Mandate of Christ – Redefining Church, Redefining Context, Redefining Christian-Life.
By Rev Winnie Wong, Lifeline Family Church
An interactive and engaging session with Rev Dr Philip Huan on redefining the “Post-Pandemic New Normal.”
The Ministers Training and Togetherness in Prayer (2TiP) was held at Trinity Christian Centre on August 4, 2022. After the opening prayer and worship, the attendees were introduced to Rev Dr Philip Huan. Raised and ordained in the Methodist Church, Rev Dr Huan ministers to high-level leadership such as senior pastors, church boards, and ministry staff across local and international denominations. God puts in Rev Dr Huan’s heart love and passion for the local church and conveys what God is saying in this pandemic.
COVID-19 has brought about sadness and discouragement to the churches and reset a new normal in the way we do church. We must pray for an anointing from the Holy Spirit to give us new ideas to do church. Rev Dr Huan spoke on the subject of “Redefining the Post-Pandemic New Normal.”
Rev Dr Huan created a group chat for his session and asked the ministers to type in their answers to his questions. Participants sent in short and crisp answers to the chat.
Redefining Church
What is “church” and how do we do it and define it? Rev Dr Huan gave this definition: Church is a community of Christ-followers who grow in and lives out God-values of their faith, anchored as value-based pillars of ministry, e.g., faith, outreach, harmony, reconciliation, and word-based decisions.
Rev Dr Huan showed a slide of a survey to the question “Which takes the most of your church’s time, effort, and resources presently?” Six items were listed: Nurturing, Mentoring; Word; Worship; Hospitality/Oikos; Outreach; and Mission. Understandably in this pandemic, Outreach and Mission took the last two places.
At this point, Rev Dr Huan asked the ministers to say a prayer for their churches and typed in the chat, “God, I need this for my church…”
Redefining Context
The landscape is the “Pandemic and Social Movements”. Some Christians are uncomfortable with seeing their traditions disrupted and unable to connect online. Newcomers who visited church online may find this being their only connection to the church.
Online is a valid community and social media is the new “public square”. This is a new and future world for discipleship and the Church must find a pathway to engage, reach out and win this community.
Redefining Christian Life
There was group work for about 20 minutes. Participants were to select the top issue they resonated with and gathered in groups of 3 to 5 people. They worked out the 3Rs: Resonance, Reasons, and Response in the discussion.
The interactive session was a success and the ministers could resonate with the topics discussed.
