Lego Build Night - 10277 Alternate build DORICE train plus Updates!

This was a fun build! I definitely like this version more than the crocodile!

Summer 2021: $30.00 to SCCEFC's Mission Fund!

Thank you, friends, for your purchases on my Rebrickable store! This past summer, we donated $30 to South Calgary Chinese Evangelical Free Church’s Mission fund!

Summer 2021: SCCEFC's Mission Fund

For this Summer (June-Aug), all net profit from my Rebrickable store will be donated to my church’s [South Calgary Chinese Evangelical Free Church] Mission Fund.

At South EFree, we support close to 30 missionaries and organizations. We value the relationship with our missionaries and partner organizations and our goal is to foster deep relationships and not just material supports. Many of them have adapted to a new and uncertain reality this past year, and they need our prayers and support through these challenging times. You can learn more about some of their work on our church’s website!

A prayer for those whose Father's Day maybe painful.

On Father's Day, we celebrate and give thanks to the fathers in our life. But I am also reminded of the orphaned children, those whose father had passed and those who can not be a father.

A prayer for the fatherless and the childless:

Our heavenly Father, today we come into your presence and give thanks for you are our perfect Father. You have lavished on us, and you called us your children. Your compassion for us is beyond what this world will know and understanding. I pray for all of us whose earthly father is not with us anymore or who can not be a father themselves. I pray that on a day where we see families gather in celebration, that you will comfort us with your Fatherly presence. That we will know and experience deeply your embrace, your encouragement and your fatherly counsel. Lord God, help us to look beyond what we have lost or do not have but help us to know you are truly all we need. You are my everything. May we know joy and security in you that testify to your perfect love.

Thank you, Father, for my life. Thank you for everything you have given me. Thank you for the journey you are leading me through.

To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Upcoming 24hrs Build-a-thon for Mission

Hi! My name is Calvin and I love my church at SCCEFC (South Calgary Chinese Evangelical Free Church)! I have been there for 15+ yrs and one of the areas I serve in is the Mission ministry. (Full disclosure, I am also one of the pastors  at SCCEFC)

At SCCEFC, we support close to 30 missionaries and organizations. But during these restrictive times, missions may seem far and away as gatherings are limited and travel's restricted. Yet, we know our missionaries and partner organizations have not stopped working and ministering on the mission field. Many of them have adapted to a new and uncertain reality, and they need our prayers and support through these challenging times. 

The goal of my 24h build-a-thon is to raise awareness for our mission partners and to raise support for our church's Mission fund which supports our missionaries and partner projects.

24h Build-a-thon for Mission 2021 live stream details:

Date: June 25th, 6 PM to June 26th, 6 PM [MST]

Where to watch: https://www.twitch.tv/heroesofthepew

What will I be doing: I will be building new LEGO sets and MOCs for 24 hrs (with breaks for food and washroom).

Click here to learn how to give to the SCCEFC Mission Fund direcly.

Click here to support the SCCEFC Mission Fund through GoFundMe!

Click here to learn more about some of our missionaries and organizations
(If you are a member of SCCEFC, you can request a full list of missionaries and organizations we support from the church office!)

Let's pray for our missionaries this summer and come build with me that day!

Christ's body is uniquely gathered

Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don't think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us. Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ's body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other. - Romans 12:3-5

"If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." - 1 Cor. 12:26 

One of the learnings in my short 2 yrs of working in a multi-[sub]ethnic, multi-congregational church is that the job and work can be overwhelming. There is a lot of opportunities, tasks, ministries, relationships, and events to discern. It is likened to a scattering of seeds to choose from. Which one should I pick to focus on? What am I called to do? Everything is good to do, but what am I meant to do as a pastor? 

Churches today had often wanted to put each member into the right ministry neatly. We find out their gifts, talents, capacity, and even ethnicity, and we slot them in their respective silos. We ask them to pursue their ministry with excellence and advance their ministry's goals. In a multi-congregational church, we strategically put people in their language-based subgroups; we put them in the soil that we hope will allow them to grow the most efficiently and have the highest chance of individual success. 

This all sounds and looks good until I step back and look at the body of Christ as a whole. As I reread Romans 12, where Paul speaks about the uniqueness of each body part, we often jump quickly to the recognition of the diversity of individual giftings in the church. That, because we are each uniquely gifted by the Holy Spirit, we, therefore, have a specific role, and because of these functional roles, we are siloed and separated accordingly. It seems to make sense that we fit better separated in our own boxes. But as I reread carefully again this passage, vv5 stood out in that Paul ended that by saying, "We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other." 

We belong to one another. 

Each of the body parts has a special function; they are unique, yes! But what is the most unique is the body of Christ as a whole. When each part—each member—is connected and bound to each other, we testify to the Good News of Jesus Christ itself. The Gospel is made alive when the diverse people of God are united by the Spirit, and they function in a way that "belong to one another." This is why Paul warns the church in 1 Corinthians that, even if one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. Even if one ministry is thriving, the whole church is affected if other ministries are not doing well. One body part can't turn a blind eye to the other body parts. It can't ignore the others. Each part must relate to the other in order to belong to one another. 

I think this is why I started to see my work not just in slotting myself into a box and focusing only on my own ministry portfolio. It is not just focusing only on the English congregation and on my unique ministry callings. But as part of a diverse multi-congregational Canadian Chinese church, I think one of the most important charges to any leaders is to help each other belong to one another; To help our people relate to one another; To lead our easily segmented congregations be a unified, gathered people of God. The realist might say this is a pipe-dream, but I believe God specialized in the impossible if it is His word, especially when it is about His church. 

So, in short, what did I learn the last two years serving in a Canadian Chinese Church? 

It is this: My purpose is not about advancing a cause, an institution, or policy, but it is advancing His people as a whole, a people that proclaim and carry the Gospel: A gospel that speaks to the gathering [verb] and the gather [noun] of God's people. 

April - May 2021: $30.00 to Inn from the Cold

Thank you, friends, for your purchases on my Rebrickable store! This past 2 months, we donated $30 to Inn from the Cold’s Claire's Campaign!

38 years. 1 question.

As our province returns to more restrictions, I am sure many of us are again holding our breath and wondering when we will be able to return to some form of normalcy again—when we can return to work, when we can eat together, gather together, worship together. It seems like every month for the past year, we take a step forward and two steps back. We languish; we wait in distance and try to hold on to hope. But what are we hoping for? What is sustaining such hope?

I was reflecting on John 5 this past week, the story of Jesus healing the sick man, a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years. I highlighted that verse—verse 5—and sat with it,

One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.

38 years. For 38 years, this man has been lame, unable to walk. Yet, I would imagine there were moments in his life where he was hopeful, where he prays fervently with hope, or when he learned about the legend of this pool by the sheep's gate where said healings occur when an angel stirs the water. These were moments of hope, I am sure. And yet, these moments become disappointments as well. As he waited under the colonnades waiting for the water to be stirred, he never got the chance to enter the pool as someone always got ahead of him (v7). Imagine that, every day, he waited anxiously for that moment, and if and when the water was stirred, he could not get there in time.

Hope and yet, disappointments.

Today for many of us, we are in this same predicament. The infection rate goes up and down; our kids are in school and then not; businesses open and close. Questions haunt our thoughts every day: will I get infected on my next trip to the grocery store? Will my kids at school? An emotional roller coaster ride of questions, hope, and disappointment.

For many of us, we try to create our own hope and find our way through the pandemic and crisis. We attempt to control what we can control, but we have seen in this one year that there is nothing much we have control over, whether it is our physical & mental health, our jobs, or our economies. Hope can't be found in our security, our career, or our investments. We can try and create strategies and processes to mitigate risk. Make goals and plans to alleviate our loss of control, but they are all at best, guesses, in our life journey.

So then, what can we truly hope for?

As the lame man sits and waits by the pool, he must have thought of many different strategies of getting to the pool when the time comes: calculating distance to the pool, the people in his vicinity that may help him, the other sick people who he is competing with... His hope is definitely zeroed in on that pool. That is until Jesus came to him and asked one question (v6),

"Do you want to get well?"

What Jesus offered wasn't a lift to the pool or a parting of a path toward the water, but rather a question at the right time and the right place. The truth is, the man's plan to get into the water was not needed. His hope in getting heal in the water was ill-placed. What he needed was for Jesus to come to him and ask, "Do you want to get well?" The hope he needed was a timely divine encounter with his saviour, the LORD Jesus Christ.

Today, we also need such hope. A steadfast hope that is directed toward the heavens, anticipating for Jesus to come at the right time to ask, "Do you want to get well? Are you ready to get up and go?" There is no surer question and encounter we have in this life than this. Whether we will be lifted up on this side of heaven or lifted out to the other side of eternity, hope is certain on both sides of heaven.

Pandemic, wars, economic downturns, famine, and depressions will come and go and repeat. Our current restrictions may get tighter one day and the next day not. Your long-term illness may not have gotten better in the past ten or thirty-eight years, even though there were moments of hope. You may have been out of work for years, and none of the interviews pan out. You have tried and done everything possible. But, dear church, don't lose hope in our God who will lift you up and out one day. A day divinely timed according to his plan where he will come beside us, look us in the eyes and asked, "Do you want to get well? Are you ready to go? It's time."

Hallelujah! Thanks be to God because that day is coming.

April-May 2021: Inn from the Cold

For the month of April-May, all net profit from my Rebrickable store will be donated to Inn from the Cold.

Inn from the Cold is a local (Calgary) non-profit that provides shelter and support for families in desperate situations. More than half of those they help are children—children right in my city. Read more about their work here!

March 2021: $20.00 to Tearfund's South Sudan's SGBV fund!

Thank you, friends, for your purchases on my Rebrickable store! This past month, we donated $20 (rounded up from $19.95) to Tearfund’s South Sudan Sexual & Gender-Based Violence fund! Read more about the plight of women and girls in South Sudan who are targets of abuse and rape. Pray that their voices are heard and they can find hope and a safe haven within the local church.