What Are the Simpsons Teaching about Church?

Our Trip to Dollywood

When we were in Tennessee looking at houses, we took a day with the kids to go to Dollywood. Kate felt like we needed to do something to have fun since we have done so much traveling. These are pictures from my camara phone.

This is Maggie riding the car. First time she did it by herself.

Kate got a little wet on the water ride. Fun to wear wet clothes on the ride home.

Here is Dean with Pierson. Don't they look alike?

Anna drove the car and had such a fun time.

This was a picture from San Jose. It was taken at the Organic Church conference I went to. These folks here were from one of the simple churches in the area that Kate and I sat with. They were great people. I was so impressed because they were so kind and loving. The girls here actually went out and bought Kate an unusual tapioca drink so she could try it. Elton, GUy on the far right, is the pastor of this church. They have about 40-50 people and are doing church differently to reach those who won't go to traditional church. They were doing the real deal.

We're Going To Morristown

I will be going to Morristown First UMC to be their Minister of Discipleship. I am excited about this opportunity. I feel it is right up my alley. One of the main aspects of the position is to relaunch a contemporary service they began about a year ago that needs some specific leadership directed to it in terms of music and preaching. This is exactly what I was looking for, preaching in a contemporary setting and helping to set its direction under the leading of the Spirit. It currrently has about 80 people but I see much potential. Building a service from the ground up is a privledge and one which excites me. I want to create a service where people encounter God and also anyone can feel comfortable coming no matter how they dress or what. There is a lot of work ahead but it is something I can sink my teeth into.

Another aspect of the position is to help with their Discerning Team to help them develop a discipleship plan for reaching their specific goal of making disciples. I have done a lot of reading in this area and it is a focus of my dissertation. This designing process excites me as well.

You can read the history of the church by going to www.fumcmorristown.org. In my interactions and conversations with the Sr. Pastor Darris Doyal, I really liked him and was impressed by him. He has a real joy for life and ministry. Darris is a person who gets things done but also very family friendly and I felt this would be a good place to work.

I will be joining a full time staff of a music minister, a youth minister, children's minister, administrator, as well as several part time staff people. They have a membership of about 1500 with about 450-500 in worship on any given Sunday. It is about 1 1/2 hours from Kate's folks.

Pray for us. Kate and I have looked for houses last weekend and a weekend before but no luck so far. It takes time but it is very frustrating waiting. I go down one more time to look for a house and meet with the personel committee (PPR). I am looking forward to it.

Getting Closer

Some of you may be wondering how things are looking for the rest of the program in terms of work. As of yesterday, I preached my last required sermon for class. I have almost all my course work completed for the program. All I need to do is edit and add to my dissertation. I got back my first draft of my dissertation today and it had a lot of edits to make. I hope to have it completed by April 27th-ish.

Yesterday I took Kate out to celebrate all that has been completed. Much has happened this year. It has been a great year and I can't wait to get started in my new position. I will write about that in my next post.

Prayer Mountain

For me, prayer mountain was the most personally impacting experiences from the whole trip. It was for two reasons: the Prayer cell and the stations of the cross.

For two hours we traveled up the mountain to look at the sites of Christ's life, death and resurrection. At each stop, one of the Beeson Pastors National, one of the staff, or one of the Beeson Pastors International shared a devotional thought. The preaching ws not just preaching. It was an encounter with God. Each devotional built on the other, even though this was not intended. Randy began the experience of inviting us to enter into Christ's life as a little child upon his daddy's lap.

Alicia talked about how Christ stilled the storm. She focused not only the fact the Christ still stormed but that it was his presence in the boat which made all the difference.
John Stockle, a PHD student at ATS, shared powerfully how we as pastors need to die to pride. He shared how everything in his life had gone well but the past two years all the things he tried to do didn't work. He had to die to himself. He invited us to do the same.

Randy closed this time by reading the resurrection story and inviting us to run up the hill to see if Christ was truly raised. It helped us remember that that is what it was like for those first disciples.

These thoughts don't capture the moment. You did have to be there. It has also been two weeks since then.

This is the prayer cell I went to later that night. I wrote about that experience a couple weeks ago and you can see that link here. It was a pretty small room, about 6 by 3.

Overall it was a great experience and I'm glad to have gone.

Yoido and Going Home

One of the things we guys did while we were there is get fitted for a taylor made suit. They measured us, we picked out the fabric and they made and delivered the suits to us a couple days later. I have never had that experience before but I did buy one. I was very happy with it once I got it. It was a little more than I expected to pay but still cheaper than buying one off the rack here in the states.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Yoido Full Gospel Church. It is the largest church in the world with 750,000 members. Hard to even comprehend. We went to their "youth service" which had at least 10,000 people. It was fanastic.

Interestingly they did a lot of "American Praise and worship music and it reminded me a lot of our experience in London at Holy Trinity Brompton. That means that church does not need to be complicated but simple and can be replicated. I was surprized how much Americanized it was. We sang along to the worship in English while they sang it in Korean. It was definately the best music I had heard in a long time. The preaching was loud and heated but for me hard to follow. I connected more with the preaching of my collegues than that of the church. But I give those guys credit, they were dancing in worship and had more energy than most of us combined.

Another Aaron video to give you the feel. Thanks Aaron for all your work.

The ride home was forever. It was 12 hours from Seoul to Atlanta. I was advised to stay up and not sleep so the jet lag wouldn't be so bad. I watched movies, lots of movies, more movies than I have in months. Once we got to Atlanta, our flight was cancelled and we waited for hours. Aaron and I decided to get a direct flight to Tri City airport in Tennessee to meet up with our families. This was a comedy of errors. It was supposed to leave at 3:45pm but after some Delta "problems", we left at 7:45pm. Yes that is right. 7:45.

We did notice in killing time that not many people smile in airports. They are either too tired, too cool, or too disinterested.

This is us praying to go home and go to sleep.

Once we finally arrived at TriCity Airport, we had hoped to have our families come out and greet us. Instead they weren't there and we were not thrilled. We were more disappointed. Our luggage was in KY so we had to buy new clothes for Easter and to make it about 5 days.

But we were so glad to be back in America. It was a good experience but I'm done traveling for a while.

Kwanglim South

This is the Kwanglim Church South. They started the church and refurbished the building by buying an older building and making a church out of it. THey invested $33 Million in this building. Big Money. About 1000 in attendance at church. Bishop Kim preaches here some.

They had a special sign to welcome us to the building.


They gave us a tour of the church. They had a petting zoo for kids and a play place as well.

Their sanctuary was beautiful. All the high tech stuff. All Marble. It was a little overwhelming/

This is the Sr. Pastor of the Church. He introduced the Bishop Kim and his presentation.

Bishop Kim did a presentation on how the church grew during his years of ministry. You had to be there to expereince it. Bishop Kim is a very positive person and it was neat to hear how God worked in this process.

Randy had a special presentation to Bishop Kim from Asbury to thank him for his ministry and hosting us.

Bishop Kim showed us his prayer closet in his office. He was a prayer person who prayed when not preaching on Sunday 4-5 hours every Sunday morning. He was a model to us of a praying person.


This is their cafeteria. They went all out for the food for us. They gave us gifts and even gave us ties for all the males. It was very special and hospitable of them. We felt very special.

Bishop Kim graciously was willing to take a picture with me. I'm sure he does this all the Time

Kwanglim Methodist Church

This is Kwanglim Methodist Church. They hosted us on this whole trip. Bishop Kim took over this church when it was small in the late 1960's and now has 80,000 members in 35,000 in attendance. It is the largest Methodist Church in the world. Bishop Kim was greatly impacted by Robert Schuller and his positive thinking theology. The bishop designed this building and tower after Schuller's buildings.

This is the sanctuary view from the street.

This is a view of the pipe organ. Kwanglim is a large traditional church. One colleague said that

it reminded them of a church in the 1950's as far as worship style and pastoral authority. They have services at 7, 9, 11, 2:30 Contemporary and 5pm.

This is where they have the Senior High Sunday School.

This is the middle school Sunday school class. It was interesting to say the least. They had worship for 30 minutes, preaching, annoucements, and then they broke up into small groups for a lesson. I saw Krispe Kreme donuts and they had a pizza delivery to one classroom. The kids were like all middleschool kids; goofing around, not listening when the speaker was talking, etc. It reminded me of typical kid stuff, except not to the degree as some of what happens in america. Just give them time.

They gave us quite a spread for lunch. The really went all out.

On Tuesday mornings they have Trinity Bible Study taught by Pastor Kim. About 4k people show up. Interestingly most were women in attendance because the men were all at work. They had a worship team to open and close. The music and the teaching were top notch.

Once again, another Aaron Video

Christian Girls High School

One of the first days, we got a tour of a Christian Girls High School. This center is a training center for the workplace.


Don't they look sharp.

We sat on the ground to watch them do their presentation on traditional dress and etiquette.

They invited us to wear their traditional clothes. Some of us did this, I did not. I took pictures.

We have not seen Gordon in a suit before so some of us took picture of him. It was a sight to see.

Here is fellow BP Jim, a person of over the top grace.

The school had their kids teach us how to write in Korean. It was fun.

This is the chapel where they worship and did a presentation for us.

The singing was beautiful and you will see that in the video at the bottom.

They were sensitive to our food tastes and gave us KFC. Was not expecting to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken in Korea.

They lead us out by these kids blowing their horns. They do this for kings and queens. They did it for us.

Aaron did a video of that day. Enjoy!