Reach for the nations

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Mission Training - Session #1
What was shared:

The importance of having a common vision – Mission

The essential ingredient of LOVE as a motivation for missions. 4 kinds of love that people experience – Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity. What I found most interesting was the aspect on Friendship love [Idea from - The 4 Loves by CS Lewis]. The book described this kind of love as being unnatural, for it doesn’t come about ‘naturally’ in the sense that unlike Eros-love where you look then suddenly your heart beats faster, your palms go sweaty, the grass is greener and the sky is bluer. In fact it seems at first, passion-less, born out of a common interest, simply a fact binding the minds of two people that excludes the rest when the two decides that they are friends. It could be anything, a love of ping pong, the same kind of music, or computer games. However, don’t misunderstand, though it excludes, it is not exclusive. In fact as more people join the friendship, the love gets enhanced. Unlike people in Eros-relationships where the exclusivity is jealously guarded, and with good cause, the friendship-love gets enhanced when more join the group.
For example, Jonathan and Daniel Yan are friends, with friendship built on the common cause of “COSB”, and they relate to each other as ministry peers. Now, suddenly Daniel Yan brings Daniel Fung into this circle of friendship. Does this mean that Daniel Y now has less love for Jonathan because he has to spread his love out to accommodate Daniel Fung? No, in fact the relationship becomes richer now that Daniel Fung is in the picture. Why? Because, Dan F brings out the nurturing, big brotherly, lame side of Dan Y that JW will never draw out, this comes simply from the fact that Dan F is younger and he’ll laugh at lame jokes. So if Daniel F suddenly gets cut off from that circle because he has to go overseas, the big brotherly, lame part of Daniel Yan gets lost.

So bringing all that back to our team, each person brings something unique to this group as a whole and every single one is important. Most, if not all of us, are already friends and our common cause – Christ which should ideally be sufficient to pull us through anything. However, I think we want to establish an even more focused purpose of working together in this group, make it more tangible and relevant, because as we will be working together on an even closer proximity and there will definitely be friction. So practically speaking, we want to establish this common focus for why we do what we are doing and for when things get rough.

That brought us to the question of – Why exactly do Christians go on mission trips?

Most of us cite the bible and rightly so. If we believe the bible to be the word of God, we cannot help but go. Without the Bible, World Evangelization would be “an impossible and a senseless endeavour”. It is the Bible that lays the responsibility on us to evangelize the world. It gives us the “news” to proclaim, tells us how to proclaim it and the promises of power that come with it when we go in obedience. In fact the whole bible revolves around this missionary call. Right from the beginning – Creation, to the call of Abraham, to the coming of Christ and finally when Christ comes again. It is the grand story and design of God to involve us in this work of sharing the news of salvation to those that are lost even to the ends of the earth – so we are getting involved.

What exactly is the vision and purpose of THIS team to Cambodia?
What is YOUR vision and purpose in this trip?

Roles and Responsibilities

With much consideration of individual strengths and talents, specific roles have been assigned to each of you, this list means that you’re mainly in-charge of that certain area, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to do anything else. In fact everyone is involved in everything, just that the in-charge will drive it and tell everyone else what to do.

Overall I/C (JW)
Logistics & Finance (Isaiah)
Admin & Co-ordination (Vyn)
Prayer & First-Aid (Su Jun)
Devotion – Preparation of Materials (Elizabeth & Vyn)
Worship – Musicians (Joel)
Creative – Song & Drama Preparation (Shalom & Rachel)
Publicity (Daryl)
Children Program (Daniel F & Nathaniel)
Youth Program (Daniel Y)

T-Shirt - Black Shirt with Red heart in front and Jigsaw Pieces behind.

[Excerpts from William Carey & the Missionary Vision]

Traditionally, at least in evangelical circles it is a word [missions] normally associated with the activities of our Lord’s early disciples as they attempted to begin the work of going ‘into all the world to preach the gospel’. Today it is used to cover just about anything that is done by Christians in any other country other than their own. This, we are persuaded, is at best regrettable; at worst it is mischievous. How so? Because the most inevitable tendency of this outlook is for the preaching of the gospel to end up taking second place to humanitarian concern.

It is not that we are against the good being done by Christians all over the world… It is that we are convinced that the work of the church is essentially something else. It is almost as an aside, by accident, that she finds herself involved in these other matters. She is commissioned to fulfill another work; a work that no one else is either interested in, or qualified to perform: the preaching of the gospel to needy sinners that they might be properly prepared for an everlasting state. It is a question of priority. It may even be a question of mandate. This is what she is uniquely called upon to do and all else must be subservient to it.

[About William Carey] He was not unconcerned about the social, educational, and environmental needs of those to whom he ministered. But we are persuaded that all these interests and concerns were subservient to this greater work of proclaiming the gospel.

vyn @ 10:26 AM

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THE BOSS: GOD (infinity)
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Isaiah.Das (26)
Jonathan.Wong (26)
Daniel.Yan (26)
Joel.Chin (23)
Deborah Ng (23)
Daryl.Ong (19)
Shalom.Fung (17)
Rachel.Wong (17)
Elizabeth.Lee (17)
Nathaniel.Lee (16)
Daniel.Fung (16)

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Projected Timeline

1 Nov - Session 2 & Flyer Distribution
8 Nov - Session 3 & PT
15 Nov - Session 4
22 Nov - Prayer/Prep/PT
25 Nov - Mission talk
29 Nov - Final Prep/Prayer

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