitely be fascinating to see you guys use the talents you've developed in the corporate world to see how they might be applied to the church. 

It'd be interesting, for example, to consult the church as you would any other non-profit, looking at its org structure, its operations, its strategy, and its "marketing" (It almost seems sacrilegious to think of evangelism as "marketing" but that's all evangelism is--matching a product or service to a need. And in our case this "product" really does deliver on its brand promise and has a catchier tagline than Nike--Jesus Saves :)). 

Of course this type of review wouldn't be able to look at the spiritual component of things, but I think just as in the human body the physical health can affect the spiritual health, I think the same must be true of the church. If you guys do embark on this, I'd love to hear the results!

Eugenia Liew I guess the main reason Pr Yang was excommunicated was due to his point of view in speaking in tongue. I can understand his point, which is the reason I was warned NOT to join TJC. Many TJC members can speak in tongue, yet do not produce the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit. Some do not speak in tongue do show that their lives r full of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Other denominations emphasize more on the fruits than the tongue.

Eugenia, I never met you but from your comments I sense you are a relatively new member. If that's the case, if I may say so you are the perfect illustration of when Jesus said "the last will be first and the first last". Yes, you're absolutely right. What a lot of us "old timers" forget over time is that speaking in tongues is only the first step--an important first step to be sure, but hardly the most important part of receiving the Promised Holy Spirit. Just as an apple tree needs to bear apples and an orange tree needs to bear oranges, someone with the Holy Spirit must continually bear the fruit of the spirit and grow more like Jesus every day. On the day of judgement, a tree that hasn't bore fruit will be thrown into the fire, no matter how many tongues it speaks (okay the metaphor kind of breaks down there, but you get the point). 

The next thing I'm going to say may sound disingenuous, but I assure you it's not. Thank you for teaching me. The older I get, the more I realize that I have so much to learn. I always have to be reminded that Jesus pointed people away from the priests and the teachers of the law and towards the children for them to learn what "perfect praise" meant. I think anyone who's been a member for over 20 years should be forced to lock themselves in a room for an hour with someone who's recently been saved and just shut their mouth and listen. 

As far as Pr Yang's excommunication, as someone who's heard Pr. Yang speak on the topic of the Holy Spirit this is one of the things that baffles me the most. I've never seen exactly what it is he's accused of saying (which is one of the problems), but just as in the example I gave above and in my most recent post, I can't shake the feeling that somehow individual things he said were taken completely out of context.. Whether intentionally or unintentionally I can't say. But I'll be writing a post on my own perspective on the Holy Spirit in a little while. 

Hsu-Chang Lu A church organization is, after all, a social machine where everyone interacts according to each one's intention. In the apostolic time, they #1 loved each other and worshiped God (which happened to please God). Introducing a subtle difference and now everyone in this social machine has #1 intention of pleasing God and all decisions from the church organization is equated to God's will, or worse, the church organization itself to God's body, there is a risk of having a social machine without God. If A=B and B=C, and B doesn't get used much, we just remember A=C. The machine keeps on churning, operating everything according to the schedule, getting rid of anything or anyone in it's way until it collapses under it's own weight since God and the love of each other, now more or less ignored, is not there to support everything anymore. I hope it does not happen to TJC. It already happened too many times in the history.

Just a note to everyone--back in the day in Elizabeth when Br. Lu and I taught J1 class, we decided to go through a few lessons on early Christian church history. I don't want to pump up his head all that much, but Br. Lu's classes on the topic were phenomenal. The saying is true: "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it". While most religion college courses tend to be way too agenda-driven these days, I'd definitely recommend you and the Spirit within you look for objective reference material about what happened to the original Apostolic church, because there are lessons for us as a church in history. If you need tips on where to look for those, bug H.C. Lu :P 

Andrew Lu Oh and Albert, he still comes to church sometimes.

Thanks Andrew :) Yes, I do indeed and I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon ;) And I still want you to give me table tennis lessons one of these days ;)