On the Linsanity

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NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 19: Jeremy Lin #17 of...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Well, here it comes. I guess it is unavoidable that I would end up writing a Jeremy Lin post. After all, he has sort of taken the world by storm over the last month with his incredible run at the New York Knicks. And I also do it unapologetically. The fact is that my Facebook wall has been pretty much half-covered by Jeremy Lin posts for the last week or two. He is an internet phenomenon right now. And especially here in Hong Kong where there are all too few Asian sports heroes to cheer for. Then when you add in his amazing story and devout Christian faith the opportunities for conversations to springboard from his story to the gospel are plain to see.

Actually my wife was first person to tell me about Jeremy Lin, and it says something about his appeal to Asian audiences that my wife knows something about sports before I do! (Those of you who know either of us will understand, those who know both of us will understand even more!)

Lin comes from a Taiwanese-American family. He was born in California, where his parents had immigrated to from Taiwan. Being Asian-American, he is part of a demographic that has increased 50% in the last decade (compared to 10% for the overall population) and although he has only come to global prominence in 2012, he has been a hit on the Asian scene for much longer. During his stint with the Golden State Warriors he had a cult following among the large Asian population in the San Francisco Bay area (check out this video of a post-game interview), and he was interviewed on a Christian TV show in Taiwan last year, and also voted one of the top eight most influential Chinese-Americans by Vivid Magazine. There have even been noises about him represented either Taiwan or Mainland China in international basketball.

(Interview in Mandarin, Jeremy Lin replies in English though)

In Hong Kong, basketball is one of the most popular sports (with soccer) and you can find people playing in outdoor basketball courts every weekend. For someone with a Chinese background to make it to the biggest basketball league in the world is big news. For him to grab the world’s attention while doing so makes it impossible not to take notice of him.

But Jeremy Lin’s story isn’t just about him being an Asian player who has made it to the top of the sporting pile, it is also about the obstacles he had to overcome to get there, of which being Asian is definitely one of them. Apparently even at Madison Square Garden (the home of the New York Knicks) he sometimes gets asked by security guards if he’s a trainer, because a Chinese guy wouldn’t be a player (obviously!?)

Jeremy Lin was the captain and star of his Palo Alto High School team, making the All-State team, yet  despite sending his resume and a highlights DVD to a number of colleges, failed to get a basketball scholarship. Harvard were one of the few universities to take an interest in him, although even then he was recruited on an academic scholarship as Harvard don’t offer sports scholarships.

On the Harvard team, Lin again stood out, setting records and helping the team to some of their best performances in years and won plaudits from many commentators and yet, when it came to the NBA draft in the summer, Jeremy Lin was not picked in the draft. He went on to be offered a place on several teams, signing in the end for the Golden State Warriors. During the 2010-11 season he played only a bench role for the Warriors, averaging less than 10 minutes a game.

At the end of the season, with a new coach, Lin was cut from the Golden State Warriors roster. He was subsequently picked up by the Houston Rockets in pre-season before he was also cut by them before the beginning of the season where he was picked up by the New York Knicks as a backup to the guards they already had on their roster. He wasn’t playing very often and the Knicks were actually considering releasing Lin before his contract became guaranteed on February 10 when he got a chance to have some gametime due to injury and poor performances by the team in lead-up games.

On February 4 he scored 25 points in a 99-92 win over the New Jersey Nets and Knicks star Carmelo Anthony suggested to the coach that Lin should start. Jeremy Lin had his first start in the NBA for the New York Knicks on February 6 against the Utah Jazz, scoring 28 points, following it up with wins against the Wizards, Lakers (where he outscored Kobe Bryant), Timberwolves, Raptors (with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to win the game) and Kings, and after a loss to the Hornets, a win over the Mavericks, scoring at least 20 points in each game.

This month he has been on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time Asia. But this basketball success despite the odds is not the full story of Jeremy Lin. The other thread running through this story is his Christian faith. In many ways his faith mirrors who he is on the court. One of the hindrances to his being identified as a talent by the scouts for both the College basketball and NBA teams was the fact that his strengths revolve around teamwork. Although his stats show that obviously he can shoot the baskets himself, he is also feeding his teammates, which is demonstrated by him ranking sixth on the NBA for assists per minute. And he is undoubtedly a humble person. After deflecting the praise after each of the wins after his first six starts, he was more than ready to shoulder any blame after the loss to the Hornets. And he is not shy about his faith either – he attributes his inability to get sports scholarships as God’s plan for him to go to Harvard, he regularly attributes praise to God and regards glorifying God as his greatest goal, and talks about pastoring or other ministry roles as options for him post-basketball.

And so for me, working with university students in Hong Kong, it is impossible for me to ignore Jeremy Lin. He is a wonderful example of someone using their God-given abilities to glorify him, of someone trusting God with their life, even when it seems as though their dreams aren’t going to come true, of someone who the students I work with can look to as a role model, as someone they can aspire to emulate.

And he is also a great person to invite the non-Christians on campus to consider what life is about, how God gives meaning to everything we do, whether it be study, sport, work, or anything else, and a picture of what the Christian life looks like lived out. Blaise Pascal said that we must show people that the Christian life is both desirable and reasonable. Someone like Jeremy Lin goes a long way toward doing that for people, especially in Hong Kong. And that is why we are doing what we can to harness his fame to help start conversations about faith. So many people are talking about Jeremy Lin on Facebook already, it makes sense to equip our students to be able to connect these conversations to conversations about his faith, and consequently to how that faith relates to all of us. Thank God that such an opportunity has arisen for us to talk about the gospel, and pray that may take this opportunity.

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Facebook vs The Great Firewall of China

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As Facebook announces its IPO it clearly has the upper hand in the social network war. Facebook is the dominant social network in most countries around the world. The only problem this brings a network like Facebook, which has become famous for, as much as anything else, its relentless growth, is where it is going to get new users from. As this article explains, the growth in the western world has largely dried up for Facebook. Almost everyone who is going to get on Facebook has already made the decision to join. Those that haven’t joined are increasingly unlikely to ever join.

However, a majority of the world’s internet users are not on Facebook. So the question is, “Where are they?” And the answer is in Asia, and the largest chunk and most problematic for Facebook is China.

The Great Firewall of China is the name given to the Chinese governments censoring of the internet, which includes among others, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. The response within China has been to create copies of each of these sites. Where the rest of the world watches videos on Youtube, China watches them on Youku. Where the rest of the world interacts on Facebook and Twitter, China’s hundreds of millions of internet users do so on QQ, Renren, and Weibo.

There are still ways to use these sites in China. Many people use VPN, and the Kindle Keyboard 3G manages to sneak under the radar of the Great Firewall.

Unfortunately, the Great Firewall means that global social media gospel campaigns are unlikely to reach many in China, at least for now. But there is a huge opportunity if there are people who are willing to take the principles and strategies that work in social media for the rest of the world and apply them in the context of these China-specific social networks.

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Just a click away

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One of the things that I repeatedly say when I talk to people about our ministry is that this generation is a visual generation, a narrative generation and an online generation. If we are serious about reaching this generation with the gospel then we need to be communicating to them in this way.

So here’s a story that explains exactly why we need to use the internet to communicate the gospel. By doing so, we bring the gospel to where it is just a click away from the people who need it.

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Jill Vidal’s story

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What if you were an up and coming young pop star with the world at your feet, and then you lost it all, your career and your reputation?

And what if this turned out to be the cause of the best thing in your life?

Find out in Jill Vidal’s story below as she shares how she found love she could depend upon when her life reached its nadir in a detox ward in Japan. (Update: Now with English translation!)

This is the second promotion video for the Love Me If … series of evangelistic meetings at universities in Hong Kong next month

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Soularium Training Videos

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Our good friends who developed the Soularium conversation-starter tool have produced a couple fo training videos. Check them out …

Getting Started …

… and Going Deeper

We have our own contextualised version of Soularium in Hong Kong called YingSeung (影想).

And friends of ours have developed an iOS vesion of their contextualisation of the tool called HeartMirror. Check them out.

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Eastern and Western Utopias

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In The Geography of Thought, How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why, Richard E. Nesbitt mentions how all Western Utopias apart from those derived from the biblical ideas of the Garden of Eden and the promise of the New Jerusalem have five salient characteristics:

  • there is steady, more or less linear progress towards them
  • once attained, they become a permanent state
  • they are reached through human effort rather than Fate or divine intervention
  • they are usually egalitarian
  • they are usually based on a few extreme assumptions about human nature

Utopia in the Eastern mind is very different, more attuned to reversion rather than progress.

He writes: “It is worth noting here that the ancient Hebrews were in these respects closer to the Chinese than to the Greeks. Their Utopia – the Garden of Eden – was in the past and they hoped for at most a restoration. Their notion of the nature of change was similar to that of the Chinese – they held a clear notion of the yin and yang of life.”

In the first chapter of A Short History of Chinese Philosophy,  Fung Yu-Lan writes “The fact is that Chinese philosophers were accustomed to express themselves in the form of aphorisms, apothegms, or allusions and illustrations. The whole book of Lao-tzu consists of aphorisms, and most of the chapters of the Chuang-tzu are full of allusions and illustrations.”

When one considers the Old Testament Wisdom literature we can see a clear similarity here between the works of the Chinese philosophers and the Proverbs. When reading verses from Lao-tzu and Ecclesiastes in isolation, it is sometimes difficult to tell which verses belong to which writer, such is the similarity.

It seems that we can learn a lot about understanding Old Testament Jewish philosophy and writings by studying and comparing them with their Chinese counterparts.

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Who is my neighbour?

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This was the question a Jewish teacher had for Jesus in response to the command to “love your neighbour as yourself”. The question is essentially asking, who should we love?

Jesus’ answer was to tell a story, the story of the Good Samaritan.

Bruce Springsteen’s response is to sing a song

What do you think?

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Driscoll and Criticism

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Mark Driscoll is probably one of the most well-known preacher/pastors in the world right now. He is also one of the most polarising, whether it is because of his views on homosexuality, mixed martial arts, Avatar, or any number of other issues.

Recently Justin Brierley, the host of Unbelievable, a debate/interview show between Christians and non-Christians interviewed Mark Driscoll, for an article for Christianity Magazine, partly to tie in with Driscoll’s release of his new book Real Marriage (which is not without its own controversy).

Justin is known for his fair, and even-handed control of the debates between Christians and non-Christians. He doesn’t give patsy questions, but he doesn’t play attack dog either, and he generally lets both sides have their say and facilitates their interaction, which is probably one of the main strengths of the program – it leads to genuine dialogue between believers and non-believers on a wide range of topics.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on the New Year’s Eve Unbelievable show, including  one part where Driscoll said:

“Let’s just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don’t have one – that’s the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren’t telling the truth.”

This quote was picked up on by Christian Today magazine, who published a short article based on the excerpts from the Unbelievable show, which then prompted responses from people including Krish Kandiah, a director of the Evangelical Alliance.

I’m guessing that Mark Driscoll’s recent blog post, “A Blog Post for the Brits” is largely prompted by the initial reaction to this, and in anticipation that the article Justin Brierley will write for Christianity Magazine will be equally or more critical of him and his ministry.

What he says in this blog post is worse than anything in the interview. And you can have a listen to a portion of it (start at 34 minutes) and judge for yourself. He has launched a pre-emptive strike against Justin Brierley simply on the basis that he thinks that the article in Christianity Magazine will be uncomplimentary towards him.

He says this interview out of all he has done with both Christians and non-Christians associated with the release of real Marriage, this one “... was, in my opinion, the most disrespectful, adversarial, and subjective. As a result, we’ve since changed how we receive, process, and moderate media interviews.  ”

Ironically, according to a colleague of Justin Brierley’s, Mark Driscoll had little to worry about from the article:

and Driscoll apparently had no problem during the interview according to Justin Brierley himself:

 

 

What Driscoll has said amounts to character assassination. Honestly, if Mark Driscoll is so thin-skinned that the mere possibility of criticism causes him to treat people like that then he should not be pastoring or writing books, let alone controversial ones.

Update: The full interview audio is now available

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Love Me If … ?

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In February the five main campuses in Hong Kong will all run evangelistic meetings with the same theme: Love Me If …?

Every year our campuses in Hong Kong run evangelistic meetings which usually each attract several hundred students and have dozens of people pray to receive Christ. This year for the first time, each of the five main campuses are all using the same theme and speakers for the evangelistic meetings. This gives us opportunities to do things on a scale that we haven’t previously been able to, and to co-ordinate our promotion for these meetings.

I (Karl) have been leading our promotion team for this campaign. Our promotion campaign includes social media, website, and videos.

The idea behind Love Me If … ? is to raise the questions that most of us has at the back of their minds. Would the people in my life love me if things were different. Would they love me if I failed my exams? Would he love me if I was overweight? Would she love me if I had no money? I believe that everyone has these questions at the back of their minds, because we all desperately want to be loved, and because unconditional love is so rare. What we want to do with our campaign to is bring these questions from the back of their mind to the front. Then people will be ready to hear about the unconditional love that God offers.

Last week we released the first video promo for the campaign. It was deliberately ambiguous to encourage discussion and conversation. I know that most of you don’t understand Chinese but hopefully it should be obvious that both James and Chloe have secrets that they are hiding from each other. The text at the end of the video asks “Would he love me if he knew?”/”Would she love me if she knew?” We are encouraging students to give their suggestions of what their secrets are, then we will choose the best three and put them to the vote. The most popular option will then be filmed and the final version shown at the meetings. The purpose of this is break up a really big step (going from a website to an evangelistic meeting) into several smaller steps (leaving a comment, voting in a poll) and also hopefully building up a relationship with the students over several interactions so they are more interested in coming to the meeting.

Our main speaker in a Cantopop star, Jill Vidal, who became a Christian after being arrested for drugs and consequently losing her career. We will be releasing a second video closer to the date of the meetings which will be an interview of her telling her story. We have done it in the style of “I Am Second”, which has really stylish presentations of Christians telling their story of faith. I will be editing the footage over the next couple of weeks. She really does have a fantastic redemptive story.

Update: Jill’s video is now up. You can view it here.

We’re hoping and praying that God would use this promotional campaign to create genuine conversation between our students and their non-Christian friends over the next month or so, and that many of these friends would come to the meetings and have an opportunity to hear the gospel and respond.

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