BE EMPOWERED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT

[Photos: Oceania Convention in Phillip Island, Australia]

Greetings to Hope churches

I send you greetings from Melbourne, Australia, where we have just finished the Hope Oceania Convention. Around 850 people attended, with a great excitement for what God was doing in our midst.

[Photo: Ps Simon Eng & Lai Eng at Oceania Convention]

I want to greet all of you in North and South America. I want to greet all of you in our European churches. I want to greet all of you in our African churches. I want to greet you all in the wonderful name of Jesus in our Asian churches. I greet you because you are precious to the Lord and you are precious to our family of churches. You are precious to my heart as well. I want to pray and I want to continue to remind everyone that you are in our hearts. I really want to pray that God will continue to advance our churches. God will continue to advance your work for the Kingdom wherever you may be. God be with you.

Pastor Simon Eng video message

Hope Oceania Convention - Moving in the Spirit

The Oceania Convention was about moving in the spirit. And we had a terrific time. We had plenty of time to be able to minister to people. And the leaders were also taught on how to operate in moving in the spirit and using the gifts of the spirit. [Oceania Convention Photos Website]

[Photos: Pastor Wilson & Pastor Ian teaching at convention]

We also had Peter Truong who prayed for the people. You will be able to see the video in the near future where people who’ve had long term aches and pains being healed. People suffering from back problems, knee problems, fingers that couldn’t properly open and close – God moved upon all of them.

The teaching sessions were really wonderful. We learnt about moving of the spirit, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and about the power of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Wilson, Pastor Brendan and I taught.

And we all got together and really ministered victoriously. The leaders after our convention, they testified about God’s great work. The leaders did a survey among the people: 85 to 90% said they had been ministered to and they had learnt how to practice moving in the spirit. They are excited about what God can do through their lives. It’s been a wonderful weekend. It’s been a powerful weekend, a strategic weekend where our churches in Australia and New Zealand learnt about moving in the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s been wonderful.

Hope Oceania Churches report

[Photos: Oceania Convention Opening Ceremony]

I want to give you a further report. Our churches are also experiencing the wonderful touch of God around Oceania.

• Hope Auckland, the church is reaching up to 80+ people in their Sunday service attendances which had previously averaged around 40, 50. During one special celebration, they had more than a hundred people. Bernard and Angela are excited about what God is doing.

• Hope Brisbane, our largest church in Australia is touching over 700 people. They are now planting a new centre in Ipswich. They also believe God for the approval on their building project, Unidus, soon. Wow! It’s an exciting time. Hope Brisbane sent a missions team to Fiji as well. I really want to pray and believe that Oceania will do some landings this year or next year. I also pray for people to have a heart burden for the Pacific islands and that the churches will be able to send teams there.

• Hope Melbourne, our next largest centre, is pioneering 4 new centres. They went to Papua New Guinea (PNG). Exciting, exciting things happening are there.

• Hope Perth, God did something really wonderful. Hannah finished chemotherapy and the doctor says she is cancer free. Praise God for that. They’re also moving into missions and planting centres. One of these churches is in rural Western Australia.
  

• Hope Busselton is touching country Australia and its people. Nigel and Sandy have been wonderful in being able to plant the vision in towns around Busselton. They’re really experiencing wonderful growth and wonderful additions. Simply because we trust God, we move with God’s vision and God is adding to our churches. Busselton planted 2 new centres. Praise God! With Nigel and Sandy, they really believe in God. For a while, they were praying for breakthrough. They’ve finally broken through in their town. And now they are moving into two new towns to be able to bring people to the Lord. I am excited about what God in doing in country Australia.

• Hope Adelaide, God is bringing in the people as well. Adelaide’s Payneham centre now has over 160 people, with a new centre established with Eddie. They are excited. Brendan has been involved in an African mission. God is just doing awesome work.

• Hope Hobart, Tasmania, God has been doing a wonderful work there.

I’m excited to hear all of the reports about what’s happening in our centres. These are the major areas of what is happening in the Oceania churches. God is doing a great and wonderful thing of touching our churches, blessing our leaders, blessing our families, our students, our professionals and working adults. It’s great. I had a wonderful and blessed weekend with the Oceania Convention in Melbourne, Australia.

Leaders Conference May 2009 - Kuching, Malaysia

[Photos: City views of Kuching]

Coming up in May, we’re going to have our Leader’s Conference and we’re going to change that to a global conference in Kuching. We’re going to do lessons on leadership.

We are going to relearn about the life of leadership, integrity in leadership, the strength and the accountability in leadership. We are going to re-look key areas of the church leadership, working together as a team of leaders. I mentioned in my last sharing that there were new developments coming up.

In the May Leaders Conference

• We will also be launching our mission statement
• Our new logo
  
• We want to launch world mission
  
• We want to project ourselves for moving forward of our movement.
  

We want to look at the launching of a few areas that will really show that we’re moving ahead as a movement as well.

Plurality in governance & leadership structure

I’d like to share with you some of the progress...

• We’re looking at building more plurality in our governance and in our leadership structure in our local churches, in our regional churches and also in our international eldership as well. We are in the process now of adding more elders so that we are able to govern as a team.
  

• Our leadership is more than just one man; we are looking for accountability towards our own team members as well. We will be more open, more transparent in reporting to our leadership team, and they can likewise have an input to our pastoral decisions and the things that we want to do in the church.
  

• Financially, we pledge to be more open to our Interim Leadership. We are accountable to show them how we are budgeting, what we want to do with finances in our movement etc. And this is some of the progress that we are looking into to strengthen the governance of our movement.

[Photos: Hope United Kingdom Festival 2009]

Personal accountability to the movement

Personally, for my own accountability, I recognised together with the Interim Leadership, that for over 10 years, I’ve been always accountable to the eldership, accountable to the leaders over me.

But right now, those people are gone and we have suggested a few key leaders both in my Malaysian contexts and also leaders who are slightly further away. And we are looking into at least two to three key leaders whom I can be accountable to as well. I won’t mention the possible names at the moment but the Interim Leaders together with me have seen the importance and the value of these. And so personally, I am also looking into that aspect of accounting myself externally and to our leadership team as well.

[Photos: Hope Singapore Easter Services]

Building unity in the body of Christ

I think we recognise the fact that personally all of us have to be a bit more open to outside leaders as well. So we’re encouraging our local churches, our pastors to begin relating to pastors in their cities.

People in the ministry who can share their heart concern, who can be friends together with them that they can go out causally and just continue to relate as a group of friends and friendship with leaders and pastors around the place as well.

[Photos: Hope Lima, Peru - South America]

Apostolic covering in the movement

On the apostolic covering over our movement and the apostles that we want to relate with, we are in the process of identifying globally recognised apostolic ministries and people who are already effective in their apostolic field.

We’re considering some of these people so that we can relate with them as an external input, they can speak into our movement, they can do some evaluation with us as well. And so we’re looking at various apostolic authorities that we can relate. And we are in that process and we’re looking at identifying these people to be able to speak into our movement as well. So overall, we are really looking at opening ourselves. We’ve been insulated, we’ve been inward looking and now we’re looking opening ourselves more and more to be able to relate with a greater body of Christ.

Hope North America Convention July 2009

In July, I will be travelling to Hope North America convention. I previously went there in February. We ironed out issues and dealt with matters. The team is moving towards consolidating all of this as we go and meet together in July for the convention. We are moving forward with the vision and moving forward to what we want to do in the Americas as well.

So this will be a time of consolidation for our North American churches and the mission work in the Americas as well.

Moving forward in the anointing of God

Brothers and sisters, together with learning and teaching about moving in the spirit, I want to encourage every one of us to do so, not just Oceania. We need to discover a greater anointing. We need to discover a greater move in the spirit in our lives as leaders and in our churches as well.

[Photos: Hope Hong Kong Easter Celebration]

Individually as a leader or as a member, seek God together with me for our churches, such that we can discover the life and power of the Holy Spirit working in us individually, whereby we can grow, whereby we can see the life of the Spirit.

When we look into the Bible, it is essential for us as an individual, essential for us as a church, to know the power and the work of the Holy Spirit. It will help us to really receive the power of the spirit to serve God victoriously. That’s why God invests in us, God pours out his Holy Spirit on us so individually and as a church, we will be to grow, and we will serve God effectively wherever we may be.

The Holy Spirit helps our churches to grow and to be an effective power source in our locality.

Pastor Simon Eng
Elder of HGI