Personal report for my Gen12ii mission trip

Oh well, I have finally managed to find the time and energy to prepare my personal report for my not so recent Gen12ii local Southern Cross Project in Singapore, which was held on the 18^th -27^th June 2007. The trip was a rewarding and tiring one whereby we mainly pass out Gospel packs to the mainland Chinese tourists who have came to Singapore, in order to reach them with the Gospel. We also organized other activities like street witnessing, steamboat dinner outreach and attending one session of an ongoing Alpha Course to the mainland Chinese health workers in order to maximize the usage of our time for the purpose of ministry. All in all, it was a fruitful and rewarding experience. Anyway, here's my personal report:

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Dear supporters and fellow brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I know that it has been some time since the end of my Gen12ii trip – Southern Cross Project Singapore 2007, which occurred on the 18th -27th June 2007. I am indeed sorry for the late preparation and completion of my mission trip report, but it has been finally completed.

In this report, I would like to just touch on various aspects of the trip and what I have learned from them, as I trust that the team report would be sufficient to inform you as to the various events and issues we encounter during our relative short 10 days of ministry here in Singapore [Basically, our water supply was cut off, and the door locked in on us].

For this Gen12ii trip, I was given the role of the Prayer IC for the team. As I had performed the role of Logistics IC for my previous 2 mission trips, taking up this role was an interesting experience for me, since it has been quite a long time since I took up such a post. Right at the onset, problems start to emerge. I guess when you volunteer to be the Prayer IC you will get the full attention and attack of the Devil. I was subjected to serious attacks from the Devil before the trip by a spirit (small s) of oppression, especially when I attempted to do up the Prayer Calendar for the team. Only after much prayer did the Lord granted me relief and I was able to do what I was supposed to do.

During the trip itself, everything went rather smoothly, at first. Having no recourse to attacking us directly, we faced obstacles such as opposition from people like the tour bus drivers, and various building maintenance issues as outlined in the general team report, which strangely occurred on the days when we had planned to do our street witnessing. Through it all, we had a renewed sense of the battle that is being waged around us, and of the power of God who works in and through our prayers to accomplish His will on our behalf.

A couple of points I would like to mention here with regards to some of the activities that we had engaged in.

The main issue I have is with regards to the Alpha Course session that we were invited to attend, on Saturday the 23rd June 2007. This session was conducted with the aim of reaching out to mainland Chinese health workers who are working in Singapore. As per normal, the session was mainly focused on the video by Nicky Gumbel (of Holy Trinity Brompton in London, UK), followed by a group discussion later. For the group discussion, our mission team was split into various discussion groups allowing us to have more interaction with the various mainland Chinese people. The topic of that day’s discussion was on ‘Why did Jesus die?’, a very pertinent topic for our faith. The message was reasonable, though not too correct in certain places. During the discussion group however, the mainland Chinese in my group asked very deep questions, with regards to salvation by faith alone, the place of works, the raising of the specter of Antinomianism etc. They also pose the question as to if Jesus died for the whole world (which is what Nicky Gumbel as a synergist teaches), then why should we believe in Jesus as we are already saved. The depth of the questions they ask surprises me, as each of them touches on a massive subject in and of themselves, and would take weeks if not months to cover if they were intent to do so. What shocked me is the total inability of the facilitators to answer most of the questions put forward to them, of which a couple were rather obvious since Arminianism and historic Christianity cannot match. There was one time when I was trying to show them why Christians will not want to sin (because they have been given a new nature cf 2 Cor. 5:17), and also about the fact of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and the imputation of our sins to Christ so that God considers us righteous and thus will accept us as pleasing in His sight. The facilitator however, directly contradicted what I was sharing to them from the Scriptures. Instead, he attempted to posit a form of works-righteousness similar to that promoted by Roman Catholicism; that our works are meritorious in proving the genuineness of our faith. I was greatly disturbed by this. Knowing that these brilliant mainland Chinese are truly interested in spiritual things, I am very disturbed by the fact that we are not able to provide them with the true truth and meat of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ but to give them the ‘watered down porridge’ of the seeker-sensitive gospel, with the facilitators even at best being unsure about the message of the Gospel we are supposed to share, and will be held responsible for creating confusion in the minds of these seekers.

With this, I am even more saddened as I know that those of us who are supposedly more biblical than these facilitators are NOT doing the job of reaching out to these people. I am ashamed sometimes to call myself a conservative, Reformed Christian, as while the world out there is dying and drowning in a wave of heresy, we are busy preaching to the choir. I am not saying this as a word of condemnation, as I myself are also guilty of neglecting outreach as it is outside my comfort zone. What I am saying is that those of us who do know the full truth should be all the more eager to reach out to others, and to call God’s elect out of darkness into His glorious light.

Throughout these 10 days, it has been a privilege for me to partner with God to do the work of an evangelist. Although it has not been as long as any of my previous mission trips, it is not the duration itself that counts, but the surrender of our hearts and the work of the Holy Spirit acting through us that matters. I will take comfort in the fact that the word of the Lord will not come back to Him void (Is. 55:11) and will accomplish what He has desired and decreed. May the Lord use the many Gospel packs and the Bibles in them to reach out to the Chinese in China and save many people, through the reading and proclamation of the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now may the God of all peace, the only wise God our Savior, be with you all now and forevermore. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria, (For the glory of God alone)
Daniel Chew.