PASTOR PN MESSAGE

I am in Brisbane, Australia. I joined the Hope Oceania Convention (OC) which had over 800 people. Behind me is the Greek Club, where we held the OC titled “Immersion, A Contextualised Church”.

[OC 2008 Photo Website]

Pastor PN Message at Oceania Convention (Video)

God wants to move around the world to touch people, God’s people, and put the vision of the Great Commission into their hearts.

I personally believe that the Great Commission will be God's agenda, and will be God's momentum and will see God moving in our modern times.

Crossing the cultural borders

To fulfil the Great Commission, we need to cross borders; we need to do cross cultural church planting.

We need to list out the people, in our localities; we need to list out the international people in our localities and also all over the world; that’s why we need to contextualise. We need to adopt and adapt so that we can better understand their culture and lifestyle. This will allow us to get along with them so that we can understand their mentality, what they are thinking, and what they are; so that we can win their hearts and bring them to Christ.

Building a Contextualised church

We love them so that we can understand them, be with them and identify with them. The concept of the contextualisation is that we to keep the message, the content and the substance but we can change the container. It’s like a plant and a container: we keep the plant but we bring it into a new location. Although we are intentional in where we target, we can change the container. However, we love to use the local container which would be best suited to the local plant.

Contextualised the gospel message

This is the key concept of contextualisation. We love to convey the message, the substance of the Gospel and God’s biblical principle, but we can change the methods, the means, the local means so that they can accept the message and the substance well.

We love to contextualise, we need to contextualise, we need to understand the local people, and we need to adopt to be considerate of their circumstances; to adopt the local people, adopt the local culture, so that we can be adaptive and get along with them. The purpose is to win more souls, reach out to them and bring them back to the Kingdom of God.

A spirit of excellence at Oceania Convention

At Hope Oceania 2008, I was very impressed because I could see how far the churches have progressed.

It was the first time I saw an orchestra at Hope Oceania Convention. The second thing I saw was the thoughtfulness of the organising committee: they had a creative programme everyday, especially in the evenings. I saw the Pacific Islanders dancing which was so spectacular and wonderful. If they continue to improve like this, it could be a World Class Convention. I appreciate their efforts, so please enjoy the Oceania Convention; you are welcome to join them next year.

God Bless you!

Pastor PN
President of HGI