Cross-Cultural Friendships

Homeward bound, as our plane crosses the international date line, I am reflecting on cross-cultural friendships, specifically those that developed between Rebecca and me and our hosts during this trip.

I knew Se Hyung Lee from Drew and from his participation in a Nouwen retreat I lead a few years ago for United Methodist ministers in Northern New Jersey. And Rebecca had met him when he visited to Drew to see us and set up this trip. But we had not met his son, Jon, a student at Carnegie Mellon University, who met us at the airport and was fully bi-cultural, bilingual, and a delightful host. We felt very close to him and his father on this trip.

Likewise with Rev. Jongbok Kim, senior pastor of Yeonsoo First Methodist Church, and Mrs. Kim, founder of the Elim House retreat center for people with disabilities, where our pastors’ retreat was conducted. Rev. Kim’s humble spirit, Mrs. Kim’s creativity and contagious love for Henri Nouwen as artist, and together their commitment to ‘downward mobility’ and vision for compassionate ministry with the those often neglected by the world, was inspiring and exemplary. The four of us hope to travel together to a world area of need sometime in the future.

Also, Rev. Jong Soo Kim, founding pastor of 3,000 member Seshin Methodist Church, and Mrs. Jong Soo Kim, fluent in English and so proud of their daughter, Soung Ae, a student at Drew, hosted us for two days. The more time we spent together, the closer we all felt to each other, and we began to think about how we could do ministry in the world together, possibly in Malawi, together. Seshin Church already has 50+ missionaries and mission projects worldwide, and a new church plant in Malawi would truly be a great thing to do together.

Finally, I’ve been friends for many years with Younglae Kim, a former professor at Drew and who still teaches in the DMIN program, and now Associate Professor of Christian Education at Methodist Theological Seminary in Seoul. But Rebecca had not met him until this week. Younglae invited her to preach at the Seshin Church where he is an associate pastor, served as her translator, and spent all day Sunday with us. What a friend, and what a gift Younglae is to the church and academy. I’m sure we will continue to do many ministry projects together, in the USA and Korea.

Cross-cultural friends, indeed, are a gift to be received with gratitude, as Henri taught.

Mother Shalom

South Central, Los Angeles, was the neighborhood in the city where Communities of Shalom began in 1992. I met Marx Gutierrez from El Salvador who was there attending High School at the time. He remembers what happened at the corner of Florence and Normandy Streets in South Central, LA, when Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten while the crowd looked on and the police did nothing; and how the Rodney King beating resulted in a not-guilty verdict for the police and resulted in a major, 3-day uprising in the neighborhood, until the National Guard came in and finally imposed law and order. He can still remember the fires, the bright orange night sky, the mass looting, 45 unsolved killings, the social chaos...And how the United Methodist Churches responded by creating a zone of shalom in 7 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Today, Marx is a community organizer, and married to Jennifer Gutierrez, Conference Shalom Coordinator in the Calif-Pacific Annual Conference, and Rev. Vilma

First Generation Lambs Club Reunion

Fifteen of us gathered Saturday night at the Lambs Club for a 35 th year reunion of those who helped start the Lamb’s Church in Times Square in the mid to late 1970’s, including: Rev. Paul S. Moore , Founder of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene, and his wife, Tamara Dr. Michael J. Christensen , charter member and former associate pastor, and his wife Dr. Rebecca Laird Fr. William (BJ) Webe r, former Associate Pastor and Director of the Lamb’s Residency, and his wife Sheila who lived at the Lamb’s Jim and Dustee Hullinger, who were on staff together and made the Lamb’s their home for over 25 years Effie Canepa , who was the church pianist under 3 pastors, and her husband Peter Shirley Close, who attended the Lamb’s in the late 1970’s while studying, performing and teaching music and voice Carl "Chappy" Valente , former associate pastor Rev. Bob DiQuatto , lead singer of the Church’s “Manhattan Project” and staff member of the Lamb’s, and his son Jason Rev. Gabriel

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue Lecture Notes: Presented by Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministry, Drew University; and International Director, Communities of Shalom, The United Methodist Church Introduction “There is a little man in Peru, a man without any power, who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book. In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that God became human to bring good news to the poor, new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives. Then years later this book and movement it started is considered a danger by [the USA, or Rome], the greatest power on earth. When I look at this little man, Gustavo, and think about [the President of the US, or the Pope], I see David standing before Goliath, again with no more weapon than a little stone, a stone called A Theology of Liberation (Henri Nouwen

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