Category: Pastor’s Blog

A Glorious Day to Praise Our God!

September 20th – a day I will surely treasure and remember! What a wonderful way to finish off SAINT PAUL’s 50th anniversary year.

We gathered in worship for the Consecration of the Virginia Maniti Williams Ministry Center. Bishop Warner H. Brown Jr. preached on “The Meeting Place” from Matthew 28:16-20 and led our ceremony. Our new District Superintendent Rev. Staci Current joined in.

Things tried to stop us from celebrating… We were scheduled for an inspection Thursday morning and received a call that the inspectors were all in training. We were rescheduled for the following week. Special gifts to hand out did not arrive in time. They are being given out. We had hoped to gather in the new upstairs space to eat and begin to move items in. Unfortunately that was not the case and yet the Spirit could not be contained!

We just had to celebrate and give thanks for all that God has already done to get us to this point. We were led in worship by our praise team and our many worship leaders with special music from our Kingdom Kidz Choir and Agape Choir.

The family of Deaconess Virginia Maniti Williams received the special plaque we will hang at the new entrance to Precious Time Christian Preschool. It will be at a height for parents and children to see and be reminded. Deaconess Virginia lived a life inspired by God and made that God incarnate through her service as Director of Children’s Ministry and initiating the formation of Precious Time Christian Preschool. Her witness continues to intersect with so many children, families and volunteers impacted by these ongoing ministries. It is a privilege to honor and be reminded of one of God’s saints among us.

The delicious meal was catered by Ima’s Kusina in Milpitas (owned by the Maniti family) with donations of salmon from the Capistrano family, turon from the Maniti family and fruit from Naomi Porcuna and Paz Flores.

Truly a glorious day!

Special thanks go to so, so, so many! My apologies if anyone is left out accidentally.

·         Capital Campaign committee and the United Methodist Foundation who led us in the Building a Future Through Faith campaign;

·         Building Committee and Technical team who have persevered through all the changes;

·         Manny Bautista who joined me every other week at the construction site meetings;

·         Finance Committee who has made our church finances work;

·         Proforma Construction staff who we have gotten to know well and love;

·         District Board of Church Location and Building for guidance and support;

·         North San Jose Church Extension Society for a loan to bridge the financial gap for converting our construction loan to a mortgage loan;

·         Fremont Vice-mayor Suzanne Chan and Pastor Sherman Williams of CityServe who helped us work with the City Planning department;

·         The wonderful prior and current Precious Time Christian Preschool staff for making Jesus known;

·         Those who have given to the Building Fund and prayed for this Ministry Center over the years;

·         Pastors, leaders and faithful followers who have dreamed and worked towards God’s dream and what is still to come;

·         Most importantly to our God and the Holy Spirit for inspiring and leading us to do far more than we would have imagined we were able to on our own!

And there is still more to come! Our UMW provided funds to purchase the new kitchen appliances. Jay and Linda Canuto donated and installed a sound system for the upstairs classrooms. Our UMM will be providing a new TV in the new space. Others have donated funds for furnishings. We will need help assembling the new playground and furnishings. We are exploring improving our sanctuary sound system. Talk with Lloren Corpuz, Manny Bautista or Cheryl Konno about furnishing needs.

I have been saying for several weeks that I cannot help smiling and then sometimes I feel like crying because it is so amazing that we are reaching this point in ministry. God is so incredibly good to us! I just thank God for each and all of you. What a joy it is to be in ministry together. Our Dream Weaving will have happened and we hope to continue to explore next steps to follow where Jesus leads. What an exciting time this is! Thanks be to God!

The Heart of Worship

 I love the song called, “The Heart of Worship” by Matt Redman. 

 “When the music fades and all is stripped away and I simply come…

You search much deeper within, through the way things appear, You’re looking into my heart.

I’m coming back to the heart of worship
and it’s all about You, it’s all about You, Jesus.
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
when it’s all about You, it’s all about You, Jesus.”

It reminds me of the purpose of worship and the importance of my attitude of bringing all that I am—my heart, mind, and focus – to worship.

Recently, I read an interview of Rick Muchow, worship leader at Saddleback Church (known for Purpose-Driven Life pastor Rick Warren) where he talks about what is worship and what isn’t.

He said that Worship is “Any expression of our love to God—for who He is, for what He’s said, and for what He’s doing. The Bible says, ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God’ (1 Cor. 10:31). Worship is a physical expression of our spiritual relationship with Him.”

I love that clarity in definition. It’s not just music, ritual, nor what happens on Sunday morning only. It’s much bigger and wider than that. In fact, Jesus exemplified many ways of worshiping-through obedience, teaching, reading and quoting Scripture, prayer, fasting, and giving. It’s anything and everything that we do to show our love to God and the focus of that love is toward God. This is why I think it is important to know what worship isn’t and we also need to watch out not to worship in wrong ways. This is Rick’s answer to ‘Is there a wrong way to worship?’ He said,

“Focusing on yourself. There’s a difference between ‘service’ and ‘serve us.’ A lot of people go to church for what they’re going to get out of it. But it’s not about us. Though we benefit from worshiping God, that’s not why we should do it. You don’t love your kids for what you can get out of it. You love them because you love them.”

Yes, indeed. As the song, “Heart of Worship” reminds us, “it’s all about you, Jesus.”

As you might already know, many people are involved in making our Sunday worship run as smoothly as possible, and they have been working diligently to make improvements to our worship—skills, technology, presentations and more. I know they don’t want to draw the attention to themselves but to Jesus. As a pastor, I am thankful for their faithful ‘expression’ of their love to God each Sunday. With gratitude, my hope is for all of us to pray for those who are working hard in the backgrounds, encourage their efforts to serve, and most importantly, bring the ‘Heart of worship’, so that our lives would reflect His love and through our lives, God will be glorified.

Coming back to the heart of worship,

Pastor Sun Hee