Flushing New York

No I am not talking about the verb, but the recent visit to the far corner of Queens called Flushing. About a week ago me and the other interns visited the area to understand what our world may be looking like in the near future, if not now.

As we began to walk (about a 6 block walk) we found ourselves running into a couple of Hindu temples, a Seke (spelling?) worship place, an Asian denomination church, a Jewish synagogue, a Buddhist temple, an Islamic mosque, a Catholic church and a few other lesser known religious gathering places.

In 6 blocks!

We then began to ask ourselves two questions.

First, a broad question for all of humanity - why do we believe in God? This created subquestions like how do all these religions come to be in the first place? How did each religion start?

The second question was how is Christianity different than the world religions of the past and present?

New York is a hub for pluralism and a global context. You can find every tribe and every way of doing things by walking down a few blocks. There are countless numbers of food styles, tons of different languages being spoken, and tons of communication breakdowns between people.

I think it is very important to wrestle with those questions as well as understanding the world we live in. Obviously to reach out to the culture of New York, one must be familiar with the people he/she is reaching out to. With the internet and the flurry of information flowing into rural areas as well as the cities people are connected with all types of realities, knowledge, and choices.

So why is our faith tradition unique? What do we have to offer the world?

And how do we reach a world that has the information of the world at its fingertips? that is post-modern? that is post-Christian (as some are calling it in America now - or at least in Europe) that is moving and living in cities more than ever before? that is more of a melting pot than ever before?

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I wish I could give you our entire conversation, because it deeply explored what we believe and what the world is going to look like in the coming years.

In other news, our house church Friday night was a great experience . . . it is so great to be in an atmosphere that the common goal is to seek and discern truth. It is something we experienced a lot especially in Russia, and it's just really great to be able to agree/disagree and everything in between with a community and figure out what God is trying to tell us through his words! Our communion time was also phenomenal as we invited God to be with us and then in a pop-corn like way we gave up to God our prayers, sang songs we felt led to sing, read scripture that we were thinking about, and shared the body and blood of our Lord and Savior. It was a great expression of a community of faith coming together and worshiping.

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Also - I love central park! We were able to listen to a free concert by the Philharmonic orchestra last Tuesday night and there were approximately 8 billion people there with us. It was great!

I also spent yesterday there watching the diversity of God creation interact and exist among his beautiful creation. It was quite an experience, I highly suggest doing it sometime!


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My parents and Katie's parents are coming up in a little less than two weeks and we are extremely excited to get to show them the Bronx! It's easy to talk for hours about my summer experiences, but it's so difficult to be able to actually describe faces, people, culture, events, and experiences to the detail they deserve, so I'm excited they will be able to get a taste of life here!