Dear fellow servants of Christ,
Writing daily ministry journal is one of the challenges for me and probably many others. I have tried to do it three times years ago until last March of 2020 when the Covid-19 brought an impact to the lives of everyone in the world and I had the motivation to practice it. My ministry journal includes significant events of the day (kairos, not chronos). I recorded people I met, inspirational articles I read, flash thoughts to elaborate, immediate things to do, long-term future plan to develop, lessons I learned from others, my comments for each single incident, etc…
When reviewing my journal, I always find interesting ideas that feed my thoughts for writing/teaching/preaching, valuable experience for personal growth, urgent items for earnest prayers, and tons of thanksgiving for enthusiastic praise. For example, one of the significant events that I attended was the National Conference of Vietnamese Baptist Churches in North America during the first weekend of July. I met the first featured speaker at the conference room door, shook hands with him and told him, “ You are the main reason that I come to this conference.” His reply “You are so generous” revealed his humble attitude. No wonder he is serving as the top leader of the convention. He is Dr. Ronnie Floyd, Executive President of SBC.
Then during last two months I reviews my visits and connection with churches and lay leaders. I observed that most of our churches are struggling to gather church members to come back to the worship services on site inside the buildings. Most of our churches practice very well the social distance and disinfection cleaning, even in creative ways. For whatever reasons, the worship services did not gather the same crowd as before. However, I myself felt very inspirational and encouraging. I have observed church members sitting in the wheel chairs and raising theirs hands to praise the Lord with sparkling eyes and limited voice under the masks.
Finally, I would like to share with you several helpful articles that I read recently.
· Paul Tripp talks about facing difficult situations in your
· Angela Lee mentions about leveraging conflict for better decisions: Fight and Unite
And of course, you’re welcome to make comments and/or chat with me about the above articles.
Looking forward to connection,
Your fellow servant of Christ,
T. A. Nguyen
P. S. On Sunday August 8th I went to attend the worship service at United Community Church. The meeting is hybrid. Only 6 persons showed up on-site, the others participated via Zoom. My heart was lifted up when I sang with the top of my voice along with the choir on the screen. Pastor has been very creative to lead the congregation with excellent pre-recorded videos. Best of all, he led the UCC church to give faithfully (with frequent increase) to mission cause which includes our Association. See some pictures of the service below.
