When I became a full-time pastor 23 years ago, every morning when I got up, I was thinking about how to grow the church, how to make it more progressive and stronger. All I could think about was how to make the church grow and lead more people to believe in Jesus. I tried all kinds of strategies. Whenever someone said that a certain ministry could develop a church, I would learn it.
It wasn’t until I had been pastoring for 10 years that I really understood and became convinced that the most important thing to do in order to develop a church is to develop believers first. Only when the believers are strong, then the church will be stronger and be able to fulfill the mission that God has entrusted to it. In order for believers to become committed disciples of Christ, they must be taught to understand the Word of God and trained to practice be more committed, willing to serve, and evangelism. Otherwise, believers will not have the heart to commit, nor the strength to serve, and they will not dare to step out to evangelize.
Therefore, discipleship training is the most important ministry of the church.
When I became fully convinced of discipleship training, I fully committed myself to the ministry of discipleship. So far, I have been in discipleship training for 13 years. Time is going by fast and I have 7 more years to go before I retire. Before I retire, I hope to establish St. Peter’s church as a discipleship training church and to mobilize the whole church to do more church planting and mission works.
2022-2024 Serving at St Peter’s Church Ipoh.
In the past twenty months at St. Peter’s church, I have had several visitors ask me why the number of people attending worship services has become so low. They have said that the number used to be very large. I tell them I don’t know, it was like that when I came.
Then you may ask, well pastor what have you done in the 24 months you have been here? I can answer you that in the past 24 months, I have shared the vision of discipleship training with the congregations. I have trained some leaders, stabilized some leaders, and motivated some leaders to be more committed.
Simply put, at least I’ve stabilized the slide. At least now we are no longer slipping. At least the slide has stopped.
Now we’re going to start moving up. Will you help the church to move up? If you will, you must first be trained and equipped to be committed and make yourself grow in spirituality.
Let us begin to climb upward. Let’s make the church strong.
Our church needs your efforts as well as your commitment to grow.