年会副会友领袖｜Simon Wong Ching King

Brothers and sisters,
“Godliness with Contentment is great gain” (1Tim 6:6). The secret to this contentment is godliness and of course it brings good values to christian living. It is a gain and it is good. However, Complacency is not. Complacency is a feeling of being satisfied with how things are, not wanting to try to make things better.  Complacency in churches may result in lukewarmness and insensitivity, with the loss of the desire to bring the gospel into the community or marketplace. To be more specific, it may end up in a loss of zeal to reach out to the spiritual and physical needs of our community. It has a negative impact to your community. It can impede the growth of the church.
Unfortunately, the line between these two C’s is sometimes blurred. We are often afflicted with complacency along our journey of faith, without being aware.
In 2016, as part of the multiplication efforts to grow more english-speaking churches, some of us moved out to reach out, from a comfortable church and started a new english-speaking congregation. We used another church facility, which was unconventional and unsettling initially for many. We encountered challenges. “Why did we bother to plant a new congregation at an unfamiliar vicinity in Tabuan Laru?” we asked ourselves at times especially in the midst of difficulties.
The rest is history as two years later, by God’s grace, the new church called Tabuan Trinity Methodist Church was constituted. This group, planted at Tabuan area has continued to grow to about 200 plus worshippers with about 30 plus sunday school children this year. And 2019 will be challenging as we focus on reaching out even more to the Tabuan community to bring more to God’s kingdom. This is the fruit of saying “NO!” to complacency.
Let us check whether we are complacent or not and not mistake it for contentment. Thus, each of us, in so many other ways, should be ready to go out into the community, renew contacts and reach out to the backsliders, to care and visit, no matter how inconvenient it is. We should persevere and be willing to do more & better, to do everything that helps our ministry/fellowship/small groups/churches to have healthy growth, for God’s glory. May God’s Kingdom grow – the lost will return, lives will be transformed.
We can be contented but may our Church not be complacent.