Resurrection from the Dead – 2023 New Year “Disciple and Mission” ministry report and intercession
Dear Prayer Companions and Family,
Wen Hui and Wang Jie ask you a safe Chinese New Year in Africa! May you experience more joy and hope in walking with the Lord in the Year of the Rabbit!
Over the past month, we have received many emails, WeChat and WhatsApp messages of concern, greetings and blessings, which are very touching and motivating! Sorry for the inconvenience, we did not respond to any message; Know that you are silently praying and supporting us, and thank you sincerely in the Lord! Report our ministry and family here!
Chinese often say that the beginning of the year is spring. And in January 2023, there are two major festivals: New Year’s Day and Spring Festival. My husband and wife decided to visit our brothers and sisters in Tanzania and South Africa on this special day, after settling down the local church service, and at the same time attend the opening ceremony of the Cape Town Diaspora Chinese Family Church, and scatter the ashes of the late Pastor Duan Zhongyi, a senior of the South African Chinese missionary, into the sea; We are also especially looking forward to exchanging discipleship and mission experiences and New Year’s ministry plans with Chinese and African pastors. We also planned to hold three Timothy Discipleship Group Leadership Certification Workshops in Tansanda, Joburg, South Africa, and Cape Town, a ministry program that was completed in one year with the mission team in less than 3 weeks!
The theme of this month’s service is “Resurrection from the Dead—Glorious Service,” and the verse is John 12:24-26
Truly I tell you, if a grain of wheat does not fall into the ground and dies, it is still one, and if it dies, it bears many grains. He who cherishes his life loses it; Whoever hates his life in this world must keep it for eternity. If anyone serves me, follow me; I am there, and those who serve me will be there; If anyone serves me, my Father will respect him.
(John 1:2:2:4-26)
The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ is when a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, first experiencing ten deaths (12:24); Spiritual life is followed (12:25); Then there is obedience and glory (12:26). This principle applies to Jesus’ disciples, including us!
On New Year’s Day, we helped Pastor Richard EmBwaga of Jericho Church break through the traditional model of church pastors such as coaches playing ball on the sports field and the congregation watching performances, and began to train believers and participate in ministry. Starting with the 8 deacons of the church, using small group study using Serving the Lord, these leaders are excited to be equipped in ministry and serve in equipment. Richard is one of our local pastor-led co-workers to promote the pastor’s duty in the East African church to “complete the saints and fulfill their duties to build up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:1:2). Start with your own church.
On January 7, we arrived in the city of Tanzania. The Chinese church here is led by Preacher Che, and more than 20 staff members have participated in the iTIM Timothy seminar, and the church is doing systematic and solid discipleship, and slowly seeing some growth results. On January 8, I continued my previous online sermon on the James series “Being a Wise Man” (James 3:13-18), where gratitude can be shared face-to-face with my brothers and sisters; Wang Jie was able to bless and pray for the children on the spot. I am especially grateful that the church has begun to go out and do cross-cultural missionary work. Four Chinese staff members who had been trained in the church were paired with us to receive local church leader Dr. Gilbert invited to cultivate Tanzanite pastors through the iTIM workshop.
Dr. Gilbert, the initiator of the local mission organization Sinai, led three local African pastors to participate in the training last October when the United States sent Pastor Du and Jiang Wei to Kenya to train pastors. This time we went to Tanzania and they organized an iTIM Leadership Certification Workshop at the local church, which was attended by 10 local pastors and all received certificates of completion.
In particular, this training, somewhat beyond our surprise, was that in addition to Dr. Pastor Gilbert, almost all Tanzanese pastors do not understand English. Thank you for preparing the Chinese staff team for us, they all have local language learning experience, and they are also intern staff of the iTIM discipleship group. So everyone picked up the lights and night battles, found out the seminar courses and discipleship materials of previous training, and translated them into Swari in advance. In the discipleship group leadership exercise in the seminar, the team leaders made a good discipleship group leadership demonstration! May the Lord do life-changing and cultural renewal work in the local church and community in Tanzania through the solid group discipleship and accountability mechanism of the iTIM system!
After serving in Tanzania, we went to Johannesburg, South Africa, where we were greeted by Elder Yu Wai Ching of the South African Chinese Christian Ministries Association and Teacher Lu Yong and Morning Sun of the South African Shiro Town Prayer Center. We first met with the staff who had participated in the iTIM discipleship, received them, invited us to dinner, and listened to them share the story of the Lord in South Africa and the success of iTIM discipleship. On January 15, I shared the Sunday message of the Temptation of Victory in James 1:12-18 in both churches, reflecting on how the diaspora lived victoriously in difficult circumstances.
From January 16th to 18th, we held the Chinese iTIM Timothy Discipleship Growth Group Leader Certification Workshop at the Shiro Town Prayer Center in South Africa. Thirteen pastoral staff from four Chinese churches in the nearby area attended the seminar and led discipleship groups through the Essential Truth exercise. On the last day of the seminar, Wang Jie was unable to participate in the on-site training due to her physical condition. By the grace of the Lord, she led an online group demonstration of “Serving the Lord” group in a Zoom meeting in the hotel. This online group was a group of co-workers who came to the PE church thousands of miles away to attend the seminar but could not come. God’s grace accomplishes His power through human impossibilities!
The Chinese Family Church in Cape Town, South Africa, opened on January 20, 2023, attended by more than 50 pastors from southern African countries and North America. Elder Yu Wai Ching presided over the opening and dedication service, and Elder Duan Xu Mei Mei, Pastor Ho Ka Chun, Pastor Liao Fangling and Elder Hui Jianwen successively prayed and encouraged the new church.
In particular, Elder Xu used Hebrews 11:4 to teach us the lessons of faith.
By faith, and by offering sacrifices to God, more beautiful than Cain’s, Abel received the testimony of justification, the testimony that God referred to his gifts. Although he died, he still spoke because of this faith.
Heb. 11:4
Abel’s faith indicates exactly the message of the gospel of the cross. The first ancestor Adam and Eve and their descendants, including us today, were sinners who were cast out of the Garden of Eden where God was present, and all died in sin, and could not be accepted by a holy and perfect God, but were separated from God and at enmity with God (Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:1). Only by sacrificing the blood of the animal and allowing the debt of sin to be paid can man come close to God and worship Him. Abel recognized his sinful nature and the answer to salvation, so he offered the firstborn of the flock and the fat of the sheep. The firstborn sheep and the fat of the sheep foreshadow the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross (1 Peter 2:24; 3：18）。
As Jesus said, “a grain of wheat that fell into the ground and died” (John 12:24), this is also the golden phrase and legacy of the pastor’s life. This gospel message also reminds us that our ministry begins with the sacrifice of Jesus, imitating Jesus as a grain of wheat that fell into the ground and died, so that we can have resurrection and bear many fruits of life!
From the evening of January 20th to the morning of January 22nd, we led about 40 of our attendees to the Timothy Discipleship Leadership Certification Course at this newly established Chinese Diaspora Church. They are pastors and church leaders who have served in the mission workshop for many years and have a special passion and practical experience in mission. I would like to introduce the iTIM discipleship system to you, hoping that through communication, sharing and leading the practice of the group, I will help you combine discipleship and mission, and equip disciples solidly, so that the staff of mission workshops and church-planting churches can become missionaries who do discipleship and can effectively pass on (2 Tim. 2:2).
On January 22, the first Sunday of the New Year’s Day, the first Sunday worship service of the New Year and New Church, I shared the Sunday message “Diaspora Mission Church” (Acts 11:19-13:3) at the Chinese Diaspora Family Church in Cape Town. Encourage pastoral staff and brothers and sisters to learn from the history of the first church to learn from the example of the mission church: pay attention to the inner growth of the church (evangelism and discipleship), expand the missionary action of the church (care, giving, prayer, sending), and especially value the testimony of living life. Complete trust and obedience to God.
Praise the Lord! On the first day of the new year, there are several new events, which are also the seeds of wheat that fall into the ground after death. I would like to mention two of them in particular, the first of which is the appointment of Elder Yu Wai Ching as a CDM missionary and director of Southern Africa, where she will lead diaspora missions and Timothy discipleship ministries in southern Africa, and shepherd the church as a missionary. Elder Yu studied with Pastor Duan, participated in the Chinese church ministry for more than 30 years, and also had many connections and further studies with the Western Missionary Society. When she attended the CIU Master of Theology program, I was a visiting professor of missiology at Chinese Theological Seminary, which led her to have a better understanding and recognition of the mission and direction of CDM. Especially when Elder Yu attended the Lausanne Conference on behalf of CDM in August last year, she confirmed God’s mission call to her, and she decided to apply to join the CDM staff team to prosper the mission work of the Chinese Church! May God bless and use her!
After the Sunday service, more than 30 pastors and mission staff accompanied Mrs. Duan and their son to the Cape of Good Hope by car to scatter the ashes of the late Pastor Duan Zhongyi, a pioneer of the Chinese Church in South Africa and a Chinese missionary. May God remember this faithful servant who served the Lord to death and continued to bear fruit for the Lord! Happily, Brother Zhang Xiaodong, the first gospel fruit of the Cape Town Diaspora Chinese Family Church, was also baptized and converted to Christ on the same day. We bless this fruit as it grows and becomes a worker who receives new fruit for the Lord!
On January 23rd, the second day of the Lunar New Year, we successfully completed our ministry in Cape Town, South Africa. Praise the Lord! When we were about to return to Kenya, East Africa, we found that Wang Jie was very weak and had difficulty moving. Thank you Lord for your mercy! Several brothers and sisters dropped us off and tried to help us get on the plane. When Victoria Falls was suspended, the flight attendant specifically persuaded Wang Jie to go to medical treatment, but she insisted on continuing to fly (still cold after covering 4 quilts). Finally we returned to Kenya and arrived home at about 3am to settle down and rest! Two days later, the Mingdong sisters (a staff member of the Tanzanian Chinese Language Church and the leader of the iTIM discipleship training team that we have cultivated), who are TCM practitioners, learned about the situation of the master and mother, so they flew over to give Wang Jie acupuncture/moxibustion treatment and share it The testimony of iTIM discipleship motivates us greatly! May God protect and heal Wang! May we have more time to be used by the Lord before He comes!
On January 29, the scheduled monthly Sunday sermon at Kabuku Mission Church continued and my James series of sermons was the turn of Be Faithful to Your Money (Ya 5:1-6）。 This church is one of our local seminar training centers. Thanksgiving churches can operate financially independently and become truly homegrown churches. Two local pastors equip local lay people with iTIM in the New Year.
As we share spirituality together these days, we still think of Hebrews chapter 11 4 verse about Abel’s faith. We are wary of Cain’s sacrificial ministry in contrast to Abel. Cain also knew to sacrifice to God and to draw near to God. We speculate that he offered God the best yield of the land, even more than Abel’s firstborn sheep, but his offering was not favored by God. Why is there such a result? I think that Cain focused on religious affairs, acted by personal effort and good deeds, made personal choices and decisions to make God’s offerings, was self-righteous, did not think and ask whether it was in God’s mind, and therefore tried in vain and did not please God. Even sadder, when Cain learned that God was not pleased with his offerings, instead of quickly confessing his sins and repenting, he became jealous of his brother Abel for making a sacrifice pleasing to God and even killed his brother. So we are to rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us and always think and ask God: Is what we are doing today an Abel’s sacrifice or Cain’s sacrifice, in God’s heart or in man’s heart? Pray that the Lord will help us to be more aware of God’s will, and that the work of mission is not simply to do the offerings (charity, good works, etc.) as Cain personally wished, but to learn from Abel’s faith, to make discipleship rooted in the crucifixion, so that a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies (death to the old self, death to the world), and thus produces many discipleship seeds (true repentance and revived life); Believe that this is the offering God wants us to make! Please pray for us! Always remember to do a pleasing ministry to God!
Please also remember the following two needs in prayer, may the Lord provide!
The first is the aforementioned newly established Cape Town Diaspora Chinese Family Church, which intends to purchase a meeting place of about $185,000. Thanks to God’s preparation, this time we have successfully signed a contract for the past viewing, and we have raised 150,000 US dollars, but there is still a funding gap of 35,000 US dollars, and we want to know whether God wants to give Cape Town, which has about 100,000 Chinese. Provide a meeting place belonging to the Chinese (there is currently no church belonging to the Chinese, only another small Chinese church borrowed from the local church).
Second, Pastor Lau Fu Li and his mother will come to Africa at the end of June this year to hold a spiritual revival meeting for evangelists and missionaries. CDM hopes to raise airfare, room and board costs for certified iTIM disciple pastors (CDM missionaries) in Africa (CDM covers 50% of the cost of most participants, and CDM covers the full cost of a few particularly difficult participants), totaling about $20,000.
If you are moved to participate, please log in to the pledge of the African Mission Special Project, or you can continue to visit the website to give support. May God remember your prayers or/and participation! May God please our sacrifices, prosper the gospel of the Lord, and glorify the Lord’s name!
Missionary staff with you,
Wen Hui and Wang Jie February 2, 2023