“THE PRIESTLY BLESSING”

As Christians, the first thing you must understand about blessing is that we do NOT earn it by merit or hard work. It is by the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ we get all our blessing. We receive blessings freely.  ”It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing,even life forevermore.” (Psalm 133 : 3).

It is strange to hear that God will only bless those who tithe, go to Church and involve in ministries.  If this is what the scripture teaches, then those who tithe, involved in ministries and goes to Church will not fall sick, lose their job and so on so forth. Proverbs 10 : 22 says “ The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it.”

What is even shocking to hear is that God will not bless those who gamble namely through lottery.  You are an oxymoron to say so because the Church is earning interest through fixed deposit when the Bible clearly says that we should not charge interest. (Exodus 22 : 25) The principle of banking is that you are lending your money to bank by your fixed deposit! That is why the bank pays you interest.  If gambling is wrong, depositing tithes money in a bank to earn interest in also wrong. By the way, many of your “top guns” are visiting lotto clubs for blessings. Correct them first!

NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

It’s the end of 2009. New Year 2010 is about to begin. As usual people will be busy with their new year resolutions. The Church will be very busy with yearly plans and projects.

Many of the Church programs are carried out because they are in the yearly plan. Things that are decades old are still carried out because they are in the yearly plan.

It is high time for the Church to seriously look into the effectiveness of such programs. Unproductive activities and programs should be scraped out. One of such program is the Area Fellowship.

The Church should seriously stop relating the Area Fellowship to John Wesley. We are not living in the Wesley’s era. Try to be more creative. The actual fact is that the Area Fellowship is a total failure for many reasons. Please find out the reasons yourself. It is a total waste of time. The best Church  resolution for 2010 will be to shut down all Area Fellowships.

CHRISTMAS SERVICE

Christmas service was great. The sermon was straight to the point. It was rather a great message put in a very simple and straight forward manner. All was said within the context of Christmas and not an inch out of topic. Best of  all, it was short and sweet.

The ushers were very friendly and helpful. The use of big screen and digital camera was indeed very good. It was a wise move to get the new couples to collect offering. The Church really recognize it members.

Sorry to say that the only thing that was NOT in place was the Special Thank Giving for the Christmas rally. What about the Candle Light Service in on of the outreach that also attracted many unbelievers? What about the other numerous programs carried out by various commissions  and committees ? Aren’t they too deserve a “special” recognition on such a “glamorous” service?

CHRISTMAS RALLY WAS A FAILURE

The truth is, Christmas Rally was a failure.  Nobody actually knew how many people attended the event. No target was set. To say that 300 to 400 unbelievers attended is absurd when in actual fact there was no mechanism or official statistical data to support the claim. Hear say evidence is NOT sufficient to justify the huge expenditure incurred.

God is great because no rain on that day. Otherwise, you people could have easily put the blame on the rain for your failure. Since the Church fail to set their expected attendance, base on the financial impact and the venue, reasonably expected crowd should be 2,000 to 3,000. Common sense will tell you that if you expect a crowd lesser the 2,000 the venue for the rally should have been a hall.

FAMILY FIRST

The next famous announcement from TMC Ainouno the church is something like this – “we will be closing our 2009 church account on 31/12/2009. Those who have not tithed, please buckle up or else face the consequence of having your membership, marriage and funeral right terminated.”

1 Timothy 5 : 8 says “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Our God of grace wants you to take care of your family first. Settle all your outstanding bills such as housing loan, car loan, insurance policies, medical cards, utility bills and others. If you have any debts, give your first priority to come out of it. Take good care of all your children’s need such as school fees, books, bags and others.  If you fail to do that, the Lord says that you have denied your faith and worse than unbelievers.

It is clearly stated in 2 Corinthians 9 : 7 that ” Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

The church cannot force or extort you to pay. To maintain your membership, please give cheerfully any amount what you have decided. The amount can even be 20% if your heart decided.  Heaven awaits you.  To read further about tithes, please refer to the contents.

THE HISTORY OF WORSHIP

If you still remember, there were days when we sing only 5 songs in a formatted Sunday Service. The choir and Pastor will lead the singing session. The congregation remain standing for the first two songs. For the third song, the congregation will be seated in a prayer mode. The fourth song is for the offering. Finally, the last song is the closing song.

In the seventies we only have the organ. By the eighties, we have three instrument namely the organ, base guitar and the drum. Things we under control by strict Pastors and choir director who take charge of the situation.

As the Church evolves, many things changed. Singing lead by the Pastor and Choir became boring. To enlighten the service and namely to make it more appealing for the younger generation, a worship session was introduce. The single and three-man music band exploded to up to nine people with various kind of musical instruments. Common sense will tell you that a Christian Worship does not need that much of instrument. The essence of a Christian Worship is the lyrics of the songs itself and not the music. To make matter worse, some instruments are played alternatively by two person.

Worship Leaders were introduced to replace the boring Choir and Pastors. The noble intention behind this is to enhance the worship session. The worship leaders were expected to come up with their own authentic style to lead the congregation. Worship leaders are expected to fire up the worship to the extend that both the young and older generation benefit from the worship session.

Sadly, what we have today is a melodramatic worship that is slowly evolving back into a formatted worship. One can notice that only the worshiper is different but the style of worship itself is too formatted. The style of singing and leading is the same for all the  worshiper. They chose more or less the same songs, repeat the same song, drag the tempo of the song for reason only best known to them. The only achievement so far is a very long and noisy Sunday Worship. In this case, it is better to revert back to the old style of formatted worship.

BREAKING NEWS

I don’t have the opportunity to meet Church members frequently. Two days ago I meet a prominent member. The subject we discuss was Christmas Rally.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to calculate. Any field event is a “success” if the attendance is about 3,000 to 5,000 people. With 1,000 members, only 20%  (200 people) of TMC Ainouno members take part in Church activities.

To be generous, I will say another 300 may attend by “special” invitation and publicity. That will give us a total of confirmed 500 members attending. Plus minus another 100 hear and there to make up 600 provided that it is not raining.

To conclude, Christmas Rally has nothing to do with Christ, Christmas, unbelievers or evangelism. If the Church authority is smart enough, based on pass experience they should be able to see the huge financial impact.

CHRISTMAS RALLY

The Christmas we celebrate today is an indicator that today’s Christianity is willing to accept any worldly customs and traditions. Christmas has got nothing to do with the Bible.  To make it short, many Christmas traditions and practices predated the birth of Christ himself. These practices are related to pagan Roman gods and goddess.

Today, thank God we do not have pagan Roman gods and goddess in the Church. Instead, we have music, modern dances, traditional dances, various kind of “Christian” songs, and drama for Christmas. By putting up this costly stage show, how are you going to show the love of Christ to the people? When and where did Christ ask you to do all these?

To make a mockery out of it, some even claim that they are going to proclaim the gospel by having the Christmas Concert. Christ has been mocked and crucified once. Please do not mock and crucify Him again in the name of Christmas.

Living in a multi racial country, we can see in TV that even pagan god believers are spending their cash wisely on the widows, aliens and the fatherless.

If the “storehouse” has too much cash, how about helping those who are affected by the recent earthquake, tsunami and flood. By doing so, you can really show the love of Christ to the whole world. Oops! it is not in the Music and Worship Committee yearly plan. Never mind, its not too late to revise the plan.

SPEAKING IN TONGUE

For those who don’t know, speaking in tongue is a phenomena where a person utter words that no one can understand.  In the context of the Bible “tongue” means language.  For an ordinary person, speaking in tongue simply means speaking in a different language.  To understand the concept of speaking in tongue, one must read  Act 2 : 1 – 12

When it happened ? Verse 1.  On the day of Pentecost.  What happened ? Verse 2. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of violent wind came from heaven  Verse 2 tells us that, there was a divine intervention.  A sound like blowing wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then, there were tongues like fire and so on.  The crowd were perplexed.  According to verse 5, there were people from all over the world speaking different tongue (language).  Verse 6 is very tricky, “one heard them speaking in his own language” meaning the speaker who is a Galilean (verse 7) speaks a language which a listener who may be an Asian could understand.  The speaker did not know or understood what he spoke.  After the incident, the speaker of that different tongue(language) will not have any knowledge of what he spoke. Verse twelve says amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”  At the end of the day, no one even the speaker knew what happened.  Then, as you read further, Peter stood up and explained what happened.

How many languages are there in the world?  Stephen R. Anderson of the Linguistic Society of America,cites the Ethnologue organization. According to Ethnologue, there are currently 6,912 living languages, defined as languages that people speak today.

It is interesting to note that speaking in tongue is a gift from God.   Speaking in tongue would have been the best evangelical tool of all time.  How can the people during the time of Jesus ignore such a magnificent gift?   The Bible have no records of Jesus or his disciples speaking in tongue when they go from one town to another.  Jesus and his disciples knew that speaking in tongues can be self-induced and they don’t want to lie about it.

The “Big Lie” was simple –tell the biggest, most outrageous lie; tell it often enough; tell it loudly enough –and eventually people will believe it – Joseph Paul Goebbels

Knowing this, the Apostle Paul has got this to say in 1 Corinthians 14 (New International Version) – Gifts of Prophecy and Tongues

1Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. 2For anyone who speaks in a tongue[a] does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.[b] 3But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5I would like every one of you to speak in tongues,[c] but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues,[d] unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.

According to the Bible, anyone who speaks in tongue, speaks to God.  As such, I belief speaking in tongue do exist and I would like to conclude with verse 18 & 19 of 1 Corinthians 14 “thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.

SUBSIDY MENTALITY

Most of the time, church programs are carried because they are in the yearly plan. Little do the church authority check or question the leaders on the effectiveness of a yearly plan.

The recent excursion that was cancelled is a classic example.  The morale of the story is :-

1. Most of the church members are not interested in the programme. The handful of those who participate are the same people namely from committees and sub committees.
2. Members are in financial crisis. They prefer to spend their cash wisely and effectively every month.
3. The church has successfully brought about “subsidy mentality.” Looks like church programmes are only effective if they are subsidized by the tithe’s money.

Are we going to “subsidize” the so-called “Christmas Rally” to ensure that it is a “success” ? If the aim of the programme is to reach non believers, why should the congregation keep the date free? The congregation know what Christmas is about. Planning to fail?

Frankly speaking, the “Christmas Rally” (which is not Biblical) is a success only if it is fully financed by donations and sponsorship.