ending Conversations gracefully

Last night, I talked with Andrew who was back for a week from Seoul, Korea. First thought in my mind was, "You're korean? I thought you were chinese...". Just goes to show you that even asians can't tell what ethnicity other asians are. So all you white folk, don't feel so bad!

We got talking about the Korean church, the trappings of asian and american culture, how pastors and clergy of the asian churches tend to be 'stratified' meaning that there is a very real sense of a pastor is 'up here' and the congregation is 'down here'. This causes a lot of pastors to have 'secret' sins that are never found out, because it would 'shame' them in their congregation, because the congregation expects them to be above reproach. On the flip side, from what I have seen, the asian churches on a whole have a prayer life that few american churches can rival in intensity and duration (duration meaning not how long you can pray, but how long the prayer vigils keep going).

How do you end conversations gracefully? If you're talking to someone, and notice out of the corner of your eye that someone that you need to talk to is walking by, looking like they are going to be leaving the place, do you interrupt your conversation abruptly, and say, "I have to talk to this person, so could you hold on?" Seems rude, especially if the new conversation is a semi-lengthy one, but I can't think of another way around it.

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