By Leow Yew Chong
Occasionally we sing the hymn “The Gospel is for All” to remind us of the work at hand. The lyrics are:
The blessed Gospel is for all,
The Gospel is for all;
Where sin has gone must go His grace:
The Gospel is for all.
Received ye freely, freely give,
From every land they call;
Unless they hear, they cannot live:
The Gospel is for all.
They remind us of the necessity of the gospel because unless the world and people hear, they cannot be saved.Damnation is their only direction and how piteous sorrowful it will be on that Day when they turn to us and say, you never mentioned Him to me!!
Hence, every week, every month, every year we are reminded to reach out to our family members, our loved ones, our friends, our acquaintances and strangers whom we come across in our daily lives, and rightly so!! In Klangitself and within the Klang valley, there are over 6 million souls who are in need of the Gospel call. And we have only managed to reach out to a small fraction of them. Sometimes we narrow our vision of the gospel call to within one-half hour drive from our homes. Anything beyond that, we are unable or unwilling (?) to share the gospel.
The above same hymn has another stanza as follows:
Say not the heathen are at home,
Beyond we have no call,
For why should we be blest alone?
The Gospel is for all.
The writer of this hymn, John Moody McCaleb, was a missionary to Japan from 1892 to 1941, with his financial support coming from the various individual churches of Christ in America. Therefore the above stanza had a very special meaning. Taking it in our local context, the gospel is not restricted to the Klang Valley. The clarion call rings the same today as it did a hundred years ago.
The Klang church had its planning session on 20 November. One of the items discussed were plans for the mission work. The mission team for 2019 consists of brethren Khoo Tze Ren, Daryl Kirk, Low Poh Sim, Mandy Singh, Christopher Lopez, Bobby Ong and Yew Chong. The objectives of the team were firstly to assist some congregations in Peninsular Malaysia in reaching out to friends and strangers, and secondly to work with them in future mission field.
Bro Khoo Tze Ren presented the proposed plans at the Church Planning Session where we are to have a quarterly visit i.e. 4 times a year with congregational singspiration, medical talk, visitation, tracts distribution, adult/kids camp and gospel meetings to harvest some fruits from our efforts.
Since bro Chris Lopez had been tasked to work with the Ipoh and Kuantan congregations, the suggestion was that we streamline our plans with his. Hence, in 2019, we will be at Ipoh in January, April, July and October with the gospel meetings in July or October where we will have own elders and preachers as the speakers. For Kuantan, it will most likely be a year-end gospel meeting.
We seek the participation of Klang brethren to support these plans by going for these quarterly events which will take place from Fridays to Sundays. Your presence will be a great encouragement to both the Ipoh and Kuantancongregations whereby you will work with them in tracting, Bible studies, helping to sing in parts in praising God and giving the beautiful offering of our lips to God during worship, letting the people in the vicinity recognize that God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is actively working with His children in these two congregations.
God has placed each one of us with different talents and abilities in His church so that we can grow into the unity of faith where we can be with Him and each other for eternity. We beseech you to consider taking time off from your busy schedule for these few sessions of Mission Work in Ipoh and Kuantan. Together, we will expand the borders of His kingdom to cover all of West Malaysia.
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea (Isa 11:6-9).
