Rant of the Exiles

Initial logo courtesy of Bach Nguyen I had hoped to announce the name of the church plant during service this Sunday at Garden City. That won’t happen so this is a virtual announcement.  We are Quicksilver Church. In 1989, my parents bought a home near New Almaden , in the one of the most southern reaches of San Jose. I never understood why it was called “New” because the area felt decidedly old, run-down, and rural. The original Almaden is a town and municipality in Spain, about 200 miles south of Madrid. The mercury deposits of Almaden, Spain account for the largest quantity of liquid mercury metal produced in the world.  New Almaden, on the other hand, is aptly named for the location of the oldest and most productive mercury mine in the United States. Mercury, also known as quicksilver, was mined extensively during the California Gold Rush beginning in 1848. Mercury is used to recover tiny pieces of gold mixed in soil and sediments. Mercury and gold settle t...

Photo by  Michelle Jimenez  on  Unsplash Exactly nine years ago, my boss, friend, and mentor, Justin Buzzard, began planting Garden City Church and posted Top 10 Reasons NOT to Join a Church Plant . I thought it might be fun to share my own top 10 list. Like the church plant itself, which will be a Garden City daughter church, my top 10 list replicates much of the thinking in Justin’s list and extends it to the church plant’s unique context.  Do not join a church plant if . . . 1. Your personal dream for the church plant supersedes your love for other believers. “Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together . This applies to every church, in its infancy or otherwise, and yet church plants are tempted by the idealism of its members, and th...

The writers of The Book of Mormon musical answer the question: “What does the world think of Christians?” Their response is a melodic, witty, and uproarious put-down. Note: This post contains spoilers.  I watched The Book of Mormon on Broadway with my two teenage sons. My second son picked the show and I thought it would be stupid. Who wants to watch a musical satirizing Mormonism? It doesn’t seem very entertaining. Full disclosure: I also thought Alexander Hamilton’s life was a stupid musical idea. However, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez (hereafter abbreviated as PSL), are comedic geniuses. Their collaboration is incredible. It is a pop culture masterpiece -  ruthlessly satirical, hilarious, and wondrous. In short, my boys and I loved it.  I was interested in how I would respond to a work that attacks faith, in particular Mormonism but in general, all religious faiths. And make no mistake: Mormonism is the writers’ primary target but their cr...

An awkward Asian American intellectual reflects on being a missionary exile in East Oakland Russell Jeung’s new book is called At Home in Exile: Finding Jesus among My Ancestors & Refugee Neighbors . An alternate title could have been "Nerdy Asianz in the Hood". Make no mistake about it - Russell Jeung is a nerd. He absolutely fits the model minority stereotype. How to tell? Exhibit A: When you graduate from world-renown Lowell High School in San Francisco, get a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford University, and then later obtain a PhD from UC Berkeley. Check those boxes for Jeung. He now works as a sociology professor at San Francisco State University. I met Jeung for the first time at his book launch. Exhibit B: When you are decidedly unimposing physically. Jeung doesn’t wear glasses but his look fits the nerd mold. He is rail thin and doesn’t appear to do any strength training. His body language is awkward and although a fluid public speaker...

I've been loving Malcolm Gladwell's new podcast, Revisionist History. A recent episode is called Generous Orthodoxy ; it tells the story of a 98-year old Mennonite pastor named Chester Wenger who loses his pastoral credentials for performing the wedding ceremony of his gay son. This podcast attempts to reconcile the tension between relationship (generosity) and moral principles (orthodoxy). Without a doubt, he falls on the generosity side of the question. His appeal to orthodoxy consists of personal sacrifice and respect for the institution.  There's a lot to disagree with: 1) Gladwell does not espouse conservative Christian beliefs: One of my friends couldn't finish the podcast because of Gladwell's "smarmy and superior tone". It's also immediately apparent, especially if you've listened to his previous podcasts, that Gladwell is politically progressive. In one of that three-part series, he attacks Stanford, Bowdoin, and other elite colleg...

I helped the older Asian gentlemen put his backpack into the overhead luggage bin. I sat in the middle* and he had the window seat on our flight from London to San Francisco. It turns out he was an Oxford physics professor headed to Berkeley for a workshop. When I asked him about his travel, he told me he had visited the US too many times to count and he was always too busy to have time to sight-see. Later I praised Oxford as an exemplary institution of higher learning. He replied with a perfunctory "of course". After I told him I was a pastor, he kept calling me a priest and asked me about conducting mass. I couldn't tell if he was feigning ignorance or considered religion as beneath his superior intellect.  I love talking to people on planes. I'm an extrovert and it's a captive audience. These situations are great opportunities to get to know people. Sometimes people aren't in the mood to talk and that's fine. They're also my favorite chances ...

A friend in my church asked recently "What is our church policy regarding Halloween?" As this is my personal blog, I will speak for myself. My family enjoys Halloween. It doesn't mean other Christians should. In fact, we have the freedom in Christ to participate as we choose. We participate by dressing up. I attend Halloween costume parties. We take our kids trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. Why do we do that? I understand Halloween has roots in the past as a pagan holiday. I haven't researched its full history but I know there's some evil and occult stuff out there. Halloween also has roots as a Christian holiday - somehow the two traditions became mixed together over the years. I also recognize there are overtly disturbing elements of Halloween - demons, zombies, witches, ghouls, skeletons, and other gory, goth, and decidedly non-Jesus-y type things. I know the purpose of a haunted house is to scare people. One of our neighbors builds...

A couple friends asked me how to live out their Christian faith in the workplace. They work in high-tech and they're under lots of pressure to perform. I spent nine years at IBM/Hitachi working as a business analyst and project manager. I did well because for the most part, I acted like a jerk. Thus, I am well-qualified to know how one should NOT live out his faith in a corporate environment. But one thing I did notice is workplace communication is often dishonest. Take for example, a basic element of social interaction, the greeting: How are you? Depending on your role and job environment, you will ask or be asked this question anywhere from a couple times to a couple dozen times a day. When you greet someone in the hall, get a drink from the water cooler, warm up your food in the break room, or call a coworker on the phone, you open with this phrase.  You lie when you ask the question. You lie when you respond to the question.  You...