Nursing Books for Malawi

My mom is raising money to send 10 boxes of nursing books to Malawi. She met the nursing students last summer when she visited Malawi for a month. The books were donated mostly by the students and faculty at Hawaii Pacific University. Hawaii Kai Church is handling the donations which you can make through firstgiving.com: http://firstgiving.com/booksformalawi.

This is a YouTube video that I took at Hawaii Kai Church of my mom telling the congregation about her time in Africa and this service project that came out of it.

North Korea Freedom Week

North Korea Freedom Week started Sunday in Washington, D.C. to bring awareness to the human rights crisis in North Korea and the atrocities committed by North Korea and China (who captures North Korean refugees and sends them back to North Korea). It's disappointing how little coverage this event has gotten so far in the wider media. I created a page on Chosun Journal to list all of the coverage I could find online for those of us who aren't able to be in Washington. I'm hopeful there will be some video and photos of the scheduled events available later this week. More to come...

City of San Francisco Declares April 26 Not for Sale Day

I received an email from the Not For Sale Campaign this afternoon informing me that the mayor's office of San Francisco has declared this Thursday, April 26th, Not For Sale Day. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any information about the event online, except for this one blog post. The email said this was the schedule of events happening at the University of San Francisco:

12:00 pm - Students demonstrate anti-slavery activities on campus (Harney Plaza)

1:00 pm - Anti-trafficking film festival - new and unreleased films (McClaren 252)

5:00 pm - David Batstone, Norma Hotaling (founder and director of SAGE), Olympic and World Figure Skating Champion Brian Boitano speak about their abolitionist work. (McClaren 252)

6:30 pm - World Premiere of "Not for Sale: The Documentary". Director Robert Marcarelli presents the films and answers audience questions following the film (McClaren 252)

Then on Sunday, April 29th (my birthday :) First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley will be hosting a special Not For Sale worship service in the Sanctuary at 7:30pm.

IJM Prayer Gathering Offers Remote Participation

The International Justice Mission Prayer Gathering starts today. IJM is an amazing organization started by Gary Haugen that works on the front lines of injustice, rescuing victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression. I first heard about IJM in Gary's book, Good News About Injustice. My pastor, Mark Labberton, and a number of other people from First Pres Berkeley will be flying to Washington D.C. to participate in the annual global prayer gathering. They will join IJM staff from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. who will lead them in prayer. They will also hear personal testimony from victims of slavery and injustice, as well as from the teams who have been used by God to bring their rescue.

For those of us, myself included, who would love to attend this event but cannot make it to Washington D.C. - IJM has provided us with the online resources to participate in this event remotely. They have provided written prayer guides and video clips from IJM field staff. Let's join them in prayer this weekend.
2007 Global Prayer Gathering Remote Participation

Missionary Ethics

This morning I opened the San Francisco Chronicle and found a story called "An 'underground railway' rolling to freedom or death" in the Insight section. It was written by Josh Chin who is a student at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. He was given the rare opportunity to enter a safe house in China and meet a dozen North Korean refugees who sought protection there. The safe house is part of a loose network of Christian missionaries who do what they can to help North Korean refugees escape to South Korea. The Chinese government does not recognize North Koreans as refugees and will forcibly repatriate them back to North Korea where they are often tortured and sometimes killed. As Josh says in his article "the missionaries are virtually their only protectors."

As an opinion piece this article was much more personal than a typical news story. Josh shares his own struggle to define whether the missionaries are bringing life or death to these refugees. Josh is quick to point out the courage of the missionaries who face imprisonment or worse if caught aiding the North Koreans. He also points out that they seek no recognition and earn no payoff for their work other than remaining true to their beliefs. Many North Korean refugees do make it to freedom because of the work of these missionary networks.

So why the struggle? Two of the North Korean women that Josh meets at the safe house, 16-year old Esther and 17-year old Grace, declare that they plan to return to North Korea "to spread the Gospel". Josh notices that Grace seems hesitant. Proselytizing in North Korea is a crime punishable by death. Why would the women choose this fate? Josh wonders if the women, taught from birth in North Korea to worship Kim Sung Il, Kim Jong Il and juche (the national philosophy of Korean self-reliance) have merely substituted the object of their faith with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of Christianity. Are North Korea refugees easy targets for missionaries? Is this ethical? Are the young women better off? These are the questions I struggled with as I drove to church this morning after reading the paper.

I have more questions than answers and Josh's article does not attempt to give any answers. He shares his struggle and asks his readers to draw their own conclusions. Here are a few of my thoughts.

In the final class on his book, The Dangerous Act of Worship, Living God's Call to Justice, Pastor Mark Labberton engaged in an extended discussion with a woman in the class who wanted to make sure that in our discussions of justice we did not forget that our main calling as Christians is to spread the gospel. Pastor Mark, while agreeing that sharing the good news of Jesus Christ is important, argued that loving our neighbors and working for justice are inherently valuable to God - because of the nature and character of God - and that value is not dependent on our sharing the Gospel.

I asked myself why proselytizing is punishable by death in North Korea? (Josh writes that these days North Koreans caught illegally crossing the border are no longer put to death unless they return to proselytize) Another way to ask the question is: what does Kim Jong Il have to fear from the spread of the gospel in North Korea? In 2001 Edward Kim, editor of Chosun Journal, wrote Kim Jung Il "knows that once the missionaries and refugees were to bear witness to the world of their unbreakable courage and undying love strong enough to move the whole world's conscience, that his freedom to abuse would be lost forever." There lies hope - and yet that quote comes from a conversation that Edward had with one of these missionaries and it leaves me with much concern.

Learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:17

Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?
Isaiah 58: 6

Community 2.0

Last week I attended the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas. Here are some of my takeaways.

1. Meet in person
   Over time both online and in-person interactions are important for the health of an online community. Face to face meetings deepen the connections between people and they give people a chance to think together – online interactions are usually about sharing information, not innovative thinking.

2. Invest in people
   Tools and infrastructure are secondary. Having the right people nurturing your community is primary. Talent is scarce. Some of the new skills that will be necessary to manage a community include moderating, archiving community contributed content, analyzing metrics, attracting people to your community (different from traditional intercept marketing).

3. Be authentic
   The company needs to be up-front about what they are hoping to gain from the community and the values of the company should be clear and evident from their action (or non-action) in the community.

4. Get to know your community
   Analytics are critical to determining what is going on in the community and giving more value to your participants. Metrics will help you determine the health of your community and whether it is a success (based on your predetermined business goals).

5. Give recognition to your active participants
   One key motivation for people to join a community is to receive recognition for work that they do or ideas that they have. Find ways to highlight your active participants and give them the recognition they seek.

6. Change mindsets
   * Focus on the participant and then the vendor
   * Focus on long-term value and then short-term performance
   * Let the community gain control from the bottom up rather than trying to sustain top-down organizational control

Living As In the Day

Notes from David Gill's Ethics class - Week 1 on "Living as in the day -- when it is still night". See this previous post for the class overview.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

"Spiritual worship" in this passage could also be translated "logical response" or "reasonable service". The Greek words that are used are logikon latreia. Paul is presenting an argument about how we should live our lives and he appeals to us on the basis of logic.

"Do not be conformed to this world". There are two words for world in Greek. aeon meaning age or a period of existence; and kosmos meaning the spacial universe. The word used in this text is "aeon". The call is to not let ourselves be shaped or defined by the age or culture that we live in. Rather we should "be transformed by the renewing of our minds". And the purpose is the discernment of the will of God which is:
good [Greek: agathos, meaning good for us]
acceptable [Greek: euarestos, meaning well-pleasing, beautiful]
perfect [Greek: teleios, meaning end, complete]

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Romans 13:11-14

"you know what time it is". The Greek word for time in this case is kairos which means a period or point in time, not chronicle of time. Right now, at this moment, it is time for us to wake up.

"the night is far gone, the day is near". The image below is meant to give us a better picture of what "living as in the day" looks like. While we are not able to look into the coming age to determine how we should live, Jesus who is the "bright and morning star" (Rev. 22:16) left the Day and came to us, in the Night, and gave us a perfect example of what "living honorably as in the day" looks like. So we look to Jesus.