RICE Vision Night

The RICE Vision Night has been announced! This will be very exciting, as Steve Chong and the RICE leadership team will share the vision of the RICE movement for the next few year and unveil 2 new arms of RICE. So be there to find out and share and support the vision! The flyer above will be emailed and mailed out in March.

Date: Monday 13 April, 7:00pm
Venue: Moore Theological College
RSVP: By April 10 to supporters@riceevent.org.au

City Bible Forum Grad Club Dinner - Monday 16th March

I will be speaking at the City Bible Forum Grab Club Dinner. The aim of the dinner is to welcome 2nd and 3rd year grads starting work in 2009 and give some general tips about being a Christian at work from those who have been there before you. I’ve been asked to speak on ‘Surviving and Thriving in the Workplace’. This is a great opportunity for recent graduates to network with other Christians and encourage each other as they commence their working life. Please forward details of this event to those who would be interested.

Speakers: Craig Josling (ECOM), Janet Jones (use to work for Disney), Michael Nhieu
Cost: $22
When: March 16th, 2009 6:00 PM through 8:30 PM. (Dinner served at 6.30pm.)
Location: Occidental Hotel, cnr York and Erskine Sts (level 2) Sydney, NSW 2000
Contact: RSVP to Craig Josling - craigj@ecom.org.au

Australian church planters gather

170 delegates converged at the Wesley Centre to 'Turn Talk into Action', a one day conference aimed at gathering current and emerging church planters to move towards establishing a nation wide church planting network with the hope to see church planting explode across Australia.

Al Stewart chaired the conference and kicked it off by sharing from 2 Timothy and talked about the quality of a leader, that being the: The Soldier, The Athlete and The Farmer (2 Timothy 2). He said the single human factor to church growth is leadership and he shared some alarming stats that showed that mainstream denominations are currently not growing but declining.

Al gave an overview of what a national church planting network would look like in terms of vision, core values, benefits and opportunities. In essense the network will be a 'network of networks' with the following values:

1. Church planting as a key strategy to church growth
2. Commitment to evangelise
3. An entreprenuerial culture
4. Flexible training and study of scripture
5. Real engagement with our culture

Andrew Heard shared his experience with planting an independent church in the central coast, Central Coast Evangelical Church (http://www.ccec.com.au/). Steve Chong spoke about his success and mistakes with his first year planting kirkplace (http://www.kirkplace.org.au/). We also heard from other guys and their church planting stories from all over the nation, including the Woolongong area, north coast, Brisbane, Tasmania and Melbourne. I met Guy Mason who started a church in a pub in Docklands, Melbourne, (www.docklandschurch.org.au). Awesome stuff!

We had dinner together and I got to meet a great bunch of guys. We spent the rest of the night brainstorming ideas and giving feedback to Al, Andrew and Steve on our thoughts of the potential church planting network. An area of contention was the network's relationship with Mark Driscoll's Acts 29 Network(http://www.acts29network.org/). Pro and cons where discussed with being an official branch of Acts 29 or being an independent Australian church planting network.


Despite the debate, everyone is excited to see the establishment of a church planting network in Australia which will hopefully tip a church planting movement across the nation. Expect to see the launch of the network later this year...

A weekend at NIDA

I went to Acting School! Yes! I spent two full days at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) to do an Acting Intensive short course. The idea of dabbling into a bit of acting was seeded at a KPMG training retreat, where we did a series of improv presentations as part of the training and a colleague told me I had the gift of the gab and acting on the spot. So I thought I'll give this acting course go for a bit of fun and I thought I might pick up a few drama techniques that might help with preaching.

Over the course we played drama games, acted out scenes we created and we did text analysis of The Crucible, a theatre play written by Arthur Miller. Steve our tutor, who is a theatre director in Australia and Singapore absolutely blew my mind away when we analysised The Crucible. I now have a new found appreciation for literature and made me realise how bad my english teachers were in highschool! I also learnt that the most common form of acting style is a naturalism technique devised by Constantin Stanislavski (1863 – 1938), a Russian actor and theatre director. Stanislavski’s system continues to be the predominate style of western mainstream performances to this day. The Americans have adopted Stanislavski’s technique and developed a commonly known acting technique called ‘The Method’. Part of the Stanislavski system involves asking the following questions to 'get into character':

1. Who am I?
(Who is the character physically, mentally and spiritually)

2. Where am I?
(What is the space the character is in)

3. What do I want?
(What is the objective that the character wants to achieve)

4. Why do I want it?
(What is the motivation of the character for reaching his/her objective)

5. What do I do to overcome?
(What are the obstacles the character neesds to overcome to reach the objective)

6. How do I get it?
(What are physical, verbal and psychological actions the character needs to take to achieve the objective)

I think these are also helpful questions to ask when preparing a bible talk or study to better understand the literary and geographical/historical context of a passage as well as the author's objective and motivation for writing to their original audience.

What was interesting was that, the next weekend after I went to NIDA, at Thrive class, I learnt to see the bible as like a drama in 6 acts, which is taken from N.T Wright's book Scripture and the Authority of God. The acts are:

1. Creation
2. Fall
3. Israel
4. Jesus
5. Apostolic Age (us)
6. The Renewal

This framework is quite helpful when we teach from a particular book of the bible to understand which act the particular book or passage falls under to make sure we don't take the passage out of the context of the overarching storyline of the bible.

Overall, I had wonderful learning experience on the dramatic arts and I now have a new perspective on how I read my bible, that is to appreciate and pay attention to the diverse literary styles and the specific words and language God has chosen to speak to us. It is truely amazing how God uses humans and our language with such vivid detail, imagery, emotions to explain profound and timeless truths of God's and our existence. As well I had tremendous fun playing a suicidal humpty dumpty because he was rejected by Mary (who had a little lamb), a bitter divorced 50 year old ambulance driver who has a vendetta against drug users because his 8 year girl was killed in a hit and run by a junkie and a salesman for Mongolian boar pus to be used as face cream and body wash.

Fight the good fight!

I'm really exited about a new ministry called Agon Ministries in the States, that reaches out to men in the Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) world. Having done kickboxing over the years and a fan of MMA, I think this ministry is absolutely awesome! They have speaking events at gyms and fight clubs and teach the bible by marrying fighting principles with biblical principles, and they get respected Christians fighters like Ken Shamrock and Matt Lindland to share their testimonies and Christian life. Its also a great example of missional ministry, of getting into tribes and subcultures and bringing the gospel to those cultural contexts.

Agon Ministries also aims to encourage the Christian men to 'get into the fight'. Scott Knight the founder, says that most of the Christian men at church are 'shadow boxers', who come to church and get 'trained' but are too 'wimpy' to actually put it into practice and go into the real world and actively be on mission for Jesus and fight against sin, the culture and the spiritual warfare.

Having visited the South and West regions of Sydney and speaking to leaders from various churches there is an epidemic shortage of guy leaders in the church. But also a lack of guys in church in general, in David Murrow's book Why Men Hate Going to Church, he reports that women make up 60% of the congregation on any given Sunday (US stats). Fellow sisters cry out of the apathy of most of the guys in the churches and as a guy, I know we are so easily tempted to get caught up with the idols of Sex, Money and Power. To be real authentic men, we need to follow in Jesus footsteps, boldly living counter-cultural holy lives. As men of God we are to "pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith" (1 Tim 6:11-12).

To win the war we need the men, soldiers to lead our families and the church. Therefore lets continue to think and invest in men's outreach and discipleship as a strategic imperative for the ongoing health of the church.

Visiting my Synergy friends

This week I had the opportunity to visit my friends in the north west who are part of a new leadership network called Synergy, made up of youth pastors and leaders from mainly pentecostal evangelical churches: AOG, Foursquare and independents, but there was also a baptist youth pastor and Salvation Army guy from the StreetLevel ministry in the city. The meeting was at Filipino Christian Fellowship - The Church on the Highway, in Michinbury and being a more conservative Sydney evangelical I wasn't sure what to expect at the meeting. But throughout the night as I got to meet and chat with the the leaders at the meeting I was impressed and endeared with their deep love for the gospel of Jesus to reign forth in our city and their Kingdom mindset to work together to support each other in their ministries, breaking down denominational and church boundaries. Synergy is led my friend Joel Chan and the purpose of the network is to provide training and development for leaders and provide a place to network and learn from each other on matters of life and ministry.

The experience really helped me to breakdown my preconceptions and stereotypes of pentacostals and was encouraged to know that we are all one in Christ, having the same passion for the mission of Jesus. What I found most encouraging was how Spirit-filled, open and unhibited the pentacostals expressed their love and praises to God. During the meeting we were interupted by a group of adult men downstairs singing whole heartedly together. Quite funny to see Joel's speech interrupted with a manly rendition of Ancient of Days, and you know the Filipinos can sing! But I thought that was fantastic! I wish to see the same zeal for God in the men at the churches I'm more familiar with. 

We closed the night with prayers in a prayer circle and as I jumped back on the M4 highway to head home, I thanked God for broadening my horizons, for experiencing the love and unity in Christ with my new friends at Synergy and I prayed that God will grow and mature the Synergy ministry to equip and fuel leaders to faithful and fruitful service that will bless the churches and their communities.

Preaching at Carlton Methodist Church

On the first day of February, I preached at my friend’s church, Carlton Methodist Church (CMC) in Allawah. I was invited to give a sermon to the English congregation, which is mainly made up of the parent’s children of the Chinese service. The majority of them are high school age. They are such a fun and great bunch, very vibrant and enthusiastic group of youth. I had a great time sharing God’s word with them and meeting some of the youth leaders who lead their youth group called REEF.

I learnt that the Methodist church was founded by John Wesley and missionaries from Britain, North America, and Australia planted Methodist churches in Asia in the mid 1800s. I did a bit of research and learnt that the Methodist revival movement traces its origins to the Great Awakening in the 18th century in Epworth, North Lincolnshire, England. It began with a group of men, including John Wesley and his younger brother Charles, as a movement within the Church of England. The movement focused on a methodical approach to studying scriptures and Christian living. The term "Methodism" was a pejorative term given to a small society of students at Oxford who met together between 1729 and 1735 for the purpose of mutual improvement. The early Methodists acted against perceived apathy in the Church of England, and became open-air preachers and established Methodist societies wherever they went. The Methodist preachers were notorious for their enthusiastic sermons and often accused of fanaticism. The most notable preachers were John Wesley and George Whitefield. John Wesley came under the influence of the Moravians and Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, while Whitefield adopted Calvinistic views. Consequently, their followers separated, those of Whitefield becoming Calvinistic Methodists. Wesleyan Methodists have followed Arminian theology. CMC is predominately made up of Malaysian Christians who migrated to Sydney and came from the Methodist church in Malaysia. So after the service I had awesome chicken rice for lunch with the lovely people at CMC!

CMC is currently looking for a new pastor for the English service. As I have wandered around Sydney, I’ve discovered that there a lot of Chinese churches without a pastor for the English congregations. Some of the reasons include the English congregation being too small to support a full time pastor or that there aren’t many Asian pastors in the pipeline who can work in the Chinese church context. This is quite heart breaking because there are so many second generation Asian youth who need to be looked after and shepherd by pastors to see more disciples of Christ and the next generation leaders raised to carry on the gospel work. Please pray that God will continue to call more young men filled with the Spirit to serve faithfully as pastors to fill the vacant church positions.