Pastor Sam mentioned Lionel Messi and immediately became a pastor I like.
He asked all of us to close our eyes and point to north. We each point to our own directions. If we don’t know the direction, how do we lead?
Cell Church is like Justin Bieber. (Hmm …) Pastor Sam said Justin Bieber’s Baby has 2.8 million dislikes. At first glance, we may want to turn away. Keep listening and we may fall in love.
Excel Point Community Church is a Baptist church and it is not a merger of Excel and PowerPoint?
When Federal Express merge with UPS, will they be named Fed UP?
EPCC is a point of excelling for Jesus – walking and living an excellent life for Jesus.
There are both English, Bahasa, Chinese, Nepali, Vietnamese Congregations. There was a series of of evangelism events during Christmas last year, a total of 1,500 Vietnamese received Jesus. They are so hungry and passionate for Jesus.
ECPP people visited a construction site and gave them blankets. Four Vietnamese came and asked the name of ECPP’s god. They received Jesus on their 2nd visit.
EPCC started in Jun 1997 with 3. There was no problem managing the church. Pastor Sam lectured in a private college. They met in a 26 storey apartment with no musical instruments. There are no chairs and only bean bags. There were 5 offers for Pastor Sam to go to bigger churches in the city. Pastor Sam said he was told by God to go back to Penang to start a church for the young adults. He used to ask for pastors to pray that God would not ask him to be a pastor. He wanted to be an evangelist.
Introduction to Church with Cell Group
The main purpose of cell group then was for- Fellowship
- Member care
- Bible study
By the time the members have increased to 140, including one English and one Bahasa congregations. Peter Wagner said no matter how good a pastor is, when the church grew to 200, he will not be able to remember all their names and manage them well and meet their needs well. Pastor Sam realized the need for help.
The Need for Cell Church
The concerns- How to pastor / shepherd all members effectively/
- Managing new visitors
- Discipleship
- Evangelism
- Church Growth
- Developing Leaders
- Managing Pastoral Duties
ECPP set up an Evangelism Committee. When this Committee were not working, evangelism stopped and everyone pointed his fingers to the Committee. It is unfair to put the burden of evangelism to a small group of people.
Pastor Lawrence Kong remembered that it was so tiring and demanding to keep up to expectation, during the transition from a church with cells into a cell church.
There are not many funerals in ECPP. At one point, 97% of the members are students.
The pastor has to come to a place that he is secured to release some jobs to the others. Relinquishing / delegating the jobs is a paradigm shift. There is no retirement nor pension scheme in the Kingdom.
At the tail end of John the Baptist’s ministry, a man came to John and told him the man he baptised is now baptising many people and people are all going to him. John is known as the Baptist. John said a man cannot receive anything except it is given to him from heaven. John also said he must decrease and he (Jesus) must increase. (Jesse said there will be competition to decrease.)
How can a pastor do everything?
Looking for a structure – a framework for shepherding and growth
2Sa 5:12 And David knew that the LORD had established him as king over Israel and had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel.David learned the secret very early – that there is no leader without followers. A leader cannot keep all duties within his control. David is established as king for the sake of the people. A leader must love his people.
Pastor Sam attended a 17-day conference in FCBC, Singapore,. It was overwhelming to see what a 10,000 strong church is doing and try to map it to a church of 100+ people.
At the 3rd cell church conference in Shah Alam, Pastor Sam started to understand how to internalize what he learned.
The Journey – Stories of Implementation
It started out of desperation. ECPP transformed into a cell church when it had 100+ members. Out of excitement, Pastor Sam launched the cell church before any proper buy-in and vision casting. They handled the problems along the way.Proportional Percentages or Roles
| Shepherd | Manager | Leader | |
| CL | 60% | 25% | 15% |
| ZS | 40% | 35% | 23% |
| ZP | 30% | 40% | 30% |
| DP | 25% | 25% | 40% |
| SP | 15% | 25% | 60% |
Stories of Resistance
“Why must I join a cell?” If the pastor is not around, can the church continue to run?Accountability. It is a place to ensure consistency for everyone to receive spiritual food. It’s provides opportunities for fellowship.
There was resistance for multiplication – some even talk CL now to work hard to avoid multiplication.
ECPP came up with 8 blessings of multiplications and this is incorporated into the CL training. 2 months before multiplication, the CL shared it with the cell members.
Baptism, baby dedication,etc. can now be done a the cell level. Cell members began to look at their Cell Leaders as people they can trust.
There are 4 levels in the School of Discipleship. All promotions and monitoring are done via cells.
Stories of Success
Staff are selected from among CLs. Evangelism is no longer dependent on Evangelism Committee. Each cell is given RM200 to multiply it to carry our Dream Projects. One cell consisted mostly of Indonesian workers multiplied that RM200 and bought 48 hampers to give out during Christmas. A Bahasa cell cleaned up and painted a leprosy hospital. One creative cell from the campus group (USM) did a “blessed” draw in the gas station (with prizes of RM3, RM5, RM10) with guides on safe riding. The riders are also given a vest and tracts. Yet another cell offered ‘free money for bus ride.’ Another one walk around and insert coins for parking and left a small note on the cars.The vision is no longer on the church level but at the cell levels.
USO (Urban Street Outreach) is a ministry that goes out once every 2 weeks to give clothes and food and there are salvations every time they go out.
The most important things that God put into our hearts when we move into the cell church is to win souls.
In ECPP, there is a fulltime clown. He earns a 5-figure salary. He trained many clowns and they visited children in hospital.
There is the Kids Club.
Stories of Failures & Struggles
“Why are there no solid teaching?” The members need to understand the concepts of evangelism and edification.After a while, the cells became very comfortable or they have exhausted all their oikos. They could not develop new leaders.
Story of Restructuring
There was a break of 8 weeks – no cell meetings, for retooling.6 Ps
- Play = Welcome
- Praise – Worship
- Process – Evangelism (record names in Book of Life and pray every Friday.)
- Preaching – Word
- Parenting – Discipleship
- Proclaim – Works
When we grow bigger, we grow smaller.
Feeding of 100 – 20 loaves (2 Kings 4:42)
Feeding of 4,000 – 7 loaves (Mt 14:34)
Feeding of 5,000 – 5 loaves (Mk 5:30)
Assimilation Rate
- Mandarin – 80%
- Bahasa – 60%
- English – 65%
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