Week One - CEFC

With a tinge of nervy expectation I walked into CEFC, this being the first of Sundays away. I was hoping there would be communion (there was!), and maybe a chance to meet Glynn and Joel. As God would have it, they were there, right in front of my eyes, as I was ushered to my seat in the Sanctuary. I guess He knew how was I feeling and that, well, for the first week at least, I did not need to feel so alone.

Service was great. It is an amazing feeling to be surrounded by strangers, yet who are family for life, all singing our hearts out, giving praise and glory to our Saviour! I think I was next to a lady who served as a singer; she could really sing! I must admit that I did have the tendency still to compare it against GMC's services though. Lets just say that when it comes to our contribution to the church at large, I'm getting pretty sure its music; but yet we need work on the spirit behind it, the desire and the passion must be right.

The sermon was one whole other thing though. Rev Edmund Chan, according to what I know at least, was back after a short (1 year?) sabbatical away from CEFC as Senior Pastor, but yesterday marked his official return. Boy, I don't know what else to say than, "Here is a man of God.", and "He can speak really well!" Okay that doesn't do it justice, but anyway. More on his sermon (and what I learned/echoed/thought about) in a bit.

On a whole the service flowed well. The order is different. Short worship (3 songs), followed by prayer, then sermon, then prayer response, communion, videoed announcements with offering taking, and then another time of short worship (2 songs) to end it off. Extended worship at the end really makes a difference, I felt, in responding to what God had spoken through the sermon. It really does end off the service nicely, and doesn't feel like a routine or a "one for the road" kinda song that we seem to have in GMC.

More markedly, would be the abject lack (or sense the lack of) showmanship. It felt a lot more like the 9am service, where things happen as according to a schedule, and the transitions are more marked, and less "flowy" as the 1115am service tends to be. Ended on the dot as well. 1.5 hours.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time there. Its a little of a pity that I wasn't able to play the polite guest and go sit and talk in their guest corner; I enjoyed myself immensely the last time I did that. But I had to go for LCEC so, well, turned down the gently insistent befriender as kindly as I could.

Right then, on to the meaty thing, the sermon.

Rev Edmund spoke on "Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing". In essence, he spoke on how the Great Commission was centered on our corporate and individual relationship with Christ, on how we needed to make the primary concern of this mission about discipling the world, and lastly on our own personal need to run this well.

In his words:

1) We must have a Foundational PURPOSE that grounds us

2) We must have a Steadfast PRIORITY that governs us

3) We must have a Personal PASSION that grows us

Reminded me a lot of the letter to the church in Ephesus really (in Revelation).

In particular I'm gonna focus on point 2), and an issue that he brings about. The priority that we need to have is to "Go make disciples of all nations", which he used both to tie in proclaiming CEFC's new vision ("World Missions!"), as well as raising up an issue that affects us all, which is what gave me pause (in a reflective way) as I listened to the sermon.

If the church is not discipled intentionally, we will all become "Cultural Christians". To a large extent, much of modern Christianity has become a culture. A life without real life. These people come to church regularly, but they are far from God in many ways. Three marks, or kinds, of Cultural Christianity are:

1) Spiritual Consumerism
- they are spectators, not participants
- always wanting something new to listen to, and so "common knowledge" bores them

2) Self-Help Gospel
- "What I do that fulfills me, not the church" or anyone else that doesn't affect me directly for that matter.
- Usually focuses on improving, blessing, getting out of lousy circumstances, etc.

3) Double-Life
- speaks for itself really; a double-heart and a double-mind that lives a life of self-fulfillment
- excited about things in church, fervent even, but its basically a mask
- character does not change, merely puts on a front for the right situation

Everything about cultural Christianity is self-involved, and things in church to them gradually grows common, routine. It becomes a culture. I do this because, well, I always do this. There's no meaning to it, simply life. In time these people can and will rise to positions in leadership, and they do nothing but espouse reliance on human strength, fear of the unknown, keeping the status quo, seeking new and exciting experiences and being bored by the same old same old, but keeping to it because... it's what we do.

I guess that really made me reflect. In many ways, I do think I have bits of all 3 marks in my life. Its quite scary. Asides that, I have seen these marks in lives around me. I have also thought long about these things, and how they often reference to end-time prophecies, the dead church Sardis in Revelation, Christ's own statement "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.".

And I think why it stuck me most, is because this has been the area of life that God has constantly been speaking to me of; that its not so important what I do in life, but He's really really really a whole lot more interested in who I am and how I need to change. Throughout my year of dim silence (that 2010), that thought has come, again and again. Its about my character, its about gaining a heart for others, the lost. Its about losing the dross and the emptiness that often plagues my life, caused by my own hand. Its about people, relationships, for if God is love, then I must love too.

I guess to end this post off, the words for 1 Corinthians 13 works best.

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."