racey evangelifestyle

It has been a funky coupla days for me. Last night, i hung out with my Asian friends from church at Nancy's place where we had steamboat and hot plate type thing. We also invited Hannah who comes to AUTCF, little pretty blonde girl who wears no racially tinted lenses, so felt perfectly comfortable amongst a buncha ching chongs. Hannah also came to our church on Sunday and was quite bemused by our church slogan - "Bringing English-speaking Chinese to Christ". I will stop myself at saying that it's an extremely exclusive, or excluding vision/mission statement. Can anybody justify that slogan? No matter how hard i try, i certainly can't. It's an English-speaking Chinese church, and not many people even speak Chinese - there's not enough for a Chinese BS group let alone service!

Anyways, steamboat was cool, but i was challenged by Han to be careful about the way i banter and take the piss out of our "Asian" gatherings. I find it very difficult to accept that i go to an "Asian" church - i am very happy to be an Asian, but i'd much rather be in an international church community, rather than an Asian one, for the simple reason that many of my mates in uni aren't Asian, and would feel uncomfy walking into a predominantly Asian congregation, with a slogan like that, no less!!! OCF in Auckland Uni is predominantly Singaporean-Malaysian, and i've deliberately stayed away not because i don't want to be identified with them, but because i have other commitments with AUTCF that i'd like to fulfill to the best of my capacity. I'm also very aware that it's only too easy to be sucked into the whirl of a "home away from home". This isn't an attack on my church or OCF in any way - but maybe an attack on the slogan and the attitude towards ethnic identification in Auckland, across all races but particularly in migrants - a baseless, selfish, narrowminded unwillingness to broaden horizons.

Back to the story - I was full of banter as usual - and proceeded to make naff jokes about how Hannah should feel strange in an all-Asian setting, and how it was funny that she liked the seafood and fishballs and all, while some of the Asians weren't even trying... Basically no one else except for Hannah really realised i was taking the piss outta Asians but were quite bemused by my frequent outbursts! Hopefully they didn't really think that i was priding us on being an exclusive Asian community, or that i was strengthening our identity as a Chinese church?! Ugh. Anybody have any thoughts?

Today was a cool day. I had brekkie with VJ my neighbour and today, after a trillion coffees and lots of procrastinating, i finally found the courage to talk about Jesus during our conversation. And it was cool. She was intruiged that i actually understood what i believed in, and was asking curiously about all these rituals and rotes that they have to perform as Catholics, and what symbolism (or lack of it) they have. We chatted about stuff for about 25mins and that was totally awesome - i was again, liberated knowing that i don't have to pull any punches or make altar calls but to trust the Sovereign convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

In the afternoon, i was in town meeting my mate Dom for lunch and to do some Christmas shopping when a Hari Krishna cheesily stopped me in my tracks with some lame as pickup line i wouldn't bother repeating. I've been eyeing these HKs (hari krishnas, not hongkees) for awhile now, because i often see young white HK monks hangin around trying to sell their books but only receiving bemused eyebrow raises in return - and i really long to sit one of them down at BK or something to chat about what we believe to be truth. So with that half-thought in mind, i allowed this HK dude named YADU (kept trying not to call him YODA) to chat with me about what he believed. We were chatting on the street for about half an hour - and honestly, he wasn't a very good monk cos he found it real hard to explain to me stuff! I was hard out asking him questions about what he really believed, and what he expected me to do about it, but he couldn't give me a straightup answer and was always waffling on in tangents. Anyways, a few minutes into the conversation, God reminded me to love this chap despite his peculiar beliefs, and not to look down upon him as a nutter, but to respect him as a fellow man, created in the image of God. Well, listening to him gave me the chance again to proclaim the character of God and what He has done for us, and i should be thankful for that opportunity and rejoice that God was glorified (hopefully i got it right!). To my dismay, he actually agreed with all the stuff i was saying about God being the ultimate truth, Jesus being the Son of God, and the necessity to believe in Jesus to appropriate salvation. I guess i shouldn't be dismayed - we were having our own little worship session because we were agreeing on truth about God!!! However, it's one thing to know/say stuff about God, but it's another thing to believe it and embrace it in our lives. Many of his answers led him into his HK book which he was trying to sell, and i guess that's their wordofgod, which is fair enough. That's all it leads to, doesn't it... He had some plausible arguments and some charming ideas, but if its not founded on truth, it'll sink when Jesus comes again.

So, that's me for now... interesting things continue to happen in my life as i plod on for the sake of the Gospel, i just pray that my sinfulness doesn't get in the way!