For several years we felt the need to
organize a discipleship course. Every year some people were baptized, but aside
from the regular teaching in Sunday worship and Bible study there was no
‘course for beginning Christians’. Marioka regularly mentioned this as a need
that had to be addressed. Although I readily agreed with her, I was afraid I
did not have the time or energy to take this on myself and at the time we did
not think any others who could do it.
Diligent readers will know that we tried to do our best in our daily
teaching jobs (at the international school). I wanted to be effective as a
teacher and so I offered retests for students who would come at lunchtime for
extra help and practice. Then we had our weekly Bible study evenings, which we
diligently kept, even if attendance at times was fairly low. During most of the
school year we also had our biweekly visits to Mary’s class (at a local Chinese
high school), where we would teach and practice English reading and
pronunciation while we would study and explain the Gospels.
The last two years we had made weekly power points for the worship
meetings. Although most of these were later made by cutting & pasting from
existing files, it always took quite a few hours to craft a presentation that
was clear, informative, and artistically pleasing. It was fun to find suitable backgrounds and
illustrations, but it also took a lot of time. So, most of the Friday nights
and Saturdays were used to prepare the message, the liturgy, and the actual
presentation.
Sunday morning we would usually be busy with “the church” for four or
five hours, including preparation before the meeting and lunch with various
groups afterwards. The second half of the Sunday constituted our time of rest.
About two years ago we had a family join
our group, where husband and wife were quite mature and obviously spending
considerable time studying the Scriptures. They asked us to be baptized, for
they had first been baptized in the Mormon “church”. As we do not view this as a church of Jesus
Christ, as He is revealed to us in His Word, we had no problem doing this.
Because of their knowledge and commitment, we asked this family S to consider
teaching a (Chinese) discipleship course on Sunday afternoons. They accepted,
and for a couple of months they did so, until they felt called to leave us in
order to assist in the start of another church plant north of the city (about
90 minutes travel with public transit).
After family S had left, Sister G (one of
our deacons) had taken over teaching the course. Although we had never
appointed her as teacher, we felt we had no alternatives, so we accepted the
situation. A year later the first course was finished, and there was a break
before the second part would commence. At that time we had just started the
“Blackaby course” on “Experiencing God”. I would do some of the teaching with
our evangelist translating. The second part of the evening we would split into
groups (if there was enough attendance) and a ‘core group member’ would lead
the group discussions in Chinese. One night, while Brother T was leading, Sister
G (our deacon) made a strong statement, which showed that she had not
understood my teaching. When Brother T gently
tried to correct her, she snapped back that T should not be in leadership
because of his personal pride. It was this event that made us doubt whether it
would be wise to have her teach the next discipleship course. The issue was ‘resolved’ some weeks later
when Sister G left us after the “Facebook Confrontation.”
Again, it seemed obvious that we should
have a discipleship course. Also, it was clear that we did not yet have any
leaders to take on this responsibility. So, I finally agreed to take it over.
Soon we would lead a discipleship course, on Sunday nights. As the material
used so far had been in Chinese, however, I had to find suitable lesson
material and a suitable translator.
Several of us had noticed that Sister H
(D’s wife) was pretty good in English. She is a friendly and quiet woman, and
she would not readily volunteer her insights. When we asked her to consider
helping out in the new discipleship course –after some time of deliberation-,
she decided to give it her best. Together with Sister M (our remaining deacon),
she worked at it very diligently. The first two meetings, she was nervous, and
I often had to repeat myself before I got a translation. The third time, H was
early. She told us she had come much earlier to pray to God to help her in the
work. From that day on, she was more confident and the translation went much
smoother.
For our lesson material, I first went to the
website of (Timothy Keller’s) Redeemer Church of New York. For preaching, his
sermons had provided me with much inspiration, and in extra busy times, I would
rely quite heavily on his messages. (This was always properly communicated in
our meetings, and we also wrote a letter to Redeemer Church with appreciation
for their indirect support.) Yet, for
the discipleship course they had no suitable material for our kind of cultural
setting and audience.
I then discovered that a group of American
(Reformed & Presbyterian) churches had published a set of material
available online. Unfortunately, for non-member churches there was a cost
involved in accessing the material. Since I was unable to test it for
suitability, I was reluctant to make the payment or to ask our church for
money. After two requests, I was granted free access for our work in China.
After some hours of preparation, however, I found the material too weak in
substance, with too much time wasted on daily life stories from a typical American
context. When I read the suggestion to use some (natural) object, like a
seashell, to help us focus in our prayers, my mind was made up: REJECTED!
Finally, just a week before our announced
starting date, I found the kind of material that I was looking for. “Lion of
Judah” is a baptistic church in Florida that focuses on ministry to the Latino
population. Their first booklets for discipleship seemed to be clear, to the
point, and with many Bible references. So, ‘at the last minute’ we adopted this
material, and for the second meeting we spent some time to do the sorting and
the binding of our ‘textbooks’. First we were a bit disappointed that about
half of the recent converts did not (regularly) attend the meetings. Sister H
(the translator) started to invite some of her friends, and a few other regular
visitors, who were serious seekers, joined the study evenings. After about a
month we had the police visit, so then we moved the meetings to our house. This
made the atmosphere more intimate, and we were amazed most Sunday nights, how
our new friends were obviously excited to learn all about the Gospel and the
Word of God.
Several times earlier Marioka and I had experienced this kind of
situation. I would just share the Gospel and respond to questions, and you can
clearly see the Spirit at work. The
first time God used me in this way, I was so excited, I declared, “This is my
greatest joy; to see Christians and seekers gripped by the simple teaching of
the Gospel truth, so that they are cut to the heart and transformed in their
lives.
P had very little exposure to Christianity
when she joined the group, but after just three months it was obvious that she
understood the Gospel and committed to follow her Savior. Her testimonies showed us how the Spirit was powerfully
at work in her and in her family. J was
another young woman, who had been searching. She had visited our services
before, with her husband A and her friend S. A was at first perhaps a little
apprehensive; interestingly he was the son of a Turkish immigrant in France.
Yet, he too was convicted by the Spirit, so we were very excited to see that
all three of them wanting to be baptized. We had a special service on Pentecost
with a visit to the swimming pool before and a fantastic dinner-celebration afterward!
PtL!
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