NSC English - Our Journey - Part 1 (Adrian)

 “A CHURCH COMMITTED TO EMOTIONAL HEALTH IS A MESSY PLACE.” 

Author of “Emotionally Healthy Church” Peter Scazzero,

• An emotionally healthy church is a church that allows vulnerability to flow
• Authenticity is not just about being honest to one another.
• Authenticity needs to breath from a heart/place of vulnerability, our willingness to be vulnerable to one another

NSC English – Our Journey – Part 1

Lessons learned and DNAs in the past 7 years

Most people aware of our NSC English timeline, but very few asked us what we have learned in this journey. Valuable lessons have been learned and taught by God. I feel a great urge to share these lessons.

In Sep-2010, God called a few of us to start the English Service in New Soho Congregation answering to the need of a rising English speaking generation. This was in many ways like a new “Church Plant”. We were in a unique setting where the service was built up from scratch freeing from any unnecessary traditions. For a very long time, we were outside of the main ministries.

We began with a faithful core team of 6

• Peter Chow who is now with the Lord, Simon and Kristina Tsang are now serving in HillSong, Tim Lee is now working in Asia, Anne Shum is now faithfully serving in the NSC Chinese and SBF, I am the last one remaining in the NSC Eng writing this tale.

In the first 5 years,

• We changed venue and timing of the service 4 times.
• We operated under little external support and limited resources.
• Many times, we prayed to God begging for help,
• His reply to us was “My grace is enough for you.”
• God said to me, “The day you know how to build up a church/disciple from scratch, you will know how to build a church.”  
• It’s not very comforting, is it?  We knew the journey would be long and there were no shortcut.
• God has taught us valuable lessons through these hard times. Little that we know, these lessons have also become the core DNAs of the NSC English Service, our foundational building blocks. Something that we all hold dear.

There are 6 important lessons (Building Blocks)

1. Journey of Authenticity
2. Journey of Sheepherding
3. Journey of Father’s Love
4. Journey of Freedom by His Truth
5. Journey of Honouring and Submitting to one another
6. Journey of Heaven on Earth

JJourney of Authenticity

• As I said, we had very limited resources to begin with, preaching in particular. None of the core team were trained to preach in English and none of us were theologically trained at the time. We had no church worker.
• A big part of our initial focus were focusing on logistics rather than people, i.e. how to find a preacher for each Sunday Service.
• In our naive mind, we thought “English Ministry = English Sunday Service” (meaning an English Sunday Service with enough chairman, worship leaders, speakers and people serving in various roles). We thought as long as all the components within a Sunday Service were there, the picture was complete.
• It has taken us a few years to realise the most basic lesson. We learned that the foundation of any church ministry is “Love in Authenticity”. Things begin to flourish when this is at the heart and centre of everything we do.

• In our first year,
• Since finding enough preachers to fill each Sunday rota were the main focus at the time, we went through a period of relying on external speakers.
• Most of the speakers were from AllSouls and St Helens, their apprentice programme.
• Although, both churches were willing to send their apprentice to us, these speakers were inexperienced and none of them could regularly commit to our service.
• They were disconnected and failed to make any connection to the congregation to be effective.
• (average attendance were 15) 

• In our second year,
• We were forced to move the Sunday Service from 1:30pm to 4:00pm in order to secure additional support from CCiL English Staff.
• However, our core leaders were also serving in the youth group in the Sunday morning.  Sunday becomes an impossible long day from 8:30am to 7:00pm. All leaders were burnt out at the end of the 2^nd year. We knew we had to change again.
•  (average attendance were about 25)

• In our third year,
• We found a new location 10 mins walking distance away from NSC, a place called “Dragonhall”.
• We decided to move to this venue so both the youth group and the Sunday Service can take place in the Sunday morning. This made the Sunday arrangement more manageable.
• The drawback of this was losing all our supports from other English congregations. Everything had to be started from scratch all over again.
• Finding preachers became the immediate issue, the only option for us was to grow our speakers and leaders from within as we knew we could not rely on anyone external. We started training those who are willing to take up preaching slots. For a very long time, standard of the pulpit message was hard to maintain. People come and gone as they were not being fed spiritually
• (average attendance were 35)

• During the 3 years, apart from battling with all the logistic issues, all our leaders’ vulnerability were visble for all to see. I have gone through a period of a very depressed stage, feeling that I have let down my fellow workers.
• Nevertheless, we were deliberately being honest and transparent about our struggles to everyone. Our leaders model authenticity at all levels. After all, we are on the same boat together.
• There were no department in the English ministry as there were so few of us.
• We operated in a flat structure, basically everyone was in the core team. Every meeting includes all serving members.

• In our fourth year,
• We started introducing a sharing slot in every Sunday.
• Each week, a different member will come forth to take a sharing slot. There were no restriction of what they could share.
• The Spirit was moving among us, most of the sharing were genuine and authentic. 
• People started to share their struggles openly. 
• The community grew closer together and members started to feel at home. 
• The place became a safe place for the vulnerables. 
• We were still struggling most of the time, ministry was messy but this has become a spiritual home for those who chose to stay. 
• To our surprise, members started to look forward to the sharing slot each week. This become one of the main reason why people were finding comfort to stay.
• By the end of the fifth year, attendance grew to a regular 45.

- End of Part 1 -