LEADERSHIP THAT LASTS CONFERENCE

Brothers and sisters all over the world, we just finished our LC (Leadership Conference) at Kuching. That’s where I am at the moment. We completed a very essential and important LC entitled "Leadership That Lasts". We learnt about the principles of finishing successfully and victoriously. We learnt about how to build principles into our lives and carefully putting safeguards in our lives so that we will last the distance.

[Photo Website of Leadership Conference]

Leadership That Lasts is a fresh LC in which we redesigned the teaching and workshops. Some 400 leaders were excited about what God did in the midst of the LC. Many testified about how great it was with the wonderful presence of God and about the opportunity to relate together.

Pastor Simon Eng Video Message

Teachings at Leadership Conference

We talked about principles of lasting in God’s calling. We talked about how to survive detours when things happen in our lives that tend to distract us away (by Dr Wilson Lim) . We talked about being hampered but not crushed (by Pastor Ben KC Lee). We keep values that will cause us to be able to bounce back again. We talked about breaking free from our limitations. We talked about the reward that God has for each one of us. It has been a great LC. I talked with many of the brothers and sisters from Asia, Australia, Europe, and America. This is wonderful.

[Photos: Speakers at the Leadership Conference]

I shared about moving forward in our movement, moving forward as a family together. Let me share with you about some of the areas I would like to communicate to our people all over the world and our family together on how to look at some of these areas we are moving forward in.

Directions for moving forward

1) Mission Thrust

We call the first area, "Mission Thrust". This is the first M. We desire to continue to be able to fulfil the vision of the Great Commission. We are still revitalising what we started out with almost 20 years ago. We are continually remind ourselves about the Great Commission. Some of the things that we have discussed about with our leaders include trying to finalise our goals.

For example, our goal on the 238 countries and territories. We are still planning on how to accomplish and to fulfill in every region of the world. We also talk about building quality biblical churches that will be able to get the job done.

[Photos: Prayer at the Leadership Conference]

Quality churches will enable the church planting process to continue successfully. We identify some goals, for example, to be able to build 30 churches to over 100 people. There are about 99 churches in our movement out of 117 we have in totality at the moment, which are below 100. We want to get at least 30 of those over the 100-people mark in the next 2 years.

We also talk about building 3 churches over more than 1,000 people (Brisbane, Kuching and Kaula Lumpur). We are going to allocate manpower to be able to look at how we can build these churches to be over a hundred, and some over a thousand. Besides, we also identify some to get beyond the 500-people mark. So we want to be able to continue to build our churches to move on the Great Commission momentum. That’s the first M.

2) Management of HIM

The 2nd area that I would like to continue to work on is what I call Management. We want to ensure that we will be able to manage our movement well. God has given us great blessings in our churches to make sure we are able to manage well. For example, in finance and human resources, we’re looking to hire professionals, qualified people.

• We’ve hired Angela Tie, a Masters graduate from Australia to keep the accounts. We hired Nicola Song with a Masters degree, to do human resources and legal registration, and looking at the terms and conditions of our pastors so that all our manpower will be managed properly.

• We will also setup committees which include finance and human resources to make sure we are managing finances well, and manpower professionally. All these things are going to be set in place under management.

We’re also looking at group work aspects; we’re putting people into group work. For example James Loke is looking into education. We’ve also set aside Pastor Willie to do mission monitoring and mission momentum. We also have various people being identified. We have people under the church growth department moving around different churches to identify those which need help to grow and move stronger in our management and movement.

[Photos: Praise and Worship at the Leadership Conference]

3) Maturing of our Churches

The third M is what I call the Maturing of our churches. What are the different areas that we want to look at in the maturing of our churches? One, we want to strengthen spiritual governance. We are looking for external apostolic relationship to speak into our movement. This will be people who are proven apostolic that can come and relate with our leaders, speak into our movements, make some suggestions, and even at times raise certain issues, corrections we need to make and we will consider them carefully.

So we’re opening ourselves to external apostolic relationship and friendship compared with other previous times, when we were only looking inward at our own people. This apostolic ministry will also be raising up and developing our own apostolic ministry.

We have people in our church who are gifted, maybe junior apostles in the making whom we want to develop as well. Under the maturing of our church, we also look at covering for myself as an elder, covering for our leaders, personal accountability and external accountability so that we have someone else to speak into our lives in that aspect.

Further on maturing in our churches, I’m interested to raise up Christ-centred disciples. We want to build our people to really be Christ centred; disciples that follow God, disciples that commit their lives to God in a Word-centred manner.

We also want to build quality Christians with quality character; the character of Christ, the character of the fruit of the spirit, the character to will be moulded, so that we’ll last the distance. And I’m also interested to see as we mature as a church, the glory and the power and presence of God will be in our midst. In our churches, we’ll be able to sense that and the leaders will lead our people into that maturity as well. That is the 3rd M.

[Photos: Workshops at the Leadership Conference]

4) Ministries Development

The fourth M will be Ministries development. We want to continually develop many more ministries such as church planting and pioneering support, which will need training materials. We have various types of training materials but not systematic organisation in terms of syllabus to train our church planters.

We are going to try to develop mentoring materials to help our people and mentoring them really well in a spiritual and holistic manner.

These are the various things that we have set out to move forward and I believe that it’s going to be a terrific future coming up for us. During this LC, there were prophecies of new things and God wanting to move us on with a harvest and greater anointing. It’s a wonderful time to be together.

New Mission Statement

I also want to share with you the good news. The new mission statement is going to be revised. It is more relevant and contemporary to the language and English of today. It will be a mission statement that will invigorate our lives as well with this fresh touch. It says:

"Fulfilling the Great Commission by raising Christ-centred disciples to plant vibrant biblical churches in our city, country and all over the world."

Hope International Ministries (HIM)

Together with that, we have a new logo design which is really beautiful and meaningful logo, which we have launched in Kuching and you will see it soon coming to your shore. We will use this logo in our local churches and HIM.

[Photo: Interim Leadership Team]

We also launched our international covering under Hope International Ministries (HIM). It will be called HIM. To Him be the glory, to Him be the praise as we move forward, not under HGI anymore, but under HIM. Together with logo and mission statement, a new tag is also line been coined.

Spread the vision for Christ

Brothers and sisters, in closing I would like to share with you some expectations that we can put on ourselves.

• Firstly, continue to be proactive in communicating the positive changes coming. Please share this with our people.
  

• Secondly, continue to lead with our life examples through what we have learnt and our vision's values.
  

• Thirdly, you can continue to keep our members informed on what you have heard here.

Do keep them informed on the development that is coming up. Finally, I would like to encourage you to keep in unity. Keep in the flow together with us. We are together in our international movement, in our family of churches together and our good leaders among us, myself in the RMC, and the pastors that are under us. They are excited with the 400 leaders together this time. We are so excited with the fresh touch of what God is going to do in our movement.

[Photos: Kuching City Tour]

Prayer support for Pastor Simon Eng

Let me update you as well in mobilising you to pray for me in my travel to consolidate and strengthen our churches.

• I will be travelling to Hope Singapore this coming weekend where I will be preaching in four services on this coming Sunday. I will preach in the two main services and two Filipino services. It is going to be an exciting time to communicate to the people on what God wants to do in our church.
  

• In the beginning of July, I will travel to the United States again. I will meet the leaders there in Seattle to discuss about revitalising ourselves, being refreshed, being a church that is revitalised by God. I want to believe God to move our North American churches.
  

• Then in August, I will travel to the European Leaders Convention in Berlin. It will be a great time for consolidation, and to hear about how we are moving forward. It will be a great time for us to gel together to put incident of the past behind us and move again.
  

I covet your prayer; I need your prayer not just for my travel but for me to advance the work of God forward. I really desire your covering. Join together with me, be partners with me, because I can’t do it alone. I need you, pray together with me.

Until I communicate with you next time around. God bless you, keep strong, keep close to the Lord and keep moving in God’s vision. God bless you, see you again next time.

Pastor Simon Eng
President of Hope International Ministries (HIM)

Special Highlights of LC Video