We started our weekly Sunday fellowship meetings at 171A East Coast Road last Sunday. There was a lovely time of worship when the Lord’s presence was keenly felt.

We rejoiced that we have been provided such a beautiful place. The airconditioning may have to be boosted but we’ll wait and see. Susan’s feedback was that I preached well. She’s wonderfully encouraging.

I intend to post pictures later when we are more settled. Besides we have a hooch pooch of chairs (beige, orange, white and the plastic garden variety). The ones we ordered will only arrive on September 18th.

Victor’s presence was missed as he had dengue fever, but thank God not bird flu as was originally suspect. So he is out of guarantine. We visited him last night at the CDC (say communicable disease center) and found him in good spirit, pretty well recovered, and hoping to be discharged at 8 pm when the doctors do their rounds.

Alice was very sweet to boil soup for Victor on Saturday – a sure fire remedy for the dengue. But it’s frog with bitter gourd. Since we could not visit on Saturday, I informed Victor that I was “voluntered” to consume it, so as not to waste the effort. He looked kinda of glad it was me not him who drank the frog soup…

Now that we have found a place of our own, what’s the expectations?

In typical “choo” style we began to analyse the thing half to death!

The discussion started with a frank appraisal of why we have not grown in numbers. The fact that empirically (or typically) vineyard church plants get smaller before they get bigger did not carry much weight. The youngest amongst us (like the little boy in the tale of the Emperor’s new clothes) said in a brutally honest voice, “It’s because we are not attractive enough”. Hmmm…

Then is it the music or is it the preaching? (I do feel that my preaching must be engaging but my goal is not just be be pleasing to people’s ears!) Or is it because we do not have weekly meetings, or is it due to the hotel venue and the lack of “walk in by locals”? (We had many foreign visitors/guests from the hotel but as you can imagine, it’s not convenient for them to come back for a second look!)

Why aren’t we attractive?

Finally, Susan says it’s low energy on our part! You may be trying to figure this one out? She means that we are not able to continually manifest as “bubbly, effervescent, life of the party, we’re game to hang out with you anytime”. Hmmm…

It’s very tempting to hedge on what our expectations are for doing church in this new place. I wanted to at first. But now I would say “great expectations”. There are great expectations (and I ask the Father in Jesus name) for God to bring people to us who have a heart for bringing other people to Jesus! (Like I preached on Sunday, and said, “What a simple strategy for growth.”)

We readily confess that there is nothing inherently attractive about us, though we value excellence in our offerings (doing it all unto the Lord). But whatever you may see that is good, kind or lovely in us must be attributed to God’s grace and the work of transformation by the Holy Spirit.

What’s dear in our hearts is to continually exhibit the presence and the power of God, and accordingly we CALL upon Jesus, our Lord for this to be so.