Sydney, Rev Lawrence and Helen Ong
The pandemic continues to exact its toll on our work to the Iranian community. The long shutdown of physical meetings has affected many of our members.
The long layoff both for Sunday meetings and cell meetings have unfortunately dampened their faith. It was only in the latter half of the year that we finally had a clear run of physical meetings without interruptions. By then, it has been a hard slog to get the members back to church.
They have grown accustomed to staying at home on Sundays even for the cell meetings. This coupled with the sudden rush of work intensity has led to a drastic drop in attendance.
Also, we encountered a leadership squabble last year, the effects of which was still being played out in 2022. Some members had left us due to the fallout.
Notwithstanding this, a remnant remains. The Iranian pastor was so stressed out, he had stepped down under doctor’s advice for health reasons. We are currently engaging another Farsi pastor (also of age) to take over.
We have maintained a working membership database, hence we will be able to gradually bring the bulk of the membership back.
Unlike the Iranian, the Chinese has grown in strength. This despite a huge setback when our Chinese pastor left us late last year in a most unexpected manner. I believe the Lord had a hand in this as there were things we were unaware of and for the good of the community.
The church remained on track because by then we had a solid leadership base (6 mature couples) which was further enhanced when a Chinese pastor with his wife joined us. The church is healthy in attendance and finance despite being hardly 2 years old. There is great potential to grow wholistically.
We are praying that the Chinese Eastwood work will serve as a mother church to many similar works throughout Australia because of the growing Chinese migrant community.
Conference with Rev. Terence Ong
We held a Spiritual Conference in July. Rev Terence, Senior Pastor of Centre of New Life (S'pore) was the main speaker. It was a great conference as he was able to connect with both the Iranian and Chinese communities. He challenged us to a deeper level of spiritual commitment to the Lord. It is particularly good for the members to touch base with the leader of our mother church. It was our joy to fly him in to spend his precious time with us.
2022 Church Camp with Rev. Dr. Ivan Herald
After a break of more than 3 years, we were blessed by the Lord to resume our Church Camp in December 16-18. Our honoured speaker was Rev Dr Ivan, a much sough-after speaker who specialises in Marriages and Family.
An author of 14 books, he had spoken to 2200 churches in Australia on Families and Marriages and was awarded the “Citizen of the Year” in 2000 by the Australian parliament for his good work with the communities. It was a great time of bonding and receiving of wise counsel from the Word of God. A total of 105 campers signed up but some had to pull out because of Covid infection.
Looking Ahead
The main focus for the coming year is to strengthen the communities through the establishment of a network of connect (cell) groups and discipleship training of new converts. We have launched a Young Adult ministry (English) and the plan is for the ethnic pastors to oversee the respective communities with us building on the English service.
The church is financially sound, but numbers need to grow.
New works remain a challenge because of lack of resources primarily workers and funds. It is prudent to put this on hold until the pandemic peters out as the fear factor of meeting in crowds remains.
