A Breakout Year

SYDNEY by Rev. Lawrence and Helen Ong

Iranian Church

Early this year, the Farsi congregation suffered a severe setback owing to a split between the incumbent leadership and the new ones that joined. Despite numerous attempts to resolve their differences, the problem proved intractable resulting in the departure of the newer members. It was a major setback but the work continued unabated with about 20-30 remaining members. We are re-building the work.

One major problem is finding a Farsi pastor who loves the ministry and is committed to the people. We tried finding but with little success. About 6 months ago, an experienced pastor and wife joined us. They brought stability to the group with new members joining every week. We have decided to keep this ministry a purely Farsi work hence a Farsi-speaking pastor is an absolute necessity. However, I still preach once in 2 months with an interpreter.

Pray for this congregation. Australian culture and economic condition is making it hard for many of them to assimilate and provide for their families. We are working towards restarting cell groups so as to re-connect with every member.

Eastwood Chinese Church

This new congregation is healthy in attendance and finance despite being only 3 years old. We are praying that they will serve as a mother church to many similar works throughout Australia as there is a great opportunity to serve the growing Chinese immigrant population here.

Our biggest challenge is finding full-time Chinese-speaking workers. So far, those that we had were not suitable as they were not growth-oriented and just wanted to be paid well. One of them was gifted as an evangelist and for various reasons had to supplement his income with physically demanding construction work. This left him too tired to be effective and after about 18 months, he decided to resign because the pressure was too great and members were looking for someone with a pastoral gifting rather than an evangelist. Hence from 12 November 2023, this church is primarily helmed by us along with three couples serving as key leaders. It will suffice for now, thanks to additional help from the new Lidcombe Chinese Church which has four lay-pastors in their midst.

Lidcombe Chinese Church

The highlight of 2023 was the establishment of this church. We have always had this desire to start churches among the Chinese because they are the fastest growing ethnic group here. Through a contact, we came to know about a small Chinese church of about 25 members operating without a place of worship. Because of our connections with the council facilities, we were able to help them secure a permanent worship hall. The leaders were grateful and decided to come under our leadership and Lidcombe Chinese Church was birthed.