Paul’s instruction to Titus for his flock is “…that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things…” (Titus 2:10). We need to adorn the doctrine of God in all things in the midst of the contemporary culture because we are the recipient of God’s Truth. In a world of relativism where post-modernistic ideologies rule we need to rise up and stand upon God’s truth. Much of today’s malady is pluralism; a world so cluttered with alternative worldviews, a world of multiple choices and we are told that there is no absolute truth, just pick and choose.

In the earlier verses Paul was quoted:

But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine:…..in all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you (Titus 2:1, 7-8).

First, let us get back to the reality of divine revelation. God reveals Himself to man. His revelation of Himself is two-fold: (1) Through His creation which we call general revelation. By looking at the world we can make sense of reality; the vastness of the universe, the beauty of the earth, nature and its order gives us an indication that there is design and there is a Designer. (2) His revelation of Himself is through His Word, the Holy Scriptures which we call His specific revelation.

The bible contains the history of man and the involvement of God in the lives of humanity. It is in His word that we discover our way back to God; his salvation for mankind, and his inheritance for man through His Son Jesus Christ. The reality of divine revelation also includes these: (a) He loves us with an everlasting love; (b) he desires that none should perish in their sins, and (c) who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.

Second, we have the content of God’s will for mankind. You and I have a purpose and meaning in life. We do not exist on the sea of meaninglessness because God created us and we have his image. We are his image-bearer; in that we mean, there is a life-purpose and a life-mission for each of us. Not only that – there is an overarching story that hangs the whole of the history of humanity since the creation of this world. We have the content of God’s overarching PURPOSE and WILL for humankind – you and I have the message of the love of God in our hands!!

Third, the redemption story is powerful. We must not take it lightly or flippantly. Jesus died for you, for me, and for the whole of mankind so that we can continue to reach the ultimate intention of God which is to have a family where He is the true father and we have become his “sons.”

Fourth, in order to safeguard ourselves from relapsing into paganism, into idolatry, or into worldliness we need the Word of God to have full authority in our lives. We must allow the Word to be our guide and the measuring rod against the inroad of spiritualism, idolatry, and secularism.  We should guard ourselves from falling into self-deception – the trap of materialism.

Learn Theology

Sometimes I think I try too hard to convince people that seeking knowledge is a very spiritual thing to do. Some people think that praying, reading the bible, worship, speak in tongue are all spiritual exercises that are more valuable BUT I beg to disagree. There is a place for all the Christian disciplines mentioned and the development of a healthy and coherent theology should be included. People are put off by the word theology. I have come to appreciate it very much. In fact it is in and through theological reflections that I have come to appreciate God in a whole new way. My worldview has changed tremendously over the last few years. It is largely due to my new appreciation of theology.

One of the theological issues that I had a privilege of discussing, researching, and reading about is pastoral theology – the theology behind the pastoral ministry. While it is great to be hands-on and practical in doing pastoral ministry there is a place for the understanding of the doctrinal and theological nature of pastoral ministry. I have benefited a lot in discussion about pastoral theology. Take for example the role of preaching in the life of a pastor. If we approached pastoral ministry on a pragmatic fashioned then preaching does not seems a big deal. All you want is to care, to help, to comfort, to sustain, etc, etc the flock. But if you want to seriously think about God and his role in pastoral care then preaching will take a new understanding. It will become a very important conduit to proclaim the truths of God. The theological underpinning is that propositional truths are important and the declaration and the herald of it are extremely essential to the spiritual nurture of every believer.

Quote: Millard J. Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine

The word doctrine may prove somewhat frightening. It conjures up visions of very technical, difficult, abstract beliefs, perhaps propounded dogmatically. Doctrine is not that, however. Christian doctrine is simply statements of the most fundamental beliefs that the Christian has, beliefs about the nature of God, about his action, about us who are his creatures, and about what he has done to bring us into relationship with himself. Doctrine deals with general or timeless truths about God and the rest of reality. There are several reasons why the study of doctrine is NOT optional: (1) Correct doctrinal beliefs are essential to the relationship between the believer and God. (2) Doctrine is important because of the connection between truth and experience. (3) Correct understanding of doctrine is important because there are many secular and religious systems of thought that compete for our devotion these days.

I must point out that I am grateful for all the truths about baptism of the Holy Spirit, using the Spiritual gifts, and the deliverance ministry. Through these ministries we saw the effectiveness of bringing people into the kingdom of God yet I have to honestly say that we are very poor, inadequate more correctly, in transmitting of doctrines in our discipleship and spiritual formation. Somehow we are contended with the present, with the needs of people and the future; dwelling on the second coming of Jesus but forgetting our historical roots. I am not just saying about the Pentecostal or the Evangelical roots but the Christian historical roots right down to the first century. There are several things I would like to highlight. While it is good that we want to flow with the Spirit of God and to move as the Spirit leads us we must not neglect the following areas.

The Neglect We Give to Our Mind

God did not asked us to let our mind die when we received him as Lord and Saviour but instead to renew and transform our mind. There is therefore a need of using our mental faculty in the working out of our faith in Christ. I found that many people do not want to engage with their mind because of a faulty view that to do so would cause doubt to enter and therefore negate faith; miracles will not happen as a result or healing will not happen. How naïve could that be?

Leaning Heavily on the Supernatural

There is such a leaning towards the supernatural, the miraculous that to engage with the mind is worldly, to be carnal, and to give in to the flesh. I find myself struggling with this idea for many years. I discovered that I needed my mind to comprehend how much God loves me and what I needed to do in order to receive my miracles or to grow my faith. It is so strange that many would put their mind on hold believing that they would be more spiritually in-tune with God. I find nowhere in the scripture suggesting that to be spiritual we need to stop using our mind but rather on the contrary.

Over Emphasis on the Experiential

Our prayers can be loud, aggressive, and expressive. I was brought up to believe that loudness in prayer equates spiritual strength. We spent lots of time engaging in spiritual warfare; binding and losing and engaging in wars in the heaven. I must say that it is not all futile because there were great results that I had personally experience in spiritual warfare intercession. I am not discounting that, I am merely saying that we have swung over to do these things that we neglect to spent time engaging with our mind – using our mind and intellect to understand God’s truth line upon line and precepts upon precepts so that we have an answer to every question foisted upon the church.

I am all for a consistent, logical, and systematic understanding of the doctrine of God, of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. We need to go beyond the supernatural, the things of the Spirit, healing and deliverance, the experiential and get down to really grasping the truths of God and the reality of our dark and gloomy world and be prepared to give intellectual answers to intellectual questions regarding faith and God. At the same time be like Paul, demonstrating the power of God in his life and ministry. There is a place for the demonstration of the power of the Holy Spirit in our meetings but salvation message is not just demonstrative alone. We need to be able to clearly explain so that the one who accepts the message did it not only with his heart but also with his mind!

Watering Down of Propositional Truths

I just cannot understand why is it that there are some among us who thinks that informing the mind would not help in changing them at all? I think it is really amounting to disrespect to hold the view that God cannot use propositional truths and empowered it with His Spirit to cause a renewal of the mind and a revival in the hearts of people.

If we all take note of Church history we would soon realised that much of the changes in society, in the world has come from those who are willing to educate the masses, to teach the uninformed and illiterate, and to preach powerful sermons of commitment. Those who uses the supernatural, the emotional appeal does not last that long. Look at people like Luther – his writings changes the face of church history. How about Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Wesley brothers, and many more? Printing of bibles and the churning out of massive amount of literature not only educate the people about the truth of God but does change entire nation and society. Ideas do have consequences. Teaching – informing of the mind is the first step towards a renewal and a transformation of the hearts.

If we were to argue from the fact that we need the power of the Holy Spirit to change then might as well we just hide in the mountain to do deep reflection for all of life. I think we need to draw the line. I firmly believe that the knowledge of God and the truths of God facilitate the Holy Spirit to work that truth into our being. That’s why we need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It is because we need the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis as we progress in our intimacy of God. We need to gaze upon God but we cannot possibly gaze into the unknown and hope to get revelation. God has revealed himself through His Word so we use the knowledge of God as revealed in his Word to come to a place of intimacy.

We cannot appreciate God’s love if we don’t first understand cognitively why he loves us. It is not impossible to know that because he has revealed his everlasting love for mankind through the Incarnational Word (Jesus) as written in the Holy Scriptures.

I get very agitated when we keep chanting that teaching is not enough. Yes it is not enough but it is the beginning of wisdom. How does wisdom come? Does it come from supernatural revelation? No it comes from a seeking heart wanting to know the truth. A seeker for truth will go anywhere and do anything to find it out. God had put that in man and when he found the truth he will fall down on his knees and worship.

Isaiah 28:9-10 – To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast? For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.

The overemphasis of meeting and ministering to the needs of the people with just a token given to Christian education and theological instructions give rise to over-dependent, over-grown spiritual babies. We have forgotten the lessons of the parable of house-building; build the house on the sand (experiences and feel good, needs met) or build the house on the rock (strong foundation – rock solid doctrine; truths of God – a living reality.)

I have to admit that as I grew up and answered the call of God for ministry the gnawing feeling deep within me was that I was uncomfortable with some of the things going on within the Full Gospel circles. That which unsettled me the most has been the over emphasis of the leading of the Holy Spirit whereby the mind, the reason or the intellect was given little place in the understanding of the Word of God. Some of the things that we could not understand we placed it in the category of the “mystery” of God yet to be revealed. I was rather disturbed by that. I had always wanted to really know.

There has been a bifurcation of the head and the heart. Oftentimes the church ended up giving pre-eminence to the heart issues. Now I realized that if we were to put our mind on neutral gear we stop growing spiritually. There needs to be a balance between the mind and the heart. Someone said that what we really feel in our heart must first make sense in our mind. Now I understand that it is important not only to love God with all our heart and soul but also to love him with our mind – a renewed mind that can reasonably understand the plan and the purposes of God for mankind.

This is a term that I coined in order to explain that parents have a fixation on their children so much so that their children control them rather than the other way round. It is common to see parents allowing their little ones to take charge and not being able to discipline them or for some cases, even unwilling to discipline them. So it is really not an uncommon sight in Asian churches today (urban and English medium) where we see little emperors running around unrestraint and mothers are like maids-in-waiting! Some of these brats would scream, yell their lungs out, and throw tantrums if they don’t get what they want.

Sometimes I wonder why such situation has resulted in the church today. I am really puzzled over the fact that parents would not be able to control their kids. In my own reflection and observation I think there are several reasons for that.

First, more and more of both parents are career people in a very competitive world. They spend most of their time working. They have not thought through seriously the role and responsibility of parenthood. Many of them left their children to grandparents, to maid, and other care-givers. It is not that grandparents were a bad influence to the child but rather they can do so much and not more as this is not their child. Moreover most grandparents pampered their grandchildren more than they do to their own children! Just imagine that your child spend so much time with the maid and care-givers during the day. No matter what, they are not the parents so they would not give the same kind of love and care and tenderness as a mother would. So all they would do (the most) is to keep your child occupied. Moreover she has her own value about what is right and wrong. Many times when parents take their children home, they found that they have to get their child to unlearn what was taught during the day. In many cases it is almost impossible because the child does not have a close bond with them but more with the maid or care-giver. Nowadays, you could hardly get a good care-giver who would love and teach godly values that you so desire for your child.

Second, when parents become aware of the preciousness of time that they have with their children because of work commitment they would certainly want to treasure it. Inadvertently, they ended pampering them and giving in to them. When a child knows that her parents would give in to her she would seize control. Children are the best manipulators! It is inborn in every child; a part of man’s sinful nature!!

Third, when there is more cash to spend, parents become very lavish in their spending on their children. Some calls it love but I think it is indulgence and idolatrous. Parents are no longer frugal. Parents would give to their children toys and more toys – PS2, computers, hand phone (usually more expensive than theirs), etc. I am not saying that we cannot be generous with ourselves and our family but I am saying that our children should not become a fixation. Remember Abraham and his intense love for Isaac that God has to come to him and test him once again (Genesis 22)!

Let me reiterate once again: Success in our career, finest education for our children, and fixative parenting embedded in our personal worldview and manifestations through our church cultural practices do blur our theology of God, of Christ, of man, and of missions.

It is honourable to hold the thought of giving our children the finest education. Our instinct tells us that the secular education for our children will be their survival in the future. This is typically for the Malaysians due mainly to our political landscape and racial polarisation. We are so afraid that our children will lose out so we work vey hard to give them a good education. I think that is acceptable and reasonable. As Christians we need to have that perspective – one that looks out for their children. But I have an axe to grind with parents who stress secular education as top priority for their children. They have a warped view of the role of education and Christian discipleship. They do not see education as preparing their children for life but instead it just a status game. Education should be holistic and not just to pass with flying colours in examinations. Education for our children should include Christian education and not just secular subjects alone.

The failure of parents to see discipleship and spiritual nurturing as more important than secular education may be the main cause of their children doing well in colleges and universities in terms of education but become lukewarm in their life of faith. What is the point of producing doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc when more and more of them are bent towards the world than to God? What is the point of our children succeeding in the world according to the world’s standard but failed miserably in upholding Christian values and maintaining upright moral behaviour? What sort of legacy do we want to leave for our children? Do we want to leave them with the knowledge that we have provided them with the finest education but no spiritual heritage for them to hold onto when they face the harsh reality of an unkind and cruel world? Do we want to just leave them with the knowledge of the world without the knowledge of God and a vital relationship with Him?

I believe that we need to encourage our children to study hard and to study smart. I believe that we need to expect our children to know the value of education. But I believe we need to teach them lessons of faith; faithfulness to God, faithfulness in serving Him, and faithfulness of uprightness. I believe that we need to educate our children “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).”
I believe it is the duty and responsibility of parents in the following areas: (1) modelling to our children what it means to love the Lord with all our lives and one another as Jesus loves us, (2) encouraging them to be involved in the Lord’s work (we need to be involved too!), (3) challenging them to take time to study God’s word – discipleship courses and/or Bible study courses, (4) motivate then to participate in short-term mission work, and (5) insisting that they put God first and learn to trust Him as they put their heart and mind into their studies.

There are at least THREE of such cultural biases that I want to highlight because unconsciously they had formed an integral part of our belief system, a part of our personal worldview.

Success in Our Career

The pursuit of success in ones career is very much embedded in the Asian culture and it really has nothing to do with urbanization. Over the last decade or so we have heard the word “kiasu” – a famous colloquial word out in the marketplace. For as long as I can remember in our Asian history, face-saving has been around. I am not saying that we should not succeed in our career BUT we need to have a proper paradigm of what is our purpose in life now that we are followers of Jesus Christ. Success in our career is a very secularized idea but work is what God has called us to do and to participate in. For many, career had a lot to do with the idea of survival. If it does not has its beginning with God it would most certainly be one of self-preservation or the accumulation of things.

Just consider this with me: if success in our career is the number one priority in our lives it could lead to compromising of our morals and ethics. Am I right? How many people would go all out to pursue their career but drag their feet to church or to be actively engaged in Kingdom business? Let’s be honest here: how many Christians today have been on the side of materialism on the pretext of advancement in their career? How many have even become idolatrous, falling into the pursuits of wealth? How many are caught up in the euphoria of the prosperity gospel? Where do you think such thought comes from? Asians, especially the Chinese, values wealth and prosperity – even if it means getting there through unscrupulous means!

We have developed what I call “A Worldview with Cultural Biases.” There is a host of cultural biases that laced our personal worldviews which form our church’s cultural norm in an urban and modern church today.

Affluence has sets us on a road towards materialism. Materialism is the non-verbal part of our pursuit of happiness while we echo religiously that we love God and are dependant upon Him. It is basically the trappings of consumerism and need-oriented mentality. Globalization has made our world smaller. Education and technology are readily available. The amount of information that is freely flowing through the media has not only made us a more informed people but has also educated us with its ideology, philosophy, and ethics (if there is any I questioned!).

Such influences do go very deep into our psyche but with an Asian mindset of circular thinking and our culture of superstitions, the influences of the thoughts and teachings of the world major religions (Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism), the revival of spirituality, and our historical background of idolatrous upbringing, our personal worldviews (I called it an “Asian Urban Culture”) is pretty much a mixture of modernism (Western thoughts) and a diehard and unquestioned Asian cultural biases.

In my observation I tend to think that this Asian Urban Culture has already penetrated into the Church today. Even as a Christian one was not taught what it meant to decisively denounce some glaring cultural biases that could hinder us in our discipleship. There are at least THREE of such cultural biases that I want to highlight because unconsciously they had formed an integral part of our belief system, a part of our personal worldview.

I have been rather inactive for some months now. Sorry about that. Discipleship in the Asian context has been a preoccupation for me over the past many months and I thought it would be good to express it here and hope that I could get some response. So here it goes ……

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There had been many voices crying out about the need for discipleship in the church today. There had been many resources been churned out about discipleship. For most of us ministers of the Word, we know that discipleship is vital; it is important to the growth of a new believer, it is important in obeying the great commandment of the Lord to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” (Matthew 28:19). Honestly speaking I have been thinking a lot these days concerning discipleship. It is not the case of not knowing the importance of nurturing and discipling but rather what do we do in the process of discipling others? In other words, what is the content of our discipleship process? It is easier for us to hold the idea of mentoring, coaching, and apprenticeship but not that defining sometimes in reality.

I would like to suggest that we get over some of the faulty worldviews that had developed over the years and unpacked them one by one; deconstruct them rather so that we can begin to rebuild a theology of discipleship that has the right ingredients for proper nurturing of the flock of God placed under our care.

Here, I am presenting to you SEVEN ASPECTS of what I called the discipleship fault-line that are hindrances to the growth of those under our pastoral care. I would have to put up a disclaimer: I am presenting a personal view of what I believe I saw and observed in the church generally but more so in my own church setting in this contemporary world and urban setting.

Well….I must apologize for such a long silence. There’s really no reason to it except that I was not very motivated this past 2 months, plus a lot of planning to do for the next 4 months, plus lessons that I needed to prepare, plus my external drive that contains all my works got screwed up with no backup at all, plus my car went through major repair that cost me a bomb financially, plus laziness. Well…really there’s no reason to it!

Let me just give a little update of my life for the last 2 months:

1. My weight before I went on a strict diet and exercise was 102 kg but now I weigh 94 kg Well…I still have 14 kg to shed!!

2. I celebrated my birthday with my family enjoying a wonderful dinner prepared by their mum and me eating a small piece of grilled chicken breast and a piece of bread and vegetables! Ha ha

3. I took my wife and family to a Korean Restaurant to celebrate my wife’s birthday. It was a great dinner and costly too!

4. I have been given a new position in the church – Executive Pastor over all the English Churches (Island & Mainland). The task seems daunting. Besides that I am still overseeing the Equipping and Mission of the Church. I pray that I can cope with the new role.

5. I attended Plan09 in Malacca – a Youth Mission Conference. It was wonderful, awesome, and great. I enjoyed it. I met YB Hannah Yeoh – Assemblyman for Subang Jaya, Selangor. I was encouraged!

6. I am reading books on Justice, Human Rights, and Ethics. It’s really awesome.

Well…that’s about all that I can write at this point of time. God bless