Wow! Last night was a special night. We had Pastor Keith (leader of AMI) and his family join us in our meeting. Pastor Keith blessed us by delivering God’s Word and sharing about what God is doing all over the world. It was a great time of fellowship afterwards as well. God is setting the stage for us… we have four more Sundays before our official launch.
Pastor Keith shared from 1 Peter 2:9-10, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” He focused particular on three key Greek words in this passage – genos (family or generation), ethnos (nation or ethnic group), and laos (people).
It was refreshing to be reminded that we are part of a chosen family. This is where we need to base our identity on. We are too often swayed by what the culture tells us. We allow them to shape and form our identity and self-worth. But we are a special and chosen family member belonging to God with a special and particular purpose in life.
Pastor Keith also shared about the importance of seeing a “Saints Movement” in generation. For too long, we have fallen into the trap of allowing the clergy to do all the ministry, when in fact it should be the laity that are doing the ministry. The role of the pastor (or leader) is to equip the saints for ministry (Eph 4:12). Succinctly, Pastor Keith mentioned that we needed to “reclaim the fivefold ministry” that we see in Eph 4:11-13.
Lastly, Pastor Keith shared about the 626 Mandate that will start this Wednesday for all the AMI churches. We are pretty excited about this mandate that God has given to us. It will be a 24/7 prayer movement which will occur for 40 days (Sept 1st through Oct 10th). Prayer has to be the bedrock of all our missions activity and church planting.
God is moving rapidly all over the world – one particular place is in China. God has opened this door for us to work with a person that has connections to various people in the Chinese government. We will be allowed to legally hold bible studies and teach English to some of the graduates of the most prestigious university in China. If we influence them with the Gospel, they will be able to go back to their hometowns and share the Gospel with their friends and family.
It is truly an exciting time to be alive. We want to follow God’s lead as we commit ourselves to prayer. What a privilege to just tag along for the ride!
Afterwards, Pastor Keith wanted to have some Buffalo Joe’s famous chicken wings. So what could I say? I had to be a good host and oblige 🙂
Here are a couple of pictures from our gathering:
We spent some time praying – asking God to help us be counter-cultural
Pastor Keith praying for this new church plant