Every Step Forward is for Christ (Part One)

Embodying a purposeful direction in the Vision Statement to bear fruit for God

Khen Lim




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For the many decades of my church’s existence, the mandate fleshed out in its Constitution was to fulfil the Great Commission (Mt 28:16-20). Of course, that would probably be no different for many churches throughout the world because this is a broad vision that is well spelt out in the Bible. How the vision is fleshed out will likely, though, be varied, given the different complexions, needs and issues that each church has.

The Great Commission is, of course, a very important cornerstone for all Christians and it goes without saying that it is therefore an inherently vital function of the church. That being said, our church had, over the decades, struggled to understand how to fulfil it beyond a generic understanding of what churches in general are purposed to do. 


In other words, for a few decades since, we have essentially been rudderless and in some senses, some might say we had been purposeless also. Given that we’ve soldiered on in this manner for this long, it is truly a miracle that as a church, we are still standing today but credit for that goes entirely to Him, the Almighty to whom the church belongs. It is He who have been propping us up all along; otherwise, we would have gone asunder a long time ago.

One general election ago, our church voted in a brand new chairman and board. As they say, gone with the old, and in with the new. There was much hope pinned on to the word ‘new’ because of what that could mean for all of us. Many of us who have been in this church for many years now, had wanted to see the wheels turn for the first time in a very long time. This opportunity now appears to be handed to us on a silver platter and we believe God has made His move, a move we have been waiting patiently for like, forever.

But before this day, many of us felt that the church had lost virtually all sense of dynamism. We were languishing and doing things mechanically purely for the sake of doing them. We no longer enjoyed that element of surprise in the things we can do joyously. We were not just stagnating but felt that our ship was going backwards.

The Background

In the thirty-three years since its founding, the development history of our church can briefly be described in the following thirteen stages:

-        1. Start small, think big. We began modestly but then again, most churches do too. Credit for our founding must go to our brothers and sisters from EFC America who equipped the founding members with the inspiration to be optimistic.

-        2. Promising growth. It was exciting times for the church because before too long after we began in the mid-Eighties, we were numbering thirty to forty plus members. Given our community setting, we were set to expand steadily.

-        3. Premature disaster. Then we had to endure a tragic split literally months after its founding (by our American brothers and sisters in EFC America). Our church’s first pastor wanted to go charismatic but he failed to see that the congregation didn’t.

As a result, the church was torn into two and in the separation process, the pastor took away half the membership and with the knowledge of how to establish a church now firmly learned, he went off to start his own, leaving a small but broken remnant behind.

-        4. Lost our legs. The church returned to its small size and stayed small for a very long time. Much of the congregation was understandably disheartened with such a serious setback within an unimaginably short period of time.

-        5. Temporary closure. The church reached a stage of her life where there was no pastor to lead it, resulting in a temporary closure. In hindsight, this became a period now known for its mysteriousness because most of us have no idea what really took place then before it was reopened.

-        6. Born again. Miraculously, God sent someone to encourage the church to reopen its doors once again. Funny enough, that ‘someone’ wasn’t a member of our church or any church for that matter.

-        7. Turning point. The church took on a new pastor who had just returned from Australia, having completed his theological study. Things looked much better and the members felt more hopeful. Regrowth became a distinct possibility.

-        8. Peak numbers. Under the new pastor leadership, the church grew in numbers and moved to larger premises. Things were looking bright. Everything in church felt interesting to many in the congregation.

-        9. Dropped the ball. The numbers began to recede once again. Members left for different reasons. There was tension within. Internal conflicts grew. While some stayed the course, the outlook was less hopeful once again.

-        10. Hopelessness. The numbers had by now plummeted to a little more than a dozen faithfuls. There was a feeling that the wind was knocked out of her sails and things had once again begun not to look good.

-        11. False hopes. Over the subsequent years, the church endured a number of misfortunate and regrettable incidents. These setbacks were originally viewed with great promise but they ended up regressing the church.

-        12. Near closure. Almost four years earlier, the church was nearest to a permanent closure when issues concerning her finances were raised in an open meeting with the members. A number of feuding members took the cue to walk out permanently.

-        13. New direction. A number of years of stability amidst a vastly reduced membership size ensued. By then our long-suffering church pastor had gone through almost twenty years of faithful service but has grown increasingly but understandably weary and tired. Then came a general election that brought the church a new chairman with a revamped administrative board.

With all due respect, the non-pastoral leadership in the church up until that point had been lacklustre at best. It had lacked imagination or even vitality. Everything was ‘business as usual’ but it was going nowhere fast. Over those many years, the electable church positions were viewed as an annual obligation because they were required by government regulations in compliance with constitutional law governing the Registry of Societies.

And with that, calling of annual elections was mandatory but it didn’t take long for these to become processional. Their significance had long disappeared together with much of the usual enthusiasm. While the same chairman endured a return to office for many years, the other positions had numerous changes but nonetheless, nothing changed. It was very much a case of ‘nothing ventured, so nothing gained.’

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All of this isn’t to say that everybody was merely warming the pews. In those many years, many events had been staged for different occasions including Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Church Anniversary and Christmas Day. Other than the usual and often enjoyable feasts (we call them ‘pot bless’), there were hardly a handful who were willing to put in the hard and made them happen. Most preferred the leisure of warming the pews. They were essentially bankrupt of ideas, unwilling to roll up the sleeves and impervious to the pastor’s never-ending pleas to help out.

Inevitably even the most enthusiastic became jaded and either ran out of steam or turned disillusioned. Unfortunately not many stayed on. While some left, looking for a more vibrant church, only a few remained behind and continued their loyalty to the pastor and church.

Being a typical feeder church, our younger ones were also leaving for different reasons. Most of them left to further their studies interstate or abroad. At least one left because she thought our services were too boring for her. Those who completed their studies were also not likely to return to Ipoh since everywhere else offered better job opportunities.

It isn’t the intention of this article to peer into the history of the church to criticise. A simple overview of its past merely offers us a clearer understanding of how much burden the church had to deal with ever since it was founded more than thirty-three years ago. Our church today remains compact. At best, our congregation size is no more than fifteen or so. Full house only happens during the church’s annual Election Day or during Christmas service. Cynics would say that the best attendances are reserved for days when we have feasts and they might be right.

Given our small numbers, politicking is easy to observe but still impossible to rid of. The same can be said for absenteeism by any one member and when that happens, a clutch full of attendants at our Sunday service can look and feel discouraging to walk-in guests who were expecting a dynamic standing-room church. In other words, if you were expecting a church bursting with youthful vitality and upbeat worship ministry, you would end up feeling underwhelmed because that unmistakable sense of despair is probably quite palpable.

For those who persistently stayed on (even when others were leaving), often the question was why not leave. Despite the negative hype surrounding an underpopulated small church such as ours, the few of us kept soldiering on because we have invested in God’s promise that someday, He will do something big. And even if His sense of timing isn’t quite to our liking, we walk by faith that unless the church closes, we will always be there to serve Him obediently.

Confusion of ideas

For too long now, some of us have been grappling with what to make out of our church. Could it actually grow? And if it really could, how would we do it? If our church isn’t made for growth, then what is it made for? If it remained forever small, can we accept the way it is? Is it biblical to have a small church? Does a church have to be necessarily big in every way? Can a small church have a big heart? Can a small church do great things?

None of these questions were left unvisited by at least some of us. We would have bashed them around over and over, discussed them, argued over them and played the devil’s advocate just to see how we would cope with a church that, for all intents and purposes, could remain small forever. When we began to probe into the future of our church, there was no doubt that elsewhere in the world, there were small churches that remained very engaged, very much alive and doing well. A church needn’t have to be mega-sized to mean something for God has plans for every church, large and small, near and far.

It would be deceptive to deny feeling negative at some points during these discussions. There have been many occasions even in the recent past where some of us thought the worst but God was gracious in calming our fears and raising our hopes, reminding us of His promise to do something. And so we often found ourselves taking to our (sparsely attended) prayer meetings, crying out to Him to not forget us. After that, all we had to do was to be still and wait.

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There is often that unmistakable feeling that our church was constantly running on empty. It was like sneaking a look at the fuel gauge, seeing the needle doggedly pointing at ‘E’ and yet it was still chugging along as if on the smell of an oily rag. No matter how we might have made ourselves feel stranded and standing rooted to the ground, God was making sure we would plod on one Sunday after the next.

With abysmal offerings collected every week, our church was essentially surviving on savings in the bank that comprised depleting fixed deposits and precious little else. We do not have wealthy members in our midst to rely on for sizeable donations. We do not have influential people in our congregation who could effortlessly rustle up fundraisers. Instead the big weakness in our church is a serious lack of younger people and whole family groups. Without these, growth has remained stymied for many years. With most of our congregation being senior-age retirees and the unemployed, any thoughts of financial sustainability are always discouraging.

Inevitably, our ideas shrank in size and number. We found it increasingly harder to think big or act big. The vitality wasn’t there anymore. People weren’t volunteering to help. They haven’t been for a long time and there were no signs that this would change anytime soon. Even an excellent idea was futile if no one bothered to help out. Soon, the whole church felt enveloped in negativity and we found ourselves foregoing prayer meetings and Bible study nights. It became so bad that we even stopped rehearsing for our worship services. Losing all these events meant that our church was only opened one day a week, that is, on Sunday services and nothing else.

The ‘bare necessity’ approach was a terribly gloomy sign of the times for us. Without much prospects over the horizon, some of us were even wondering when the church doors would finally close.

Leadership Change Brings New Initiatives

It’s now almost two years ago since our non-pastoral leader called time on his long tenure as the church chairman and with this, we saw a brand new face with a brand new attitude and a whole new outlook to things. While there were also wholesale changes to the board membership, it was the change in the chair that was eye-catching enough for some of us to sense God’s hand at this. This was the sign that we were looking for. This was the change of tide that we have been waiting for so long.

Fresh from his ‘migration’ to Ipoh from one of our EFC sibling churches interstate, our church would have been a relatively foreign experience to the new chairman and his family. But one good opportunity arose from this – he was the best place of all of us to view our church and what took place within our four walls with a neutral perspective. Without taking sides, he could assess the church’s strengths and weaknesses more effectively than our maligned eyes. For the first time in a very long time, we could take a deep breath and anticipate a proper and in-depth review of our church from as many different standpoints as it would take for us to gain the best yet understanding of what we can and cannot do to advance our future.

As I understood later, if it weren’t for him responding to God’s calling to stay, our chairman and his family would have gone somewhere else. Since he had actually found a different church earlier on, his decision to make us their spiritual home was truly a miracle and a godsend. Much of this told us something we already knew – our church was not healthy. There were issues that we needed to tackle headlong. There were hurdles we can no longer avoid or sidestep. In some ways, our church was slowly imploding from the inside. Because we finally identified our ‘enemy’ as operating within our interiors, we could no longer point the finger at the outside world.  

It was wonderful – and a huge relief – to have a fresh set of eyes seeing and then confirming what we suspected a long time ago but was too afraid to affirm for ourselves. Fearing that we were wrong in our own views, our new chairman vindicated what we had thought over the years and because of this, we felt renewed strength to push forth a new agenda and to fight the problem.

It was a long time coming, this new leadership. For some, it was a two-decade long wait. For others, even five years was intolerably long. It would be fair to say that the many who had left by now had given up waiting for something to happen. Even for those of us who remained behind, the wait was near-insufferable.

Now that we were humbled by God proving us wrong – and chastising us for our impatience – we also realised that indeed, He not only heard our cries but had also delivered. Of course, our problem was that we neither knew how nor when. And so when it came to our Election Day two years ago, God made His move but of course, we were none the wiser. How easy it was for God to do something so naturally before our own eyes and yet we were too blind to see.

Let Love Lead the Way

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Our new chairman spend around eight to nine months observing our conduct, learning our practices and understanding our traditions. From there, he developed a fresh thrust that would hopefully redirect the church in a more rewarding direction. This thrust was to be preceded by what he identified as a strong need to put our house in order. This would entail two clear initiatives:

-        A need to love first. In his observation, he identified that our church lacked real love, which he now called a core issue, one that was apparent within the small congregation and one that must be resolved beforehand. In several of our leaders’ meetings held at our home, we recognised together the biblical importance of loving one another first (1 Cor 13:13). In John’s first letter (1 Jn 4:8), the apostle bears a vivid reminder for all of us, saying, ‘anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.’ And with that in mind, we need to get past our enmity issues by overcoming them with love.

-        Christ is our bigger picture. Self-centredness was prevalent but we must now supersede that with the much larger picture in which Christ must come first. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus said, ‘Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need.’ In simpler but equally powerful words, John says, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (Jn 3:30). In all that we act, we must learn earnestly to place Christ foremost and relegate our selfishness (Col 3:1-4).

Make Disciples of Our Own

Once we can carry out the above two initiatives, our next step will be to make disciples of Christ out of our own church members, to teach them through no less than the Word of God and then to equip them with what is necessary to passionately serve Christ throughout the remainder of their lives.

One of the things that we will need to do is to reopen our Bible Study classes but with a striking difference in how we approach them. In the past, Bible Study classes were two-fold. One was to do a survey of the Old and then the New Testament. In this survey, we would go through every verse of every chapter. It was a long plod but we kept telling ourselves that we have all the time in the world. The other was Church History where we explore the important historical events beginning with the Early Church, moving further to the latter centuries.

To use our Bible Study classes in the equipping of our members would require us to reform their structure, format and curriculum. A topical-based disciple-centred curriculum will need to be fleshed out over time but admittedly, this will be a huge challenge for a small church like ours comprising only one ordained and one lay pastor. Together with the chairman, we will use the subsequent leaders’ meetings to deliberate over this approach, instilling discipline and structure into a progressive learning format.

It will take time to develop these classes but they will nonetheless be of great importance for the members to attend. All of this is a rather tall order. The history of our church does not bode well in terms of prospects of attendance. In recent times, our Bible Study classes were as unpopular as our Prayer Meetings. In either case, attendance was apathetic. The only thing we can ever do in this instance is to pray and petition God to unbind the bonds that are holding back our church members from wanting to learn His Word.

Projecting Beyond and Convert Others

Once the members are grounded in the Word of God, preparation will take place to ready their heads and hearts to be a testimony for Christ in which what we say and do will reflect Christ in all of us. To do that, we need to incorporate Christ-like values in our lives and once we can do this, we should be confident enough to know that half our battle will have been won.

In order to live up to our church name (and denomination), we must encourage our congregation to take the Bible seriously. In that sense, head knowledge isn’t enough; we must also subscribe to the practical aspect in how we believe in Jesus being our Lord, Saviour and Christ. Historian David Bebbington does well in summarising the evangelical distinctives by identifying four fundamental characteristics of evangelicalism. He puts them as follows:

-        Conversionism. This is central to the transformation of lives via a ‘born-again’ experience as well as a life-long process of following Jesus.

-        Activism. This is the expression and demonstration of the Gospel in mission work and also all efforts centring on social reforms.

-        Biblicism. Bebbington expresses this as “a high regard for and obedience to the Bible as the ultimate authority.”

-        Crucicentrism. This is the focus on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, on the cross of all our sins as the only way for humanity to redeem itself.

Besides this, church members must now learn about the very essence of any related word, evangelism. This is the spreading of the Gospel by public preaching or personal witness. The Gospel – Good News, in other words – is often mishandled by well-intended Christians who assume that the best way to reach unbelievers is to begin with the good parts like God’s love for mankind when in fact, the message is actually lost on them. A better approach would be for unbelievers to come to grips with the bad news first. Until the fullest extent of the bad news (Ps 7:11, Heb 9:27 etc) is first presented and presented in the grimmest possible way, effective evangelism cannot be effectively communicated.

Modern evangelism doesn’t deal enough with the holiness of God and this is something, which we must address. It isn’t His love but His holiness that we must first acknowledge and worship Him for. Remember that the seraphim in Isaiah 6:3 extolling God, saying, “And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.’” It is only when we fully understand God’s holiness that we appreciate why He hates all sins (Zech 8:16-17, Prov 6:16-19), which then explains His righteous wrath against sinners.

Once we get the right picture into our Christian perspective, we will realise that the ‘God is love’ message so widely propagated today distorts our understanding of His supreme holiness. Because many of us are more comfortable with Him as a God of love, we end up not learning to fear Him (Prov 1:7), not appreciating that He is also a jealous God (Ex 34:14) or have no understanding that His hatred for sin is so real that it burns against all evil (Isa 5:25, Hos 8:5, Zech 10:3).

Evangelism, in recent history of our church, has proven to be a particularly difficult aspect to carry out. Had it been easier to do, we would have fulfilled our role as a community church, which would have meant that residents in neighbouring suburbs would have comprised a large part of our congregation. As it stands, we only have one member who hails from a nearby suburb.

Our desire to mould members into disciples of Christ cannot be divorced from our need to get some kind of outreach happening, in which we open up for ourselves real opportunities to finally tell our neighbours, friends, work colleagues and anyone we know (who care to listen) about God. All the initiatives mentioned here that we intend to mobilise are essentially joined at the hips and they are all required to make it possible for us to bring people in to know Christ. In other words, one without the other won’t work. All of them are needed.

Bringing people to Christ and helping our church to grow doesn’t imply any obsession with numbers. Of course, quality is still more important. What we do in church, how we behave and what we know about God still matters even when we try to bring more people to church. We must also be mindful that living in the real world means that even churches must pay bills. We need to ensure that we have continual funds to meet church expenditure without compromising on our spiritual integrity and dignity in Christ.

(continued next week)