GLOBAL CONFERENCE IN SINGAPORE - HARVEST

Elders’ address 

On 16-19 July 2013, various leaders of the HIM global family of churches from different parts of the world gathered for a time of learning from the word of God, rejuvenating in the Lord’s presence and growing in fellowship in the Global Conference (GC) held in Singapore. The theme of the GC was Harvest. Pastor Simon Eng, the president and elder of HIM gave his opening address to the crowd, giving thanks to God for what He is doing in the different churches all over the HIM movement. He also gave a review of what God has been doing in our movement till date and updated on the key progress and initiatives which are as follows:

Missions:

• Number of nations with HIM churches/missions spots : 42 
• Number of HIM missions spots all over the world: 328 

Maturity:

• School of leadership – to begin in Jan 2014 and leadership training will last for four weeks. Interested leaders can sign up for whole or part of the training as it may be difficult for all leaders to congregate in one locality for training due to commitments in work, family or cost considerations. The aim is to train the key leaders in HIM to be trainers so that they can be equipped and can train others in their region in the different parts of the world in the future. 

• The elders and regional pastors are continuously being trained and equipped to upgrade themselves and to bring new development to the movement. Recently, they went to the Exponential Conference in the US to learn from pastors and leaders of larger church planting movements and they had to opportunity to network with them. 

• Potential regional pastors in the movement will be trained and raised up to take care of a geographical scope consisting of communities of people in more than one nation. 

Ministries: 

• Ministries networking and development – Pastor Simon encouraged the sharing of ministry ideas or skills among the different HIM churches. Interest groups (community, worship, intercession, counseling and current/future church planters) are also set up for ministries networking, development and learning from one another in the movement. 

• NextGen leadership training – He also encouraged the pastors and leaders from the different churches in the movement to build up the next generation leaders and to encourage them to come together during GC, to be trained and to network with one another. 

Pastor Simon concluded his address by emphasizing that missions continues to be the DNA of HIM movement. As a movement, we will always be embarking on advancing missions. The Elders and the Regional Pastors are looking into different ways of planting churches and exploring ways on how we can be more effective in our church planting effort all over the world. These ways include special projects done on the missions front to meet the holistic needs of the people in the less developed nations as well as to help to sustain some local believers financially so that they can be released to do the work of the Lord. Possible examples of such projects include micro-financing (e.g. to set up chicken and goat farming businesses), medical missions as well as children’s programs. 

Pastor Wilson, HIM Elder and Founding Pastor and Senior Pastor of Hope Brisbane, shared on the uniqueness of HIM because though we consist of many churches all over the world, we are one family. He shared from 1 Cor 12 that the churches in HIM is like a body made up of many parts, but one body and one family in Christ. Thus, we are interdependent and related to each other, we need one another and we ought to support one another. As different parts of the same family with the same vision, we function together to fulfill the Great Commission!

Some key lessons from the GC teachings 

The speakers of this GC from our HIM movement were Pastor Simon Eng, Pastor Wilson Lim, Pastor Denis Lu and Pastor Jeff Chong. There were also two invited speakers for the GC, namely Pastor Rick Seaward (founding pastor and Apostolic Overseer of Victory Family Centre in Singapore) and Mr Peter Chao (Founder – President of Eagles Communications). 

Key points: 

The Church is called to a global harvest 

God’s activities throughout history have been driven by His heart cry for a global harvest. His heart is for the people of all nations who are created by Him, who are fallen and lost, and need to be reconciled to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. We, as the church of Christ, is being sent and mobilized for the plentiful harvest out there. (Matt 9:37-38) “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. (John 4:34-35) 

Spiritual-Economic problem in Christianity today 

The demand for the true gospel all over the world is extremely great as there is a serious spiritual need in people’s lives out there. Yet there is a problem of the spread of different false gospels which draws people away from the life-giving truth of God. There are three false gospels which are prevalent in Christendom today, namely the gospel of consumerism, the prosperity gospel and the social gospel. 

The teachers of the gospel of consumerism present Jesus as a commodity and teach that Jesus is here to meet the needs of Christ believers, to heal them, to bless them etc. The false teachers shape Jesus to suit the crowd so as to attract the people to come to the church week after week. Christians who subscribe and buy in to the gospel of consumerism are like consumers. In order to increase the “market share” of the church, the church leaders who are the providers of the gospel of consumerism try to find out the “consumer” preferences through surveys in order to cater to the needs of the Christian-consumer congregation. The gospel of consumerism is powerless to transform lives but it appeals to many false disciples of Christ who are just seeking the God they want. 

“The turning point in our lives is when we stop seeking the God we want and start seeking the God who is.” - Patrick Morley 

The prosperity gospel is all about health, wealth and happiness. Financial blessing is believed to be the will of God for Christ believers and it can be obtained through confessing biblical scriptures on God’s promises to grant them prosperity in life positively and having faith in those promises. Churches who are into the prosperity gospel believe that if someone is poor, it is his own fault as he fails to confess the promises of God for prosperity with faith. The underlying assumption of the prosperity gospel is that God wants His people to be happy. However, the pursuit of happiness is not biblical. It is the pursuit of joy and Christ that we are called to. 

Matt 16:26 “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” 

“God does not prosper a man’s business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel.” – John Piper 

The social gospel is about the application of Christian ethics to social problem. The emphasis of such a gospel is on social justice to alleviate poverty, crime, alcohol and health problems. Teachers of this social gospel believe and advocate that Jesus will come back when there are no more social ills. However, even though Jesus said that we as Christ followers are the salt of the earth and light of the world, if we are not bringing people to reconcile to God through Christ, it is no use even if we do a lot of good works. The trend in Christianity today is that many churches in the world have failed to understand their Great Commission mandate. Churches are paying lip service to the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20), leading to the tragic normalcy of the Great Omission. 

Solutions: The first solution to the spiritual-economic problem is to raise up labourers for the harvest through a return to learning Jesus’ model of winning souls. True Christ followers need to personally follow Jesus, not just in words but also in actions. When we walk with Jesus closely as His disciples, he will MAKE us “fishers of men”. We will be changed and be a change agent as we reach out to the lost. Secondly, we need to return to praying earnestly to the Lord of the harvest (Matt 9:37-38). Finally, we need to return to a fervent commitment to the Great Commission.

Harvest in the marketplace 

There are various challenges in reaching out to the people and reaping a harvest in the marketplace of today’s world due to the effects of globalization, pluralism, postmodernism etc. In order to reach the people in the marketplace, we as Christ’s followers ought to embody the message of Christ to others, to allow them to see the proclaiming of Christ being lived out in our lives. It is also important for us to earn the right to be heard through competence and care. When we meet up with people that we want to reach out to, we should value-add to them and also allow the love of Christ to flow from us to touch their hearts. If we want to reap a harvest, we need to keep sowing seeds of the gospel. The reaping will usually come later as we trust in the power of the gospel which leads to transformation of lives. 

Sowing & reaping the harvest 

Sowing the seed of the gospel is required before reaping the harvest. Sowing is done through intentional and strategic witnessing and sharing of testimony, through good works, with the “man of peace”, in prayer and is also done supernaturally through signs and wonders. It is important to note that reaping is done in season, against the wind, with anointed gifting and by building healthy churches. (John 4:34-38; John 20:21) 

From Heb 11:23-27, we can learn that the leaders that God use to sow and reap the harvest are those who 1) know their identity (v24), 2) accept their responsibility (v25), 3) set priority (v24-26) by choosing the purposes of God over what the world values (popularity, pleasures and possessions) and 4) focus on eternity (v27). 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, as a movement, we shall work for harvest by: 

• Keeping in mind that missions is our DNA; understanding that we are a family of churches in different parts of the world that function as one body with many parts to advance missions and we are being sent by God to reap the plentiful global harvest out there together; 

• Continuously exploring different ways in which we can be more effective in our church planting effort, sowing the seed of the gospel and reaping the harvest all over the world through the power of the Holy Spirit; 

• Focusing on making true disciples of Christ, raising them up and training them to be labourers and leaders for the harvest who personally follow Jesus, live out and teach the true gospel of Christ, pray earnestly for the harvest and return to a fervent commitment to the Great Commission. 

Written by Karen Wong (HIM Ministries Dept)