Tomorrow is my friend Jack's baptism. So he had a special testimony / sharing in tonight's fellowship. He spent maybe 30 to 45 minutes telling us about his past, how he joined our fellowship, and how he decided to follow Jesus for the rest of his life. He was very honest with us, telling us what he was thinking, how he felt about the Christians he met, how he felt about the Church before, etc.

From his sharing/testimony, I noted four things that the Church (CCF in this case) should possess to make disciples:

1) Relevancy. Worship and message must be relevant to the culture of the audience. For sure worship's target is not the people, but God. However, if the worship fails to bring people to worship God, then the worship has failed in its task

2) Authentic caring. As in not some "assigned carers" nor "caring in the church". What I meant by authentic caring is to build a relationship through "out of church activities" that are of interest to both sides. The keyword is "authentic". Authentic caring should not be assigned, but self-motivated.

3) Teaching. A person who has faith without understanding would be easily confused or shaken. Understanding and faith are not oppose to each other; instead, understanding strengthens faith.

4) Community. Since Christianity is never a private religion, it does not make sense to experience faith in a solely individual fashion. How should I describe it? To do our parts to bring people closer to God, we have to immerge the person into a Christian culture. Think about learning English. We dont learn English by watching Chinese televisions and reading Ming Pao. We learn English by immersing ourselves in the English culture; we make friends with English speakers, we listen to the radio in English, we watch their movies, read their newspaper, etc. The Christian community works in a similar way.

I hope it is obvious that God's presence is assumed in all of these. Therefore, prayer is essential.

Comments?