Ray Li’s Blog

This past Sunday I went to Living Faith Community Church. I am starting to look for a new church with my family. I had found LFCC on the list of Redeemer Affiliated Churches.

It was a pretty cool experience. In many ways, it’s exactly what I look for in a church. The music quality was quite good and the song selection was good. They did a few Sovereign Grace Music songs and The Power of the Cross. Here are some neutral observations solely based on this Sunday’s service:

• LFCC uses less songs in its worship service than other worship service I’ve been to.
• It has communion every week.
• There is a leader/emcee figure that facilitates everything.
• It reminded me of Redeemer in terms of how it is structured.
• The church’s mission is to be multi-ethnic. Most of the congregation seem to be Asian young professionals.

In terms of the message itself, it was decent. It was entitled: “The God of Christmas.” Apparently Pastor Ro was a lot more animated than he normally is, so maybe it wasn’t a typical message. I think the message was gospel-centered for sure. He preached from the Word, he was engaging, and he was solid. And as a side note, he pulled out Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll and read a passage from it.

The one thing was that the gospel wasn’t presented as clearly as I was expecting. But I don’t want to be one of the annoying punks who pick everything apart. I think I just had built up my expectations too much, thinking he would be an Asian Tim Keller (an unfair expectation). . But hearing one message is hardly enough to make any sort of assessment; I think I’ll check out some more of the messages on the LFCC website.

I may check out a church in Astoria called Astoria Community Church. It’s also on the Redeemer Affiliated Church list. Only problem is it is 28 minutes away (with no traffic) and there are no community groups around my home.

I really need to be praying throughout all this. Can’t be a church shopper/hopper, I need to figure out where God wants me to be.

LFCC does seem pretty exciting from its vision statement. Check it out:

1. Gospel-Driven: The Gospel tells us that our root sin is not just failing in our obedience to God but relying on our obedience to save us. Therefore the gospel is not just the way to go to heaven, but is the way to address every problem and is a way to grow at every step.

2. Prayer-Rooted: Healthy church is both a result of and a means to the dynamics of spiritual renewal, therefore we must be rooted in extraordinary prayer as well as corporate and individual repentance before God.

3. World-and-Life View: The Lordship of Christ over every area of life prevents us from dividing life into secular/public vs. private/sacred realms or into physical/worldly vs. spiritual/church realms.

4. Multi-Ethnic: We will mirror our geographic neighborhood, which is very multi-ethnic. We will seek to reflect more racial unity than our neighborhood in order to witness to the truth of the Gospel.

5. City-Positive: We do not just seek our own prosperity, or even the peace of our neighborhood, but the peace and prosperity of the whole city. We will not only have pity or sympathy on our city, but also will respect and learn from it as we show compassion.

6. Community-Based: We believe that the Gospel alone changes people’s lives and creates a new community which loves and serves each other. And this change occurs as Christians learn to apply the Gospel and share their lives with one another in mutual encouragement in small cell groups.

7. Church-Planting Minded: We do not consider church planting to be either traumatic or unusual process. Rather, we are always planning and working toward the next daughter church, just as we are always doing other ministries of the church.