I Ate a Snail Today
I ate a snail on this, my last day of teaching at Faith Bible Seminary, a Chinese seminary in New York City. The church FBS is affiliated with is, according to the New York Times, the largest Chinese church in the city of New York. Faith Bible Church is a center of activity throughout the day. This church functions as a hub, like Detroit Metro functions as a Northwest Airlines hub. A lot of NYC Chinese churches look to this church and to this seminary to train and equip their people for serving Jesus Christ in ministry. There are a lot of people coming and going through the main office of this place all day long and into every evening of the week.
The pastor, John Hao, is a man of great vision. John has already started churches and seminaries around the world. The newest seminary connection is in Vancouver. Some of his pastoral staff came back from a trip to Africa last week, attended my class this week, and are going to China next week. God has given John a vision to start 20 new Chinese churches around the world in the next five years. I hope to be doing some things with John in regard to this. At the end of this day I sat with John in his office and we prayed together. He prayed for me, and I prayed for him, and we prayed for us. John and I feel that God has connected us together for, as the book of Esther says, “such a time as this.” And this creates a really neat link for me between New York City and Monroe. God told me one very clear thing about all of this today. It’s that my Monroe church family is a real part of this. A church family is like a human body. I’m just a body part of my church being extended to this wonderful church in New York City. And by “my church” I mean both my particular church family as well as many other Real Jesus-Followers in Monroe, like the amazing Christians of Godworks Soup Kitchen, and friends I have in other Monroe churches. The truth is, we never do things like this alone. Not really.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be picked up at my hotel at 10 AM, and taken one more time to the church. There I will speak at the commencement cerremony for the current seminary graduates. Then, on a plane and back to Monroe (flight time about 80 minutes). I’ll be so glad to see Linda and my family. There will be a lot to do next week, especially since my son Dan is getting married to a wonderful girl named Allie on June 16. I may ask them if, for the reception, we could have snails and bubble tea.
June 8th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
We can have snails and bubble tea if you wanna pay for it! Have a good flight dad!