My 4 Years in Faith and Lundu

My 4 Years in Faith and Lundu

My Joy and Your Joy                                                                                                    

Praise the Lord for God in the person of Jesus has sustained and empowered His church, Faith Methodist for 20 years now. It is my joy and privilege to celebrate the 20^{t h} Anniversary with you all in writings like this.  It is such a joy because you really move forward through thick and thin.  A lot of you decide to obey Jesus and made hard decisions paid the price to make a difference for Him.  Consequently, you reach where you are today.  I also believe you celebrate with joy for the same reason.

I would like to take this precious opportunity to recall my 4 years with you and share how Jesus had used us as His disciples at Hui Sing Garden and Lundu.  If there is anything that we can boast for all these achievements, it was Christ Jesus who empowered us to do it. 

Faith Methodist Church

As a young and energetic pastor, I was all ready to obey Jesus in this church.  I served in Faith from 1998 to 2001.  I would do anything to serve Christ, my Lord.  During my stint of four years in this church, these few exciting ministries happened in God’s timing.  As it was His timing, I attributed to His empowerment behind all these.

72 Disciples From Trinity Methodist Church

FMC was a newly formed church then.  It was formed as a result of transferring 72 disciples of Jesus from Trinity Methodist Church (Ellis Road) who lived near Hui Sing Garden in 1997.  They were professionals and came in families and individuals.  They were full of potential to make a difference for Jesus as I looked through the list of names who were transferred to Hui Sing Preaching Centre.  I teamed up with such manpower and Jesus blessed us with the following major ministries.

Lundu Outreach

First and foremost, I continued the work of outreach at Lundu left by the former pastor, Lee Wen Chieh. I preached a sermon on ‘Take on Lundu with Faith’, requesting the congregation to be my drivers for every Saturday, to participate in visitation, giving tuition, and doing social concerns and giving.  We always went to Lundu early in the morning on Saturdays every fortnightly at first.  The outreach work was progressing well as we saw a few backslide Christians coming back to church and non-Christians were coming to our gathering.  However, our evangelism among the Chinese was still considered as tough as the majority Hakka Chinese there was really ‘hard ground’ for us because most of them were ancestors’ worshippers, Taoists, Buddhists, and idol worshippers.  We also reached out to the Selakau tribal people and I baptized quite many of them. They came to worship with us for a while when I served in Lundu from 1998 to 2001.  I always summarized my sermon in BM.  They loved to be prayed for after the church service. After I was posted away, owing to lack for follow-up, they stopped coming.

Lundu Church Planting

Then, in the second year 1999, with the help of brothers and sisters from FMC and SCAC Board of Finance, we purchased a piece of land and built a church (a preaching centre).  I was posted there 1999 to 2001.

These few years of church planting at Lundu really brought all of us at FMC closer to one another.  As long as we participated in this ministry we became close because we had amble time to fellowship in the church van on the way to Lundu.  Also, we were ministering together in visitation and social concerns, cooking and having meals together, praying for the sick and needy, and giving whatever we can to the lost of Lundu.  We even invited Sabah Basel Church and Taiwan Methodist University students to do short term mission to do outreach with us.

As I looked back, I experienced the privilege of what it means to start from scratch in church planting.  I had the joy of experiencing mobilization of brothers and sisters to do outreach and organizing a small congregation according to the Methodist Book of Discipline.  Though conversions among the Chinese were not many owing to their unwillingness to leave their ancestors’ worship and their present faith, we still established a small congregation of about 50 persons who survived until today.  After I left them at the end of 2011, I still went back there to preach a few times.  Every time, we met I could still feel the warmth and closeness they expressed for me!

Pioneering the Mandarin Service

Secondly,  FMC also pioneered the second service in mandarin.  It was such a bold step.  Originally, the survey was meant to study the feasibility of having a second service in English.  The results that came back showed that there was a need for it.  However, FMC Local Church Executive Committee (LCEC) unanimously decided to go for a second mandarin service.  It was truly a great example of FMC led by the Holy Spirit.  The rationale behind the decision was owing to the majority of Hui Sing Garden community was made up of mandarin speaking people.   When I left for Miri, the mandarin service attendance was about 80 persons.  Today, at the point of writing, the mandarin service has developed to become two services.  The average attendance was about 600 for both services.

Development of Evangelism Explosion

Thirdly, Evangelism Explosion (EE) in mandarin was particularly well received by the mandarin congregation.  I experienced how it was a powerful tool that ushered in quite many new believers.  I experienced the joy of working with a team of older adults in using this tool to reach out and make disciples among the Chinese.  Old believers who went through the course became firm in their personal faith.  Those who used it after the training, experienced the joy of bringing people to Christ using this tool.  The English congregation was trained in EE, though many of them were equipped but we always faced difficulty in finding more targets for your outreach.

Developing FMC 2010

Fourthly, I had the privilege of reading Rick Warren’s book on ‘Purpose Drive Church’ and using it to do a vision called FMC 2010.  We even documented it and we singled out what we want to achieve by 2010.  I did not have the privilege to serve in FMC till 2010.  I used the book as a model to mobilize FMC to do ministry in the five areas: worship, fellowship, discipleship, evangelism and mission.  We borrowed disciple material from Rick Warren’s church to do discipleship at church level.  We also borrowed the purpose statement from Rick Warren church.  This vision helped FMC to be more focused to drive at those five areas of ministry.  A few good things have been achieved though I could not serve till the end of the vision.  We produced one missionary in the person of sister Victoria Lai who is now stationed at Cambodia.  We ventured into another language to form another congregation. 

The New Building Project

Fifthly, we managed to kick off the new building project in 2001.  Before I left for Miri, we were very united to raise building fund in Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Miri, Bintulu and Sibu and SCAC churches responding to help us.  Again I experienced the Methodist connectionalism in its effective function.  This time, I was not worried at all about the fund raising as I knew from the first EMC building project that Jesus would provide all our needs.  All we need to do was to do disciple-making, pray, plan, and trust Him to provide us with our needs.  Though I did not have the privilege to see the whole process of building construction like I did for EMC, the new church building was completed under the leadership of Rev Philip Ang.

Maintaining My Relationships with FMC

I have built up great relationships with brothers and sisters in this church, it is so much so that they still send their church newsletter to me regularly.  They still include my family in their church address.   I still update them with my happenings.  I am connected with quite a few of them through face book.  I still come back to this church to preach and minister once a while.  A few of the church members still continue to care and support my family especially during my two years of theological studies at Sabah Theological Seminary and during my sabbatical year.

Formation of  Lundu Preaching Centre - Challenges

For the whole year of 1998, FMC outreach team visited Lundu fortnightly faithfully.  Then, SCAC posted me there, 1999 to 2001.  Most non-Christians did not receive high education.  They regarded Christianity as a religion which does not honor parents because we do not worship ancestors and burn paper money.  Some said when Christians died, they only ate flowers because at their cemetery, their descendents only put flowers.  They believed their ancestors came back to consume the food offered to them as the taste of the food was different after the offering. This mentality was hard to eradicate.  Also, people might have the fear of their ancestors coming to harm them if they did not worship them after they died!  I had to preach from the Bible about the where souls were going after we Christians died and pointed how departed did not depend on food to survive.  Also, logically, if their parents or grandparents loved them during their life time, how could they harm them.

At least one third of the church members were poor.  We came in to encourage their children to pay attention to their studies.  We believe education is the key to overcoming poverty.  Sometimes, during my visitation, one of standard concerns was to know whether they improved in their studies. I would teach them in English, BM and Mathematics.  I always prayed for their children to enter local university when they grew up.  A few youths did end up in university a few years later.

It is a small place where the church members treasured our ministry.  Each family was committed to come for service and always sought to be prayed for after service in the afternoon.  They took my advice seriously after I prayed for their problems.  I experienced the joy of ministering them despite the small size of congregation.  To me, every soul won to Christ is precious in the sight of Jesus.

As the town is simple and small, people tend to talk about one another.  Negative words spoken by fellow church members and by people outside the church tend to affect our own church members.  I had to spend time helping them to overcome especially the hurtful words.  It was not easy to build them up in the word of God as they might not apply God’s word so relevantly to their situation.  Also, they to tend forget what they learnt quickly.  I must never be disturbed by this setback and never give up on them.

Praise the Lord, after I left the church, I was able to visit them and preach at Sunday service a few times. The latest was on March, 2013.  They hope that I would still go to visit them.

My Prayers For You

I pray that the Spirit of Jesus will inspire you with a vision for another 20 years that serves to produce disciples for Jesus who will transform the nation, and Sarawak in particular.  I pray that as our indigenous people consisted about 65% of the Sarawak 2.4million population, FMC will pay great attention to training the indigenous people both in the towns and rural areas to be disciples of Jesus.  I pray that your vision will not only attract Chinese to come to your church, it will attract people of different nationalities, races and ethnics to come.  I pray that they will not only be professionals, intellectuals and the rich, they will also be the poor, the weak, the handicapped, the marginalized, the people who are hurt, the old ones who are neglected, the homosexuals, the gamblers, the gangsters, the divorcees, the sick, depressed and mentally in trouble, and etc.  I pray that Jesus will raise His disciples who have burden for these different groups of people.  I will pray Jesus will empower you to form a team of pastors and ministry leaders to look into the needs of theses groups of people.  I pray He will raise many pastors (well versed in English, BM and English) and missionaries to supply to other churches both locally and overseas.   I pray that all your resources and manpower will be fully utilized to bless others.

A Faithful Disciple of Jesus,

Pastor Law Hui Seng

9^th August, 2015.