The Return and Homes August 22, 2007

It has been a wonderful week and there is much to report so without haste…here is a picture I took on my walk on the Williamsburg Bridge on my birthday. Here are my updates:

I now longer serving at Chinese Christian Herald Crusades and had to say good-bye as I am in my new season developing the Asian American Laity Ministry with PaLM and serving at a new church (keep reading)

Jamie is back! After spending 8 weeks in China working on a water project in Nanjing, she came back just in time for our 2 year anniversary. We celebrated by going to Nobu Next Door where our friend and chef extraordinaire gave us some generous dishes to help us remember this special day. We topped of the week by going to the PaLM Yankee game with some ministry folks Hosive (Vision), Pastor John (PaLM), Howard (PaLM) and Donald (Boon Church). The Yankees lost in dramatic fashion (again) and then headed out to the North Hamptons for some reconnection time with Jamie at a Bed and Breakfast. It was nice as we spent time sharing and healing from our seperation.

It is now official, Jamie and I are now attending Living Faith Community Church. I have known Pastor Stephen Ro since 2000 when we met at Concerts of Prayer Greater New York Pastors’ Prayer Summit. I have come on as part-time staff as their Director of Gospel Community (There was a rumor that I would be their DOS: Director of Something). I will assist with their leadership, communications, inreach and outreach. So far it has been a great home for us as we seek to develop a “Gospel Driven” community. I will be facilitating a Sunday School conversation entitled, “Rules of Engagement: Moving Beyond Belief.“Here is the blurb:

“We go to church on Sundays and Fellowship during the week where we have flashbacks about the sermons but we find out that our faith don’t seem to translate into where we spend the majority of our waking lives…at work. God has called us to engage and to live out a gospel narrative but we find our vocabularies seem to confuse more than to clarify. We will wrestle together about how faith and culture should intersect in our lives. We will have also have conversations on the topics of engagement of culture, being missional, postmodernism, culture wars, social justice and the challenge of building authentic communities of faith. Bring a cup of java, your bible and some open minds as we seek to move beyond belief.”

I had great retreat with Christian Testimony Long Island two weeks ago. I spoke on “Being in the World and Not of It” a theme that I have been developing since speaking on this topic at the Midhudson Chinese Christian Church‘s Revival Meeting last Fall. The CTLI Retreat was a great time and I did a special workshop with first generation parents and their teen children. It was moving to see so many tears and I closed the workshop with the parents praying with their kids. I was moved to see some healing take place that weekend. It was good to reconnect with some of the youth I worked with years ago at Teen Eastern Chinese Bible Conference.

Thanks for your prayers. I will speaking this year at Boston Chinese Evangelical Church at their Career Fellowship and will be doing a series on Jesus Uncensored.

I will also be doing a special one day training workshop at the Reload Conference. I am so excited to be on the same venue with my good friend Jeremy Del Rio. They have some of the best local and national leaders in Youth Ministry represented.

I am prepping for a trip back to the ‘Cuse so Jamie can drop some water samples. I am looking forward to it. I will be finalizing my support letters to go out. I need to raise another $20K for me to go on full time with PaLM starting in January. I am meeting with prospective funders and supporters. I am looking for some exciting and new ways to facilitate some new ministry initiative such as an Asian American Youth Workers Conference in the Spring of 2008, an Asian American Leadership Fellowship and continue with the Monthly Fall 2007 ENGAGE series which will focus on Leadership.

Thanks for your prayers and support, if you would like to learn more about the Asian American Laity Project please contact me at peter [at] palmny [dot] org. See you soon!