A Kite Is Made to Fly

Seumean and Iris Kuon shepherd the TOUCH FAMILY in Webster, Texas. We have prayerfully coached them for five years. She writes:

Last year when our beloved Uncle Ralph and Auntie Ruthie had ceiling problems at their town home, they stayed at Galveston for a few days. They invited us to join them for lunch and surprised the kids with two kites. We drove to a spot at the seawall where the wind was particularly strong.

Here we were, four adults with two kids, trying to fly two kites. We felt so covered with love and spoiled by the attention we were getting for just flying kites ! There was excitement, love and laughter in the air ! I was particularly touched at one point when both Uncle Ralph and Seumean were showing XinMing how to “lift” the kite. Three generations right there.

A side note: you may assume people at my age would know how to fly a kite. I didn’t. I had never flown a kite. The kids were having a great time and I wonder how I would have missed out on such fun thing all my life! Timidly, I tried to do what they said and when the kite took off for the first time, I was feeling like the kite : soaring in the air. After all, the law of aerodynamics is not selective of whom it will work for.

A week later, it was P.E. time and the wind was strong. I thought to myself : let me pull out the kites and fly them! I was able to let it drag for a short distance but it never took off !

After a while, I figured out that a small part was missing. Put it back on and it took off – soaring high in the sky once more ! This caught the attention of other kids and they all came wanting to fly the kites.

There is so much similarity between flying a kite and how a cell church works. For a short time, it felt as if it did not work in America. It was not taking off ! But when the wind is strong (the Holy Spirit working in people’s hearts), the spiritual principles behind a cell-based church are no respecter of the flyer! 

It works in South Korea, it works in Brazil, it works in Ukraine and it works in America. It is going to work its way into the very END because it was the model since the very BEGINNING!

We have been so blessed to have someone who knows how to fly a kite taught us. We are teaching the others who want to receive it NOW. This past Christmas, our service was conducted by the young people – 20's and down. It was the most precious scene when kids as little as five were praying for the adults.

Thank you Uncle Ralph and Auntie Ruthie for teaching us how to fly the kite. Shall we go again soon ?

BURNOUT IS TRAGIC!

I have been involved in Brazil and the USA with several cell churches that pushed cell group multiplication so hard that the membership rebelled and the pastors had to shut down cells completely. The idea that every cell member can lead a cell is not only unbiblical, it is impossible.

I actually know of a church where the leaders set a goal of baptisms that had to be produced for each month by each cell. One cell had already met their goal for the month when another conversion took place. The cell leader said to the new believer, "We want you to wait until next month to be baptized because we have already met our goal for this month." While that seldom happens, it signals the wrong motives for winning the lost can occur.

The body of Christ is made up of body members. Not all of them are destined to lead a cell. There are other roles to be honored within the cell group. For examples:

Dawn was a new believer in a singles group I formed in Houston. In the first six months, she drew in so many friends we had to multiply. I suggested to her that she take half the cell and lead it. She asked to pray about the offer and then said, "No. I am not called to lead a cell." At first I was disappointed but then the Holy Spirit said, "Ralph, I have called her to be an evangelist and she needs to be trained to equip others to be evangelists." I helped her see that her role in our midst was to take other cell members by the hand and help them learn how to cultivate their oikos contacts who needed Jesus.

Frank is a Chinese brother who is a brilliant computer programmer. He is shy and retired. In our men's cell, he often would listen while others shared, evaluating the discussion. Then he would present a profound and deeply inspired insight. I would say to him, "Frank, where did that come from?" Confused at first by my question, he would say, "What do you mean?" "Frank, that did not sprout from your mind. It is an energizing of the Holy Spirit. Over and over, you put deepest knowledge into words. That is your ministry!"

We do not pay enough attention to the fact that a toe does not have eyes, that an arm is not a leg, that inward parts are silent but critical to body life.

We must recognize Christ has given to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. They have authentic contributions to make to the body based on how the Head has formed their ministries in the Body.

When we push people into roles to make growth happen we make a grave mistake. No! Not every person can be a cell leader. That is a doctrinal error.

A BODY WITHOUT A HEAD

“He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things.” Colossians 1:18

Some years ago, a Baptist church here in Spring Branch found a decapitated head in the church dumpster. The pastor said to me, "Spring Branch is a decapitated society and this is a symbol of it!"

The years have passed and that church, so fashionable in the 1970's, no longer exists. It went out of business because Spring Branch was at that very moment changing from being an all white middle class community to an immigrant town.

At the same time the head appeared in the dumpster, the fashionable buildings that held a body of Christ lost its mandate from the Head. Plying their "programs" for the "Like Us" people, they did not listen to the Savior of the World who had come to seek and to save the lost.

The death of that congregation was impacted by that severed head, the head of a Korean. Many families instantly left the church for a location safer for their family. The abandonment of Spring Branch by that church triggered sales of homes as the residents moved to the suburbs.

Then I saw a Lutheran church with mouth watering property in an area of Houston which had been invaded by the Chinese. I tried my best to persuade the pastor that the harvest of immigrant Chinese could transform the use of the property and triple its membership. But neither he nor the caucasian members had Christ as Head and so they sold the property and moved to the suburbs. Every time I see the apartments that now occupy that land I shake my head in disgust.

Now expand this thought beyond a community like Spring Branch or a city like Houston to a nation: the United States. With a few exceptions, the American church society is no longer directed by Christ. It is a consumer oriented structure presided over by a clergy system that protects itself as much as the politicians, who are more interested in re-election than in meeting the needs of the society around them.

How will all this end?

Your response would greatly interest me!