Today (19th Oct 2008), my wife and I were invited by our Senior Pastor, Ps. Chew to have lunch with him and Ps. LT Jeyachandran of Ravi Zacharias Ministry as Ps. Chew wanted me to send Ps. LT back to USJ 6 which is near Bandar Sunway where I stay. Little did we know that Ps. Edmund Chan and his pastors from Covenant Evangelical Free Church of Singapore were in town and they too were invited. All in all, there were six pastors who had lunch with my wife and I ! Awesome !There were Ps. Chew, Ps. Chandran, Ps. LT Jeyachandran, and Ps. Edmund Chan, Ps. Tony Yeo and Ps. Fabian from CEFC, Singapore. What an overwhelming privilege it has been for me to be having lunch with God's anointed servants and in the brief one hour or so, I learned so much from these servants of God. From Ps. Edmund, I learned that it is a good practice to live not just within our means but below our means so that we have some to save and some to bless others. He also stated something which was profound : "To have freedom without maturity is lame" and "To have maturity without freedom is blind".
Ps. LT commented that in India, the Christians are suffering now although the Indian Constitution allows freedom of religion. This is because Indians do not know how to handle their freedom with maturity.
From Ps. Fabian who is a Worship Pastor, I learned that worship is not just an activity we do during the weekends when we gather but in every aspect of our lives, it should be a worship unto the Lord and we also opined that most worship ministries in churches today have deteriorated into "golden calves" to which Ps. LT commented that the songs that we sing now are about how much we adore the worship we give to God rather than just worship God and God alone.
Ps. Chew then asked the pastors how as pastors are we to address the congregation in the wake of the current economic/financial meltdown. To this Ps. Edmund commented that as a Pastor, he has always hold on to the principle of : "Nothing to lose, nothing to prove and nothing to hide." So, to pastors the current meltdown is not so much felt by them as they hold no stocks and shares but to the business people, it could mean a total wipe-out or almost half of one's assets being wiped out overnight.
So, as Pastors he opined that they have to feel their pain as well and point them back to the God of all comfort, the One who has the answers to life's problems, and assure them that God is still in control of every circumstances. There will be a new generation of poor but there will also be the next generation of the rich.
There were many other topics which we talked about but suffice to share here in my blog that it has been such a "blessed" afternoon for my wife and I. May God continue to use these pastors to build and encourage the Body of Christ ! Amen !
