Prayers for Oppa: From K-Pop to J-Pop, a Devotional for Performers & Their Fans

By Teresa Santoski

A compact, meaningful prayer tool geared toward the East Asian entertainment industry, Prayers for Oppa contains 20 devotionals on topics of interest to performers:

Giving an outdoor concert on a rainy night? Check out Performance Safety.

Feeling pressure due to the expectations of others? Flip to Discouragement.

Wondering if youre presenting yourself to the public in a way that brings God glory? Find what you need in the Fan Service and Image sections.

Each devotional includes prayers and applicable Bible verses for fans as well as for performers:

Is your favorite performer sick or injured? Turn to the Healing section.

Are they going through a tough time in their career? Go to Difficulty Getting Work.

Want to support them in their efforts to share their faith? Try Social Media, Sharing God with Others or Taking a Stand.

With its emphasis on cultivating a strong relationship with God through prayer and reading the Bible, Prayers for Oppa offers performers and fans a more meaningful connection with one another and with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490809595

Teresa Santoski

Teresa Santoski committed her life to Jesus Christ in 1996 and has found herself having one adventure after another ever since. That wasn’t exactly what she anticipated when she became a non-denominational, Bible-believing Christian, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. A ten-year veteran of the newspaper industry, Teresa most recently covered arts and entertainment for The Telegraph, the second largest newspaper in the state of New Hampshire. In this role, she interviewed numerous musicians, artists, actors, filmmakers, authors and other creative professionals of local, national and international renown. She continues to write her award-winning humor column, Tete-a-tete, which has developed a devoted following since its debut in May 2008. Though she graduated with honors from Wellesley College in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Teresa also studied Japanese language, history, film and literature and received an extensive extracurricular education in Korean and Japanese pop culture. In 2006, she traveled to China and Tibet as a member of the New Hampshire Friendship Chorus, photographing and blogging about her experiences as a special project for The Telegraph. This journey led to additional interests in Chinese, Tibetan, Taiwanese and Thai pop culture and helped cement her desire to encourage performers in the East Asian entertainment industry in their Christian faith. Teresa served as a critique group facilitator and member of the leadership team for her regional chapter of Word Weavers during its affiliation with the Jerry B. Jenkins Christian Writers Guild. She continues to participate in a small critique group of committed Christian writers when her schedule allows. She resides in New Hampshire, where the trees easily outnumber the East Asian restaurants, but you can still find excellent sushi, stone pot bibimbap and boba tea. For more information about Teresa, Prayers for Oppa and Teresa’s other writings, visit www.teresasantoski.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 Teresa Santoski.

Cover photos and design: Sid Ceaser (www.ceaserphotography.com)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com  The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations in this publications are from The Message. MSG® Copyright (c) by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0958-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0959-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917361

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/23/2013

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Loneliness

Image

Fatigue

Humility

Fans

Success

Sharing God with Others

Gossip and Rumors

Physical Appearance

Love

Discouragement

Difficulty Getting Work

Fan Service

Good Health

Performance Safety

Healing

Safe Travel

Before and After Work

Taking a Stand

Social Media

Additional Verses

Becoming a Christian and Nurturing Your Relationship with God

Talking Points for Interviews

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

– Ephesians 6:18 (NIV)

Dedication

To Dad. For staying up all night to figure out how to print my eighth-grade English assignment (which I accidentally wrote in a math program instead of a word processing program) and for everything else along the way.

This book is for every performer who has embraced their God-given calling, and every fan who wants to bless them for it.

Introduction

T hanks to developments in technology, fans of East Asian pop music can be found all over the world and can connect with their favorite performers through social media and the internet. These technologies have likewise given performers more opportunities to interact with their fans than ever before.

Why shouldn’t fans and performers connect spiritually as well?

The most lasting and meaningful way for fans to support their favorite performers is to pray for them. Letters and gifts can be a wonderful encouragement, but prayer moves the heart of God to act on behalf of these performers, to help them in their work and strengthen them spiritually.

With the opportunity to share their Christian faith with an unprecedented global audience, performers need all the prayer and spiritual support they can get. The East Asian entertainment industry is a challenging environment, and regular refocusing and refreshment are essential for performers to succeed spiritually as well as professionally.

Such is the aim of Prayers for Oppa.

The Title

Oppa is a Korean word used by girls and young women to refer to older males with whom they have a close relationship, such as a brother or a boyfriend. Some female fans of Korean pop music, or K-pop, have adopted the word as a term of endearment for their favorite male performers.

Prayers for Oppa is also for dongsaeng, oshimen and any other form of address or classification that exists for a performer in the East Asian entertainment industry, along with their supporters, male or female.

Dongsaeng is a Korean word used by both men and women to refer to a person of either gender who is younger than them and with whom they have a close relationship. Oshimen is a Japanese word some fans use to refer to their favorite performer – it translates to the member I support the most.

Prayers for Oppa may also be helpful to performers in other parts of Asia and elsewhere in the world, along with the fans of those performers, and I encourage them to use this book as well.

The Structure

Prayers for Oppa contains twenty devotionals that focus on the challenges faced by performers in the East Asian entertainment industry. Many of these challenges have been mentioned by numerous performers in articles, interviews or behind-the-scenes footage or on social media. Others are issues that simply make sense to address because of the performers’ faith and their profession.

Each devotional has an introduction that sets the topic in the context of the performer’s work and offers Bible-based encouragement and counsel. This is followed by a prayer for the performer, an applicable Bible verse for the performer, a prayer fans can pray for the performer and an applicable Bible verse for fans.

Each performer prayer also includes a fill-in-the-blank sentence so performers can address their own personal concerns.

None of these components are meant to be exclusive. Fans can benefit from reading the performer prayers and verses, and vice versa. Performers may even want to use the fan prayers and verses to pray for one another. Supplementary Bible verses for each devotional can be found in the Additional Verses section, organized alphabetically by topic.

The book also contains a section on how to become a Christian and how to nurture your relationship with God, as well as a section with suggested talking points for performers who are looking to share their faith in interviews.

Prayers for Oppa has been written to accommodate the busy schedules of performers in the East Asian entertainment industry. The introductions are short, the prayers are quick and to the point and the verses have been prayerfully selected for their relevance to each topic, offering a meaningful and effective way for performers to connect with God even if they only have a few minutes.

Likewise, fan prayers have been written to help fans pray for performers in a focused and efficient manner, and verses have been chosen that supplement the intent of the fan prayers.

This book is neither an exhaustive list of the challenges performers face nor the only way to pray for them. Rather, it is designed to be a guide and to encourage readers to draw closer