The 16th Annual True Family Values Banquet at the Hilton Chicago Hotel on December 17, 2011, marked the culmination of the Original Substance of the Divine Principle (OSDP) workshops that drew more than 3,000 ministers and members of different faiths during the last three months. The afternoon banquet drew distinguished American religious leaders, including the Reverend Stephen J. Thurston, president of the National Baptist Convention of America, Rev. Naomi King, the sister-in-law of Martin Luther King Jr., American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) representatives, Dr. Chang Shik Yang, the continental director of the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC) and Rev. In Jin Moon, president of the Unification Church USA. Rev. Joshua Cotter, vice president of the Unification Church USA, introduced the Generation Peace Academy choir, a group of young, second-generation Unificationists, which performed two songs together with members of Sonic Cult. "I know that you [the audience] pastors are already concerned about how to inspire our young people to live lives of faith that are exemplary before God, amen?" said Rev. Cotter. "Well, you're in for a treat today, because you can see these young people, the Generation Peace Academy Choir. Rev. In Jin Moon has transformed the Unification Church in America the past few years through Lovin' Life Ministries, and young people like these are coming from all over America and are inspired to develop their talents but also to give their lives for God." Archbishop George A. Stallings Jr., national co-president of the American Clergy Leadership Conference, introduced Rev. In Jin Moon as the keynote speaker with the following words: "Good afternoon family. It is my distinct honor to introduce the keynote speaker for this 16th Annual True Family Values Ministry here in the windy city, Chicago. Who we will hear from today is a very focused, strong and determined woman who has set the course for a new emphasis on women in leadership in our world and one who has created a paradigm shift in the way America and the world views the Unification Church and the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind. Our keynote speaker is definitely a woman who knows who she is, what on earth she is here for, and where she is going. She is creating a prototype in the way churches will minister to young people for generations to come. She has created a unique expression of ministry, of Sunday worship, called Lovin' Life Ministries. Are you lovin' life? Are you lovin' life? You haven't had a chance to love it, until you've been to a Lovin' Life Sunday worship!" Remarks from Rev. In Jin Moon 
From left, Rev. Michael Jenkins, Minister Tanya Edwards, Bishop Jesse Edwards, Rev. In Jin Moon, Rev. Zagary Oliver, and Bishop Sulanch Lewis. "I am so excited to be in this beautiful city of Chicago and to bring you greetings from our True Parents on the 16th Annual True Family Values banquet. When I woke up this morning, I was awarded with a beautiful view from my hotel room – a snow-covered Chicago. And where I come from in Korea, snow is always a symbol of God's blessing. So I very much feel our Heavenly Parent here together with us, as well as the spirit of our True Parents, who are praying for the success of this conference. As we come to a close of this year, I feel a great deal of work has been done. Our True Parents have been talking about January 13, 2013 as the time when they need to stand in the position as the true parents of humankind to share the breaking news with all of God's children. And what is the breaking news? "The Generation Peace Choir that you saw did a great job asking the audience to find them somebody to love [they sang Somebody to Love by Queen]. Well, our True Parents come to answer that question. They come with the gift of the Blessing, of hope, of inspiration. When we look at our world today, we see it's suffering quite a bit. It's in need of a great deal of healing. There are many young people who are lost and struggling to find their identities, trying to find the meaning of life, trying to understand "Why am I here?" or "What is the purpose of my being?" or "What is the meaning of my life?" Well, our True Parents have been sent by God to answer those questions for us. And the incredible thing about being in a room like this is that we can meet and talk as members of one family despite our different backgrounds and that we come together with the understanding that we are all divine and eternal sons and daughters of God. "I feel that my job is to continue sharing the breaking news of our True Parents, to share the gift of the Blessing with our brothers and sisters, to encourage all of humanity to graft onto the true lineage of God and commit not only to each other but to our heavenly parent, our community, our world, as a proud and a dignified member of this world. So I feel this is a time when we can look towards the future with a great deal of inspiration. I see a group of young men and women calling themselves a generation of peace, acknowledging that we come from the same parent, our heavenly parent and striving to live a life of compassion and not only becoming internally excellent, but externally excellent as well – this is the vision for our future. Young men and women who understand where they come from and the meaning of this thing called the gift of life. "In this year we've done a lot of good work, together with our good friends representing all different faiths of the world. We have completed the OSDP workshops – 3,000 ministers of different faiths – and before that our True Parents invited 172 ministers representing the north, south, east and west of the United States to come and unite in heart and spirit together with our True Parents to lay the great foundation of faith and substance by connecting these 172 ministers with the different clans in Korea, in preparation for the peace building that our True Parents are partaking of each and every day. Korea is still a divided country. The north is run by a communist government that does not realize the existence of God, and our True Parents are encouraging the South to work together with the North in a peaceful and loving way. I feel that in this great work of re-unification, all the great faiths being represented by different religions and scholars are instrumental in the peace-building process. I encourage you to continue to work together with our True Parents to build and bring about the peaceful millennium that we all long for. The True Parents of Humankind "I'd like to take a moment to remember how this all started. My father was born in North Korea into a devout Christian family. His father and grandfather and great-grandfather really wanted to dedicate themselves for Christ. But when Father turned 16, when he was praying on the hills of Korea, he had a vision and in this vision, Jesus Christ appeared to him and began to tell a story of his life and asked my father to take up a mission. Jesus Christ said, 'I was not meant to die on the cross, but I was meant to go on and find a beautiful wife and together with her, stand as the true parents of mankind, and start sharing in the good news of what an incredible time it is to graft onto the heavenly lineage of God through the process of the Blessing. I came to create an ideal family, a beautiful family, a living paradigm of what true love was meant to be. This was what I was meant to do, but I went the way of the cross because my people did not know who I was. John the Baptist was not there to recognize the gravity and the profundity of his mission to share the good news with the people.' "John the Baptist had a mission just like the faithful people seated in this room have. His mission was to make straight the way of the Lord with the Israelites and all the countrymen of the world so that people can recognize who the son of God is, unite with him, and together, start building ideal families through the process of the Blessing and become one family under God. My father received the blessing from Jesus Christ and from then on until today has never wavered, has always lived a life of sacrificial offering even though he was misunderstood, persecuted, imprisoned time and time again. Even though he was put in a North Korean concentration camp and left to die, the man survived because he knew he had a mission to share the breaking news with the people, which is that the time has come again, that – fast forward 2,000 years after Jesus's death – we have our messiah again, but in better form. This time around, he's got a beautiful wife. The Significance of True Mother 
During the OSDP seminar the ministers were informed of the lifetime achievements of Rev. Moon and spouse Dr. Hak Ja Han, shown above in a photo from the early 1970s. "She gave him seven sons and seven daughters, and together, they have been ceaselessly sharing in the breaking news with brothers and sisters in the world to become one family under God. Can you imagine, if Jesus Christ had found his beautiful wife? The history of Christianity would have been a vastly different one. It would not have been one where the concept of Christian piety was understood in a life of denial, where you had to isolate yourself from the world to seek individual salvation. Had Jesus found a wife and lived a fulfilling life substantiating the true love of God in the context of a family, 2,000 years ago we would have had a living paradigm of what our families should look like, and we would've aspired to be like Jesus and his wife, the true parents, and we ourselves being inspired by the living paradigm of true love, would have gone on to build beautiful families of our own, and the world would have been a very different place. "Instead of the understanding of the Trinity as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you would've had the Holy Spirit manifested in the flesh in the form of a woman. Then we would have realized the Trinity was not the complete picture, just as Jesus' dying on the cross was not the completed picture. What history has been waiting for was for the messiah to come again and find a beautiful wife so the Holy Spirit could be made flesh in the form of a true woman. Then humanity would understand the true value of not just men, but also women. Women would not be seen as just a "woe to men" but as the complete picture that we have in our True Parents. That's why our True Parents come to teach us the four-position foundation of God, man, woman and child. This is the original concept that our Heavenly Parent had in mind when he created human beings many years ago. So, our True Parents come to share the breaking news with all of us, saying, "This is the time." In a way, we, representing different faiths, have a chance to make history right, to restore the position of John the Baptist by truly uniting with our True Parents, working with God's anointed and making straight the way of the lord. "We here at Lovin' Life Ministries come to share in the message of the breaking news that we need to think beyond individual salvation to family salvation, world salvation, beyond our race or culture or economic means and work together to make a world of healing, compassion, understanding, where every individual is a unique, beautiful, eternal being that was put on earth to manifest their divinity with the rest of the world. This is an incredible time when we can come together as one family as the messiah walks with us, breathes with us, laughs and cries together with us. How many of us would give an arm or a leg if we could have five minutes with Jesus Christ, with Mohammed, with Buddha? Think of the millions of people who have come before you and who will come after you and look upon you as the ones who walked, talked, laughed and cried with True Parents! The Windy City of Chicago "English is a second language to me. When I hear the word 'Chi…cago,' I hear the word 'she.' Think about it! Women need to have a voice as a true, eternal daughter of God. I always thought 'she' was an interesting word because 'Sh!' comes before 'he.' [Laughter]. Nobody knew what to do with women. Do we place her behind the curtain, do we allow her to take an active role in the life of faith? Do we put a microphone in front of her face? For the last 2,000 years, because of the Fall of Man, and because Jesus Christ never had a wife, we did not have a clear understanding of what a woman should be. Therefore, it's been 'sh' for 2,000 years. "So the time is right when the true Adam comes as the messiah and raises up that beautiful woman –not somebody relegated to a second class – and says that 'sh' needs to have a voice. 'Sh' needs to work together with 'he.' The interesting thing is that when you say 'cago' in Korean, it means "commitment," "pledge." So, in this time of the breaking news, if 'she' can work together with 'he,' and if the city of Chicago can really commit and pledge itself to work together to make a better world and to usher in a millennium that is worthy of our heavenly parent, that is worthy of our True Parents and all of you and me, if we can pledge to partake of a life where we start living as one family under God, then the heavenly winds can start to blow, and Chicago, known as the windy city, can be the city where the heavenly winds of true love, of ideal families, of true family values can start to blow all across America and all throughout the world." Contributed by Ariana Moon in Chicago |
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