Reach Out, Build Up, Send Back

Scripture reading: Acts 5:27-29

Having brought the apostles, they made them appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”
Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men!

The first Christians whilst maintaining respect for the civil authorities that were over them, saw that their first allegiance was to God.

Taiwan

Population: 23,036,087
Religion: Chinese/Buddhist 93%, Christian 1-4%, Other 2.6%

Most people in Taiwan follow a mixture of animism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, with a strong emphasis on ancestor worship. There are more than 16,000 registered temples.

Challenges for Prayer:

• Taiwan’s political future is a matter for intense political debate and international diplomacy. Pray for wisdom and guidance for leaders.
• Pray for the removal of barriers preventing the growth of the Church:

o    Resurgence of Buddhism and Taoism and subjection to the spirit world.
o    Few Chinese want to give up ancestor worship.
o    Disillusioned young people are turning to crime.
o    Taiwanese society is very materialistic. There are many Pachinko parlours, lotteries and other forms of gambling.

• Taiwan is the only major Chinese society where there has not been significant church growth this generation.
• Pray for a nationwide prayer movement to unite the Church.
• Pray for a breakthrough among the working class. Taiwan’s Christians are generally highly educated and do not find it easy to reach out to their working-class neighbours.
• Pray for more missionaries to go to Taiwan and that those who are called may be encouraged and willing to stay.
• There is a lack of pastors and full-time workers. Many experienced pastors emigrate to Western nations. In small churches the congregation expect the pastor to do all the work.
• In big cities there are some large vibrant churches that are flourishing. Pray for relevant, spiritual training and more effective lay training.
• The witness among students is encouraging and students are now permitted to form Christian groups in schools. Pray for an awakening of interest and commitment to pray and send out missionaries.
• Pray for sales of Christian literature in the secular book market and for the creative use of video/DVD, music and the internet in evangelism.

OCF UNSW

President: James Tang
Theme: Reach out, Build up, Send back
Campus: University of New South Wales

Attendance:

2006: 25
2007: 10
2008: 10

Description:

The Lord has been good to us this year, as we have new members joining us, mainly from Malaysia and Singapore. With a group of 10, may we not be discouraged by the small number but rather strife for unity and closeness that can only be seen in a small group. We are currently holding our meetings at KCOC (Kingsford Church of Christ) on Saturday mornings.

Praise God For:

• Thank God for the local church’s (KCOC) support, especially in providing a place to meet for our weekly bible studies and also the support and assistance provided by the ex-ocfers
• Thank God also for Rob Robayna, OCF Sydney’s staff worker who has been a great help and great source of encouragement not only to OCF UNSW but also to the other centres in NSW as well.

Please Pray For:

• God will provide OCF UNSW with a vision and a mission statement that will be central to all that the centre does and its activities
• God will continue to send “ready-made” leaders to OCF UNSW so that the core group may be strengthened
• God will strengthen and empower the leadership, that they will continue to stay faithful to the ministry and have a passion for the people, edifying and encouraging the members with a servant attitude
• Relationship and fellowship among current members will grow deeper and be strengthened
• OCF UNSW will have the desire to reach out and impact the university community

My journey in discovering the “D” words…
…disciple, discipleship and discipling

by Joanne Chew

Dr Joanne Chew was a member of OCF Adelaide from 1999-2004. During her time in OCF, she served for many years on the local committee, and was the chairperson of the OCF Convention 2002 in Adelaide. She is now working as a doctor in Adelaide, and serves as a life group leader in church with her husband Dr Andrew Kiu.

Allow me to share with you my story briefly. I became a Christian in December 1996, at the age of 16. Before that I have been going to Sunday School for many years and subsequently attended my church youth group. In the early few years of my Christian life, I basically learnt how to journey with Christ on my own, not knowing if anything should change at all from my life ‘before Christ’. Sure, I received teachings; through talks, sermons and bible studies but it took me a few years to fully understand my salvation, what it means to be a ‘new creation’, and what prayer and quiet time is all about. At that stage I did not even understand the full extent of what being a disciple meant. I had not been discipled and did not realize there was such a thing called ‘making disciples / discipling’ even though I had been exposed to the Great Commission.

Anyway, in 1999, I came to Australia for my studies and also started joining OCF. So there I was, my first year here, enjoying, absorbing and learning what I can…until the following year, my second year. There was a group of non-Christians who had started coming to OCF and within 6 months, one of them accepted Christ (praise God!). She comes from a non-Christian family - Buddhist, with NO Christians at all in her family. Before she came to Australia, her duty was to pray and burn joss sticks to her ancestors every morning as she is the eldest child. She also accompanies her grandma to pray and to go to the temple every week. When she became a Christian here, she only had 6 more months left before going back to her home and family, only this time as a Christian. She was here just for a year in total, but a year was what the Lord felt was sufficient; a year that was life changing for her as well as for me.

Remember, at that time, I was only 19+ years old, and 3+years of being a Christian. So there I was, excited for her but also very fearful…because I could just imagine the hostile environment that she would be going back to as a baby Christian, with no Christians friends, no ‘OCF’ and no church support. There were many questions in my head, ‘what if, what if…’ And it was at that point that I sensed the urgency and the need for her to be grounded in her walk with God as well as to be taught in God’s word and truth in order that even if / when things becomes stormy and difficult back home, her foundation in the Lord will be firm.

Someone once said to me - give them a fish & you will feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you will feed them for a lifetime…And that thought pounded in my heart and mind..”someone has to teach her how to fish…” So with no experience, no prior ‘training’, not having been discipled ever in my life at that stage, and still a young-ish Christian myself,  I decided to disciple her…I figured what little I could give, teach and share with her was better than nothing at all. And thus our journey together started as we committed ourselves to meeting up every week, reading and learning His word as well as praying and sharing our lives together. It was in that few months that the Lord built her up and also in that short period that He showed me the value and effectiveness of discipling…what I had taken 3+years to discover, she had learnt and grown in those few months!!

It was then that I realized that nothing is more effective in helping another brother or sister to follow Christ than to disciple him or her, to help them walk closer than ever before with Christ, and subsequently reach those around them. Not only that, I have also found this relationship to be two-way. As much as she has ‘learnt’ from this journey, so have I as I have been greatly blessed and ‘sharpened’ in my walk.

Two verses I will leave with you…

Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”
Luke 9:23-24

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20

Reflection

Perhaps take a moment to reflect, asking yourself this question…”Where am I in the spectrum of discipleship?”

If you do not understand what it means to be a disciple, then you may not understand the value of being discipled…if you do not understand the value of being discipled, then you may not understand the importance or need to disciple others…

Challenge

Are you passionate about being a disciple, falling in love with and committed to Him?
If you are, may I challenge you to consider being discipled and especially to disciple others. If you are not, then I urge you to prayerfully reconsider your relationship with Him and His Lordship over your life.

It is in Christ’s heart that his disciples “GO & Make Disciples of all nations…”…Is it in our hearts too as His disciples…even if it means giving and sacrificing our time and energy, one (or more) life at a time?

If you are not discipling anyone, will you consider discipling someone? Will you consider becoming a disciple-maker?

If you are already discipling…WELL DONE, but don’t stop there! May I challenge you to teach and train your disciple to be a disciple-maker and to disciple others. May I also challenge you to perhaps consider discipling one more and to encourage other Christians around you about discipleship and becoming disciple-makers.

Will leave with you a closing thought…

Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other.
-Matthew Henry-

Scripture reading: Acts 17:11

Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

God has given us a mind with which to think through the great truths in the Bible, and to obey them.

Fiji

Population: 931,741
Religion: Christian 58.32%, Hindu 33%, Muslim 7%. Non-religious/other 0.8%

A politically volatile democratic nation that has experienced a number of coups.

Praise God that 10 years of racial discord and discrimination by Christian Fijians against mainly non-Christian Indians has ended with the unanimous approval of the 1999 Constitution. Pray on for inter-racial respect and harmony in the future.

Challenges for Prayer:

1. The legacy of British colonial greed has had a long-term impact on Fiji.
   • Resentment of the indigenous Fijians against the importation of Indian indentured labour from 1870 onwards. The results were manifest in the high crime rate among Fijians and the 1987 coup and following discrimination against Indians
   • Discrediting of Christianity in the eyes of the Indians and the present ingrained attitudes of fear, mistrust, minority complex and insecurity
   • Close link between Fijian nationalism and politicized Christianity. The coup split the dominant Methodist Church, Pray for a spirit of repentance, healing of past wounds, a fair society, and a new freedom for the true gospel
2. Fijians embraced Christianity over a century ago, but this was often cultural rather than spiritual. Pray for a deep work of the Holy Spirit to deal with compromise and ethnic hatred and to bring revival.
3. Newer churches with a more strongly evangelical message are growing, but so too are Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Pray for agencies involved in church planting and evangelism.
4. Less reached peoples.
   • Hindus, who have been patchily evangelized
   • Sikhs and Panjabis have retained more of their culture and language, but there has been little specific outreach to them
   • 59,000 Muslim community is tightly knit and very resistant to the gospel. Little is being done to reach them, and the few converted to Christ have suffered considerable persecution
   • Chinese - mostly Cantonese in origin. Many speak English. There had been no ministry specifically directed to reach them until 1992
5. Pray for the spiritual revival and health of the Church
   • Leadership training for the churches
   • Ministry to young people
   • Evangelical networks. Pray for a deep unity among believers that transcends denomination, distance and ethnicity
   • Mission vision
6. Christian help ministries: The Bible Society, Jesus film

OCF Curtin

President: Cheryl Weng
Theme: Transforming Truth
Campus: Curtin University of Technology

Attendance:

2005: 30
2006: 30
2007: 20 -30
2008: 30 -40

Description:

Our centre consists of a diverse group of students, over 6 countries. Our focus this year is to understand the transforming power of Christ and how that truth changes our lives. God is doing an overhaul in OCF Curtin and almost everything we do has taken a notch forward. We have moved out of our old premise and into a newer and better one. God has been faithful and have increased the number of our non-Christian friend’s participation in OCF. We are also in the process of settling down in a church and we trying to devise a plan to build stronger partnership with the church. God has also provided us a new and very faithful advisor (unofficial). God is indeed working in OCF Curtin and we have seen many signs from Him. Here we would want to testify of His grace, mercy and power as a fellowship.

Praise God For:

• The increased of non-Christians in our centre.
• The willingness of the members to serve in BS-leading, music, food prep, etc.
• The spiritual growth within the fellowship which is evident.
• The overhaul (mention above) as it is indeed an exciting time to be in Curtin: OCF.

Please Pray For:

• The members of the new local committee that they will be sensitive to God’s guidance
• The unity of the fellowship to be stronger
• The church partnership as we continue to build a stronger partnership
• The members that they will be more involved in discipleship and evangelism