This week we published pieces written by members of SOLA’s inaugural Young Writer’s Cohort, composed of college students and recent grads receiving mentorship to grow in their ability to express their faith through writing. The cohort members were given various prompts with the challenge to write an open letter to a specific recipient but one that would encourage and challenge a broader Christian audience. Read a short Q&A with a member of our editorial board, Soojin Park, who leads this initiative.
We’re writing a book! We believe it is time for SOLA Network to put in writing thoughts that would help the emerging generation of Asian American leaders and churches. Our book will launch at the 2024 Asian American Leadership Conference. Registration for the conference is open.
This newsletter is one of the many ways you can keep in touch with us. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For more, check out my Asian American Worship Leaders Facebook group and TGIF Playlist on Spotify. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram.
Aaron Lee, Editorial Curator
Enter our giveaway! Thanks to The Good Book Company for providing these books for our giveaway, in partnership with my newsletters for @diveindigdeep and FCBC Walnut.
- Our Radiant Redeemer: Tim Chester shares Lent devotions on the transfiguration of Jesus.
- Just Be Honest: Clint Watkins explains how to worship through tears and pray without pretending.
- More to the Story: Jennifer M. Kvamme gives deep answers to real questions on attraction, identity, and relationships.
- Teach Me To Feel: Courtney Reissig shows how we can worship through the Psalms in every season of life.
- He Gives More Grace: Sarah Walton and Linda Green give 30 reflections for the ups and downs of motherhood through the years.
Articles From Around The Web
1. Faith Chang: In Love, He Leads
On not sleeping well, answered prayer, and taking a leave of absence.
2. Sara Kyoungah White: Reading for the Love of the World
Christians are comfortable with the classics. But reading contemporary literature can be a search for truth too.
3. Renee Zou: The (Hyper) Consuming Christian
“It is sad to see how Christians, at least in the West, have also bought into the hedonistic lie of our century that life is for self-expression. We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”
Asian American Leadership Conference 2024: “Writing the Next Chapter.” April 23-24, 2024, Orange County, CA. Registration and more info can be found at aalc.network.
The vision of this conference is to equip Asian-American leaders with gospel centered, contextual resources that will empower men and women for local church ministry. Our conference strategy is to equip leaders, platform voices, and connect with one another for life-giving relationships.
The theme of our conference is “Writing the Next Chapter: Empowering Asian American Voices for Gospel Ministry”. The Asian American church today is at a unique inflection point with leaders in diverse stations across multiple generations. This conference will be an opportunity to learn from these voices for the sake of continued and future Gospel work together.
Books, Podcasts, Music, And More
1. Forrest Strickland: Three Lessons from 234 Pastors’ Libraries
Reading provided Dutch ministers in the seventeenth century with the intellectual firepower necessary to preach the Word in season and out of season, to guard the faith as it was entrusted to them, and to encourage others in sound doctrine.
2. Marshall Segal: Prayer: A Reader’s Guide to a Christian Classic
For Keller, perhaps the single most important key to prayer is its marriage to the word of God. So many of the dangers of prayer are curbed (or eliminated altogether), and so many of the rewards are unlocked and unleashed, when we pray over and through and from what God has said.
3. Aaron Lee: Related Works
Listen to our TGIF playlist on Spotify. Join my Asian American Worship Leaders Facebook group.
Our Books and Reviews page is your one-stop resource for all of your reading needs. It features Asian American authors and issues, recommendations, and interviews.
Featured This Week On SOLA Network
1. Ashley Kim: Letters: Dear ChatGPT Users
As someone who has chosen not to use ChatGPT, I want to challenge you to consider how such a technology can inadvertently weaken your love for God and for others.
2. Carissa Samuel: Letters: To My Spiritual Hero
Dear Corrie, I read The Hiding Place in high school, and to this day, I often share your story with my friends of different faith backgrounds. Your words still bring comfort to me when I find myself facing an uncertain future.
3. Michael Park: Letters: Dear Mom and Dad
The reason for my writing goes deeper than just a few apologies. We want to better connect with you. Most of us feel that our relationship with you is the most important one in our lives, even more than our relationships with girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, siblings, and yes, even our dogs. Yet, the depth and breadth, or the lack thereof, of our conversations oftentimes don’t reflect this desire that we feel for you.
4. Daniel K. Eng: The Ethnic-Specific Church and MLK’s “Most Segregated Hour” Line
“The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s catalyzed positive change for racial equality in America. Its most celebrated figure, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is remembered to have said: 11:00 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.”
5. TGIF: Roundup for January 12, 2024
What knocks leaders out of ministry? / Tolkien’s Treebeard and the Root Problem of Hastiness / Good Authority Submits / Freud’s Last Session and Faithful Debate / Hope and Perseverance in Youth Ministry: Gospel Centrality with Huey Lee
6. SOLA Network: TGIF Subscription
Get our TGIF installments delivered straight to your inbox for free every Friday. Join today so you never miss out.
General disclaimer: Our link roundups are not endorsements of the positions or lives of the authors.