Meet me halfway: #church

A couple of months ago I was with the family I've been attending in a 6-week evening course when God revealed an issue -- for the lack of word -- I've been putting on hold: church. Although I've been thinking about it since, I need to be honest that I still can't put my finger on it. 

It was the last session of the course when a brother shared about, #hashtag, church -- I can understand where he came from (he's a PK - pastor's kid) as God worked in his life through the church from which he receives all God's goodness. But, not the first time I told myself, I do not have that privilege. And I remembered then sharing to a friend (another PK) in our family, how I always felt jealous with PKs and MKs (missionaries' kids) and all my other friends blessed with God-fearing parents.  

In a diverse Indonesia my parents were of mixed ethnic groups -- my mom embraced Christianity due to marriage when she was 23; my late dad was always a traditional church-goer, with a wealthy father, yet having 3 different mothers as one died after the other, he never had the exemplary models of God-fearing parents.  My late dad then turned backslider for many years until he died in 2006. 

Practically I was born in a Christian home, going to Sunday School since I was young, growing up loving my colorful Bible-stories book so much and attended Christian private schools my entire life. 
I was 17 when I started teaching in Sunday School. But God knew I was far from having a personal encounter with Him as He brought about the turning point of my faith only a couple of years after that.

 

Parachurch: two of them

I got my B.A. (German Literature) in a (state) university which is Indonesia's oldest. But I guess being in the world's largest muslims population we never had that privilege of having various Christian organizations in 1 university. We have one, that of the InterVarsity. 

The teaching was strict: as a worship leader, we learned hymnology; as part of the core committee and small-group leaders, we read theological doctrinal books. 
It was imprinted on me that we were trained in student ministry to be agents of change in our own church. So, I was always clear, we are not a church, but we are here for the church.

I thought the Friday meetings, listening to good sermons from dedicated alumni/speakers and small-group were His ways to reveal Himself to me. But He was giving me more -- a Korean missionary just moved to Indonesia in 1999 with his young family and started a student fellowship in one of the student-housing areas nearby our campus. 

It was the Korean missionary and his ministry -- who taught me about the missional God, who taught me to pray around the campus for salvation of students, who taught me to be in a prayer team throughout gospel rallies were being held. 

I still went to our church in Jakarta with my parents. I was still a Sunday School teacher too. But all what these 2 parachurch movements did in my life made me even realize how I sat feeling empty in every Sunday service -- how my perspective about church was changed: the liberalism of theology schools that supply pastors to our churches, the lack of pastors' effort for a reformed back-to-Bible approach speaking from the pulpit.

Parachurch: yet another one

We do 4-year (8 semesters) undergraduate study in our country.  It was only the beginning of the 3rd semester when a CT-scan showed I have a 6-cm diameter of a left suprarenal cyst. Little that I knew, it was just the start of a journey dealing with the medical world that practically took almost my entire 20s. 

After some trips back and forth Jakarta-Singapore, I moved to Singapore in August 2004, when doctors said it would be best for me to stay close to them. Little that I knew, God was about to reveal another amazing thing to me: His mission. 

Dubbed as Asia's beacon of this century's churches, He made Singapore as a training ground for me. I unfortunately can't write much here about our missions work, to protect the safety of certain stakeholders. But again, through courses such as Kairos, Tentmaking, Cats & Dogs Theology, and some CPM (church planting) materials, not to mention those mission conferences and seminars, listening to good speakers in their field, His work was evident in my life as He showed me more about His missional heart, until I left Singapore in September 2013. 

#church: meet me halfway

I have been feeling like a mere spectator in every church I was and am part of, even though every single time I gave myself up to serve, or to a church-membership (including with my church in the UK, where I was for only a little over a year), realizing that as a gesture of commitment to the church leaders, for myself to be rebuked if needed as well as to be taken care of spiritually.

Glancing back and pondering of what God has been doing doesn't help me much in pointing finger on why I feel quite distant, still, with any local church.  But it certainly makes me more appreciative to the parachurch movements that He used to win me over from darkness to His light; participating in His holistic mission with a global perspective of building His global kingdom. 

This morning as God spoke yet again to me through a sister sharing a changed life of hers through a local church, I am taking this divine challenge to a journey of healing, to receive gladly and waiting in anticipation of His continued personal revelations on #church. 

I may find myself halfway in the journey, but just as He knew I was dry bones and He brought me to life, I rest knowing He will complete His work in me in His time.

Love conquers: revisited.

Last week the family I have been attending announced the topic of what they would focus on for 2016: Love Wins. And I was once more made amazed as I was just two weeks earlier, standing in awe of His continued revelation on His love. 

Two weeks before that I was reading from Acts 8 on Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch when God gave me a new revelation on His heart: the inclusiveness of His love, that at the center of His heart is always about saving souls. And by His grace, this reading also healed me from my wound.  

Love that conquers wounded lives
Has it ever happened to you, that you put a certain issue of your life into an invisible closet and you continued your life pretending that you don't have that issue with you anymore. At least I knew I did it to my wound. 
Several times at my last church in Singapore people would come up to me to say, "God loves you." And I never really believed that. That knowledge of God's love for me stopped at my head, and never really reached my heart. If you knew my background, an avid activist in student ministry in my undergraduate years (core committee, worship leader, small-group leader), at the same time a Sunday School teacher at my church, and at least 7 years after that I was in parachurch environment -- a few close friends I shared my wound with, couldn't believe what they heard, that I had difficulty to believe in His love for me. 

For years what I believed to be true, that God's love for me was less than what He graciously gave to others, was healed at the moment He revealed this new meaning on His heart from an 'old' passage that I've read many times before. If He cares so much about the salvation of the Ethiopian eunuch and mine, practically gentiles with more than two thousands years apart, all the more He would have my best interest at heart. And to trust His heart is enough, regardless of any storm I am and will be in.

Love that conquers doubts
I could pretty much imagine what Philip may have had in mind (in much lesser degree of a personal experience, just a few months ago) -- being summoned in a sudden, with little information, Philip sets out with immediate obedience. Divinely Philip intervened the Ethiopian eunuch's journey, As he was going back home, he was sitting in his wagon reading about the early preacher Isaiah (v.28). 

I wonder if Philip would have showed the slightest hint of amusement from the moment he ran up to the eunuch's chariot (v.30), to when he started preaching the good news (v.35) and to baptizing the eunuch (v.38). Because this was one of the very first beginnings when God started to continuously reveal to the disciples that His kingdom is also meant for non-Jews. 

In his obedience Philip exhibits God's perfect love that conquers doubts. 

The unconquerable love
This battle of mine I am currently fighting may not be the last as more others may come, but indeed He has won all of them for me, because this perfect love that conquers my wound and doubts comes from a God who wins.

Take me back to the "city"

It was around this time in 2012 when I was in an event held at my last church in Singapore. That weekday evening "Table for One" was a talk about relationships and singleness. But I came home with something not quite about it at all. 

The word "city" began to haunt me for weeks since. 

Struggling with visa issues in my stay here in Berlin, this week I learned new words in German law. Fiktionsbescheinigung. Rechtsbehelfsbelehrung. And some others that, I'm telling you, are not simpler than those two. But the word "city" is definitely not a new word for me. So, I felt it unusual when I just couldn't stop thinking about it back then. 

That year there was already a lot of talk in the church about the city vision -- our strategic presence in the city state, the location of the church, the multinational environment and diverse culture, and our calling as a church in the midst of those unique settings.
So, it wasn't at all the first time I heard the word being mentioned in the church.

Not until that night a different revelation was given to me, of the word 'city'. That night started all of my rethinking about the cities I've lived in. 

I was born in Indonesia's second largest city, Surabaya. Was there only until I was six years old, before our family moved to Jakarta where I spent practically my entire education until university, I don't really have much emotional attachment to Surabaya, apart from a place to spend school holidays in.
Just a few months after my graduation ceremony in 2004, I moved to Singapore, after spending few months flying back and forth to see doctors. They said it would be ideal for me to be near them, for a closer monitoring (It would be another beautiful testimony to share about a miracle He did to make my move to Singapore permanent.)

That night also started my rethinking about my role, what I do, in those cities. My job at that time, the concept I learned from the Tentmaking theology course came back in mind, the marketplace I was in, my colleagues at work... The thoughts were overwhelming as I was reaching to the point of looking to go to grad school. The idea of a graduate degree in business then came as I see it as a means to improve myself, positioning myself for God to be able to use me in wider, higher, increased capacities. 

Appointments I made for face-to-face meetings with one of our pastors to help me in my train of thoughts were not as easy as I thought. Our pastor asked me tough questions, questions I have no answer for, questions I was still looking an answer for. Why an MBA. Why the UK. Why business school. Why now. Why 'city'. What's about 'city'.
Until now, as I look back, I'm not sure I now have the answers of those tough questions he asked me, that he meant to sharpen my thinking, my decision, as he prayed with and for me.

September 2013 may have marked my move to another city (Glasgow, Scotland, UK), and now I'm here in Berlin; but these European cities added even richer thoughts and aspects to the revelations of the word. At least to me.

Yet again, the same word 'city' spoke to me in tonight's prayer meeting. It was the second time this week and each time I learn a new aspect about it. Tonight was about cities that are ruined, destroyed and abandoned.  

They will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities    that have been devastated for generations. (Isaiah 61:4)

Surabaya and Jakarta may not as advanced and modern as Singapore. Most European cities I visited are typically much more quiet, laid back, and more relaxed. But I've never lived in a ruined city, never saw one either. 

Little that I knew, I'm afraid, that cities I've lived in, in all their hectic lifestyle, modern infrastructure, their majestic architecture and history, good transportation system, have one thing in common: people, souls, that are not just distant from their Creator, but also people who are broken, hurt and lost. And by now living in this part of the world, I somehow see the 'ruin' and 'devastation' in a different light. 
The western world that's become more and more secular has long left its faith and belief in God is giving the alarming high divorce rate, the decades low birth rate, the stagnant European economy among others a new definition of the cities that God is calling us to rebuild and restore.

I'm grateful to see His present work in the continent where the gospel first brought into (Paul's second missionary journey) outside Asia Minor. Church attendance on Sundays or congregation size may not be anywhere near where I came from in Asia. But it warms my heart, every time, to see how God preserves His people in churches here. 

As you take me back to the "city" I see Your hands working beyond limitations of culture, people and situation, and I see Your heart, that You long for souls, for people to come to You.