Discipleship and revitalisation

These days, whatever I am learning at Morling College just keeps comes alive in real life. For example, this week I am doing an assignment on Baptist identity, and the “Abundant Life” class talks about the topic of baptism, giving me more clarity on the topic from a Baptist perspective. There is also a project assignment which coincided in topic with the church’s big revitalisation process!

On Saturday, I attended the leaders’ retreat at church. We read a devotional about the first, second and third commandments. (This teaching is also available online on youtube)

https://youtu.be/xriOowiQFvU

We are given the reminder to worship God for who He is (because He is worthy), and not because of He will provide you with ultimate comfort (eg. a relationship with the person of your dreams)/ answer your heart’s desire for significance (eg. prestige, a certain kind of job). 

Coincidentally the Sunday Bible Study on the following day is on the book of Job, and I had been assigned to do the question on what can we learn out of James 5:11 “As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”

Sometimes we only see half of the gospel: we expect to get blessings but fail to see the need for hardship and perseverance in character building and for growth towards the likeness of Christ. We see the resurrection but forget the cross. We see grace and salvation but forget about discipline and judgment.

In the retreat, we learned a few very practical acronyms that can serve as daily reminders for a life in faith:

Think BIG

Bonding: strengthen relationships

Investing: life in God

Growing: in the body of Christ

3Cs

Christ: Disciples Making (to develop disciples)

Church: Grow in the Body of Christ

Community: To witness Christ in the community

3Ps of serving: priority, prayer, preparation

Priorities:

l   A professor took many pebble stones. Some big some small. He also got sand and water. If we put the biggest pebbles in first, can we fit more things in? Yes. Do the most important things first. When our priorities are wrong, ie. When we put the sand in first, then we can’t fit in the pebbles.

l   Priority: love God (prayer, bible reading, spiritual disciplines). Second: love others.

l   A book on spiritual disciplines, eg. Celebration of Discipline (屬靈操練禮讚) by Richard Foster.

l   Pastoring others, who’s pastoring us? God!

l   Quiet time, listen to God. It’s easy to become frustrated in ministry and burnout.

l   Why do we burnout if God is almighty? Who takes responsibility if we burnout? We often blame others for it, but it’s really our own responsibility. Do you know when you’re sick? If we’re tired, we need a rest. We need to know our limits. Quiet time helps us understand our limitations. We need to take responsibility for our own lives. When we have negative emotions, ie. when we’re angry we confess to the Lord that we are handing over our anger to God. If we really love God, it helps us prioritise our life according to God’s will. Leaders think discipleship is the priority, but lay people might think “pastors need to care for us.” How do pastors encourage people to be outward looking? We need to practice listening to God’s voice, so that we see God’s priority.

Prayer:

l   When we pray, God works. Prayer is more important than preparation. We can pray anywhere and everywhere. It’s easy to forget to pray though. Make prayer a habit. Capture the rhythm of our stage in life: eg. Single, married with young children, empty nest, etc. Often, we may need to multi-task, eg. Praying when we’re exercising.

Preparation:

l   God is the greatest so we have to prepare the best for Him. So, when we lead in any ministry task, we need preparation. Whole heart, whole mind, whole will. Experience takes time to accumulate. We need to build up foundations first, so that our ministry life can be more stable and enriching. Be a lifelong student of God. We learn the will of God from God.

The 2000 year hope

Been studying Psalm 8: When we gaze up at the moon and stars in heaven, we realise how insignificant we are. Yet, God loves us so much and entrust us with the responsibility of being stewards over creation. Yesterday, in the “Abundant Life” class (a course for nonbelievers and new believers, but church co-workers also participated to learn how to lead future classes), we explored various ways of telling the gospel to people, and one participant accepted Christ. There was a brief mention in today's church sermon about the six-day war and valley of dry bones. 

After I got home I listened to the Israel's national anthem "the Hope" and cried heavily for the Jewish people... All the answers had already been revealed 2000 years ago, yet they are still blind to it... as soon as they understand this truth, they will be in the right covenantal relationship with God again, and God will fulfil his promises. Really long to see the revival in Israel one day.

missions/missionaries part 2

I’ve been doing student observership at the Chinese Australian Baptist Church in West Ryde this year. There had been many missionaries speaking to us lately, and I also read an article recently written by Rev Ross Paterson. I am starting to sense the importance of a supportive sending church if we are to do missions. I also started to think about the definition of doing missions and missionaries. Although workers are needed everywhere, the Scriptures specifically mentions “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). So there seems to be two important components: cross-cultural and geographical, ie. Mingling with different people groups, a sending out to reach the unreached people abroad. I find that many Chinese churches don’t seem to grasp this concept. For example, in Taiwan, there is not much opportunity to get cross-cultural experiences in the first place, and people don’t hold a “global” perspective, so rapidly propagating churches are either forming into mega churches or planting branches rapidly, but not many missionaries are being formed in the process. In Western nations, there are some “immigrant” Chinese churches whose target population seem to be the immigrant Chinese. Some of these churches have the concept of planting churches, which is a good concept, but the problem lies with the geographical location/ distribution: there are already so many churches in Western nations, and these immigrant Chinese churches are still not able to send that many missionaries to unreached people groups. Sometimes a church may grow in numbers because of the movement of sheep from one church to another, not because of an increase in the number of new believers. So, I am pretty impressed that the mission statement for CABC-WR mentions spreading the gospel “to the ends of the earth”. But around late Wednesday night or midnight Thursday morning, a suspicious fire broke out in the high school where the Cantonese and English congregation gathers, so intercession is needed for the church currently.

There is this popular talk amongst the Chinese churches about how God is raising the Chinese to spread the gospel back to Jerusalem. My personal theological viewpoint is that if God really wants to do this thing, and the Chinese are not responding to the call, God can still use other people to accomplish his work. Analogous to how Saul was anointed by God to be king, but Saul became increasingly disobedient and got abandoned by God. And why even emphasise on the Chinese in particular? I think it is a cooperative effort by people of all nations. It is not easy to answer a call though: strong faith and great sacrifices have to be made in order to step into cross-cultural missions abroad.

This semester, I picked the subject “Baptist Distinctives” to find out more about the Baptist denomination, and whether there is a calling in this direction. Coincidentally, the pastor of the English congregation accidentally sent a church membership form. Initially I was very confused because I had no idea what the email was about, and when I asked the Mandarin congregation pastor she was equally confused then realised it was sent accidentally. Anyways, started my exploration into the prescribed textbook today, and was surprised that the following people had Baptist origins: William Carey (father of modern missions), John D. Rockefeller (the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history), Charles E. Fuller (a radio evangelist who founded the Fuller Seminary, the largest cross-denominational seminary in the world), Billy Graham, Martin Luther King Jr, and Rick Warren!