George Washington Carver once said, “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.” As Christ-followers, our greatest hope is found in Jesus. Once we learn to place our trust in Jesus for everything, we will find the freedom to love and serve Him out of gratitude. It is only then, we will start to gain a greater heart for Jesus’s mission and a clearer vision of God’s Kingdom. At HMCC-HK, we are trying to raise up Kingdom servants who will capture God’s vision and His heart for the Great Commission.
Jesus gave the Church a clear mandate to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19-20, NIV). This is a universal command for all churches, but each church will carry out the Great Commission in their unique way. For HMCC-HK, we have been called to play our small role in fulfilling the Great Commission by reaching “The Circle.”
In order for us to do our part, we are going to concentrate our efforts in the next 5 years (end of 2023) to step out in faith and obey God in the mission and vision that He has given to us. This is going to require a bold and radical trust in God. Apart from God’s grace and power, we do not have the ability to see God’s vision become a reality.
We are simply calling our vision for the next 5 years, The BOLD Vision. We are using the acronym BOLD to describe our vision, which has four components:
- B – Build a School of Ministry.
- O – Open a church site, one locally and one globally.
- L – Launch at least one LIFE Group in all of the 8 UGC in HK.
- D – Disciple 1,000 people through the ALIVE discipleship curriculum.
Each of these components of the vision will play a strategic part in reaching The Circle. It is hard to believe that over 53% of the world’s population lives within the circle, and Hong Kong is in the center! It has always been our desire since 1996 to live out Jesus’s mission when He said in Acts 1:8 (NLT), “you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This vision of rippling out to the ends of the earth with the Gospel message has always been our passion and the purpose of why we have been committed to “transforming lives and transforming the world.” We will first start in Hong Kong (our Jerusalem) and then reach to as many nations and people groups within the circle (the ends of the earth).
This is why the BOLD Vision plays an important role in fulfilling God’s mission.
First, we believe that building a School of Ministry will be critical in training and preparing people to be sent to The Circle. A big part of seeing the vision become a reality is to have Kingdom workers who are equipped with various ministry skills in order to make a splash for Jesus. More specifically, we would love to see a School of Worship start up so that we can train up worship leaders and worship teams to go with future church plants. It is our hope that this School of Ministry will be a place where we can train up church planters and church planting teams.
Secondly, in order to reach The Circle, we must first reach HK. This means that we need to saturate HK with Gospel-centered churches. Even though HK covers a small land area, the population is very dense. The density makes it hard for people to travel from one side of HK to another in a short period of time. Moreover, we believe that the church should be missional and reach out to the community where it is located. Therefore, we want to see another church get started in another part of HK. Also, we are praying for a church to get started outside of HK, as well. There are many cities in China that are close by and we are hoping that God will open up a door for us to start a church so that we can build momentum for future church plants. Therefore, in the next 5 years, we want to open up another church site, both locally in HK and globally in a surrounding city.
Thirdly, the harvest is great amongst the approximately 100,000 students who attend the 8 UGC (University Grants Committee) universities. Several of them are top universities in Asia and they are even globally ranked. This means that there will be many future influencers coming out of these universities. Therefore, we want to reach them with the Gospel so that we can transform the world. So far, by God’s grace, HMCC-HK has LIFE Groups in 4 out of the 8 (CUHK, PolyU, HKUST, & HKU) major universities in HK. As part of the BOLD Vision, we want to launch at least one LIFE Group in the remaining four universities (CityU, HKBU, LingU, & EdUHK). We want to be on the frontlines of reaching the next generation so we are praying that we will be able to reach all the UGC universities in 5 years.
Lastly, we want to train at least 1,000 people with our ALIVE curriculum. Over the years, God has given us a simple strategy to raise up Christ-followers who will radically live out the Gospel message. Looking at the life and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, we came to the conclusion that there are some basic traits of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. These traits are found in the acronym A.L.I.V.E. It has been encouraging to see our members growing in these traits. We are also in the process of translating the materials into Chinese so that we can train up other people in an exponential way.
Looking over these four major goals, it can be a little bit daunting because there is no way we will be able to achieve this on our own wisdom or strength. Therefore, we need to pray and trust in God to carry out His vision for His glory.
This is why we are entering into our 3-2-1 GO Campaign. It is simply:
- 3 minutes of INTERCESSION for the BOLD Vision
- 2 people to INVEST in discipleship
- 1 person to INVITE Christ into their life
As we pray for the BOLD Vision, we want to “G.O.,” which is basically “Grow” and “Obey.” If we commit to grow intimately in our walk with God, then we will want to obey His commands. If we Grow and Obey, then we will want to Go and see God’s Kingdom make a difference in the world.
There is something powerful about having hope in our lives. It helps us to get up in the morning and even go through some of life’s difficult moments. But when we make our lives all about ourselves, we will never experience the hope and true joy of living for Christ. In the next 5 years, our church will be on a journey of seeing God use imperfect people like us to spread the message of the Gospel to HK and to the countless number of people throughout the world. Please journey with us and join us in prayer.
One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He wrote, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
I pray that we will so deeply long for the “endless immensity” of God’s glory that we will give everything that we have to be a part of God’s Kingdom work.