Not a project.

I was sitting on the plane back from my vacation from Boston. The trip was full of pleasant surprises and lots of time to reflect. Call me strange, but I find cities extremely reflective and contemplative. Perhaps it’s the broken loneliness of the city redeemed for something good. I can just zone out and be alone even in the midst of thousands of people. And somehow in the clanking of metal and towers of concrete, I hear the soft whisper of God.

It’s really funny where one can hear God’s voice.

But I’ve already wandered after one paragraph. I was sitting on the plane (next to two German tourists). So there wasn’t much to talk to them about, except to let them know the stewardess was asking them what they wanted to drink. “Justification”, NT Wright’s response to Piper, was my only entertainment for the plane ride. But the book was so thick and academic… honestly, I think I’ve become dumber since I graduated. So that wasn’t going anywhere.

Luckily for me, they had an inflight movie, “The Soloist”, which I remembered only had a 54% on the tomatometer. It’s about a reporter (Robert Downey Jr.) who starts writing about a homeless man (Jamie Foxx) he meets who had dropped out of Juliard. I was surprised at how much the movie hit me. Perhaps it was my already lowered expectations. But wow. Luckily the german tourists were asleep, because I’m pretty sure I shed a tear or two. There were several moments of resonance for me… like when Jamie Foxx’s character took hold of a cello for the first time in years… if you didn’t know, the cello is one of my favorite instruments- its timbre, the way it resonates, how the notes can glide or puncture the air with sharp marcato’s… is just mind-numbing to me. And I know that feeling- getting to play your first instrument after a long time of not playing it and the emotions that rush in… I snapped out quickly as our plane hit turbulence.

But beyond all my music nerdiness, what impacted me most about this film was the reporter’s journey of figuring out what to do about his relationship with the homeless man. The homeless man started out as his means to a good article, to an improvement project… to a friend. It was really powerful to see his struggle as he saw the ugliness of his own conceited motives for hanging out with this homeless musician. It was beautiful to see his perspective of the man change from a project to… a real friend.

It got me thinking. As I talk to partners and donors about MiraCosta and my students… it is so easy to turn my students into objects and achievements. It’s so easy just to flash a picture of the strangest person on campus and say “I threw a frisbee at him” with a sense of accomplishment. But when it comes down to it, do I hang out with these people because I care for them or because I want a cool picture to show people so they give me money?

These ugly realities bounce in my head. I realize that this is what ministry is when I don’t know love. If I don’t know God’s heart for MiraCosta and the students there, I won’t know how to love them as people, and I will start to treat each of them like a project. And as I think about this, I just see each student individually saying, “I am not a project”.

The guy with low self esteem, “I am not a project”

The girl struggling with finances, “I am not a project”

The cutter, “I am not a project”

The guy I do GIGs with, “I am not a project”

The international student, “I am not a project”

I could name more students, and even stranger students that I meet every day, but even naming who I see seems like a way of showing them off as a project.  But I pray every day that God would shed off these dehumanizing ways of objectifying the human beings that He has called me to love.  I pray that every time that I mention one of my students to people outside of the ministry, that I would be speaking out of the heartbreaking, unrelenting, pure and compassionate love of the Father for His children whom he wants to see brought into the freedom that He created them for. I pray that I would never forget the core of ministry- friendship.

It is from our radical friendship with Himself which God offers us that ministry must flow from- and that must still be spoken in the language of friendship and love. We can have grand projects of reconciliation with the homosexual community, social justice, academic advancement, evangelism, prayer…. but they are empty without love, a banging of cymbals and just noise.

May the love of God come like an uncontrollable hurricane and leave my projects in shambles. May I never forget love.

~I Cor. 13.~

Being part of a failed movement.

Lately, I’ve been realizing I might actually be a quality leader of sorts. The reality of being a team leader is becoming more… real. I spent a week alone, made decisions on my own, and started to dream about what I wanted to see happen. I did an activity where students had to learn how to do Godly affirmation to one another (and then do it for their non-christian friends). This conveniently had time where they got to affirm me. One of the students said something really sweet that I want to keep- he said that I was like a light in the darkness, and that any time I talk to him, no matter what state he’s in, he always feels better. I’ll take that. Then I got an email earlier this week telling me that I had been invited for a big position for the Urbana conference. That also helped my self esteem. The more I go through this year, the more I’m realizing that God is preparing me for more and more leadership.

At the same time, in these past 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve been coming to a ridiculous realization that I hate failure. I fear it. It is one of my biggest fears. It is the fear that all will fall apart when I fail. I’ve been facing a lot of things that signify my failure, or at least my lack of perfection. I led 2 horrible bible studies this week. I would have puked at the horrible exegesis if I were one of the participants. Heck. I wish there were more participants. At every bible study, I had perhaps two other students sit out there with me on the tarp (forgetting that it’s midterms week). On Wednesday, I had perhaps 3 students (from ~20 last year) signed up to go to Catalina and 0 dollars in scholarship. I felt like a failure in my recruiting abilities (forgetting the fact that we are in fact in a recession when people can’t pay 225 bucks to go to a camp). Then there’s the other part of me that doesn’t even want to go to Catalina from remembering the supposed failures I had last year teaching Mark. Let’s not forget that I have a fuller class that I haven’t had time to do at all and all the work is due on the 20th. I feel failure creeping up to me with the possibility that I could do mediocre in this class. And then there’s my room, which I have failed to clean for the last 3 weeks. And then, just as I was getting over it all, while I’m finally cleaning my room, I find that something very important that my sister let me borrow has disappeared. I don’t know if it’s misplaced, or if it has been stolen. I feel the weight of failure pressing me down.

I realize that I equate the successes of the Kingdom of God with my own success. I wonder how much God laughs at that assumption. But I really have the audacity to think that.

Last year, after messing up a session at Catalina (students, you probably didn’t know, but I accidentally ended early on one part, leaving my other staff worker with an extra passage to teach that she didn’t prepare), I was apologizing profusely to my co-teacher. Then our leader turned to me and just straight up said, “Stop apologizing. It’s done. Guilt doesn’t make sense right now. God meant for you to end early there. God meant for you to mess up. And He’s going to use it.” That moment has been haunting me for the past year. I’ve been avoiding returning to that moment, because part of me secretly still feels guilty for my “failure”.

Two weeks ago, I had a dream that I was driving in my car. All of a sudden I started feeling water dripping in my eyes. I kept wiping the water away, until I realized that my sunroof had cracked, and I was driving in a wild storm. My team leader interpreted it for me (she took a dream interpretation class at one of those crazy charismatic churches… I’m pretty crazy, but… yeah. That’s crazy.). She said that God was purifying my ministry. She said she was excited. I kind of felt excited, but in the back of my head I was thinking “excited? What is she smoking? Purification is never an exciting thing!”

And… God has been purifying me since. Purifying my motives for leadership. He’s weeding out my desire for success and my tendency to equate it to the success of the Kingdom of God. I’ve been realizing that as I step into higher leadership, I can’t be consumed with my performance and continue to blow up the effects of my failures. Yes, I have to still pursue excellence. But I’m not perfect. God is. And there’s the miracle. Out of the beautiful mess of our failures, God somehow breathes in the success of His Kingdom. We can’t achieve that success. God has mercy on our inability and allows us to witness His success despite and even through our failures.

I sometimes forget that Christianity started out as a failed local movement with its leader brutally nailed to a cross. And out of the ashes of failure, came the resurrection of the Kingdom that was surely of God, which transformed cowardly fishermen into the rock and foundation of a worldwide movement. Right now, I feel like that scared fisherman, wondering why I even joined this movement; wondering if my convictions were misplaced if all I see around me is failure. But perhaps I’m in this place of fear because I have not really realized that after the ultimate failure that I have witnessed, there is resurrection.

These past few weeks, I’ve had to convince myself to get out of bed and face the day, leaving the failures behind me. And you know what? His Kingdom still advances each of those days. My last Bible study, I felt the conviction return to me and had everyone including myself in a quiet awe of the power of the scripture. God has been merciful, and I now have 9 or 10 students going to Catalina with enough scholarships to cover their lack. As I was preparing for Mark next week at Catalina, I felt a strange excitement for what God was going to do with my students, no matter how sucky I performed. I finally got around to cleaning my room. And I have enough money to replace what was lost.

And no, my failures are not fully undone. But I feel the tendrils of fear and guilt slowly release as I realize that His Kingdom is not dependent on my success. I realize the depth of the statement that is thrown around in evangelical circles- His grace covers us. And wow. His grace does cover me overwhelmingly, and will continue to cover me no matter how successful or how much of a failure I am.

Slice of Conversation.

This last week has been treating me well, God has definitely been good. I definitely would not have expected this all, coming from the crappy week we had last week. I really felt the prayers of my community this week… I almost forgot that in my work, as I fundraise, the people who partner with me aren’t just income providers… they lift me up in prayer consistently, and I can be sure that their prayers were at work this week.  I won’t share everything that happened here, if you’re on my email list, you’ll probably get a full update of this last week… but just wanted to share a slice of a conversation during one of the funniest GIG’s (Groups investigating God, bible studies with seekers) I’ve had, which happened yesterday.

We were talking about Jesus turning the water into wine, and the guy just didn’t want to believe that Jesus actually did a miracle. The conversation went like this:

“Well, i just don’t see how this could have scientifically happened. Like, what if Jesus had some powdered wine and threw it in the stone jars? Kind of like Koolaid or gatorade?”

“…uh… i’m not sure that they knew how to make juice powder back then.”

“Okay. so what if Jesus was a time traveller with a time machine, and when he was born, there were two of him? perhaps, they travelled back and forth in time, replaced stuff, replaced eachother, went on vactions while the other Jesus was dealing with the disciples? And once in a while, they’d help out each other with a trick that the other Jesus wanted to do, like turn water to wine?”

“…Ferdinand. Your story sounds more ridiculous than the Bible. You have twin Jesuses travelling through time in a time machine.”

“oh. yeah. you’re right… okay. well. then here’s the most logical explanation. Jesus didn’t do anything to the water. The host was just so wasted that when he drank the water, he started shouting hysterically that it was wine.”

Amazingly logical. He smiled and stared at me. We both burst out laughing.

I seriously would go insane if I were not hanging out with people who aren’t Christian. They keep me humble and keep me laughing.

an endless cycle of beginnings and endings.

I have been trying this past 6 months or so to make North County my home. It’s been an interesting experience. I’ve had to mourn and cut myself off from things, people and places that have made me comfortable. But I have found that as I’ve come up here, there have been new experiences and joys that have made the pain of leaving worth the reward of entering.

However, I’ve encountered a new phenomenon lately. I’ve watched my new “home” begin to change. It is an obvious but strange occurence that change happens… in the places you’ve left and the places you’ve entered.  This strangeness slapped me in the face today, when I found out that the Smart & Final down the street that I go to for party supplies told me today that they are closing. My Myers-Briggs NF started to kick in and there was this strange heavy sentimentality that overwhelmed me. And I’ve had to say goodbye to many more things than stores. Closed doors. Relationships. Friends. Familiarity. “Home”. There were times in my life where I felt like I couldn’t stop mourning- I would finally finish mourning the loss of something, and then another thing would disappear from my life and the cycle just kept going.

But perhaps my experience of mourning so much (I’m not sure if it’s from an unhealthy disposition towards holding onto things too much or if i’ve really just been in a position to have to say goodbye to that many things) fits so much with community colleges. We watch people leave all the time. I watch my leaders leave so quickly- some to transfer, some back home, some back home to God. The student body seems so transitional, and I find myself really resenting it sometimes. It is easy to be in a constant state of mourning because of all the people I’ve seen who come and go. I can never hold very tight to things, and it often frustrates me. MiraCosta seems to be in an endless state of flux, constantly having to say goodbye to each new thing I’ve encountered, surrendered to the reality that I can’t keep things how I want them to be forever.

I’ve found, though, that the mourning is only one side to reality. As constant as the reality of mourning and the leaving is, the reality of the birth and new beginnings are just as constant. In fact, more constant. Hardly a dualism between death and regeneration, I’m starting to see that the movement of healing, redemption, hope and birth might just have the ability to completely overwhelm our experience of death and mourning.

As quickly as I see people leave, new people come. As quickly as God takes away, he gives again, better.  At least that’s what I have to have faith for. Sometimes, in our present and past realities of brokenness, it is hard to see the present and future healing and redemption. But it is faith in that present and future reality of wholeness where we will no longer have to say goodbye that continues to drive me forward. These days, I find that I am no longer surrounded by death, but by the Kingdom of God ready to be birthed everywhere I look. I am challenged to see hope and life behind every disappointment and death.

The Smart & Final is leaving but in its place is a Henry’s, one of my favorite grocery stores. I can’t dwell on losing my discount bulk supplier, when what I get in exchange is a store with fresh produce, organic stuff and tons of more awesomeness.

Concerning age

Coming home always puts certain things in perspective, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

I was standing in line with my dad at Starbucks today. Behind us were a group of people from the class below me from my high school. I remembered them and the classes i had with them, but I did not remember their names, so I stood silent and listened as they carried along their conversation. “Well, I was just talking to Chris, and he says ‘STAY IN SCHOOL’. I think it’s stupid. He’s hiding. I mean, look, I work at Google now, you work with finance now… why do we need grad school for anything?” Then a haughty laugh. Man. I forgot how it was to be from Lynbrook Highschool, where success was already guaranteed to you just for going to the high school. I glanced back, and saw them dressed as if they were in their thirties already. I looked at myself. In a sweater jacket, a funny shirt, jeans and flip flops. All of a sudden, I just felt immature and silly. I just did not want to even try to start conversation to relearn their names anymore. I felt a strange shame, in that I was still a little kid, and not doing adult things. It’s strange to explain to these people who have grown up in the silicon valley with success as their destiny why I have chosen my path. And doing student ministry often feels as if I’m just doing some youthful splurge because I am trying to run away from adulthood. In reality, yes, there is much to be proud of my job. But when standing next to these people with their 100 grand jobs who expected me to do the same is just strange and jarring.

But simultaneously, in these last few weeks, this old feeling has started to overwhelm me, strangely dissonant with the feelings of immaturity I feel around these old high school friends. I have prayed with friends with diseases that shouldn’t be plaguing them at this age and don’t cure. I have had to sit with my grandma as she shows me her sugar level logs, stained with blood from the pricks in her finger and stomach she has to do everyday. I have had to speak at a memorial for a student who just recently passed away. I just recently had to sit bedside with a friend just a year older than I, who had just gone through his first batch of chemo treatments for cancer. I have been telling people that I have been feeling strangely old.

I was at a prayer meeting with the Mandarin congregation at my church up in San Jose. I told the two older ladies in my group that, “我觉得神要我的心长大很快。“ (I feel God wants my heart to grow very fast). I am growing up. But not in the way they predistined me to grow up during my time at Lynbrook where they laughed at me for not applying to any Ivy League schools and scratched their heads when I told them I was choosing to go to UCSD over UCLA. Age and maturity does not come with a big salary, big title or the fulfillment of a destiny of entitlement. Instead of entitlement, the maturity comes with a call to always find joy in the times of grief. To be inspired by my friend’s enduring faith that God will heal her even though we’ve prayed for it every week. To see the smile in my grandma’s face to see me with her poor vision and that her grandson has visited her. To see the joy that overrides grief at my student’s memorial as there was more laughter than tears when people saw the loving and cheerful impact he made at MiraCosta. To say goodbye to my friend who just finished with chemo in higher spirits than when we first got there. The grief is overwhelming. But the joy I see in the midst of all of this is inexplicable and unstoppable.

As I am in this airport pondering the “Kingdom that is here, but not yet”, I realizing that the “age and maturity” dictated by my Silicon Valley upbringing can just ring so hollow at times. Underneath this muddy and young exterior of jeans, a funny t-shirt, a sweater jacket and flip flops, perhaps there are diamonds of maturity being formed.

I have been realizing that as we grow up, God does not toy with us and manipulate us into His plan at our expense… but He brings us into something so undeniably and ravishly beautiful, that the pull of the grief, pain and shame of our path is but miniscule compared to the compelling gravity of His love and joy that endlessly pursues us. The joy and redemption is worth something, the scars are there, but the life we receive renders them as just marks of God’s grace.

The road is more painful and doesn’t feel as glorious, but it is irresistably filled with more of the grace of maturity than I could have ever deserved.

A Couple of Pictures

Open Heavens Again

My Latest Painting

_____________

Catalina

Unfair

I went to a black gospel church today with one of my students (which was really awesome. It struck some chords that have not been struck for a while… but that’s for another entry). A conversation really caught me off guard. I told a guy I was living in Carlsbad. He laughed and told me he got close, but “they” won’t let him live there. I laughed, telling him how guilty I felt (which is usually my comedy line when I tell people where I live). We both agreed I should count my blessings, with plenty of laughter in between.

What’s funny is that as I was driving back home, and crossed highway 78 from Oceanside to Carlsbad, I really did feel guilty. It didn’t feel like a joke tonight. It might actually be reality.

But I remembered what the guy said to me- “count your blessings”.

Just be thankful, and live fully, love fully. Sometimes, though, it’s so hard to live in such a broken yet beautiful world. My dad used to tell me I had to just accept that the world isn’t fair (“The world isn’t fair, Daniel”, as i wondered why my sister got the cooler toy (ha don’t worry, i have no bitterness, charissa)). But sometimes I wonder if it was meant and created to be unfair…

How do I love people on both sides of the unfairness? How do I remain in between and retain my sanity? My identity must rest in God, He is the only one who can empower me to love the rich and the poor at the same time in a community where the rich and the poor live so near one another (almost literally like “across the train tracks…” except it’s a freeway). I feel like I have a rich mask and then a poor mask, depending on which part of the Tricity area I’m in (and it’s ironic my mom came from a rich family and my dad came from a poor family). But God rips apart the masks and reveals that my identity (and the members of this community’s identities) is not rested upon social standing, but upon his passionate and unrelenting love for all of them- rich or poor.

The sunset over the ocean that I can see from our giant windows… is so beautiful, but so broken, because only the priveleged can view it from where I live. I know I must not be swallowed by guilt, but the question still haunts me… Is this sunset worth it? How can I share it?

The San Diego Story

This is a video I made for our divisional fundraiser, Everyday World Changers.

It’s a great summary of what God has been doing not just in MiraCosta but in the entire San Diego county. It’s really exciting, and making the video kind of reminded me of how exciting it actually is to be working with IV in San Diego at this time. Anyways, enjoy!

Little things…

A lot of little things have been happening to me.

Like a lot of ants (perhaps thousands) making trails all over my room to reach one poor dead spider corpse i found under my bed.

Isn’t that a little bit of overkill???? Couldn’t they just send one little trail? Why several ant highways?? My room stank of ant death for the whole day. Heckuva way to start a morning…

But i promise many other occurrences have transpired this past week. last night it suddenly dawned on me that things could just be falling apart.

Took me about 12 hours before I could snap out of it and realized it was just an overhyped lie. Waking up to a room of ants didn’t help. But I realize that God is still working.

Better yet, as I find myself in places of success, God is showing me how insecure and weak I am without Him. I preached yesterday that satan tries to convince us that a) God doesn’t have a plan, b) even if he did have a plan, he can’t really bring it to completion c) Plus God doesn’t love you enough to do anything about it.
Jesus engages Satan and says a) God’s promise is enough b) God  is able to do all things c) God relentlessly loves us.

It is ironic that these 12 hours of *blah* occurred right after I taught this all to a group of beaming students. I feel so insecure because I haven’t let my own sermon transform me. And God was reminding me what it feels like in the desert, and how enticing the world’s view of success is. I cannot be defined by my success, or lack of it, in my ministry. Instead, I must let myself be defined by God’s love, and for my success to be defined by that same love. It was a 12 hour desert (thankfully… i’ve been in much longer ones), and perhaps a 12 hour crossroads to really think about how I wanted to view my own success.

Would I let my success define me? Or would I let my success be defined by God’s unrelenting love for me?

Fresh breaths of air… and some sushi I treated myself to… and something clicked and I remembered. I am loved, and I don’t have to perform in anyway to earn it. It’s a good feeling.

And I must remember… they’re just ants anyways. Sure… a thousand of them… but they’re still small . As organized as they are, they are no match for my can of extremely toxic and unhealthy can of Raid.

throwing around scripture

I have always had this dream of getting so heated up during a sermon that i’d throw a bible off the podium. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but it was the goal of my preaching. In my head, it would shock the congregation into weeping confession and passionate action. Yeah i know. Ridiculously conceited.  It was the goal… but I always stopped myself. It just seemed to gratuitous, and I felt if I needed to throw the Bible, it had better be important.

Today I threw a bible while preaching today. I blame it on not having enough coffee to maintain self-control. I just got a little… heated. And before you know it, a black, leather bound book was leaving my hands at speeds probably near 45 miles per hour. And then it hit somebody. Good thing it was a high schooler. And for some reason, it didn’t have the rush I imagined it would have. However, I believe the high schooler the bible hit had quite a rush .

haha. I’ll have to work on my throwing bible move. And think of a better move than throwing a bible for dramatic effect. I wonder what my next gratuitous preaching move will be. Perhaps it will involve a hammer, a bucket and a glass of water (If you’re from my SYS 1 class from NISET, you’ll know what i mean by that). Upon reflecting on that moment, I have been thinking about over-using illustrations or over-stimulating people in a sermon. I’d rather God hit somebody, not my Bible. But deep inside, I enjoyed catching that attention. God was perhaps shaking his head in amusement at my horrible attempt at imitating his wrath… with a book thrown at a high schooler. Hopefully Jesus will forgive me for my meddlings.

In more serious matters, I spoke at a chinese church today (Lord’s Grace Church San Diego). This was the first time I had the oppurtunity to publicly articulate the journey God has been taking me on to a Chinese audience. It was really good to publicly talk about it in front of an audience. Not only was it a good time of preaching, it was a good oppurtunity to think about where God has taken me this past year… and perhaps my life.

When I think about how God took me from wanting be a missionary at 5… and then my ethnic journey of me dreaming of being a missionary in any place of the world but China–> God humbling me on a missions trip to actually care about Chinese people as my own people–>wanting to see chinese people transform the world (back to jerusalem, baby!)–>realizing that meant I had to change it right here at my front doorstep, and it’d be a shame if i could not love my neighbor if I wanted to see entire nations transformed.

Strange windy path that somehow makes sense. It felt good to put it out there. It’s sometimes hard to explain it, because I just haven’t had the chance to. It’s worse when somebody is expecting an answer on why I’m at MiraCosta in perhaps 3 minutes, when I really need 35 minutes to explain it. And it has nothing to do with my long-windedness. It’s just that I really did not make a rash decision. It was an elaborate, methodological, strategic and heartfelt journey that God has taken me on and is still taking me on.

I feel like i’ve gone so far. And just like my silly throwing of bibles, I’m realizing my original goals were just too far, because God can achieve them in an instant. What i thought were goals were just trailhead markers for a trail towards an ominous but beautiful mountain. It’s time to tighten those laces, check my Northface camel back (how i wish I actually had a northface backpack) for water and start walking forward. Because that little ridge was just a precursor for something far greater and more glorious.