2013 State of the Church Report
Don Ng
February 3, 2013
This tradition of a “state of the church” report given by the senior pastor provides me with an opportunity to thank God and the people of the church for how God has blessed us this past year. And from the reports that you have in your hands, we have received exceedingly good news. The work of the church on earth was done. The church home was maintained and beautified. New members were added to the rolls. God has always been faithful to us and I pray that we remain faithful in Christ.
The state of the church report also grants me an opportunity to forecast and envision where I believe our future might be. While we know that no one can tell the future, we are confident that when we are trusting in God’s plan, God will walk with us and encourage us to continue to be productive, creative, and effective.
For the 2013 church theme, we have selected 1 John 1:3 that says, “We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” We have come up with these 3 simple initials, “E-F-G” to mean evangelism, fellowship and go. The idea is that we would remember “E-F-G” this year in order to become more effective evangelists, to deepen our fellowship and to be willing to go out in the world with this message.
Fellowship
In the past year over some challenging issues, we have seen the loving fellowship in our church stretched and threatened. We have not always seen some things eye to eye. And for the sake of conducting church business, we have even had some decisions made without the unanimous voting that we have enjoyed in the past. As American Baptists, we are a people founded on individual conscience and soul freedom. This means that each person has the ability to think and discern matters of faith. For as there are as many people we have in this room, there are this many opinions. No wonder we have different opinions on matters! And as God continues to grow our church with babies and kids, younger people and middle age people and older people, we will have a variety of life perspectives that will clash against each other. While a person like me in my early 60s are thinking about Medicare, young parents are trying to survive with childcare!
I am one who is not afraid of differences in opinions when we all believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord. Christ has united us as his church, the Body of Christ and whatever the issue might be or how dramatic the conflict might be, as Paul said in Romans 8:39, “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ our Lord.” Some of us are still not okay with the new Sunday morning schedule but you are all willing to try it out. Some of us have some strong feelings about who should make decisions on behalf of all of us and may be feeling somewhat dejected and undervalued. As the Body of Christ, a living and dynamic group of people of faith, we’ll undoubtedly continue to have differences of opinions. And I hope that you won’t be afraid of this either because it’s healthy and important that we both convey our thoughts as well as to listen to one another with respect.
But there is one thing that I ask of you and pray that we must practice. While we might have different opinions, we show respect. We still treat the other as we would like to be treated. We still look to those who disagree with us with the grace of God as God has been gracious to us. When we disagree, we do not stop breaking bread together. We do not avoid each other but rather we pull each other even closer together to remain united and to learn from the other since it is only when we are the Body of Christ is when we are one in Christ.
Evangelism
When we are committed to working together as Christ’s church, we would be able to face the new challenges before us. For as long as anyone can remember today, City College has rented our classrooms to teach English classes. We counted on City College teachers to teach Chinatown residents and we were able to extend the invitation to these same students to come to Friday Night School and then to come to Sunday worship. Having City College use our classrooms was one major way that we remain connected to our community. But all of this has changed with the opening of the new campus on Kearney Street.
One of the major challenges that we have today is learning how to reach out to the community again. How can we become more evangelistic? While we continue to sponsor Friday Night School, how would we best utilize our classrooms during the weekdays to reach out to our community? Presently, we have a proposal to sponsor a study hall and offer tutorial services to youth. But the questions facing us are not about the idea of such a proposal but of our ability: Will we have the people to volunteer to staff the study hall and be tutors when most of our congregation live outside of San Francisco? Do we as the church have a heart for missions at our doorsteps with the same zeal and passion that we have for missions in another country? Do we still have the skills to reach out to others? Would the Community Outreach Minister position be able to help us begin refocusing our energies and talents to become acquainted with the youth in our midst?
Our commitment in evangelism and community outreach to our Chinatown community is perhaps the number one agenda that we have in 2013. I invite you to join us in this effort to accomplish God’s mission on this little piece of God’s world known as San Francisco Chinatown. We have seen and heard Jesus Christ and we are united in Christian fellowship to go out to fellowship with God’s world.
Go
We do need to go out as a church to meet those who are strangers to us so that we can become friends. As people we are always going and coming. But we confess that there are times when we would like to see things remaining the same for as long as we can make it stay that way. We are creatures of habits.
As you know, I am currently serving as the Vice-President of the American Baptist Churches, USA in a 2-year term. This June at the Mission Summit/Biennial meetings in Overland Park, Kansas, my name will be presented to the delegates to be voted as the President of the denomination for a 2-year term, 2014-2015. Assuming that this will happen, I will have additional responsibilities to carry out.
In December, the Deacons and pastors had a one-day retreat to explore the value of creating a 5-year plan for our church. The new Deacons board will begin to appoint a Long-Range Planning Committee in the early part of this year to begin this work. My expected election as President of the denomination was a part of that discussion. Another factor that many of you know is that I am some months away from being eligible for Medicare. And if you were counting, by this August, I would have completed 15 years of ministry with you as your senior pastor.
All of this is to share with you that we are entering a period of discernment and conversations that would eventually lead to what may be my role at FCBC in the future. While I say all of this with some in trepidation that such information may be misinterpreted, I wish to become as transparent as I can and invite you to pray for me and to pray together as the church as we all envision God’s future for us.
Life is a series of comings and goings. I will be going more often to serve our beloved denomination in the coming years. We will need to be going out more often to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ in Chinatown and to the ends of the world. The Thailand mission team will be going to Chiang Mai this June. And in a few minutes, we’ll be going out of this sanctuary with the hope of seeing the first kick-off of the Super Bowl. But what Jesus Christ taught us is that when we faithfully go out and it’s only when we go away is when we can also come back together to enjoy the loving fellowship of the Holy Spirit at FCBC!
I am grateful for your presence here this afternoon as we thank God for the blessings of 2012 and pray to God for his providence in 2013. There were many people who performed work of distinction who are worthy of our recognition. The members of the Search Committee faithfully completed its work by recommending Visal Sok. The Trustees and Wendi Lin kept an eye on our building facilities so that we may always have our church festivities. The CE directors and Deacons who labored and led us to a new Sunday morning schedule have blessed us with new times to worship God, study the Bible in our Sunday rituals.
2013 is EFG. May our fellowship deepen with the power of the Holy Spirit so that we may evangelize others by going into the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ!