Archive for May, 2008:
Church review: Evangelical Formosan Church of NZ
Ph: (09)535-7817; Cnr Picton St & Wellington St, Howick; Pastor: Wu Wen-Rui (吳文瑞); Sermon topic: One of life’s crucial questions (Job 1:13-22); 2pm, 18.5.08.
Rating: A
(A=return worshipper, AA=excellent and growing, AAA=must be my home church lol)
You’ll like this church if you: are most comfortable with Mandarin, appreciate a close-knit Chinese community, share close links with the Chinese Christian diaspora.
（這教會最適合如果你：只會聽動中文，喜歡一個密切的台灣社團，偏愛比較平靜和矜持的敬拜。）
You won’t like this church if you: couldn’t understand what I just said in Mandarin, would struggle integrating with a Taiwanese-dominant congregation, prefer a large church crowd.
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And now for something completely different (churchwise) – Kim and I dropped by to visit the Evangelical Formosan Church of NZ. It’s A Taiwanese church which meets in the Howick Baptist Church building in the afternoon. The disclaimer for this write-up is that my Mandarin skills are mostly conversational and my Mandarin vocabulary has deficits in the domain of religious terminology. Nevertheless I could still understand a sizeable amount, albeit with the help of Chinese-English dictionaries and some calculated guesses.
Worship: If you can understand worship music sung in Mandarin, the songs are actually pretty good in terms of content. Songs range in tone and subject matter but are all comfortable. The song leader was fairly encouraging and the 4-piece band adept. Full understanding or not, one can only admire the fact that the church on Earth is able to worship God in different tongues. Lyrical content was respectful, even if I couldn’t understand all of it.
Teaching: Pastor Wen-Rui Wu‘s teaching focused on the Christian response to tragedy, citing the recent Sichuan earthquake in particular. I liked how the congregation read the Bible passages from Job 1:13-22 together, and Wu dealt with the delicate matter of suffering appropriately. While this oldest book in the Bible is a bread-and-butter consult in times of trial, Wu offered some extra insight into these well-quoted passages, for example:
- Some people dislike the story of Job because it seems like an impossible reaction to praise God in the face of his immense losses (Jb 1:21)
- Job’s 3 friends were exceedingly helpful with his grief, when they came from far-flung places and mourned with him for a week… but then they started talking.
Wu was also adept in drawing insights from Christian writers such as Paul Tournier, and he stressed that disasters weren’t always judgement for something in a cause-and-effect sort of way. I did notice that his preaching style was more family-uncle than motivational speaker, which seemed to suit the audience to a tee.
Church history: I wasn’t able to get much information on this, but their service programme notes that the EFCNZ have met in some form or another for over 10 years. The Evangelical Formosan Church in itself as a denomination seems to be based in the United States – the term Formosan is a reference to the Taiwanese origins of the church group. The service did include traditional elements such as reciting the Apostles Creed and a doxology, which suggests at least a Protestant lineage.
Other faculties: For a church with around 100 worshippers, there are plenty of ministries catering for different age groups. Bible studies and youth groups meet at 4pm after the service, and there are prayer groups and youth meets during the week. Outreach endeavours include contributions to the Manukau Institute of Technology as well as other Taiwan-related offerings, and the church did suggest making a financial contribution to the relief efforts in the Sichuan earthquake region.
Visitor treatment: Each visitor was greeted immediately at the door, and filled out a visitor’s information slip stating who you were, and which church member invited you to the church. Each visitor was then welcomed in a stand-up and clap approach, which other than being acutely embarrassing was otherwise quite warm and sincere. Great for those who find the anonymity in megachurches frustrating. I also enjoyed catching up with a few church members which knew my family in some way or another – one lady in particular was good friends with my mother when I learnt the violin with her son.
Conclusion: A respectable tight-knit Chinese church community, reaching out to the diaspora of the lost.
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(Disclosures: 2 friends are existing worshippers.)
(This review may not be representative of all of the church’s ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)
weekend, william
I’m sitting in office doing a little paperwork to start off the week. Here’s a picture:
I couldn’t find a 50cent stamp, so have plastered an envelope in front of me with ten 5-cent stamps to make up the sums. It lends a somewhat comical look to a fairly important letter: apparently we owe a roofing company $280 that never got paid (this is from March). Anyways, I digress:
Saturday
Was able to get back to teaching kids (was under the weather the week before), some which have practised more than others. After Academy rehearsal, drove over to VernAl’s house to pick up our big family photo block, and ended up staying for dinner. As some of you may know, I am a sucker for polentas (I used to get the chefs at NYNY to just cook me deep-friedpolentas for dinner – totally delicious!).For Saturday’s dinner I got to try the Zimbawean staple called sadza, which tastes similar to polentas.I should learn this recipe as an emergency food source or something – it seems so practical and better than potatoes that go mouldy, or apples that rot.
Watched the Hurricanes get whomped by the Crusaders with the Zim crew before heading back home.
Sunday
As eager beavers go you can’t beat me. I was up for an 8.30 church service by 7, and Cheryl, Kim and I (CKI) had a great time going grocery shopping afterwards. I was able to cook a Sunday lunch with the extra time available, and Tommy came over. Proceeded to shoot terrorists and criminals all afternoon. In between all thatI also received a “come join us” email from HBC which was very nice and thoughtful.
Also had a pretty good paperclip (even though turnout was low), got the lowdown on Dennis’s 48 hours adventure. We chatted excitedly about end of Lost season 4: will definitely have to get together the coming weekend to watch that through. Fong mei is still the cheapest of the cheap in filling our stomachs, seriously: $6.30 a head is great great great.
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Hope everyone has a good week!
Church review: Elim Christian Centre (East)
Website:http://www.ecc.elim.org.nz;Ph: (09)534-5142; 159 Botany Rd, Howick, Auckland; Pastor: Luke Brough;Speaker: David Peters;Sermon topic:”The Father’s Love”part 1,11am service, 18.5.08.
Rating:none given
(A=return worshipper,AA=excellent and growing,AAA=must be my home church lol)
You’ll like this church if you: enjoy contemporary music in worship, seek a well-tuned, vibrant atmosphere, believe in the continuation of spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit, love the corporatefellowshipacross multipleElim churches on Sundays
You won’t like this church if you: hold beliefs of cessationalism, prefer smaller congregational sizes, question topical and seeker-sensitive sermons, prefer Biblically-thorough messages.
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In all fairness, I didn’t expect to visit Elim (ECC)so soon – it was about 8th on my list of churches to see. In Christian circles, saying you’re from Elim will draw pretty strong debate. The strongest objectors treat Elim as a dirty word,dismissing their beliefs on spiritual gifts and their fixation on the Holy Spirit as deceptive, or even demonic; others are genuinely passionate about fully enjoying God’s exciting healing and gifts from the Holy Spirit, and zealously love their church.
The church has also been in the media spotlight after the recent canyoning tragedy that took 7 lives. The fact is though that doctrinal differences aside, they all accepted Christ as their saviour and have a place in heaven. And with all the swirls of right-wrongs cast aside, and from testimony of people who “just don’t know enough”, I decided to see what it was like for myself.
Worship: Due to a misunderstanding on start time, we bundled into a rapidly filling 500-seater auditoriuma few minutes after 10, at whicha 7-piece worship band and a 10-personchorus coordinated byworship director Boyd Ratnarajawas already getting things started and gathering up momentum with a couple of enriching Hillsong numbers. There’s no chance of hearing an organ hymn in here. I found the wordsa bit repetitive after repeating the chorus line for the 10th time, but you have to admire their slick sounds and immense enthusiasm for singing God’s praises (complete with synchronised swaying from the chorus group). I did recognise delirious?’s “Majesty“, which was sang with much fervour by the congregation – much oranty hands all around. An old school colleague Amos Ling delivered a beautiful improvisation on Amazing Grace in a refreshing piece.
Speaker: David Peters runs his own prophetic and teaching ministry, and also teaches at the Elim’s MinistryTraining Collegealongside abusy schedule ofpreaching at plenty of otherchurches.Other than that he’s a stalwart of the Elim leadership team, and we managed to catch his first message back from a 5-week trip to the UK.
Taking notes onhis 20-minute sermon (part 1 of 2) gave me the following: “We should rest in the Father’s love”, and not have a master-slave view of our relationship with God. Peters spent the rest of the time powerfully expounding on making “the Spirit real” and sharing his experiences of meeting people during his trip that were “digging a well in the supernatural”.He’s gotthe charisma and persuasion of a seasoned preacher, relating well to the audience. His oratory ranges from jokes on GPS navigational errors to thoughts on “not having all the answers”, and I appreciated how he humbled himself so.
Some concerns I did think of at the time were: sweepinggeneralisations of revival movements during the 20th century, an almost blas view of sticking to his notes, and a period at the end where Peters said: “I’m going to pray for the impartation of the Father’s love”. I was a bit wary about this declaration that anyone can “impart” the Father’s love on another – perhaps it’s hard to know what it actually meanswhen you’reonly givenBible quotes about the Father’s love (Eph 3:17b-19; Deut 33:12; Col 1:21b-22) that don’t mention any sort of impartation. Nevertheless Peters was faithful to his message and effective in delivering new truths to an appreciative audience.
As a note: their statement of faith is pretty clear on a separate baptism of the Holy Spirit, with associated things liketongues,being slain in the spirit, prophecy and visions. These things do “freak people out” who haven’t seen it before, a friend shared.Headded thatthis sort of thing shows up more during more “revival”-focused services, and particularly when special guests such as Steve Foss come and do their thing (“You see like, half the church fall over and everything…”).
Church History: Elim is a Pentecostal church, and proud of it. The “Elim” term comes from the first Elim Pentecostal Church founded in 1915, strongly influenced by the Welsh revival. In 1949 the Pentecostal Church of NZ linked up with the rapidly-growing Elim Church of Great Britain – ECC’s site in East Auckland is the flagship church of a NZ-wide outreach that now extends to 50 churches.Sunday teachingis meant to focuson what they term “practical life-related teaching from the Bible”.
Other faculties: Ads at church? Well yes – announcements of upcoming conferences and groups come in the form of video presentations between worship time and the message. Looking through the Elim information pack reveals a host of ministries and outreach groups, ranging from children, business groups, dynamic youth movements and so on. Elim runs a well-stocked Christian bookstore, and a Ministry Training College. Mid-week Connect groups are what ECC uses to foster closer study and fellowship together.
Visitor treatment: Crunchie bars. Yes, the chocolate favours are back in force, for anyone with special occasions and newcomers to the church. You raise your hand to indicate you’re visiting and you get a glossy info-pack with a monthly newsletter, feedback form and programme details (and the pheromonic treat). You can pick up sermon notes at the door from the hand-shaking greeters, but it’s probably easy to get lost in the crowd after the service.
Conclusion: Refreshing, energised and growing, though vague life-story messages didn’t work as well for me. Bring your Bibles with you to make sure everything checks out.
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(Disclosures: 3 friends are existing worshippers.)
(This review may not be representative of all of the churchs ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)
how’s it been guys?
Have been a little busy with work, worked overtime most every day last week to finish a big job. Consequently felt under the weather Saturday and had to cancel all my classes… but at least I’m a bit better rested now. And this week has dropped back in workload… so much that I’ve been able to catch up on mindless TV series, heh. I can safely inform everyone that Lost is pretty exciting but totally hard-to-follow if you’re not clued in on basically every season before it…
The church visits have been pretty good so far – I’ve been keeping in touch with all the people that go to different churches, and pretty intrigued by the differences in visitor treatment, doctrine and general church stuff. It’s very exciting to worship with people you don’t normally see on a Sunday, and to share and learn why each church operates the way it does.
As you can tell I’ve tried to do write-ups of the places I’ve been, though I apologise because one visit could never totally encapsulate what a church is about. Also, rating a church is never a particularly easy thing to do, since it is to some degree a subjective approach. The best compromise I could think of was to include the “You’ll like/not like this church if…” sections, giving a more balanced view. Ultimately giving an A, or an AA or whatever is a reflection of my inherent bias (as is every review), so don’t take them at face value – visit the church if you want to find out more. At the end of the day, every Christian is trying to build God’s Kingdom in some shape or form – you can either lament the fact that his Kingdom is so disparate and divided, or you can embrace what you dohave in common: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Kim’s got exams at the moment, which is pretty stressful… and everyone around is harrying away at work or study or other lifelong pursuits.
Take care everyone.
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Church review: Howick Baptist Church
Website:http://www.howickbaptist.org.nz/;Ph: (09)534-5142; Cnr Piction St & Wellington St, Howick, Auckland; Senior Pastor: Peter Somervell;Sermon topic:”Leading with Love” (1 Cor 4:14-21), from Adventures in 1 Corinthians series. Communion service, 11.5.08.
Rating:AA
(A=return worshipper,AA=excellent and growing,AAA=must be my home church lol)
You’ll like this church if you: appreciate/can handle expositional preaching, have family service requirements, prefer an exegetical approach to doctrine/Bible reading, enjoy mix of traditional and modern hymns.
You won’t like this church if you: need to worship and pray with professional musical backing, prefer wholly-topical insights to sermons, are seeking a Spirit-led experience.
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As part of our church jaunt/visiting tour/period, we (Cheryl, Kim and I) decided to attend a local (defined as in the area, not as the Lord’s recovery) service at Howick Baptist Church.After returning a camping pillowin the carpark to a friend I knew, we were given warm welcomes from greeters at the door. Being Mother’s Day, there were hand-made bookmarks being given out at the door to any woman that looked old enough to be a mother. We sat in the middle of the wooden pews, and noted large banners declaring God as creator of all things (Rev 4:11) – definitely not a church shy about who they are (I say this in light of the various churches and groups that remove the term “Church” or “Christian” from their names).
Worship:I appreciated the thought that the worship leader (Calvyn Jonker, assistant pastor) had for mothers as per the occasion, as well as his earnestness to pray for and encourage the 200-odd congregation. The careful thought put into song choice also bears mentioning, with a mix of modern songs like “How Great is Our God” thrown together with faithful hymns like “Blessed Redeemer”. Largely negating the “worship wars” that’s fractured a great many congregations and caused some tension at the very least, it’s reassuring to know that you can focus on worshipping God with a broad spectrum of respectful lyrics and music (HBC gets it in that order, which is another plus). Adding in Scripture-reading and a solemn, almost guarded Communion service, it was a very respectful experience.
Speaker: While chatting with a lady named Kathy after the service, she told us that one of the strong points of HBC was its preaching – strongly grounded in the Bible. Like other expositional preachers (going through a book of the Bible verse by verse), senior pastor Peter Somervell methodically moves through the Bible (in this case, the 1st letter to the Corinthian church) with clinical exegesis and thoughtful insights at each verse (adding a few useful Greek definitions to augment). Rather than a dry seminary-style overview, Somervell is astute in tying each verse to a key word, and insightful in applying each to the congregation. In this case, chapters 4 verses 14 to 21 came under the points of Admonishing, Mentoring, Modelling, Teaching and Correction/Discipline. Plenty of notes to take and reference to other Bible passages, and his theme of spiritual leadership was explained to include elders, pastors, parents and older Christians. Particularly encouraging was his statement that “love for Jesus Christ should be the driving motivator for all of his points.” Definitely strong and (more importantly) relevant Bible-based teaching.
Church history: There’s not much of an overview on their website, but a friend shared that Somervell has been particularly good for the church, having moved up from Wanganui East Baptist Church afterHBC hada tumultuous period without a fulltime pastor. HBC is part of the Baptist Churches of New Zealand, a collection of like-minded congregations that share some pastoral and NZ-wide resources and cooperate on outreach and ministry training efforts (more information on the Baptist movement in general can be found here.) – it’s notable though that the church also has strong links with the Reformed tradition, evidenced by their theological perspective as well as participation and cooperation with other Reformed churches in Auckland.
Other faculties: There’s a definite sense of close community at HBC, with groups and services catering for all ages (birth-college age), family news, giving and going opportunites all listed in the church flyer. Strong involvement/association with the Baptist Union of New Zealand, as well as Creation Ministries International.
Visitor treatment: A discreet card can be found in the back of each pew, where you can fill out details and drop it into the offering bags. Chatted with one lady, and three people which we knew (2 fellow visitors), all amiable and very friendly discussions.
Conclusion: A very God-focused, Biblically sound church with evident spiritual growth and maturity.
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(Disclosures: 1 friend is an existing worshipper. EDIT 25/7/08: Howick Baptist Church is currently our home church.)
Next week: Elim Christian Centre (East), Evangelical Formosan Church of NZ.
(This review may not be representative of all of the churchs ministries, or their overall teaching. Opinions expressed in this review are that of the author, and may not wholly reflect all aspects of the church or its national body: nevertheless, comments have been humbly made in both truth and love as much as possible. Please contact the church for more detailed enquiries about their services.)
Ripe Chance Woods
Michael Scofield eat your heart out!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10509732
as we go on
(More graduation pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=26333&l=5c091&id=579606378)
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Graduation ceremony was excellent – got to really reconnect with lots of different people at uni, and felt very medieval walking around in robes. The great thing about my ceremony was that it includedgraduands from Architecture, Fine Arts, Planning, Theology, Visual Arts, Music and so on – which made for a spectacularly colourful procession, as well as a reasonably interesting ceremony compared to perhaps 300 BSc names being read out ad nauseum.
We had a family photoin the eveningas well – my old boss’s wife is a very adept photographer and she gave me very nice photos afterwards to select from. You can see some of the ones she took here. Still deciding on which ones to purchase, but other than that graduation has come and gone and I’m now back at work.
Which reminds me, I should be working.
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Acts 16:39
Went to Grace Baptist Church for the last time on Sunday. Felt a bit sad as well as firm on my imminent change of service. From Grace Baptist I gained a strong appreciation of the need to make decisions with the backing and the blessing of God, as well as a real disdain for finality to interpreting the Bible. I loved the expositional preaching, but yearned for greater relevance to the atrocities of life that six-monthly-sermon-blocks couldn’t cover. I loved the equipping of Biblical knowledge, but felt that therewasn’t a real outlet orfocusto serve and impact upon the lost. I loved the people, but grew wary of the machinations and political hypocrisies which as men we all fell victim to.
In any case, an even greater challenge is this – where to from here? Obviously the next step is to find a church that is doctrinally sound, a place of sincere fellowship, welcoming and open, and is driven to reach out to the community. Formulating one’s statement of faith is a daunting task, but every church does it: on reading some church websites some will give this information out, some won’t. So I’ll be looking for a church where I can be an active participant.
Hopefully if you read this blog, you’ll be able to keep track of the churches I’ll be looking at over the next weeks and months. They will all be in the East Auckland area, and will be Gospel-centred churches.
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Graduation ceremony tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a very exciting day!