Reflection by David Lai Education Team Leader Growing up, it was hard for me to understand why anyone was a Pharisee. The impression I got from Sunday School was that they were not just legalistic and not very much fun, but also greedy, prideful, and spiteful. Or, as the children’s song  I once learned put it: Don’t wanna be a Pharisee Don’t wanna be a Pharisee ‘Cause they’re not fair you see Don’t wanna be a Pharisee Yet as I’ve gotten older and learned more about church his

Reflection by David Lai Education Team Leader Despite always being fond of history, it was only during graduate school that I really started considering historiography, which is, basically, the history of history. The classic example I learned was the historiography of American chattel slavery. To summarize, back in the post-Reconstruction days, scholars, drawing from slaveowners’ statements and texts, concluded that slavery was not so much economic but paternalistic, a way o

Reflection by David Lai Education Team Leader Hi, friends! Pastor Rae graciously invited me to co-lead this year’s Lenten devotional with him. With the young adult retreat this past weekend, I volunteered to take the responsibility of introducing this year’s study and to invite y’all to join us, thus this post.  I’ll start with the what: same as last year, we’ll be doing daily devotionals and holding a Tuesday evening remote study via Zoom. This year’s textbook is A Way Other