Pastor Ben started his sharing by relating about church growth in China. When the communist took over in China, all churches were shut down and many pastors and priests were sent to prisons. Despite the dire circumstances, the church grew in China, and members grew more than double during this time. In Hong Kong, since 1997 (H.K was given back to China) till today church grew 100%.
Pastor Ben is a very humorous pastor and many of us have not seen such pastor before. His presentation was filled with experiences that he acted out to tremendous laughter’s from the congregation. Many had not laughed so much in their church lives! That was good, it helped members to relax and pay attention to him.
He said it was good that we are going through hard times because hard times build us up. The bad times are our good times! Without bad times we get too comfortable and we do not do anything useful for God. In bad times, God moulded us and set “fire” to refine us.
He shared on Matthew Ch 16:18 “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it”.
God said He will build the church and He is not depending on other people. In the Old Testament times the people wanted human kings, but not God, so God gave them kings. However, from history we know that most kings were evil.
Pastor Ben related that when he was young he did badly in school and his report card contained many red marks, therefore his parent punished him by locking him in a room. Pastor Ben was the number eight child, and his surname is “Wang” in Chinese, if one were to translate that, his name was “Wang Pak(8 in Chinese ) tang” which means a rascal ! That really brought the house down! Since, young he had low self esteem, but over the years he learnt and grew in the Lord, and of course later he became pastor of his church.
He went to church as a young boy and he noticed that some elders had more than one wives. He questioned the elders but they asked him to shut up and said he did not know as he was a kid. Later he noticed that many came by Mercedes cars, and he realised that the church tolerated such elders because they could donate large sum of money, and if they go the money will go too. From than on he said he will not go to such church and he quit church at age 16 years. Only later at 19 years old when he studied in Australia he was born again. He promised God that he will not have anything to with church that go after financial gains.
According to him, church buildings are not important. Buildings confine people within. Let us look outward. The more important things of church is people. It is the people that build the church. We need to build relationship with each other. In fact we should love one another like Jesus loves us. Let us love other people too.
Be One accord with God. He prophesied that God will re build FBC to a greater height. God said "fear not, I am with you”.
We thanked Pastor Ben for sharing with all of us. His visit was indeed timely and only God could have arranged such visit. Infact, he was not suppose to speak to us as he was on holiday to visit one of our Brothers who was his classmate in Australia.
Thank you Lord for Pastor Ben.
No comments:
Post a Comment