HOPE CHURCH SINGAPORE: ALPHA CONFERENCE 2016

For a long time, Madam Tan Soon Eng could walk only with the support of a crutch. Every step she took was painful. But on the first night of the Alpha Conference (28-29 May), organised by Hope Church Singapore, a miracle happened. Madam Tan was at the conference’s healing service conducted by guest speaker Evangelist Daniel Kolenda. Evangelist Kolenda is President and Chief Executive Officer of Christ for All Nations, which holds evangelistic campaigns around the world. After Evangelist Kolenda prayed for all who needed healing, Madam Tan was able to walk a few steps without her crutch! 

The miracle took place on the Singapore Indoor Stadium stage. The 4000-strong audience, eyes glued to Madam Tan, erupted in thunderous applause. Madam Tan’s son had accompanied her onstage. Choking back his tears, he exclaimed, “An even greater miracle is that I’ve been praying for her salvation for years, and tonight…she has finally accepted Jesus as her Lord and Saviour! Praise God!”



Over at the Alpha Kids Conference, the children had a good time seeking God and having fun with one another. Australian ministers Brendon and Cathie Clancy engaged the children with dance, song and laughter. The Clancys are co-founders of Overflow Kids, a ministry that produces Christian media resources and programmes for children. The little ones also enjoyed wearing costumes made by a team of adults in the Filipino congregation. Some refused to to take the costumes off even after the conference had ended!



Alpha Conference closed with a moving celebration of Hope Church Singapore’s 25th anniversary. The church remembered God’s faithfulness all these years through testimonies, performances and a dazzling candlelight display. The best days have yet to come. Hope Church Singapore looks forward to greater things that God is going to do!

Written by Ming Xi

HIM BANGKOK BIBLE CONFERENCE

H.I.M. Bangkok churches organised the first H.I.M. Bangkok Bible Conference (HBC#1) on March 19th – 20th, 2016. There were 299 church members from five H.I.M. Bangkok churches attended the conference at Mahachon church’s meeting hall. 



Pastor Denis Lu taught key Scripture passages to provide the guideline and safeguard for the churches that are interested in living in the life and power of the Holy Spirit. One of the key points is “the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is strongly connected to fulfilling the Great Commission. It is not meant to entertain or make Christians feel good.” He also urged the churches to go back to the absolute standard of God’s Word as our final authority of what we do or don’t do in our church life.



In this conference, fourteen new believers were water baptized by Pastor Yongyut Wiraponsawan and Pastor Prayuth Sariman.

Written by Tepkanya Promkatkeaw, HIM Bangkok

HOPE BANDUNG 10TH ANNIVERSARY

Hope Bandung started from one good seed that desired to see her family fulfill this vision of the Great Commission together with her. This sincere and simple desire was what brought Vini to take the step to build Hope Bandung. Eleven years ago, she took the step and then started to share about God's vision faithfully. Since the first year, Hope Bandung has been blessed by Ps. Kwong Lie and Ps. Swee Min. They have really committed themselves to build us, to shepherd us, to care for us, and also to rebuke us when we are wrong. We have also been blessed by Hope Johor Bahru. They continue to be both an example and 'Big Sister' to us in this beautiful family of God. 

This year we celebrated 10 years of God's faithfulness in our journey thus fat. By faith, as a church, we chose the theme UNSTOPPABLE because we desire to be an unstoppable church that will continue to move forward to fulfill His Great Commission and be a blessing in Bandung, Indonesia, and all over the world.



Our celebration began with a video about the journey of Hope Bandung from the beginning. It reminded us of how everything started from just one seed that was willing to die to build God’s church. Then one by one, a new person came over the years and also made a commitment to help build His church in Bandung.

We then listened to two special testimonies. The first was from sister Vini. She shared about how things began and also how she experienced many adventures with God throughout the last 10 years. The second testimony was from another sister who shared how God had touched and changed her so that she could forgive people from her past who had once rejected her. In previous years, during our anniversary celebration, all of the leaders would represent the members to blow out a candle on a cake.



This year we did something different. Every person that was present held a candle. Starting with the leaders, we passed the fire to the person next to us as a symbol of how we are one team and together we have made one commitment to build Hope Bandung with our Unstoppable God. Our celebration ended with some fun activities that we appropriately named, UNSTOPPABLE GAMES. It was a series of games in which once you start, you must finish all of the games until the end to gain the reward. These games reminded every one that in this journey and calling there is NO TURNING BACK and we need to FINISH THE RACE.

May we be faithful together to finish this race until the end. Unstoppable!

HOPE PERTH: MOTHER'S DAY SERVICE

Hope Perth was honoured to have Pastor Lai Ling from Hope Brisbane visit in May, 2016. Pastor Lai Ling held a well-attended and challenging prophetic workshop, which was conducted to share insight into hearing God's voice and His heart of compassion for everyone.



Pastor Lai Ling  also preached at our special Mother's Day service, in which all the mothers were honoured with gifts and an amusing game was held with their children. The working professional unit also prepared an entertaining song and dance presentation. A scrumptious lunch was also prepared by Raul and his team of helpers, as the fellowship and laughs continued after the service.

HIM CHURCH PLANTING STORIES: HOPE MYANMAR (PS SORADEJ M)

  

Hi, I am Soradej from Hope Philippines. I thank God for the privilege to do mission in Myanmar again. Why? Because in the past I also oversee Myanmar and pioneer churches there with the local people and with my friend. For more than 10 years I didn’t go to Myanmar because I moved to Philippines. But praise God – this happened only just last week. I went there for their camp, I could see that more people have come to the Lord! When we first started, it was only just 1 church, but now there are 8 churches altogether! 

They are praising God and studying the Word of God together. I asked the leaders to send me the statistics, and we found out that there are 149 adults and more than 30 kids there. Amazingly, God really touched the people there. They really focus and pay attention to the Word of God. I could see that the leaders really have a heart for God to fulfill the Great Commission by planting churches and helping the people there to know God more.

God opened doors in Myanmar, including Yangon (Myanmar’s old capital) where our camp was held, and now we have churches in many cities all over Myanmar. More people are coming to the Lord – the young, the old, and even the business people. This is the move of the Spirit in Myanmar and guides us to joy. In the next few months I will go to Myanmar again to build up and train the leaders of H.I.M. churches in Thailand together with Pastor Chuchart. We will support them in spiritually and in everything they need, especially training so that we can have more local people rising up to serve God together.

Thank God for this privilege and His blessing! In fact, in this camp, we not only taught on training the leaders, we also taught on “Vision and Philosophy”. Pastor Prayuth trained them on how to worship, how to lead praise and worship sessions, how to use music, and how to sing to the Lord. Everyone enjoyed the teaching and learned more about praise and worship. Now they are able to move on to the spiritual realm more! Even though they came from a religious background that focus more on law, but now they have freedom to praise and worship God, and live out lives of the Fruit of the Spirit! The life of Christ increases in their lives. They are able to raise up more people too. People are amazed at how their lives have changed.

Miracles are happening there, not just physical healing, but the Holy Spirit also moves in different dimension and in different areas of their lives too, even in the business field. Another thing that I am amazed by is their business! The leaders are able to do some business that I cannot even imagine. For example, they sell computerized embroidery machines. These machines are very costly, but they are able to make a market out of it there, because God blessed them. Our God is faithful and He supplies and provides everything that they need. That is why the work in Myanmar can continue to grow and enlarge more. Praise God!

HOPE OCEANIA SCHOOL OF LEADERSHIP (HOSOL)

Hope Ministries Australia initiated its first Hope Oceania School of Leadership (HOSOL). The School ran over two consecutive weeks from 23rd November to 4th December, 2015 under the teaching of experienced church leaders and pastors. The key teachers were Ps Wilson, Ps Lai Ling, Ps Brendan, Ps Joshua, Ps Torch, Ps Lance and other senior leaders. 

Great care and preparation was undertaken throughout the training to ensure students were equipped and empowered with key leadership aspects. Ultimately, this is in hope of the students becoming even more effective leaders in their respective churches. The course included a large variety of reasonably intense subjects that also required necessary devotional time to study deeper into lessons whether in or out of the school.

These courses included; Inspirational Leadership, Foundational Bible Interpretation and Study, Church Growth, Art of Public Speaking and Sermon Delivery, Philosophy of Ministry, and Team Dynamics. The course also included the Hope Leadership Conference and Hope Church Conference. Veteran Christian leaders, Ps Andrew Evans and Ps Gordon Moore were the keynote speakers and they shared their insights and experiences. The students were deeply inspired and challenged.

Students were stretched physically, mentally, and spiritually but nevertheless joyful memories flowed endlessly on a daily basis. Throughout the course, students enjoyed fellowship-filled meals with the leaders - many memories and connections were made. At the same time, God’s presence filled the school with blessed testimonies and new beginnings for a new season for each and every person.

Written by Daniel Lim, Hope Church Brisbane

HIM THAILAND CAMP IN CHIANG MAI

The annual HIM Thailand Camp was held in the cosy grounds of HIM Chiangmai church on 19-22 May, 2016 . About 1,700 Christians from HIM churches all over Thailand came to the camp with great excitement and anticipation. They packed the auditorium in HIM Chiangmai but it was even more exciting to see their enthusiastic response to the preaching and teaching. 

This year the topic was on “Kingdom” with five speakers led by Pastor Simon Eng, President of HIM. The other speakers were the leaders of HIM Thailand, consisting of Pastor James Loke, Pastor Soradej Meesaengtham, Pastor Chuchart Chaisombat, and Pastor Chaiyapreuk Piwruangnont. Their teachings stirred up camp members’ hearts to persistently spread the kingdom of God beyond the four walls of the church. We can pray for the sick and do signs and wonders outside the church to share the gospel of the kingdom of God in this world.

The time to share about the kingdom is now, not when Jesus comes back to set up His Kingdom on this earth. As a result, many responded to take up leadership responsibility and start new groups within Thailand and outside Thailand as well.

We also had a testimony from Pukluk, a popular actress who is a Christian from another church. The testimony inspired many to live for Christ in their workplaces. Interestingly, Pukluk received the award for Thai best actress a few days right after the camp finished.