Re-Envisioning Vocational Christian Ministry in the Church in Malaysia in Light of Change (Part 3)

8 March 202210 March 2022Soon-Hock Lim Leave a comment

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

This paper was written in November 2020 when the government of Malaysia imposed restrictive curbs, SOPs, and lockdowns to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19). This significantly affected the activities of the church.

Click here for Part 2, and here for Part 1

A REVIEW OF THE ROLE OF THE VOCATIONAL MINISTER IN THE MALAYSIAN CHURCH IN LIGHT OF A CHALLENGING CHANGE

As we review the role of the vocational minister in the Malaysian church, the first point to note is that change in and around the church does not alter the minister’s ministry functions. However, change may alter his emphasises from among his varied functions and how he carries out his functions.

An example is from the changing size of a church. Gary L. McIntosh posits that churches have different needs depending on size. A small church is not just a miniature version of a large church but an entirely different entity.¹ Hence, as a church grows from small to medium-size to large the dynamics of the church also changes. This does not only affect the church’s structure, orientation and strategies but also the pastor’s role.²

Change in or outside the church always demands a response if it is to be positively addressed. On one hand it should be met with a response of consistency concerning the purpose and values of the church. On the other hand, it should be met with a recalibration of the priorities and methodology of doing church and ministry.

The Minister’s Leadership Function

In a crisis brought about by change, among the three functions of leading, feeding and caring, the minister must prioritise his leadership function. He needs to study the change, the effects of the change and how to address the change. He doesn’t do this alone but with his leadership team. Nonetheless, it is incumbent upon the minister to take the lead. Leadership is a key function of the vocational minister. He cannot surrender that role to anyone.

The Use of Technology³ and Online Platform

The biggest visible change in the Malaysian church as a response to the effects of the pandemic has been the adoption of the online platform as a substitute or as a complement to limited onsite meetings. When the Movement Control Order was first enforced in Malaysia on 18 March 2020 churches all across the country were caught totally unprepared (except a few churches that already had an online presence). Churches responded with varying degrees of rapidity, expansiveness and intensity in their adoption of the online platform.

Some churches immediately started to learn and use the available technology to livestream their worship services. Most churches were slow to adopt the new technology. Some were quick to make use of existing digital communication tools for small group meetings and to provide daily or weekly devotional content for their members. Others felt challenged by the new technology or were stretched by their limited resources. Some churches made significant financial investment to upgrade their equipment for quality virtual broadcast. Many simply hoped and prayed that all this would quickly pass and the church would be able go back to do church and ministry like the time pre-Covid-19.

These varying degrees of responses from churches in Malaysia underscore the importance of the leadership function of the minister. In other words, the minister’s leadership determines how his church responds to change.⁴ Moreover, a church’s response to external changes demands internal changes. Managing congregational changes requires wise, Scripture-guided and clear leadership from the minister.

The Unchanging Purpose of God and His Church

More importantly, the minister’s leadership is needed to direct the church in a “long obedience in the same direction.”⁵ Priorities and methods may change, but the purpose and values of the church do not change. The minister must constantly and continually lead the church towards the purpose of God as revealed in Scripture. Foremost, in terms of the mission of the church, is to make disciples of the nations (the Great Commission, Mt 28:18-20).

Hirsch and Ferguson contend that,

“…Jesus gets the privilege of decisively defining the movement that claims his name; nonetheless, leaders in his church need to take this task of defining the parameters of how people think about the church with utmost seriousness. Allowing Jesus to guide us, it is part of the leadership task to somehow manage how the rest of the organisation as a whole sees itself and its function in the world. In other words, it’s the leaders’ job to define ecclesia for the people and organization they lead.

This puts a huge theological responsibility on leadership to ensure they have a vision of the church that is consistent with the church Jesus built. We cannot shirk this, especially in moments of crisis that require accurate recalibration.”⁶

What is the recalibration that is needed to fulfil the Great Commission in this new season where mass gatherings are curtailed? The answer must be in small groups. The ministry of small groups is not new, but in this new season it needs to be emphasised and reconstructed. The minister needs to lead the charge in reconstructing the small group ministry of the church. For example, the small group needs to become even smaller. 12 may no longer work. 20 is certainly unworkable. Six might be ideal. Also, the general thrust of the small groups in coming together for Bible study and fellowship is not significantly focussed enough if the church is to fulfil the purpose of the Great Commission. The thrust of the small groups has to be disciple-making and life-on-life discipling.⁷ In this regards the minister needs to provide the leadership model of discipling in small groups in his church.⁸

The Minister as Trainer

The minister obviously cannot carry out discipling by himself. He needs to multiply himself. In other words, he needs to empower others to do the same (2 Tim 2:2). He has to see himself as one of God’s gifts to the church whose function is to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph 4:11-13). And the area which he is to equip his church is naturally in the area of his giftedness or expertise, which is to shepherd or disciple others.⁹ Hence, the pastor reproduces according to his own kind.¹⁰

Colin Marshall and Tony Payne call for ministry mind-shifts. Their list of 10 ministry mind-shift items includes: from running programmes to building people, from running events to training people, from relying on training institutions to establishing local training, from engaging in management to engaging in ministry and from seeking church growth to desiring gospel growth.¹¹

They propose a mental image of the pastor as trainer who functions as a preacher and trainer, instead of a clergyman who is a preacher and service-provider or a CEO who is a preacher and manager.¹² Their comparative chart of the three images of the pastor is helpful.¹³

The same sentiment is shared by William Willimon. In A Reader for Ordained Ministry he discusses a number of images of the 21^st Century pastor that includes the more far flung images of media mogul and political negotiator and the more commonly held images of preacher and servant. He asserts that it is the nature of the Christian ministry to be multifaceted and multidimensional. He insists that the “gospel does not change, but the context in which the gospel is preached and is enacted do change. A predominate pastoral image might have been fruitful in one age may not be so in the next.”¹⁴ Nonetheless, because the Christian ministry is significantly countercultural, Willimon says he finds “much to be commended in the image of the pastor as a missionary, or more accurately, a lead missionary or equipper of the missionaries.”¹⁵ The last point is key to the minister’s function in the present and challenging season of change. The minister’s function is not only to lead his church to fulfil the unchanging commission of disciple-making, but also to train and empower his church for this same purpose.

The church member, who has been thus trained, may not be called nor able to preach in a large meeting, but he can carry out a disciple-making ministry with a small group of people. During this season where large gatherings are curtailed this makes for a significant ministry strategy. A next step might be for the vocational minister to further train and release able men and women to start new churches in their neighbourhood and places of work; in fact anywhere, where they can engage non-believers and disciple believers. It is time for a mental shift, to stop thinking of church in terms of church gatherings, but to be the church everywhere. This is in total alignment with the NT concept of the church, which is simply a people gathered, centred around Christ and in mission for the Kingdom.¹⁶

CONCLUSION

The Malaysian church may not be aware, or may not want to admit, that its subservience to its institutionalised nature has made it quite impotent. The needs of the members, the programmes of the church, and keeping the church establishment intact are more important than the mission of the church. That being the case, in a season when the church is hit hard with an external and challenging change the prevailing mindset of the church cannot effectively respond to the change. Neither can it keep its focus on its mission.

It is the role of the vocational minister to provide leadership for the church to respond to the change. No doubt, the minister’s function is also to feed and care for the sheep whom the Lord has entrusted to him, but in a season of change he needs to step-up in his leadership function to lead the church to fulfil the unchanging purpose that God has for His church, namely, to make disciples of the nations.

The vocational minister can do this best by multiplying himself through training his members to be disciple-makers. In the present challenge when the church gathered needs to go small, the move to disciple-making in small groups is ideal. Perhaps, these empowered disciples can even start small churches where the Lord has put them. It is not difficult to envision a movement of organic churches¹⁷ mushrooming all over a city, a nation and in the nations of the world. This is perhaps the answer to lockdowns due to a pandemic or in times of persecution. And it might very well lead to a movement that Keller, Hirsch and Ferguson speak about in their books.

Re-Envisioning Vocational Christian Ministry in the Church in Malaysia in Light of Change (Part 1)

4 March 202210 March 2022Soon-Hock Lim Leave a comment

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

INTRODUCTION

The Covid-19 pandemic and the SOP set in place in Malaysia to control it have affected the church and its ministries.¹⁸ One of which is the curb on large group meetings. The traditional church thrives on large meetings. This is true of ministries within the church like the worship service and also those outside the church like its community services. This global pandemic has caused, or rather, forced, the church to rethink about how it should do ministry. In fact, in view of the changes that are taking place in and around the church, it also needs to rethink its ecclesiology,¹⁹ and the vocational minister needs to rethink his²⁰ role.

The primary purpose of this paper is a re-envisioning of the role of the vocational minister in light of the aforementioned mega change that is affecting the church and its ministries. The vocational minister refers to the main pastor of the church. Nonetheless, in most instances, the discussion is applicable to other pastors in a multi-staff church, as well as to bi-vocational and church leaders who see Christian ministry as their primary vocation. The minister’s role, however, cannot be separated from the church and its ministry. Inevitably we have to also discuss issues pertaining to the nature of the church and notions of its ministry.

This paper is an engagement in practical theology, in that it is about the theology of ministry. Hence, the discussion uses and interfaces with the four commonly accepted ways of doing theology: Scripture, reason, tradition and experience.²¹ A final point to note about the paper is that while the discussion may be applicable to churches world-wide because of the global effects of Covid-19, the context of this paper is limited to the church in Malaysia.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE MALAYSIAN CHURCH

The best way to describe the Malaysian church regardless of its denomination, language group and size is to tag it with the label “institutionalised.” At first glance this may appear appropriate since religion is one of the five major institutions of society.²²

For our purpose an institution is defined as an establishment with a firmly set purpose, structures and code of practice.²³ Timothy Keller in Center Church argues that organisations should have both institutional characteristics and movement dynamics.²⁴ He quotes Hugh Helco, “To live in a culture that turns its back on institutions is equivalent to trying to live in a physical body without a skeleton or hoping to use a language but not its grammar.”²⁵ In other words, as Keller observes, institutions bring order to life.²⁶

Institutions are important and necessary, but they also have several negative characteristics. They include, the process of decision making that is procedural and slow, innovation is from top down and implementation is done in departmental silos. An institution may be stable but they are slow to change, their emphasis is on traditions, the past and customs, and future trends are dreaded and denied.²⁷

Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson concur when they say,

“…their [institutional structures] intent is almost always good. Even so, concretized institutionalization does tend to block some of the most powerful aspects of ecclesia as Jesus intended it: a potent social force and gospel phenomenon that sweeps through populations. Any reading of history, Christian or otherwise, shows that institutional religion can become repressive, stifling creative expressions.

One of the most fundamental reboots we need to do in our day is to rediscover ourselves as the same potent, transforming people movement that started with Jesus and went on to change the world. The institutional forms have gotten us where we are now and can’t take us farther. We need to become a people-movement again.”²⁸

Very often with institutionalisation comes institutionalism, and very soon the church is beset with traditionalism and conservatism. As a result it is not be able to respond quickly and innovatively when confronted with change. In fact, it may not want to for fear of betraying its long-held beliefs, values and practices.

If this description of the Malaysian church is correct, then the church needs to do some self-evaluation. However, self-evaluation can only take place if there is self-awareness. The concept of the church’s self-awareness is discussed at length in Cyril Hovorun’s Meta-Ecclesiology. He argues that at different epochs of history the Church encountered challenging situations. They may be spiritual, intellectual, social or political in nature or the result of other historical circumstances. The challenges of these situations necessitated a response from the Church concerning its self-perception.²⁹

Hovorun’s thesis is helpful for the Malaysian church. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a huge challenge to the church—which might even be termed a crisis. How is the church responding? Will its response enable the church to thrive and advance the cause of the Kingdom of God? This is dependent on the level of the church’s self-awareness. The fundamental question that needs to be asked is: Can the Malaysian church see itself beyond its institutionalised nature?

The New Testament Concept of the Church

The New Testament (NT) concept of the church was not that of an institutionalised church. The institutionalised church is a product of the evolving concept of the church over time as it became more organised, more structured, more rigid, and hence more institutionalised.

The writers of the NT used ekklēsia to term the Christian community. In antiquity the term was used for an assembly, as in a regularly summoned political body.³⁰ The people who make up the church then, are those who have been called out to gather as the people of God who hold in common a confession of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour (Mt 16:16, 18, Acts 2:47, 1 Tim 3:15-16).

The foremost characteristic of the church would be the centrality of Christ. Secondly, it’s about a people coming together for the same cause.³¹ The church may come together for many Christ-centred purposes (Acts 2:42-4), but its ultimate cause is to be empowered and sent out by the Holy Spirit on a mission (Acts 1:8; 13:2-3) centred around Christ’s work of redemption (1 Cor 11:23-26) leading to God being glorified (Eph 3:21). This cause, or the primary work of the church and of every individual Christian, is most succinctly captured in Matthew 28:18-20, otherwise known as the Great Commission.

This NT concept of the church has direct implications on how the Malaysian church ought to perceive itself and its primary mission, and also how the vocational minister ought to perceive himself and his primary function.

Go to Part 2

Church Culture in a Pandemic

1 January 202125 August 2021Soon-Hock Lim Leave a comment

by Lim Soon Hock, Empowering Churches

After 30 years as a pastor I came to realise (I’m a slow learner) that one of the most important ingredients differentiating poor, good and great churches is church culture. Does a church have the right kind of culture for it to be a good or great church?

The unexpected disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has made the issue of church culture even more important.

For one, the cohesiveness of the church is very much put to the test because in-person meetings have been curtailed. This is especially disruptive for corporate worship, which is traditionally the main church event.

As I write this, Malaysia is reeling from a third wave of the virus, and much of the country was again under a Movement Control Order for the last two months. Churches have resorted to the use of online technology.

Will a church survive—nay, thrive in the pandemic? I believe the answer depends very much on its culture.

A Crisis Shows Up a Church’s Real Culture

Aubrey Malphurs, in his book Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture, defines a church’s congregational culture as “its unique expression of its shared values and beliefs”(p20). That is, a church’s congregational culture is made up of three components: its beliefs, values and behaviour. When beliefs and values are held in common by the majority in the church and are then actually seen in the people’s behaviour, they become culture—they give expression to the church’s unique identity.

It is this congregational culture that determines whether a church simply survives or thrives in this present challenge. Unsurprisingly, it is in a time of crisis that the real culture of a congregation becomes clearly evident. For example, is there a real culture of commitment, sacrifice, faithfulness and the like in the church? Or, were they just aspirational values? Or, worse yet, were they simply wishful thinking?

In particular, does the church have a culture where every member is connected, committed and participating in a small group? At a time when large gatherings are curtailed, small groups are the best vehicles for fellowship, discipleship and even outreach. This may be done online, in-person or in a hybrid form.

It is never too late to start a small group ministry or to encourage members to get into one. However, it is much more advantageous if small groups were already part and parcel of the culture of the church. The difference between the two is like an athlete fumbling to put on his running shoes when the starting pistol goes off and an athlete who already has his shoes on.

The Roles of the Pastor and Consultant in Shaping Church Culture

If the culture of a church is vital to the success of the church, it is inevitable that conscious effort is taken to shape the church’s culture so that it produces a healthy church. Malphurs states that the person that has the greatest responsibility to shape a church’s culture is the pastor (p129). It is by no means an easy task, because shaping congregational culture requires change. Malphurs explains that preparation, personnel and process are required to shape the culture of a church (p10-12).

I believe that church consultants have a role to play to help pastors and church leaders understand the importance of church culture. They can act as the leaders’ sounding board as the latter pursue a conscious effort to shape their congregational culture. Moreover, church consultants can study and analyse the real culture of the church (which the leaders may have blind spots), and suggest ways to develop the church’s unique and desired congregational culture that is Scripture-faithful, healthy and life-giving.

The importance of shaping congregational culture as a strategic means for developing healthy churches is found in Malphurs’ statement, “we’ve discovered that it’s a waste of time and money to attempt to lead a culturally toxic church that clings to the traditions of men rather than the clear teaching of Scripture through the strategic-envisioning process,” (p17). Hence, I believe that shaping congregational culture is an indispensable requirement to develop healthy churches.

Reference: Mulphurs, Aubrey. Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013

This article was first written for the the Society for Church Consulting blog posts on 15 December 2020. You may access it here.

The Church Thriving Inspite of Social Distancing

12 April 20201 January 2021Soon-Hock Lim 4 Comments

Ugh! The Movement Control Order (MCO) has been extended for another two weeks till 28 April. Even for an introvert like me it’s getting a bit too much of time alone! But that’s not the point of this blogpost.

Even when the MCO is finally lifted there is a real possibility that Putrajaya may ban large gatherings for the rest of 2020.

What constitutes a large gathering? According to a report in TheEdgeMarkets it is anything above 250 people (13 March 2020). However, according to theStar online it is anything above 50 people (4 April 2020). On top of this the authorities may still require people to keep a distance of at least one metre (maybe even two metres) from one another. If this is implemented the capacity of a church’s worship hall will immediately be reduced to hold at most one third of the usual crowd at any one time.

I believe churches will want to abide by the directives, and also to keep their members safe. What can we do to adjust to the situation, and yet thrive in it? Here are some suggestions for the worship service.¹

Have multiple services.
Provide overflow rooms with close-circuit TV or live-streaming facilities.
Live stream the service so that members² can join the service at home. Those who prefer to play it safe can stay home and join the service online. Perhaps, it ought to be made mandatory for the less healthy and elderly.
Members to take turns to attend a live worship. One suggestion is for people to pre-register until the quota is filled, with preference given to those who do not have the technical resources to join the live-stream.

An alternative is to schedule attendance at the live worship by cell groups. What about those who are not in a cell? It then depends on a church’s philosophy of ministry. Either some places are set aside for those who are not in a cell, or they be asked to join a cell as a pre-step to attend a live worship.

The implications of “no large gatherings” is going to be huge on the church. I’ve not begun to address two other important groups, the youth and the children (maybe in another post). And also about outreach—how will we be doing it in the day of social distancing? Here’s the bottom line: I don’t think we can do church in the same way as we did pre-MCO.

Clearly, church is not just about the worship service. Church ultimately is about relationships (vertical and horizontal), discipleship (or discipling) and reaching out to the world (to win the spiritually lost and to impact our world). If worship services are cut shorter to cater for multiple services and the live-stream “audience”, coupled with social distancing and quick exits from the church building, the worship services are not going to cut it as far as the above mentioned objectives are concerned.

A couple of pastors shared with me that this is where the small group ministry is critically important. Small groups can fulfil all the three objectives. We used to think that the establishment of cells was in preparation for persecution. Little did we know that they would also be critical for a time like this.

I want, however, to add that these small groups must be intentional about discipling, if the church wants to thrive, and not to simply ride out this period of uncertainty. A critical factor rests on a very important person—the small group leader. The above-mentioned pastors said that helping their small group leaders to recalibrate and to empower them for their role will be their primary focus. I’m sure one of the areas of training will be about making effective use of online facilities to connect and disciple their members.

So, during the ban on large gatherings there are at least two things your church should do. One, restructure your worship service and make use of the online platform. And two, recalibrate and strengthen your small group ministry with the focus on caring, discipling and reaching out to others.

¹ These include suggestions from the pastors who responded to my query.

² By “members” I do not mean registered members but all who worship regularly at your church.

Lim Soon Hock Empowering Churches

The Church, Covid-19 & IT

25 March 20201 January 2021Soon-Hock Lim 4 Comments

The government’s Movement Control Order (MCO) counter-measure against Covid-19 has affected how we do church. As a result of this national lockdown Christians are not be able to meet for corporate worship and small group meetings. Needless to say the huge majority of churches in Malaysia have been caught unprepared. Most have not kept up with the digital revolution nor learnt how to make use of the digital platform to further the work of the church.

A few days ago I asked some pastors and church leaders how they are: 1.Connecting with their members, 2. Conducting their small group and prayer meetings, and 3. Doing their “corporate” worship service. I was particularly interested to know how they are using online facilities to help them accomplish the above objectives.

Relaying information to church members is probably the easiest thing to do. WhatsApp, Facebook and the like are already in common use by many, and a church can easily send out information via these multiple social media platforms.

It’s the group meetings that is more challenging, and especially an online substitute for the corporate worship service.

It appears that the application of choice (among the small number of pastors and church leaders that responded to my research) for small group meetings, whether cell meetings or prayer meetings, is Zoom. It is a video conferencing software.

Among the first things you read on its website is that since Covid-19 the number of users have grown rapidly. You can register with Zoom for an account and host a session for free but your conference or meeting is limited to 40 minutes. Beyond that you need to sign up on one of its pay-plans. The good news is that only the host needs to be on the pay-plan. The other participants don’t even need to have an account—you only need to click and join the meeting set up by the host. Skype has been around longer and it serves the same purpose. You can read up and decide which is better or more suited for your purpose.

The bottom line is that your church needs to capitalise on these online platforms in times like this. During normal times they are still needful and useful for the occasional online meetings when everyone’s hard pressed for time or to avoid wasting time stuck in the horrendous urban traffic.

I know of at least one church that is providing daily video devotions for its members. The pastors record a short devotional message using their smartphone and upload it onto google drive. The link is sent to the members for them to view the video anytime of the day. Whether you do it daily or once during mid-week it helps your church member feel connected to you as their pastor during this time of no face-to-face contact.

Before Covid-19 only a handful of churches in Malaysia were live-streaming their worship services. Then, as I have learnt, the Sunday just prior to MCO a few more churches did their first live-streaming. I believe the leaders were already anticipating what was coming. Although the restricted movement has brought a temporary halt to live-streaming it has nonetheless given the church a look at what could be done in the future and also what can be done using online applications under the present lockdown.

Since last Sunday a number of churches are now recording their sermons and uploading them on Facebook and YouTube. Some have piggy-back on Pastor Craig Groeschel’s Church Online Platform (https://churchonlineplatform.com/). Over the next few Sundays, if MCO persists, even more churches will be using one of these online platforms. (As I write this the Prime Minister has announced that the MCO will be extended by another two weeks till April 14. It is clear that your church cannot afford not to use these online facilities.)

Recording and uploading onto Facebook or YouTube is not that difficult. A Baby-Boomer pastor can still learn how to do it. If not find a younger person (in or outside your church) to teach you or help you do it.

Worship might be a little trickier, but it can be done. If you don’t want to break the rules of the MCO then you may have to resort to a one-man band, leading and playing on a musical instrument. Unless your church is fortunate enough to have a worship leader who is surrounded by a musical family! Record the songs and upload them. Then send the links for both the worship and sermon to your members. If you have people who are IT-savvy they will be able to add in the song lyrics and splice the worship, sermon and announcements into one seamless presentation.

What about the most important part of the worship service—the offering? (Please read that tongue- in-cheek). I think it’s time to provide an option for online giving. The offering done this way is no less an act of worship.

I believe the church needs to make the best use of IT and the online platform to advance the Kingdom of God. IT can be used for good or bad. If the church doesn’t use it for good and the Kingdom, the devil will certainly use it for his own evil purpose. Your choice.

Lim Soon Hock Empowering Churches