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Pastors’ & Marketplace Leaders’ Retreat

16 September 2015 blogpastor Leave a comment

What was the retreat about
The Pastors’ & Marketplace Leaders’ Retreat on 23-25 August 2015 at the Changi Cove four stars hotel began with an atmosphere of anticipation as senior pastors and marketplace leaders mingled over a 5.30pm Sunday dinner. Catching up and talking shop with acquaintances and fellow pastors made for relaxed banter and laughter.

Benny Ho sharing the Perspectives on Marketplace Ministry

This retreat was organized by Love Singapore movement in collaboration with Arrows Resources. At the first session, Pastor Benny Ho, founder of Arrows Resources, mentioned the earlier retreats they had. The first was a pastors’ and marketplace leaders’ roundtable luncheon at Orchard Parksuites. This was followed by a second retreat at Changi Cove where the senior pastors sat down and came up with a common framework to lubricate future communications. I missed that retreat. The fruit of that retreat was a booklet titled, “Perspectives on Marketplace Ministry”, which was given to every participant in this retreat.
I was accompanied by Francis Shin (Board President) and Donnie (a youth leader), and the others in our roundtable were from River of Life Community Church, and Revival Centre Church. We had lively discussions, and the mutual sharing from our respective contexts aided our understanding of localized challenges. We remained in the same group for all the sessions.

What I learned
Here are a list of things that I learned over the six sessions, each comprising a short 20 minutes talk, and 45 minutes discussion.
1. The “Perspectives on Marketplace Ministry” provided a common framework of understanding about the kingdom of God and it’s relation to the marketplace. It gave us working definitions of words like marketplace and clarified the purpose of Christians in the marketplace. It put everyone on the same page as to how we view the marketplace and the types of Christians in the marketplace. At the end of the retreat, it was decided that some of the material needed clarification.
2. There are different types of Christians in the marketplace and one way the church can help equip Christians is to help them evaluate themselves and tailor a curriculum to help Christians in each stage move to the next level. The types of Christians in the marketplace are: struggling>surviving>stabilizing>succeeding> significance attained. The idea is to do a kind of questionnaire to help people evaluate themselves like a “spiritual gift inventory”.
3. I saw that for the church to help people be salt and light in the marketplace there needs to be an intentional disciple-making process established in the church. In addition, the church needs to proclaim a full incarnational gospel of grace. Unless Christians are walking in faith, hope and love there will be no Daniels in the marketplace. What we will have instead are the dry bones of Christians eaten by beasts in the gladiatorial politics and temptations of the workplace.
4. The church needs to examine and trim off the fats of church ministry and involvement that overtax the member and nullify his effectiveness in the marketplace. Christians are too church-chained as they labour for numerical growth, that they hardly have time, and are often too jaded to serve the needs of people of the marketplace. The mind shift needed is to focus on equipping, encouraging and supporting members to be effective salt and light out there rather than focus too much on attracting prebelievers to church, as though it were the church activities or pastors that saved souls.
5. I loved the idea of designing an interactive session for people who are entering the workforce for first time. It’s purpose is to orientate all young adults and others who are entering into the workforce and seeding them with a vision of the kingdom and of discipling in the marketplace.

Panel of marketplace leaders who shared how they were salt and light in their respective context

Interactive format great for learning
There was hardly any breaks, but short talks and more interactive learning has helped make this round-table a great learning experience: engaging, stimulating, and interesting. The seminar format keeps you awake and helps you digest, assimilate and apply the truth and ideas.
Thank God for the sponsors. The cost was generously subsidized and the rooms were very comfortable without being luxurious. I almost missed this retreat. I was still having a slight problem with a lingering vertigo attack. I was glad that by the grace of God, I made it through all the sessions.

FGB MDM School: Making Disciples in the Marketplace

15 April 2015 blogpastor 4 Comments

The FGB Making Disciples in Marketplace School

My daughter and I took a taxi and arrived at Changi Cove for a 2pm registration on a Saturday. I have been hearing about kingdom and the marketplace. During a recent Israel holy land tour we dropped by Mt Carmel and visited Peter Tsukahira’s ministry centre. He talked about the kingdom. The next year in 2013, Peter was the main plenary speaker at the Love Singapore Prayer Summit and he enlarged on the same theme. At the same summit, I met Georgie Lee who shared passionately about FGB Gatekeepers and their training camp. In 2014, Benny Ho called together a roundtable for pastors and marketplace leaders to have a dialogue. I met Georgie again and he invited me to attend a Making Disciples in the Marketplace (MDM) School. After some prayer I decided to attend it from 7-10 March 2015.

An evening for foreign delegates to see the city skyline

There were 53 participants from six countries including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and Indonesia. My daughter and I were so tired we both took an afternoon nap, and woke up late for the first session. What a way to start. The sessions were back to back and intense. There were fifteen sessions in all: five sessions every day: two in the morning; two in the afternoon; and one at night. We were well fed with good food and tea breaks before and after every session. Here are some takeaways from the 3 day school.

Blogpastor’s five key takeaways

Firstly the truth that there are many teachers and not many spiritual fathers, and fathers are what we need above teachers, systems, strategies and methodology. The key difference and distinguishing mark of the father is love, love, love. The spiritual father loves authentically. Teachers do not. Many excel in explaining or expositing, few love well, love fully and truly. I felt weird when they kept calling Khoo Oon Theam “Papa”. With time, I saw that they were affectionate in their relationship with him. They had received a lot of love from him. They naturally called him Papa Khoo. The Catholics got it right. Their priests are called Fathers not Reverends. Fathering is an excellent image of Christian leadership. I saw that in Khoo Oon Theam. Of course I don’t know him well enough, but I could see a genuine mutual affection amongst the FGB team and him. The bottom-line is love after all. Elder John of the Bible knew it. Eagle saints know it. So does “Papa” Khoo.

Secondly, the vision of discipling must go beyond the individual, as in most models, but must embrace transformation of comprehensive aspects of society. It is a vision that goes beyond one nation to globally reach all people groups.

Speakers praying and imparting to delegates

Thirdly, I learned that most Christians fly below the radar’s detection range. They live moral lives, and try to do their work well, keeping their heads down, be inconspicuous and stay out of trouble, rather than choose to seek change so that God’s name is glorified. They would not upset the peace nor confront injustice nor wrong. MDM School advocates and empowers God’s people to activate God’s salt and light in the workplace. It gives them a sense of purpose in what would occupy a large chunk of their lives in terms of effort and hours: the workplace. Suddenly the gospel is seen to be highly relevant and not compartmentalized conveniently in some weekend activity. The school has a structure and process that works for FGB Gatekeepers and they have assembled quite an experienced and influential group of committed leaders or “elders” from the marketplace. It is for us pastors to re-shape it for the local church.

Fourthly, I believe this vision has revitalized the Full Gospel Businessman (FGB) of yesteryear. The FGB played a pivotal role in spreading the charismatic experience and message in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This role of seeding the denominations and churches had resulted in the leaven leavening the whole lump except for a few exceptions like the Bible Presbyterians, the Presbyterians and the Chinese and Malayalam churches. Then with the churches renewed the FGB seem to have gone into a season of hibernation, a dark night of the soul if you would like. The good news is they have come our purified and deepened in vision and this is sparking interest among FGBs in other countries. They have seen a fire in the East and it has thawed their hearts and they are travelling long distances to catch the fire for their own people.

With Galven who did a definitive history of the charismatic movement

Fifthly, I liked it that they were serious about inter-generational impartation and mentoring. There was deliberate and intentional discipling and coaching of younger leaders. A few of them in their thirties led part of the sessions with their mentors who are in their sixties. It’s wonderful to behold. Seeing parents and their young adult son working together in the ministry is heart-warming. An example was to see Georgie and Evelyn Lee, who are leaders in the movement, with their son Galven, who was there to facilitate. Galven was researching the charismatic movement of the 70’s in Singapore. I first met him when he was doing research for his studies in NUS. He interviewed me as a witness to the revival in Dunearn Technical Secondary School. Out of that revival, World Revival Prayer Fellowship was born. He obtained a first class honours student conferred jointly by NUS and the National University of Australia. His thesis traces the history of the charismatic movement in Singapore. At last we have a rigorously researched piece that withstood academic standards of the highest order.

As a student of educational methodology and curriculum, I do see that some tweaks are needed but even as it is the MDM School can impart enthusiasm, the spirit, the dynamism of the vision. Catch the heart of the vision which is actually a spirit of fathering and apostolic initiative. Seek to contextualize it for your church or workplace situation, for it has to be contextualized.