And then I worked in Church

So after a while of taking the reins of a sturdy organisation, I felt the pinch of God to serve Him full-time in church. The burden was just too heavy to ignore. I saw the needs of the church, and I think God has really put me here at this time for His purpose.

At first I held on to a prophecy that I had upon my life that I will become an entrepreneur and start something that will be used to advance God's kingdom. I struggled for about 2-3 months before I really made the step of faith. I still kind of hold on to that today, but with less importance.

It seems that in every juncture of my life, God has tried to give me a chance to serve Him full-time, but all of those times before this, I had said 'No'. I had always found joy in serving. That's why I have never stopped, even when I changed town and church for 2 times within 2 years. I served when I was in my hometown church, I served as soon as I settled down in KK for my Degree Foundation, I served as soon as I arrived in FCC. I guess I had the heart, and God knew it.

So I asked my pastor what should I do with this burden that God has put in my heart? The minds says no, but the heart felt right.

I have bought a car so that I can travel faster from work to ministry, and I just bought a house so that I could get married with my girlfriend, who is my wife now. I had so many burdens on me that to any self loving mind, it will be virtually impossible to survive on the salary scale that a full-time staff of the church would get. But I did get through. I struggled with my debts a lot, but only after so many things and so many years, I finally seemed to have navigated through just fine. The apartment is rented out now, my finances a lot more stable than before, and just by getting rid of the burden from the apartment, I can breathe easy now.

Back to full-time;

After my struggle in getting to grips with God's economy, I took up the challenge and courage to work in church. The initial deal with my pastor was 2 years. 2 years to try out if I really had a heart to be a pastor or, dare I say, a priest. And in these 2 years (almost), I have learned how to be compassionate, how to have a shepherd's heart.

And in these 2 years, I have seen the most dramatic change ever in the history of this church. We have not only regained strength, but we are on the offensive. We decided to move forcefully through the change of a system. Everyone who has been to a charismatic church would know that churches run on this system called the Cell Group system. We evolved away from that during these 2 years. We took a bold step and tried to deal with some major problems that we were facing in the running of the Cell Group system.

We wanted authenticity; we wanted to build a family; we wanted to build a church that is so strong in its pursuit of friendship that we decided to do away with the seemingly more programme based Cell Group System. We took away the rigidity of the 5Ws.

We also moved into our new building that we bought during these 2 years. It was a challenge indeed. The renovation, the loose ends at the old premises, my marriage, the big move, all came together at about the same time. I had a stretch of about 6 months without decent rest.

We moved from our last piece of rented property to our own building for Chrsitmas 2007. We cramped up 100++ people into a hall that could sit less than that amount for about 3 months. Every week we had to struggle and sometimes even had to hope that there will be absentees. What a way to run a church.

We had to cramp in the small hall because our main hall wasn't ready yet. We had not the time nor the money to do anything at that point in time. We needed about RM600k just for renovation itself and we could not muster enough financial power to do anything with the ability that we had. But God delivered. He gave us all we need. He even provided us with an in-house Interior Designer who was on site everyday. Me and him, we tackled everything that needed to be tackled. It was crazy. Literally crazy.

Once we thought that we could take our sweet time in making an impressive building renovation, the Big Boss suddenly gave us an impossible task; to do up the place in about 6 weeks. So we did everything in about 6 weeks. We laid out the cables, we put up the ceiling, we tiled the place, we rebuilt the toilets, we installed all the lights and air-conditioning, we did up the sound system, the projectors, the walls, the stage, stage lights, platforms, roof leaks solved, the gate, the whole works. Everything in 6 weeks. It must have took 4 project managers to see through this kind of task normally, but we only had 2 people; 1 totally inexperienced, the other had seen a few smaller projects. By the grace of God we got everything done up and the Big Boss came over on the 9th of March 2008 to consecrate this place. Spiritually set this place apart forever.