Haggai Institute 3rd National Seminar

The 6-days Haggai Institute 3rd National Seminar held at 360 Hotel, Kuching has just concluded on 17th Sept (Sat).

This was the first time in the Haggai Malaysian history for two languages seminar to be held at the same time, that was Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) and English seminars running together. Thanks to the organizing committee in making this possible. There are 34 participants, 17 from Bahasa group and 17 from English speaking group. Participants came from various parts of Sarawak. For Bahasa speaking some came from Indonesia.

Three brothers from our church attended.

The faculty members were Pastor Aries Siew (Malaysia), Pastor Tay Wah Seng (Malaysia), Robert Leong (Malaysia), Dr.Aje Chaiyot (Thailand), Alex Tan (Malaysia), Rev Wong Kim Kong (Malaysia), Joseph Tan (Malaysia), Jeff Wei (Malaysia). All the speakers were world class as most of them also conduct international seminars all over the world.

Subjects covered, Biblical Mandate,discipline,effective communication,pluralism,effective witness,Biblical stewardship and setting goals.

All these subjects were relevant to evangelism. But personally I was touched by personal sharing of Dr.Aje who is from Akha tribe of northern Thailand. He said his people are in 5 countries, Thailand, China, Loas, Myamar,and Cambodia. He came from a very poor family who did not even have a pair of slippers when he was young. Yet he managed to complete his PhD. God called him to minister to his people. Now he is also a pastor, as well as evangelist to his people. He was very humble and despite his high education he was not arrogant.

The other faculty member whose teaching and personal sharing impacted me was Alex Tan from Penang. He is a high ranking manager in Intel Malaysia. His personal testimony was touching. He shared how his right eye was healed when he prayed and was faithful to God. How his financial problems were solved when he obeyed and tithe as commanded by God. His teaching was clear and effective. A fellow brother said that his subject of Biblical Stewardship conducted on the last day of the course was like a "cap" for the whole course.

I remembered Billy Graham said "If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life". It is true from my observations.

All the participants have a God-encounter from the testimonies shared on the last day of this course. Most are fired up to go out to share the good news. Many are already doing some work in evangelism. This course help us to arm ourselves to do "the battles" out there.

Glory to God for this Haggai course.

Haggai Institute

Haggai Institute was founded by Dr. John Edmund Haggai and it specializes in evangelistic work. It has been around Malaysia for a while now, and they have been conducting courses on evangelism. Their main aim is to train leaders to train their local people to evangelize.

For the next one week, I will be attending their course here in Kuching. It is indeed a good opportunity for Christians here, otherwise we would have to go somewhere else to take this course.

After the course I will be able to comment more about it. Meantime stay tuned!

God bless all readers.

You can check out Haggai's website by clicking the title of this post.

Remembering 911

Today we remember 11th September,2001 when our world was changed forever by a terrorist attack on the twin-tower in New York. The pain of many still lingers for many around the world, but especially for those families whose love ones died a horrible death on that faithful day. We are all part of it, the pain and anguish may not be apparent but nevertheless inside us because we share a common objective for a peaceful world.

Malaysia remembers the seven Malaysians who died in this horrible attack, but only three could be traced. They are:

Ang Siew Nya, Khoo Sei Lai,and Vijayashanker Paramsothy. May they rest in peace.

To read a Malaysian on-line news report click on the title of this post.

In a Malaysia national newspaper, The Star reported recently on "Where were you on 11th Sept 2001?" a number of people responded. So where were you? I remembered that faithful day, my family and I were living in Kuala Lumpur. That evening, my sister-in-law called my wife to turn on the T.V that a plane had crashed into a building. We turned on the TV and true enough we watched a plane crashing into a building and it caught fire. I told my wife it could not be real, it must be a movie. Later the news came on shortly and reported about the attack in the US. We were shocked.

To read another article about these three Malaysians go to :
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2011/9/11/lifefocus/9310547&sec=lifefocus

Christians in India

I was reading blogpastor (blogpastor.net) and he had a post about the Christians in India which is interesting. All we read about in the news are usually how Christians are persecuted, they being killed and son on. It is heart warming to read that there is a revival going on in India. Praise the Lord! Nothing is impossible for our God!

India has 70 million Christians according to Operation World. This number may seem alot but India's population is about 1.2 billion, so 70 million is about 6%. The number is growing, and among the Dalit (the untouchable of India )it appears that their numbers are growing faster than the general population. By grace of God the Dalit have a chance to be redeemed and counted as God's people.



To read blogpastor post about India click on the title of this post.

The Reading Bus

It is heart warming to read about godly people reaching out to the needy community. Here is the story of dedicated Christians like Pastor/teacher Cheli Tamilselvan and his wife Kong Lai Mei helping the communities in Kuching as well as in Kuala Lumpur. Pastor Cheli has close relation with our church when he and his wife were serving in Kuching, East Malaysia for 27 years until they moved back to Kuala Lumpur end of last year.

They started the Reading Bus to help poor rural children to learn to read. What they did was using four wheels drive vehicle (4WD)stacked with books in wooden shelves for easy transportation before driving to targeted communities on a periodical basis until the locals are trained, after which the books are left with them as their libraries. This project has been very successful. They started with one 4WD in Kuching,Sarawak now they have 6 in Sarawak, 1 in Sabah and 1 in peninsula (kuala Lumpur). They have also started one in Cambodia with resounding success.

Cheli and Kong used to be full time teachers here in Kuching and it was their passion to teach and help the disadvantage that they started the Reading Bus. Indeed, this project have helped so many poor students especially those in the rural communities in Sarawak. Praise God for these dedicated teachers!

Beside, this reading bus work, Cheli is also a pastor. While in Kuching he pastored Bethany House, a church mainly for the youth and young people like college students. He also started a tuition centre at Bethany House. This project is also to help the poor students from disadvantage communities in Kuching. Students attended session once a week to be guided and taught by volunteers.

Many thanks to Pastor Cheli and his wife Mdm Kong for their sacrifice for the poor. They are indeed servants of God and have given unselfishly to their neighbors the poor.

To read the full news article please click on the title of this post.

Churches "Friend" More Than Schools

There seem to be a debate about using Face Book between teachers and students in the US. Now it seems more churches "friend" than schools. Some states in the US banned schools from engaging on face book (fb) with their students.

A few months ago there was also a report that some churches were instructing their members to close their fb accounts because in some cases their usage led to infidelity among members. However now it appears that more churches are using the social media to evangelize, communicate, and educate their members as well as other visitors. Social media expert Chris Forbes said this is a very effective tool when used properly. Just imagine with fb a church can reach million of people. It not only influence its congregation but also people around the world. We have not seen anything like this before fb or other social medias. The expert said “If churches desire to connect with their congregation and community in meaningful ways, then they need to establish a strategy for actively engaging in the social media conversation.”

Not only in the US, many churches around the world are using social media to connect with their congregations. It is just the extend of connection. To the younger members social media is just natural for them, perhaps the older generations have to adapt to the "new" social media.

Like any good things ( all the positive benefits of social media) there are bound to be people who use such benefits for ill gains or to harm others.

As for us Christians what ever it is we must be accountable to God and use any tool with good intention and integrity.

"The man of integrity walks securely but he who take crooked paths will be found out". Proverb 10:9

To read a full article click on the title of this post.

Watch this informative video especially for churches using social media

Church Signs in the US

Church signs in US can be interesting, funny, serious and some with very thoughtful messages to attract people.

Only in US you get these kind of church signs. Let me know if there are any from other countries.

Here are some I found.

The Face Book style sign is my favourite.

Click on the title of this post to read an article on church signs.