PASTOR SIMON ENG MESSAGE

Hi everyone let me share with you about our next core value and that is about being church planters. As you know, church planting has been our core value; church planting has been practiced in our church for the last 18-20 years. Internationally, all our churches have been grounded on this core value of being church planters. Our people are trained, our people are challenged, our people pray and they look into fulfilling the Great Commission through church planting. Firstly, let me share a few thoughts about this area.

Prepare churches for the Great Commission

My first point: the importance of the church of being a church planter. We need to get our church; we need to prepare our church to be the right kind of church in order to duplicate church planters, disciplers, leaders and being able to fulfil the Great Commission. We need to build our church correctly so that these values and the principles of the Word of God are being taught and instilled into our people so clearly that they appreciate, they understand, they receive all these principles and prepare themselves in the church. The church becomes the model; the church becomes the sending centre as well.

As our leaders grow in the church, as our people capture this vision in the church, they naturally flow together in this core value of being church planters. Every member in the church should capture this vision and value of being a church planter; either directly or indirectly, they will be involved. We want the majority or 100% of our church to be involved; being in church planting. It is not just for the pastors, it is not just for the people who are most committed. Firstly, we need to ensure that we get the quality of the church correct.

The church is the seed. If the seed is not healthy, it will not reproduce. If the seed is not healthy, it also will not reproduce the right kind of leaders, the right kind of disciples, and the right kind of conceptual thinking to be able to multiply church planters. So it is highly important that we really get our church correct. I would like to encourage every one of us around the world, ensure that in the year 2010, we really look carefully throughout our churches, look carefully at the quality of our churches and ensure that we are able to reproduce church planters after our own DNA; core value of being church planters.

Church Planting is our strategy

Secondly, I want to mention that church planting is our key strategy. You know as we look at the aspect of fulfilling the Great Commission, throughout the entire world, I have been a Christian for 30 over years, I hear about Christians wanting to fulfil the Great Commission. There are many, many strategies; there are many ways of doing it from different Christian organisations. However, for ourselves in Hope, we believe that God has put the call and the challenge upon us to fulfil the Great Commission through planting churches. This has been established over the last 18-20 years. It has been practised in nations; it has already been established in the regions around the world of our churches. We have seen the fruits and the fulfilment of this strategy.

For an example, let us take Australia. We planted in Melbourne, and from Melbourne, it has gone to Brisbane, it has gone to Sydney, it has gone to Adelaide, it has gone to Perth etc. Every major city around Australia has Hope churches now and these churches that are planted biblically and healthily with the important core value in mind will continue to saturate around their city. For example, Brisbane has entered into Gold Coast. They will continue to look at the surrounding areas about Brisbane and saturate the entire region around north-eastern Australia. This is church planting, this is strategy. Further out of Australia, we shall look into the Oceania region: New Zealand and the islands around Oceania etc. Our churches there should strategise on church planting as the key strategy to fulfil the Great Commission.

Let me encourage you with a real life story that is still happening today about our church planting in Europe. We have two dominant regions. In Western Europe, our churches in London, around the United Kingdom, have been growing healthily. Planted from London, it went forth from Central London. It has gone to various cities. It has gone to Hatfield, it has gone to Ealing and it has gone to Birmingham. They are healthily multiplying and God has been favouring our churches there to multiply them. They are growing. It is touching the Filipino group and touching various communities of Asians etc. The English are coming in to join our groups of people there so Western Europe is growing healthily.

Also, our German and Eastern European churches are growing. I will just focus on talking about Germany. I think the churches around Germany have also captured this vision of church planting. They are planning on establishing key seed churches in eight regions around Germany. Each of these regions will continue to grow and they will continue to saturate their regions.

By this strategy, we can see that it will touch the nation of Germany and it will touch the nation of the United Kingdom. The churches will continue to grow, it will continue to saturate and multiply into many more groups in their respective regions. So we can see the practicality, the successes and the feasibility of this strategy; is really, really workable. We try it and we have worked it out and we have seen the fruits. So try for yourself in your local churches, in your region. You will see that God can help us with this strategy, bless this strategy and God can make it grow to fulfil the Great Commission.

From now until Jesus comes back again, our churches will continue to have this core value implanted into our members and into our churches. We will continue to establish new churches in either the regions or in the new cities, new countries etc to fulfil the Great Commission in this manner. When we look at it nationally and we look at it regionally, we see that this strategy is workable, is possible and it can succeed. That is why we believe in church planting as the key strategy because we have practiced it for 18-20 years and we have seen the fruits, we see the results and we see the success. It is an effective way, it is a very fruitful way to cover the country nationally, to cover the region beyond a national scope and together as we join our hands working around globally, we can see that we can fulfil the Great Commission to plant strong and biblical churches, to plant disciple-making churches around the world and that can help us fulfil the Great Commission.

Every member involved in church planting

Thirdly and lastly, I want to mention that every member should be involved in church planting, directly or indirectly. The core value should be in us. Although we know that not everybody will go out, we want to encourage every member in our church to capture this value. Every member in our church should be part and parcel to plant, to pray, to think, to mobilise themselves and say, “Hey, someday I will want to be able to join some team. Someday I will be able to assist. Someday, you know, I want to be involved in this”. No one should say “oh, this is not my calling, this is not what I want to do; this is not my gifting”. Even though it is not our gifting, in the different things that we do around the church; for example, a Sunday school or PKC or children’s ministry, by doing a quality children’s ministry in our churches, we can duplicate it in another country elsewhere. It is assisting, it is duplicating our ministry wherever we are involved in, and it can be a ministry that literally will help some of our churches elsewhere around the world. This is the dynamism of this strategy. You know through church planting, through everyone being involved, everybody developing and being involved in their respective ministries around the local church, that local church ministry can reproduce itself in another global church elsewhere, in another country, in another group of people, in another part of the world.

So dear brothers and sisters, everything that we are doing will be able to help, to assist and be able to advance the cause of church planting. We are church planters. We are certain that this strategy will work. This core value needs to be assimilated fully into every one of our members. Let us be clear about this. Down the years, we do not want to fight about this and we do not want to argue about this. We are church planters. Our members and our people should capture this value throughout these future years that we want to put into our church.

All our people should have this vision, should have this core value in themselves to say, “I’m a church planter, I want to be involved in church planting, my church must be a church planting church. It must reproduce other churches so that we can expand, we can bring the Kingdom of God through our church planting to establish our churches into every part of the world”. Continue to look through our churches; continue to ensure that our church quality, our churches are healthy and this seed will be able to reproduce itself into healthy churches, into strong churches, into church planting churches beyond our local church.

Global Conference in Kuala Lumpur

Coming up after our Chiang Mai GC (Global Conference) will be the one in Kuala Lumpur. It will be in April. It will be publicised or made known already to your local pastors or to your RMC church etc. Find out this information where it is, when it is and the days we are going to have our Global Conference. I want to invite you to be there because it is great for our global families and leaders and pastors to come together to share, to pray, to talk and be ministered to about how we can advance the Kingdom of God, how we can continue to fulfil the Great Commission and through our global pastors and leaders meeting together.

God bless you.

Pastor Simon Eng
President of HIM