Sunday, July 12, 2009

Missional Frost

So I've been singing for 4 weeks straight, but I don't really mind. It's quite fun anyway, although it does take up quite a lot of time with all the practices and such. I still don't know why we couldn't use the Worship Center for the Missions Seminar by Michael Frost, because I think definitely the acoustics on the 3rd Floor is much better than the one on the 2nd, which is already very good. Apparently, Daniel and Loo Juin were heard very well and played very well on Saturday. It's of no issue to me that I was the youngest person on that team, but I sure wish there would be like some enthu Sec 1s and 2s who would join the worship team. I know of people who have expressed interest, but somehow they don't seem to appear, perhaps in some hidden, secret training sessions, I don't know. I have pretty much no details of how worship training for interested people works at all.

Professor Michael Frost gave some very interesting points about what it is about being missional, and challenged our church with alot of hard stuff, that I could sense that our senior pastor was felt very spoken to after the messages.

There are four basic functions of the church:
1) Worship
2) Fellowship
3) Discipleship
4) Mission

What many churches have been doing is that they have used Worship as the organizer for all the other three functions. Not to say that Worship is the top priority, but to say that through worship, the other three are satisfied. How is that so?

When Christians come together to meet on Sundays to worship, that would be fellowship. And in between songs, there would be bible readings, so that would be discipleship. And as for mission, the guy at the front tells his congregation, "Go and invite your friends down for next week's worship." From here you can clearly see how worship becomes the medium where all 3 other functions are met.

Instead, a missional church would be a church where mission organizes everything else. How can this be possible? Well, when we send people out to the mission field, we send them as a group, and so that is fellowship. Even in the mission field, we worship in other languages, but it is the same God and so that is worship. And at the same time, we continue to encourage one another, build one another up and teach the bible to the people there, and so that is discipleship. As a missional church, we are called, in fact: sent, to go out and make disciples of all nations.

Michael Frost is a very inspiring speaker, and I'm just wondering right now how is it going to be possible for me to reach out to my classmates, friends, who probably don't want to have anything to do with religion, or the gospel, or already have their own religion. Sure, it's all about making the friendship, being friendly and happy and a good testimony and all that, but either nobody is seeing it or nobody bothers about it. Joash's apologetics course is very useful, because we study argumentative tools and so on, but everyone in my school takes Philosophy, and we've all studied Moral Theories, Logical Fallacies, Soundness and Validity and more. So it's nothing new to us, and everyone is more or less aware of it.

Still, it is good to keep reading up on Apologetics material to answer FAQs that my friends may have. I'm considering setting up a blog solely for the posting of Christian-related stuff, and answering all the people who ask me questions about Christianity on the tagboard, or in the comments. I think it's a pretty good idea, provided that I can keep it up to date, and that people actually read the blog. I'm still looking for a prayer group in the school, so if you are in a prayer group please kindly inform me, I'll join immediately as long as the meeting times suit my schedule.

I always thought that Boarding would be the medium for Evangelism, but instead, school is. Perhaps I should realize that. But everytime I go to school, instead of feeling like it's a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel with everyone around, I feel more like downhearted because it's full of homework and all that stuff. The moment I step into class and OMG I forgot to do this piece of homework and that project and didn't read this book and have to go and buy this book and need to ask for extension for CRP from Mr Lim, but the point is there are so many things that busy up my mind that I simply tend to forget everything about what happened during the weekends.

Everything about sharing the gospel and blessing people, and reaching out to friends just vanishes in an instant. So I just want to ask everyone who is reading my blog now: Can I share with you the gospel the next time I meet you? I wonder if it's okay to share it in a group because either it can get awkward or it can get very distracted and deviated because people like Nigel like to do that kind of stuff. Anyway, I feel uneasy sharing in groups because it's like not personal enough. But as Ps Dave said a few weeks back, what's wrong with being surrounded by non-believers? We're Christians, we're supposed to be surrounded. Like d'uh.

Still, it is difficult, somehow. I'm pretty much loaded with so much work I can't concentrate very well. SS Essay, Social Advocacy Reflections, all the tests, and I'm definitely going to need an extension for CRP, because I haven't even got the book yet... I can't find it in the bookstore, the NLB somehow fails to get me anything, and the HML is closed over the weekends, and only open during recess I believe... that's like the only access I ever get, and remember that I never eat recess so it's hard to make a mental note to go down there during recess, especially when I've got worksheets to do and feel very tempted to make use of recess time to complete them.

I did finish Math Assignment and the Chem Worksheets though, and I still have a lot more to go...
kaizersabre performed alchemy @ 9:33 PM