becoming

[左至右：溫哥華的Alan Yu，香港的Littleho，多倫多的Edmund]

是歷史時刻。

哈，最少對我們這三個傻人來說，是如此。

雖然是先見文字，後遇真人；
但是總有一種熟悉的感覺。

是網絡的神奇？
是相近的年紀？
是共同的passion？

我想，都會是，然而卻不只這些。

因為我們接連於上主的故事，在溫哥華、在多倫多、在香港——祂的故事；
因為這個故事，我們的心連在一起。

從校園事工，到堂會事奉，說著、笑著。說話的背後，帶著能成為祂故事一部份的興奮…

是歷史時刻（historical）。

因為這是屬於祂的故事（his-story）。

謝謝你們，是的，後會有期。

——-

Alan Yu 說：「能夠如此團契，真好。」

I thought a few of you are eager to see the following photos. So I decide to post them before our trip to mainland starting early tomorrow morning.

—-

Musing from Karen.

同細佬Adrian 和 Jocelyn 做的專訪：

死唔死，來了四日（拍攝時），「我鍾意Hong Kong 多過 Canada…」

以下兩種在港之飲品，多倫多並不見售：

檸檬可樂：檸檬味假到震，似洗潔精那種，同茶餐廳的差得遠， No good。

少糖維他檸檬茶：我沒有試過，但測試者說，仍然很甜， Also no good。

Hi everyone, greetings from HK!

Yes, we are having a great time in HK. Jocelyn gets so excited to sit on the doubledecker bus (wait until she rides the “ding ding” tram!) As expected, we walk like we never walked before… it’s been 14 (and Cc’s 15) years since my last visit. So you can imagine.

Interesting enough, I notice HK people are very friendly and polite. Much nicer than I could remember and imagine (and at times too polite, I would say…) Let me explain what I mean later…

In the mean time, please enjoy a few snapshots here and there.

Anson, I read this during my trip on the plane. It echoes your thought on reform:

It would be so much better for the church and the world if Christians would be content to show a better way to organize community life among themselves. As Yoder never tried of saying, the crucial standard of Christian conduct is obedience and not effectiveness (The Politics of Jesus [Eerdmans, 1972, 1992]). Effectiveness in transforming culture may follow obedience, but that’s God’s business. not ours. Focusing on effectiveness (e.g., how many souls can be saved with a dollor invested in evangelism done a certain way) detracts from obedience in a sinful world. When obedience to God’s way revealed in Jesus Christ is subordinated to effectiveness, the latter always trumps the former, which then ends up failing at least partly by the way.

Roger Olsen, How to be Evangelical with being Conservative, p.126-127

We will go to Hong Kong for a 3-week vacation. Thus blogging will be less frequent.

My good friend Anson on the idolatry of the glamorous church.

I had this experience just the previous weekend, when a few brothers and sisters from my church attended a wedding ceremony at another church. Many of them expressed a deep appreciation of the beauty of the church building, while to me, without denying the aesthetics beauty of it, I’m much more concern about the rotten theology and worldview of the church (ie. the people) itself.

On deeper thought, isn’t that the dichotomy we always found ourselves in? Either we look at the building at awe and assume the people likewise, or we look at the people and than negate the apparent beauty which the building conveys. A church building is just a space. Whether outsiders know what is really going on among those worshiping inside it, a church building can still arouse certain emotion just by entering it. There is no right or wrong here. Just impulses and responses. We just can’t link the aesthetics beauty of a building (or lack of) to the people, and/or g/God that they worship, and vice versa.

And on the theology side, I think we have a strong tendency to resurrect the Temple Theology back into our times — a physical building that symbolizes and signifies the presence of God. I have a problem with that. Like Anson, I am not against aesthetics; but if I understand the NT correctly, Jesus had, time and time again, fought against such an idea. The presence of God is not to be found in a building with a physical address attached to it; it is to be found in the person Jesus Christ. Jesus gathered his disciples not around the Temple in Jerusalem, he gathered them around himself.

There is a lot more to be said, like the way we think certain place in a church (building) is more scared than others (I was brought up not to eat or drink in the so-called “Sanctuary”). This is not a comment based purely on tidiness, there is something deeply theological behind it. Paul Stevens of Regent wrote some good (and to some, controversial) reflections on this.

One more thing, Anson mentioned “a trend in the postmodern church falling into the lure of glamor, vulnerable to its deception”, but I thought it is the other way around. Mega-churches and the prosperity gospel go almost hand in hand on this — both however, are very “modern” phenomena. The church that are more sensitive to the postmodern culture, tends to focus less on the building and more on its mission. I have yet to visit Mars Hill in Michigan, but from what I gathered so far their church building, even though it is a renovated old shopping mall and can seat a little less than 4000, it is really not that impressive or glamorous, compare to these.

[Related: What's in a building?]

N.B. In protest, I reject the temptation to get an image with this post that depicts glamour.