PASTOR SIMON ENG MESSAGE
The importance of communication
The first area I want to mention is about communication. I have traveled to many of our churches around the world and traveled to talk to many of our family leaders around the world as well. I want to encourage everyone of us right from the pastoral level and also to our team level where we serve in the life groups, care groups, family groups, etc.
Communication needs to be frequent
I would like to continue to encourage us to communicate as often as possible and as openly as possible with one another. Often time I find that when I talk to various leaders and members, there is a sense of a gap whereby our people don't hear enough and even within the leadership team there is insufficient heart to heart communication with one another. Sometimes I hear of concerns that are not communicated. Sometimes I hear about issues that are not openly sorted out and communicated as well.
And as a result over time, it may be harmful for our family. It may be harmful for the team. It will be harmful for the church. So I would really like to encourage every one of us, brothers and sisters, that you find a place and a point where you cans sit down together and communicate. Communicate as brothers and sisters. Communicate as family members.
It is essential to eliminate, therefore, all the negative things that may arise in our mind in our relationships as a result of poor communication, zero communication or insufficient communication.
I hope that we can all take note of this because it is going to help our family. It is going to help our leaders; it is going to help our churches if we openly share with one another.
[Hope Germany Festival photos]
Communication needs to be done in love
When we communicate with each other, try to communicate in love so that what we share is not out of spite or bitterness. We don't share out of disappointment. We do not share incorrectly.
The bible encourages us to share in love. And for the ones who are receiving the communication, let us be open to hear what the other person has to say to us. Sometimes we are shut off. Sometimes we don't hear what the other person wants to say and therefore nothing happens, nothing changes. I'd like to encourage us to continue to dwell on this topic of really improving our communication with one another.
Building friendship and relationship
The second area I would like to share about from my heart is about friendship and relationship building. Remember when we are in our core teams, our pastoral teams, we must be close friends with one another. We are not just serving through our work. If work is all that we are doing, then we are just like any other worker who has to do his job, but we are more than that. We are friends. We are family. And we want to be able to say, that in the years that we served together, we built some really good friendships.
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I have got some really good friends in my core team, in my pastoral team and in my church. I was encouraging the staff in our church office that though we are busy with our separate work, we are busy focusing on the type of work we have to do and we are intense about it; we are still a family serving together in the office. No matter what work we do, we have to find some time whereby we communicate and look at the friends we have made friends in the office. We can go to each other and say, hey you are my brother but you are also my friend.
Connecting with one another
It would great if we make some time to connect together even after work. I used to work in the corporate world and I have worked with different types of people and even in the secular world we sometimes have coffee time together. We are happy even to meet together as friends outside of the office. I want to remind us about friendship. I want to remind us about relationship building. Don't be just a busy bee working by yourself. We are connected together in the office and outside of the office. I hope that our family spirit can continue that way. That's very valuable.
Developing the spirit of excellence
The third and last thing that I want to is about quality and standards. Do you know that our God is an excellent God? When we get to heaven, everything will be excellent. God created the Garden of Eden excellent. But of course we realise that there are a lot of imperfections within ourselves. So I would like to continue to ask us to benchmark ourselves against the quality of God and heaven.
God desires us to be excellent people. In the work that we endeavour to do, we want to continue to improve the quality and the standard.
Some people may inspire you to be excellent. Some others may also challenge you to be excellent. But within ourselves we must benchmark ourselves; we must look at heaven because that is where we are preparing ourselves to be. Let's dedicate to the Lord an excellent offering of our life, an excellent offering of our whole self and the things that we do for the Lord. We glorify Him. We are not glorifying ourselves. So I want to encourage us by saying the quality, the standards must continually be a challenged within ourselves and that we want to improve because we want to give to God and excellent offering.
I want to dedicate my time and what I am doing to be an excellent work for the Lord, for I glorify Him.
So brothers and sister these are three aspects that I would like to communicate with you. As I travel and talk to our various people, I think that these three aspects will help our family, our churches; it will help us as individuals and it will help our movement as well. I look forward to sharing with you. I look forward to meeting you. I look forward to continuing to inspire you as God has inspired my life. I look forward to growing together as a movement and as a family of churches.
May God give you a wonderful month, a wonderful quarter. May God continue to empower you from above because what you are doing is supernatural work for the Kingdom of God. God bless you. Amen.
Pastor Simon Eng
President of HIM
www.byhim.org
