Two days after we returned from Apollos Training Centre in May, we received a phone call from the wife of one of our pastors. She has never contacted us before so to receive a call from her was totally unexpected. She sounded afraid and helpless! Apparently, her husband was out of town and the police have come to their rented church premise and issued an eviction order. She was given 24 hours to move out. I thought to myself, “Was the eviction notice served by the Religious Bureau?” We later concluded that this could be because of tighter security imposed all over the city because of a major international event due to take place later this year.
Because of this sudden turn of events, our original plan to use the current rented church premise to run Upper Room Training Programme in September had to be postponed. While we tried to make sense of this change, I sense God saying, “Don’t run ahead of Me.” Therefore, while we may be tempted to craft out a back-up Plan B, we did not dare to rush into anything, preferring to wait upon God.
While we reflected on the surrounding happenings, we feel God is redirecting us to something else. Our 4-month old home cell group has grown to about 20 regular members, making it a bit difficult to accommodate everyone in our little apartment. Some are seekers, some are new believers while some are un-churched believers. Whomever the Lord sends to us, our desire is that they be discipled and encouraged to attend a local church.
As the days and weeks went by, we slowly began to notice that members who attended the local church had many questions about what was preached from the pulpit. It soon dawned upon us that the teaching wasn’t doctrinally sound. Instead of undoing wrong teaching every week, we decided to take it upon ourselves to give this group of believers right teaching by holding our own Sunday services.
Pray with us as we embark on this new preaching point as well as in looking for a premise in the city to conduct our weekly meetings.
