Taking a cue from an advertising slogan

Taking a cue from an advertising slogan

When it comes to serving the community, Christians need to step out by faith and "JUST DO IT", as one advertising slogan says. We can start engaging wider society at the place where God has placed us in and not just wait around for all the planning and working out of all the details before making the first move.

This is the sum total of the messages Rev. Barry Boucher brought to participants at the two-day National Church Conference themed "Transformation - Leading with Conviction and Creativity in Times of Crisis".

Organised by NECF Malaysia and attended by over 200 participants, Rev. Boucher's messages were a call to the Malaysian Church to seize and act on the NECF nation-building agenda - Transforming the Nation Through the Local Church.

Rev. Boucher has many years of working experience in community transformation through Mission Ottawa, which he helped to establish in Canada, a network where pastors in Ottawa gather regularly for fellowship, prayer support and combined ministry to the community.

Personal Transformation First

He shared that before we even start to pray and work towards the transformation of community and society, God needs to firstntransform our lives and attitudes in terms of our worldview and outlook to make us effective instruments.

Before Nehemiah started to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, he engaged in a prayer of transformation that set him out for the challenging task ahead.

Next, Nehemiah engaged himself in authentic relationships where he was able to build trust and confidence in the people he worked with. He was thus able to mobilise the people to complete the massive building project in 52 days. This is a model for us; we need to form authentic relationships with our co-labourers in the Lord.

In his task, Nehemiah displayed intentional mission by focusing on building the walls of Jerusalem despite ridicule and opposition from various parties. Similarly, the Church in Malaysia must have an intentional mission; however, the focus must not be just evangelism but forming authentic discipleships that empowers our congregations to impact that part of society where pastors or lay-leaders cannot reach.

The challenge thrown to the Church is: How are we to mobilise our churches towards this end? Are we intentional or serious enough with 'biblical discipleship' or just discipleship for its own sake?

During the conference, participants also attended workshops on social works ministries such as drug rehabilitation centres, a dialysis centre and children's welfare homes. There were nine workshops and 10 display booths which provide insights and information on how churches may begin to do social ministries within their communities.

The workshops were an eye-opener for the participants on why and how social ministries ought to be done and an encouragement to them that they could do it. Now, that's one slogan we can adopt - "You can do it!"

From Conversion to Discipleship to Community Transformation

Prior to the conference, Rev. Boucher shared with NECF staff on the importance of developing disciples that will lead to community transformation.

Most of our programmes are centred on growing our congregations in terms of numbers. But have we been so focused on growing big that we have neglected the part about growing deep?

We all know Jesus' charge to "Go and make disciples of all nations". Truth is, we do better in making converts than making disciples, simply because the latter requires effort and time for care and follow up, and we just can't afford those. Why? Because we are busy with making more converts!

If we are to make disciples, we need to build relationships, he said, pointing to Jesus who gave us a relational model where His life and ministry revolved around relationships with people.

Rev. Boucher shared an incident in his church where the leadership re-looked at all the church's programmes and discarded those that were not contributing to making disciples. There were too many church meetings but few relationship-building opportunities that led to disciple making.

One of the decisions the leadership made was giving the church staff additional holidays so that they could have more time with their families. For example, during summer when the schools have their long break, they get an additional day off during the week. For Christmas, they get two weeks paid holiday and for Easter, it's a week off.

Dare any of our churches make such a radical move?

Relationships that lead to discipleship that leads to action and transformation - something for Malaysian churches to chew over.