Involvement and History
John Lee
background and history. I hope you would be free to also share a little
about yourselves.
Here goes:
Back at a WorshipTogether conference in Toronto in 2002/2003, I was
blessed with a great time of worship in a very multicultural setting. I
was a youth pastor at the time, but had a strong desire to get involved
with a ministry that held large events like WT. Heavily involved with
worship myself, I was driven to talk with Louie Giglio and Charlie
Hall. I asked them both a question that has nagged me for years: where
are all of the Asian worship leaders?
I knew that these conferences were attended faithfully by Asians, and
they both admitted that the Vancouver WT had even more Asians than the
already multicultural Toronto WT. They asked themselves the same thing
- here are all these Asians. Where are their leaders?
That question has haunted me for some time. Over the years, I've come
to realize a couple things:
a) major conferences can provide great practical and spiritual
suggestions on how to do ministry, but our culture often interferes and
sometimes has an even stronger influence over us;
b) the Korean Church (that's really all that I know) exerts its hold
over its leaders and often create an environment that is not conducive
to sharing resources and becoming a person of prominent leadership;
c) the 2nd Gen Church is not that different from the 1st Gen Church;
and
d) the only way to break status quo is to work outside of this
environment - hence the need for a conference (not to take resources
away from the Church, but to empower it)
That is why I think this conference idea is the best and most practical
solution... I encourage you to share your stories and then post your
thoughts in another section.
john ;)