HIM FAMILY NEWS
Hope Hatfield, UK Church Anniversary
Hope Church Hatfield celebrated our first anniversary on October 25 in the main hall of the University of Hertfordshire. It was a joyous occasion with 150 people attending the event. The theme for the anniversary was “Arise, Go Forth”.
Ps. Prakich, the RMC of Europe preached a sermon from Joshua 1:1-9, to encourage the people to be faithful to the vision and rise up for His kingdom. He challenged us to be a ‘missionary factory’ to send out people to saturate the world with His churches.
We can testify how great and faithful our God is – from a care group of few people, we have grown to become a church. We always challenge our people to “think big, start small, grow big” – quantitatively and qualitatively.
We will continue to pray hard and work hard, to reach as many as possible.
Eldos Then
Hope Hatfield, United Kingdom
Hope Kuching New Building Launch
Hope Kuching celebrated a monumental building dedication on 14th November 2009. This 3-storey building which can seat about 1,000 people in total was set apart for the advancement of God's Kingdom, a home and a house where people's lives will be touched and transformed! [View Photo Website]
The launching was well attended by our guests - pastors from more than 10 churches & organizations, our own Hope pastors and coordinators, as well as our building developer and the contractor.
Pastor Simon Eng, the founding pastor of Hope Kuching regaled and spoke of the church beginnings in 1992, with 4 adults and 2 children, and how God blessed the church with growth to 600 people at present. 
We kicked off our celebration praising God and followed up with giving thanks for all who have made such massive and wholehearted commitment to make the building a reality. We are especially appreciative of our building committee, a team comprising of professionals who gave their after work hours for 3 years in order to see our dream translate from paper to building! In the very project itself, it was gratifying to see the expression of our Hope values - that of serving God fully with our gifting and talents. Indeed our team comprised of engineers, quantity surveyors, architects, lawyers, a banker, and an accountant!
Pastor Simon emphasized the importance of a new beginning as we focused on “Building for a Difference’ for Jesus. Specifically he challenged us to increase in:
- Our spiritual commitment to God (Acts 2:42-47); to choose walking dynamically with God as a lifestyle according to His will;
- Our love for one another (John 13:34-35), expressed in sacrificial giving of our time, talents, money and all that we have; and
- Our growth in the grace and favor of God (Matt 16:17-19), putting our lives in order so that God can function through us to build His church!
Gian Wen, our lead architect testified of God’s work in his life as he undertook the project. He overcame his initial reluctance and committed fully to the task. Through the 3 years he encountered various personal and family challenges but stayed true to his commitment to God, to the team and to the project. Most of all, he testified of the enriching experiences of working in the team and how God transformed him in his spiritual life, finding the “corner of the sky”, a place where he belonged in God!
The conviction and the challenge from the message resonated within our hearts and laid the markers for building with a difference! The simple event rounded off with a scrumptious dinner for all our guests and members! It was evident that everyone ate with glad and sincere hearts that evening! To God be the glory!
Pastor Denis & Hai Eng
Hope Kuching, East Malaysia
Light of Chiang Mai: Bible Conference
The conference on the theme “Core”, which focused on the core values of HIM, was attended by HIM churches from three provinces in the North of Thailand.
The massive hall of HIM Chiangmai was packed with 915 people who hungered for the Word of God. Ps Soradej of Hope Manila, Ps James who heads HIM Education and I co-spoke with Ps Chuchart of HIM Chiangmai.
Apart from the teaching, which was the highlight of the event, the conference was seasoned with fun activities like sports and games on a spacious field that occupies half of the church property.
As evening fell the delegates were invited to enjoy a variety of food freely served at several stalls on the grass. One favourite delicacy of Ps Soradej was fried eggs with crickets! The night ended with a display of graceful folk dancing.
Pastor Chuchart and Dr Siriporn
Light of Chiang Mai Church
Hope Manila’s 12th ANNIVERSARY
We celebrated our 12th year of journeying with the Lord at Hope Manila and held our grand celebration on September 20, 2009. Many of us were able to bring our friends, family and colleagues. There were 360 people joining in the festivities and many people came to know God that day. We were very captivated by God’s Word as He used Ps. Denis Lu (from Hope Kuching, Malaysia) to preach His Word about having a victorious journey in our Christian walk.
The theme of the bible seminar was, “Rejoice!” We are honored to hear from our guest speaker, Pastor Denis Lu; along with his wife, Sister Hai Eng Lu; and our very own Senior Pastor Soradej Meesaengtham. The church was definitely encouraged with Ps. Denis’s most famous line, “when we feel helpless, we don’t have to feel hopeless”. The world offers many appealing ways to achieve happiness and contentment. It may be in the form of money, a wonderful family or a successful career. However, true joy can only be found by having a relationship with God. Learning the expressions of joy and realizing its fruits provide a way and a hope for us to rejoice in this world of tension.
“This whole month of September will be a great celebration of God’s goodness, faithfulness, and enduring love for our Hope Family. Our twelve-year journey together with the Lord has been an amazing one as God brought many miracles in our lives. Our Hope Family has experienced God’s tremendous power and strength, love and warmth, inspiring us to keep reaching out to people.” (Ps. Soradej Meesaengtham)
God’s reminded us that we have come this far by faith. Let us stand firm and persevere until we finish the race! Let us press on towards the finish line!
Pastor Soradej
Hope Manila, the Philippines
Hope Brisbane Church Anniversary
Our 16th anniversary was truly a reminder to me of God’s wonderful grace that has brought us thus far as a church. God has been good to us in so many ways. It was wonderful to see 586 people gathered to celebrate our church anniversary. Let us continue looking to God for abundant blessings and do pray for the leadership team that we may continue to grow in wisdom to lead the church forward in God’s purposes. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who had worked hard to make this a memorable anniversary.
As I enjoyed the various performances, I reflected on the fact that we have so many talented people in our midst. Surely, a significant proportion of the gifted people in our midst are not visible in that fashion. Your giftedness in our midst are so multi-faceted and I would encourage each one of you to invest your talents for God’s Kingdom. What you have may not seem like much now, but never under-estimate what God can do with the little that you offer to Him. Every one of you matter to God and to us.
As I pondered over my last 12 months, one key area that God had challenged in was to be willing to step up in faith. I have found that when God opens a door, I need to be ready to respond in the affirmative. It is not always suitable to my timetable nor to my convenience. But it is surely perfect in God’s timing. For each one of us God has a unique journey of faith. And when God opens a God-made door and invites you through, that is not the time to shrink back but instead to step up in faith. It is when we take such steps that we begin to encounter more of God.
It is also important that as a church, that we truly be a faith community. A community that exercises faith in God and that our faith is evident, not only in an inward trust in Christ, but also in an active demonstration of the power and authority of our God. It is when we step forth to grasp divine opportunities to expand His Kingdom, when we step forth to see signs, wonders and miracles, when we step forth to see lives transformed that our faith is demonstrated in tangible and impacting ways.
May you take those steps of faith forward and make a difference.
Dr Wilson Lim
Hope Church, Brisbane
Hope Newcastle Special Events
Hi, I am Chris Skinner from Hope Newcastle. This is my beautiful wife Ann-Marie. We have been coordinating Hope Newcastle church for above five years now. We just wanted to tell you about some of the great things that God has been doing.
[Chris & Ann-Marie Skinner (photo)]
Hope Newcastle Video
The Best Orientation Early this year, we had, in my opinion, our best ever Orientation Week outreach.
We saw over a hundred and fifth people sign up as contacts. More importantly, we really made some great connections and saw a number of new people coming in, leading to salvations.
People just got saved through the stall as we built the relationship with them. It has just been awesome. People have had their lives really transformed by the gospel and by being part of the church. I think during that week in the Cafe Tropicana event, although I do not know the number of people who came, but there were lots of non-Christians and some Christians who were not part of a campus group; so that was really exciting.
Creative Outreach Ideas - Cafe Tropicana
We did an event called “Café Tropicana”. The requirement was to wear a tropical Hawaiian outfit. We had gourmet tropical food around the event, we had trivia tropical which one of our members came up with. It was a really creative event with just a great atmosphere in the place and lots of new visitors. So that’s fantastic. Around 60% of the people who came to Café Tropicana were first time visitors, which meant they outnumbered our own church members; it is great to see that.
Campus Fellowship - The Space
We have also just been seeing things grow especially at our catch-up on campus. Every Monday, we meet for lunch and invite anyone that wants to come along and that’s been really exciting.
We called it "The Space". It’s something we needed to be able to reach out to Aussies. They need relationship; they need no other agenda other than you caring for their lives. So we have this place where we just eat lunch and meet up. It’s been a phenomenal time and it’s been growing. Even students in my own university classes, they said see you at "The Space" sometimes. So that was really good.
Amazing Race around Newcastle
Another thing we have been doing every six months or so is the “Amazing Race” which has been getting better and better. Our last Amazing Race event was the biggest one yet. Once again, about half of those who came were un-churched. They not only enjoyed the event, but also enjoyed connecting with us. It is important in acting as a bridge for people who do not want to come to church but want to attend events like these. From that point, it opens the door for them to come to the church where we believe they will be saved.
It is a new concept, where we go “Oh! You’ll really like this” and invite them to these events. They are ringing us asking when the next “Amazing Race” is on. They come and they have their teams and we all interact, doing stuff like just normal people: sports, games and racing across the city. It’s been really phenomenal.
I think we serve a creative God. You have incredible resources when it comes to being creative; we just believe that God is going to release greater creativity in reaching out to this generation. We are living in a society that I guess is entertainment-rich and we want to be able to just tap into God’s ideas to really reach people and then introduce them to the message of Christ. It is important and it underlies the “Amazing Race”, “Café Tropicana” and the different events that we have been doing this year.
Embrace - Women fellowship And I think Generation Y; the reality TV generation is looking for a voice. They are looking to be real as Chris was saying. When we created places where they could share their voice, rather than just fitting our own agenda or waiting for our event, we found that it was really powerful. It occurs at any place such as our monthly dinner at our place. I have this event I call “Embrace”. Many of you have heard of “Enhance”, which is the creative girls’ outreach we run.
With “Embrace”, God really spoke to me and said, “You need to gather together a community of women in your church, not just reaching outside the church but reaching the women in your church.”
“Embrace” is like a hug and it is us getting together at my house on the first Saturday of the month. We bring food. We will just catch up and just pray for each other. We find out what God is doing in each other’s lives. I just think that’s been really powerful because we then reach out together.
It is another concept that God is really beginning to breathe ideas into us about how to do church in his context and how to be relational in our church. God spoke a phrase to me which really inspired me with the Great Commission. He said, “Ann-Marie, you exist to see the lost being saved and as a church to see the lost are saved and the saved not lost.” I think that’s the Great Commission there: evangelism and discipleship; to see the lost saved and then the saved not lost. It is happening all across Australia. People are getting saved but then later down the track, get lost again. We want to keep all those God has given us. And that’s that really something inspiring us at the moment.
The Combined Christian Event
Another thing that I guess we can tell you about is the Event. It was an innovation that came forth when Ann-Marie and I were talking with some other Christian leaders that have a heart for university students and the young adult generation (the 18-35 years). We have been speaking with the heads of Christian ministries and other local churches. After four months of planning and brainstorming, we ended up putting together not another organisation, but just a space and the time where Christians could come together and they could also bring friends. We actually just kicked off this event last week. We had a great response.
It was really exciting to see 80+ people come. There were different Christians with the heart to be able to see people saved and to be able to see God lifted up because we were coming together despite denominational and cultural differences.
It was a really powerful night. I really believed that it was a great event. Ann-Marie led worship and I, out of all the different leaders, was chosen to speak. It was a great time to come together. We are interested to see what God will do with that in the future.
The relevant scripture that comes to mind is that “one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight”. We just thought we were one church. Now, we can partner across the city with other churches reaching to that generation. It is so important because 18 to 35 covers people leaving the youth ministry at school and your all pump. And then you just get lost; sometimes you face that huge attack while you are on campus or on this age group if you are not married, what do you do with your life? And we thought God has such a vision for that age group. We realised that they will not reached by the older generation or the youth, but it will be their peers – other members of the 18-35 generation that will reach out to them. It led to the idea about bringing them together and creating things so that they can bring their non-Christian friends. It is really powerful to see on campus, when people come along and not only see 50 different groups of people, but they can also see the one thing that we have in common. We personally believe that the city is to be reached by one church; this nation is to be reached by one church.
Prayer Requests
- Please pray for us to really keep God in the cross and at the centre on this ministry. As I said before, we want to see the lost saved and the saved not lost, I felt God saying we will not be lost if we keep remembering all he has done for us. So you can pray that the centrality of what Jesus did at the cross will just be in the hearts of everyone.
- Pray for us to just be able to rise up strong leaders. We have seen a lot of leaders graduate and move on. It is why we’re really focusing on rising up a next generation of leaders. We will appreciate prayer in that arena. And also pray also for all those that we have been reaching out to come to that point of salvation. We believe for a breakthrough and we believe our church will go to a new level, so your prayer support will be much appreciated. See yah!
Chris & Annmarie Skinner
Hope Newcastle, Australia
