Happy Birthday, Christe!

"Proverbs" Illustrations

The blog has been getting some serious neglect and boom suddenly we are throwing two posts at you in one evening... Well, this is one of the projects that's been keeping me busy and away from the blog: illustrations for our camp curriculum--this year, based on the book of Proverbs. My friend Taehoo and I started this run last year, after deciding that there was a great dearth of Bible study curricula geared towards the urban youth and that we should write our own. You can find a bit of the background and illustrations for our first year's curriculum based on the book of Genesis, "In the Beginning", here.

Proverbs is a book that keeps things surprisingly and refreshingly real, and so is easily translatable into the urban culture. Its original intended audience was young men, so its language and in-your-face-but-in-a-loving-way tone makes the work of coming up with lessons and illustrations that much easier. There are wonderful word pictures that almost illustrate themselves. Like this one: "As a door turns on its hinges so a sluggard turns on his bed." (26:14) Or: "Like a gold ring in an pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion." (11:22) And the content of the message, wisdom for young people who need guidance in life, is one that's sorely needed in our communities. Modern culture has a tendency to scoff at wisdom, especially religious wisdom. The biggest victims tend to be urban youth in poverty. So we are hopeful that this curriculum will be used well in our neighborhoods this summer and beyond for the sake of mentoring young folks in living life God's way.

Here is a sampling of the illustrations (you can see the whole set here):


"Fear God" or "Fools Trash Wisdom" © Kyuboem Lee, 2009.


"The Simple" © Kyuboem Lee, 2009.


"The Stubborn Fool" © Kyuboem Lee, 2009.


"Evil Friends" © Kyuboem Lee, 2009.
I had to throw this one in, because it's Amoz's favorite. Amoz these days has a strange fascination with "bad guys"... one of his favorite movie characters to quote is Syndrome, from The Incredibles. We ask for your prayers...!


"Words II" © Kyuboem Lee, 2009.


"Life & Death" © Kyuboem Lee, 2009.

Northern Ireland Update: June 09

We have been simply overwhelmed by the outpouring of support we have received for the Youth Service Trip to Northern Ireland! Many, many people have contributed prayer and financial support to make the trip, once a dream, a reality now only 7 weeks away. Most thrilling has been how enthusiastically people have given. So many who gave expressed in cards, notes, emails, Facebook messages and in person how excited they were to give and make an international trip possible for 6 young people from Germantown. One generous donor expressed that she only wished she could see the look on their faces as they experience it! Well, we hope to make that possible as we prepare to video document as much as we can and send it out to all our donors when we return, so be on the lookout for that.

Now that school is over, we are beginning the "domestic internship" with the Northern Ireland team. This includes weekly meetings for Bible Study, discipleship, a few cultural lessons on N. Ireland and some drama practice for presentations we will be giving while we are there. The team will also be serving as junior counselors in our church's own summer day camp in July, so they are serving in their own neighborhood too.

We will be having one final fund-raising event on Saturday, July 11. At a location to be announced, the team will be having a car wash with the help of Ashland Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Voorhees, NJ. If you are able, please come on out and get your car washed, and meet the team! They would be greatly encouraged to know you are thinking about them as they continue to prepare.

One interesting hurdle we've been experiencing has been the passport application process. A minor applying for a passport is required to have both parents accompany them in person at the time of application. For four out of the six team members, this is not a possibility since their fathers are not in the picture. At first, it seemed easy enough... write a letter explaining why dad cannot be there, get it notarized, send it with the application. But 2 team members have already had it sent back to them several times for reprocessing, saying more detail is required, or more documentation is necessary. One mother went to family court to get some things straightened out for the application. We are confident that the passports will be here on time, but it has not been as straightforward as we thought.

We are firming up the transportation plans for our departure on August 8. We are flying out of JFK since the flights were a lot cheaper than flying out of Philly. But that means we are in need of transportation to and from Queens. If there is anyone with a 15 passenger van who might give us a lift, let us know!

We will keep you updated; thanks for your prayers.

Happy Mother's Day

A Festschrift for Manny

I mentioned a while back that I had “completed a painting assignment... whose details I’m not at liberty to share with the world just yet.”

Well, the time to unveil the work came yesterday, when my dear friend and mentor Manny Ortiz was presented with a Festschrift (we all need some help with knowing what in the world this exactly is, so here’s the Wikipedia definition) in his honor at Westminster Theological Seminary: “Globalization and Its Effects on Urban Ministry in the 21st Century.” Our good friend and Manny’s longtime colleague Sue Baker (the Ortiz and Baker families have ministered together for thirty years in Chicago and in Philadelphia) put the whole thing together—a true labor of love.

I contributed a chapter named “Repentance and Bonding Dynamics Within Cross-Cultural Church Planting Teams” (edited from a couple of chapters in my Doctor of Ministry dissertation) and the painting used for the cover: “Global Urban Cross.” Many of the contributors and the Westminster community got together for a chapel service when Manny was presented with the work; I also had the privilege of presenting him with the painting.

Global Urban Cross, by Kyuboem Lee. © All rights reserved.

(The work was inspired by aerial photos of various cities around the world. Clockwise from top left: downtown Tokyo; favelas in Rio; rowhouses in Philadelphia; and Marrakesh in Morocco. The crucifix itself is a freeway interchange in LA. Some of you have asked me about purchasing prints of the painting; you can do that right here, at Imagekind, where you can also get prints framed and matted, or as greeting cards.)

Being an unpretentious man, Christe and I knew Manny was loving it (because of all the relationships) and hating it (because of all the attention). A better mentor I could not have hoped for. He was not only my closest teacher in seminary (both Master’s and Doctorate levels), he introduced Christe and me to each other, and he performed our wedding. He led us to pray about Germantown and walked with us through all the ups and downs of planting a church here. He baptized our boys. He got me started teaching at the graduate level. The amazing thing is that I’m not alone in being so indebted to him. There were so many lives deeply touched by Manny in that chapel; many more still weren’t able to be there. Even among the contributors, friends serving in cities all over the world—in Peru, Serbia, South Africa and Nigeria—weren’t able to be travel to the presentation, but wished they could.

I’m delighted that I could help celebrate how the Lord has worked through your life and work in this way, Manny. Many blessing on you as you continue to work for justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord!

Delightful also to have lunch with various good friends, contributors, and the Ortiz clan. I went around and got autographs from all the contributors present—Manny and Sue, of course; Bill Krispin; Jeff Jue; Mark Gornik; William Shaw (who is based in Belfast; we want to go visit him this summer during our N. Ireland trip!); John Algera; John Leonard; Tim Witmer; and Pedro Aviles—that was fun. The Ortiz clan found a ping pong table in the second floor of the Student Center where the luncheon was held, and proceeded to play ping pong, Ortiz style. It consists of the whole group (more than 20 of them) rotating around the table hitting the ball across to whoever just rotated in. If you don’t keep the ball in play, you’re out. I’d never seen anything like it before; I don’t know how many of them actually got a chance to eat! A great day of celebration, for which I am thankful.

I’d of course appreciate it very much if you could go out there and purchase the book for yourself! Deepest thanks in advance.

G.Hope Oct – Dec 08 Newsletter Out Now, and a Few Other Tidbits

For those of you who are already a part of the Friends of G.Hope group, this is old news. (No need to be left out; you can join up here.) G.Hope’s latest newsletter is out; you can get it right here.

You will be familiar with some of the stories already if you’ve been following along on the blog—Diallo and Theo’s baptisms were covered here; the post on the Northern Ireland trip is here, of course. But the news of the upcoming celebration of Easter Sunday / our 6th church anniversary / installation of our dear friend Ms. Penny Meads as a deacon wasn’t shared on the blog yet. So you should check it out.

I also asked the Friends of G.Hope group to pray (which is what the group is for); if you are a praying person, I’d like to ask you to join in. In the last few weeks, our little church family has been experiencing a lot of personal difficulties. One member is undergoing foreclosure on her house, two are grieving the loss of their fathers, and still others are dealing with tremendous life-consuming struggles. Thanks in advance.

On Sunday, March 8th, 4 of the young people on the N. Ireland trip team and I had a chance to visit City Line Church to share about the work going on at G. Hope the upcoming trip, and we received a very warm response, for which we are very appreciative.

Now, this is a story that didn’t make it into the prayer list email. After the service, as the teens and I were interacting with the congregants, someone called out, “Q jundosanim!” (Jundosa is a Korean church title for youth pastors; literally means ‘evangelist’.) I looked up, and I saw a woman whom I recognized, but it had been many years. “Oh my gosh! Benica?” The last time I saw Benica, she was in the junior high youth group at Cherry Hill Korean Church that I led during my first two years in seminary… almost fifteen years ago. She was not a kid anymore; she was now an adult.

The funny thing is, almost the first thing she said was, “We were so bad with you! I’m so sorry!” while her friend was laughing next to her saying, “Yes, she is! When she saw that it was you up there today, she was sitting there feeling really bad.”

But now, she’s a grown-up, responsible elementary school teacher taking care of kids coming up after her. It was good to see her; it made me feel like I’ve been accomplishing some things in life along the way. And it made me feel like a real geezer. Now, through the magic of Facebook, I’m getting reconnected with more of that crowd from that period of my life. All of my pasts are making a comeback into my present. A little surreal, in a good way.

“The Wire” / Germantown Connection

Some of you know about the recent passing of Mr. Henry Barksdale, father to Stephen, a fixture around our church. Stephen’s mother had passed away only a couple of years ago, and since he was living with his cousins and grandmother, whose family was already overburdened with a very sick husband and numerous children, it looked as though Stephen would be displaced to someplace too far for us to stay in touch.

In a wonderful answer to prayer, Stephen’s uncle Ron, who lives in the nearby neighborhood of West Oak Lane, took him into his house and agreed to keep Stephen attending G.Hope. Stephen hasn’t missed a Sunday service, except for the one right after his father’s death, and he’s even gone on our ice skating outing. We were hoping that he would be able to go on the Northern Ireland trip—unfortunately, the paperwork for the new guardianship will take too long to begin his passport application in time, so Stephen won’t be going with us.

Now, in a conversation with Mr. Ron, somehow this came up. Robert F. Colesberry, the executive producer (while he was living) for one of our favorite shows, “The Wire,” used to live in our neighborhood and was a good friend to the Barksdale family. The families were neighbors in the Pulaskitown section and the children used to belong to the same Wissahickon Boys & Girls Club—just down the road from us. When Colesberry worked on “The Wire,” he named one of the characters after his good friends from the neighborhood—Avon Barksdale, the notorious and very smart Baltimore drug dealer.

“But… Avon’s a bad guy, isn’t he?” C asked. “That’s all right!” Mr. Ron said, enjoying his family’s claim to fame.

I did a search for Robert F. Colesberry after that interchange, and found a memorial page set up for him at the show’s site. Here’s a quote about the man’s early life in Germantown:

To those who knew him early in life, Colesberry's successful film career was an improbable outcome. Born in Philadelphia to a prominent family, Colesberry's grandfather, the city's district attorney and a socialite, was “a Philadelphia lawyer when that meant something,” according to Colesberry's sister, Jean Brown.

But instead of the Main Line, he grew up in a modest Germantown rowhouse after his father struggled in business and ultimately, with alcoholism. Friends at Germantown High School remembered a talented athlete who did little else beyond hang with the neighborhood boys at the celebrated corner of Wayne and Tioga.

“He wasn't a boy that got into trouble,” recalled Ms. Brown, making exception for a single loitering arrest and one notable attempted theft of a ceramic cow from the roof of a local steakhouse. “But he was around the boys who did.”

Jill Porter, a high school friend who years later would profile Colesberry for the Philadelphia Daily News, recalled that the young man would attend all four periods of lunch every school day, having little use for classes. “He was nice and had this charm to him,” Ms. Porter said, remembering that Colesberry struggled to graduate with his class in 1964. “But we all thought he was going absolutely nowhere.”

In some ways, not a lot has changed. But in other ways, a lot. Will the young people growing up today in our neighborhood have the same opportunities in life that Robert F. Colesberry did? Their stories remain to be written. We want to be participants in them. And we want Jesus to be the main actor in them.