2012 Annual Report—Senior Pastor
The Harvest of 2012
2012 was much like the account of Jesus sending out the seventy disciples as recorded in Luke 10:1-12. Like how these workers were sent out in pairs, we nominated and elected officers, board and committee members. We appointed directors for our summer camps and coaches for our sports teams. Not just seventy but eight times seventy of people went into the harvest and we still discovered that the laborers were too few. When we went out, we met up against challenges both internally as well as externally that it felt that we were “like lambs in(to) the midst of wolves!”
The many reports contained in this compilation will capture all the interesting and transformative ministries that took place in 2012. I encourage you to take the time to read them. In this report, I would like to identify some major developments that challenged our status quo and prayerfully, I believe that God has his hand on what is going on at our church.
Commitment to Our Community
After many decades of City College of SF leasing our classrooms for morning and evening instruction, we don’t have this tenant anymore when a new campus was opened on Kearney Street in Chinatown. We saw these students as potential participants in our Friday Night School and then to become members of our church. We depended on the rent we received to help pay for our janitorial services. Without City College, we invited the church to suggest ideas on how we might utilize our available classrooms to reach out to the community. At this point in our planning, the church staff is proposing that we offer children and youth a study hall and tutorial for a fee.
In September, we celebrated over 10 years of faithful ministry by Pastor Jane Lam who was our Community Outreach staff. Now that we have available space and a new part-time Community Outreach staff opening, we’ll begin to fill this vacancy and embark on new programs that would better serve the needs of our Chinatown community. During this transitional time, Pastor Peter Lee is providing guidance and leadership to envision our next steps. We pray that as we go out like lambs that God will also strengthen us to face the “wolves” that we’ll undoubtedly encounter!
Ministry to All Ages
I would imagine that among the seventy laborers, there were people of different ages and backgrounds. For many years now, one of our strengths has been the reality that we are a multi-generational church family. We are truly blessed to have babies, children, youth, young adults, middle adults, and older adults in our church—not all churches can make that claim. As the result of our strong annual Day Camp and Youth Camp programs, we continue to attract to our church youth and young adults to warrant a second English Worship service.
After an almost 2 year pastoral search process, we called Visal Sok from Portland, Oregon as our new Associate Pastor for English-speaking Ministries in July. Pastor Visal has responsibilities for the 10:00 English Worship that meets at the YMCA gym, summer ministries and shares with the other pastoral staff offering pastoral care, Christian education and church administration. We are excited and blessed to have effectiveness in our ministry to the younger laity of our church!
Maintaining Our Church Home
It has been 13 years since the completion of our $1.3 million retrofit in 1999. And after heavy use for doing God’s work, we faced some major challenges in our church building. In April, our water heater leaked causing costly water damages on all four floors of our church and particularly in the church Nursery. While we hoped that our insurance covered repairs would have fixed our church in a timely fashion, unfortunately, this was not the case. Ultimately, without the use of the Nursery, our Day Camp registration was reduced.
Since the entire floor in the Nursery needed to be replaced, we made the decision to take this opportunity to rectify the earlier problem of noise from toddlers’ feet traveling down to the sanctuary when worship was taking place. A special product called, Quiet Wood was installed that basically gives us a “floating” floor minimizing any noise traveling into the back of the sanctuary. From an estate-planning gift that matured when a member passed, resources were used to rebuild the floor of the Nursery as well as to purchase new furniture. We now have a brightly painted, clean Nursery for all of our young ones!
At the end of the year, we received additional gifts designated to beautify our building since 1999. Walls and trims are being freshly repainted. Wood doors will be sanded and varnished. We are hoping that a new folding ladder/staircase will be installed to have access to the church roof outside of the church kitchen so that we can clean off our 81 solar panels every six months. The restrooms will be cleaned. We are thankful that God continues to provide generous gifts so that we would have professional laborers to maintain our church home when we who are church members are few!
First Day of the Week
From the world’s perspective, Sunday is the end of the weekend and the last day before one goes back to work. But for Christians, Sunday is the first day of the week when we come to praise God, seek God’s will, study his Word, and be equipped to go out in the world because the “harvest is plentiful” in the rest of the week. Since Sundays are the Sabbath, rather than what we usually think of it to be, we need to re-order our Sunday morning schedule in order that we may enhance worship, encourage more people to attend Sunday school classes and to respect those who are serving sacrificially with their time and talents.
After an almost 2 year study and discussions, the new Sunday morning schedule was implemented on January 6, 2013 that schedules all worship services to be 1 hour and 10 minutes long, Sunday school classes that meet before and after services utilizing both the church building as well as the YMCA effectively, and clearly defines times when our church Nursery is in operation. While these changes may have caused some of us to change our familiar routines, we also believe that as we begin a new year in 2013, we might also discover that we can learn new behaviors! The success of our new Sunday schedule is the result of the hard work performed by members of the CE and Deacons Boards.
The Larger ABC World
In 2012, I began my 2-year term as Vice President of the American Baptist Churches, USA. Serving with President Ruth Clark of Kansas City, we have implemented the new bylaws that were adopted in June 2011 in the Board of General Ministries. This year has been innovative and exciting to put into place what were theoretically adopted to be the new structure of ABC life. In June of this year in Overland Park, Kansas, the Biennial Meeting will now become the Mission Summit when church delegates will actually be working on mission issues to set denominational priorities. I hope that FCBC will have a delegation to participate in the very first Mission Summit.
Regionally, the regional executive of Growing Healthy Churches (formerly ABC of the West), Paul Borden will be retiring this spring and a new executive Tim Brown from Clovis started in 2013. In regards to the matter of the church properties being used by Sunset Ministry and 21st Avenue, our strategy is to wait to see what the new executive would say. In the meantime, exciting and promising developments happened in October 2012 that changed the ABC of Oregon to become the ABC of the Central Pacific Coast that now encompasses both the churches in Oregon as well as over 24 churches in northern California. We had a small group from our church attend this October convention in Alameda.
For close to 15 years, our church has been seeking to fellowship with other sheep, goats and other American Baptists who share our witness and mission endeavors without the threat of wolves! I pray that in the coming years, such peace and partnership can be realized.
Laborers in God’s Harvest
As in every year when it’s Harvest Time, it requires many faithful laborers to accomplish God’s work. 2012 was no exception. The Friday Night School core team with the support of Pastor Peter Lee continued to offer English and citizenship classes for our community residents. They proclaimed the love of God in Christ when they led Bible studies and community worship. The Search Committee co-chaired by Shannon Kong and Anna Ng along with the members met and prayed ceaselessly until God led Visal Sok to become our new Associate Pastor. What we enjoy on Sundays in our church home is the result of hard work by many people who watch over our building maintenance including Bill Leong and the Trustees, Bill Chin, Norman Chin, Curtis Poon, and Wendi Lin who is our on-site coordinator. When it comes to tackling tough issues like coming up with an acceptable Sunday morning schedule for everyone, Wes Chan and the CE Board, Shirlene Leong Nakano and the Deacons along with many others successfully met the challenge. And when you have so gratefully prayed and supported me to serve our American Baptist family as Vice-President, people like our Pastor Emeritus James Chuck and others have filled the pulpit and cared for you when I may be away.
Every year is “Harvest Time” in God’s field because God continues to call us as “eight times seventy” to be laborers in the field because the harvest is plentiful!