Church Theme
COS Theme Message for 2012
TOWARDS A COMPASSIONATE AND GRACIOUS CHURCH
We had the theme “Be Transformed to please God” for the last two years. The objectives of this theme is to encourage our members to renew their minds and live out a transformed life full of the fruit of the Spirit which is pleasing unto our Almighty God. Based on certain feedbacks and from the survey of the spiritual condition of our members, the leadership is happy to note that there were improvements in the area of prayer and daily devotions of our members. These are good signs as these daily activities will bring members closer to God. Although our Lord is leading the church into a new theme, the leadership will encourage brothers and sisters to continue to have intimate devotions with our Lord. As we draw closer to God, we will enjoy abundant lives as God has promised and we will bear more fruits. May our prayer be like the hymn “Just A Closer Walk With Thee, Grant It, Jesus, Is My Plea.”
However, one area of concern from the survey is in the area of personal evangelism. This aspect has not seen any significant improvement.Although certain Sunday services are doing quite well, there is much room for improvement. The Parents Day Outreach, the Mid Autumn Festival Outreach, D24 event and the Alpha programme have yielded very good results. However, over the last two years, there has not been any significant growth in the Sunday attendance. This could be due to two reasons. One is that not many new members have been added to our church and two, it may perhaps be due to attrition, ie, our church back doors are too opened such that members are leaving our church for one reason or other.
As the leadership sought the Lord for a new vision and direction for the church, the Lord led the leadership to Psalm 103:8, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” From this verse, the leadership prayed and deliberated on this and in total agreement, the new theme has been crafted as follows: “TOWARDS A COMPASSIONATE AND GRACIOUS CHURCH”
COMPASSIONATE
In the gospels, Jesus felt the need of all classes of people. His love and compassion are a challenge to each of us.
1. He feels compassion for the scattered – Matt 9:36; 15:32
2. He feels compassion for the sinning – Mark 5:1-20; Mark 16:7
3. He feels compassion for the sick – Matt 14:14; 20:30-34; Mark 1:40-45
4. He feels compassion for the suffering – Luke 7:11-13
5. He feels compassion for the seeking – Mark 10:17-22
Jesus, even though He knew all their faults, did not let that get in the way of His compassion and expression of love. He was able to look at these people and see their deepest need. He loved them at the deepest level of His being. As a result, He was never impatient with them or offended by their needs.
How do we see people? We often base our evaluation of a person on What we see or hear. What we need to learn is to look past a person’s exterior and see them as they really are. We must see their needs and then express compassion on them. Jesus wanted His disciples to become involved in the ministry of showing compassion to others. He wanted them to be moved by the needs of others, and in turn compelled to do something about those needs.
Our church would like to see more and more of our brothers and sisters having this kind of compassion towards our friends and relatives who have yet to come to the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of the ways is to continue to organise events like the Parents Day Outreach, Mid Autumn Outreach, D24 and Alpha programmes. These events will allow our members to bring their unsaved friends and relatives to hear the Gospel. The leadership will look into other Gospel events on a service-wide or church-wide basis, to give our members the opportunities to be involved.
One other way the leadership will do in the new year is to create many opportunities for our brothers and sisters to share the gospel in a friendly environment. The leadership will set up more interest groups in our church. We have brothers and sisters already involving in sports and games and other interest groups where they are able to invite their friends and relatives to participate. Activities like football, cooking classes, golf, singing and many others have attracted quite a number of people. So we want to expand these and create other interest groups by adopting this strategy of “By All Means Save Some.”
When these interest groups meet there are opportunities for bonding and friendship evangelism. In order to make this a success, the leadership would encourage those who want to be involved in setting up any interest group, to come forward and discuss their interest with the leaders of each of the Sunday Services. The leadership hope that through these interest groups the bonding amongst brothers and sisters will become stronger with a greater sense of belonging to our church, and brothers and sisters will use these groups to invite their unsaved friends and relatives to participate in a friendlier environment.
The leadership also want to encourage brothers and sisters to have a heart of compassion for those in their circles of influence - classmates, colleagues, people in the marketplace, relatives and neighbours. To strengthen this Evangelism thrust, a new Ministry, the Evangelism Ministry will be set up in the new year. This Ministry will help to organise training, setting up of interest groups and monitor the evangelistic activities in our church. Let us all be filled with a heart of compassion for the needs of others in our church, in our schools, in our homes and in our community.
Having brought our friends and relatives to our church, how then should our church environment be? Should we create a very friendly, courteous and gracious church? The leadership believe that we as brothers and sisters should live a Christ-like life as shown in Psalm 103:8, the attributes of God as was reflected in the life of Christ.
GRACIOUS – Luke 6:37-38
Gracious living is characterized by being non-judgemental, by acceptance of others, by forgiveness, and by giving of oneself to others. The description given here by Jesus of gracious living sounds similar to what Paul said about love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. The Christian who lives graciously does not go about looking for faults in others or trying to analyze their motives. Instead, they try to think the best of others, say the best about others, and do their best for others instead of making rash judgments. The best thing we can do is to accept people as they are and not try to analyze them and judge them. Often, things are not as they seem to us.
Jesus says that if we are not judgmental , then others will not judge us. If we are accepting, then others will accept us. If we are forgiving towards others, then they will forgive us. If we give of ourselves to others, then they will give back in kind. That which we receive from others will be in proportion to what we give them, and if we live graciously, the blessings we receive will add up to more than we can hold! Indeed, it is a divine law that our blessing will be consistent with our graciousness!
SLOW TO ANGER – James 1:19-20
Anger, uncontrolled anger, is one of the most destructive forces around. Anger channelled in the wrong way leads to so much hurt, damage, pain and agony – both for the person with the anger and for those they vent their anger upon. In the book of James, writing to Christians who have been persecuted for their faith (1:1) James says, “be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” James 1:19
James would not argue with the idea that anger is a God-given feeling and therefore is not always evil. But James is careful to point out that what we do with our anger makes all the difference. It is not wrong to be angry – but how we express our anger is crucial. Paul wrote, “In your anger do not sin.” (Eph 4:26). Anger is natural, but be angry in the right way or else you are sinning. We not only need to be angry in the right way but we also need to be angry about the right things. Jesus never was angry when something was done against Him. For instance, during His trial, one of the most unjust trials in the history of the world, He never said a word. This tell us our anger should never be focused on ourselves and on how we have been treated or mistreated. Jesus became angry when He saw indifference to human suffering (Mark 3:1-6) . and when He saw thehonour of God being abused. (Mark 11:15-17).
ABOUNDING IN LOVE – 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
When we abound in love for one another and all people, we abandon any negative thoughts, and focus on what is good and true and plentiful and never-ending: producing much fruit. If we abound in love, we will help each other in our service to others in Christ’s name, and further that we will also produce fruit for the Lord in that many people will be brought to the love of the Lord through our loving action; and that’s because the Lord first loved us and continues to pour out love through us.
It is time for us to stop making excuses and work as hard as we can to weed out the negativity in our thoughts. Let us focus our hearts and minds on those things that are excellent or praiseworthy.The Lord will bring peace to our hearts and our lives, and we will affect the world in a positive way. Don’t hang on to your grudges and your hurts and let it feed your thoughts of negativity. Some people live for conflict. Some people live to complain. They go on living the same way. They don’t want to change. They are comfortable with complaining. They don’t want to expend the necessary energy to change. We have to start realizing that sometimes we put barriers between each other on a Sunday as we sit in a Sunday Service next to someone who is not related to us; those barriers have to come down before we can truthfully say we are reaching out in this world with the love of Christ. So brothers and sisters, let us come together to forge a real change in our church. Let us work together towards a more graciousand loving church. Let us live a life full of the fruit of the spirit. This will bear the Christ likeness in us. This will help to make people wanting to belong to our church where Christ is revealed and Christ is high andlifted up.
Life Group Ministry
To reinforce the above, Life Groups will be using the Bible study material on the Gospel Book of Matthew. The leadership hopes that by using this Gospel book, brothers and sisters will be able to learn more of the life of Jesus. So brothers and sisters, in the new year, let us all resolve to work towards building a Compassionate and Gracious Church for the Gloryof our Almighty God.
Foong Daw Ching
Chairman
Elder Board
January 2012
