“So he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty.’” (Zechariah 4:6)
By the grace of God, the West Coast Regional Staff Conference was held in Denver, Colorado from November 12-13, 2012. Coworkers attended from nine chapters in the West, from Denver to Los Angeles to Sacramento. The main purpose of this conference was to increase our spiritual vision for the work of God and to build relationships between coworkers. As we reflect on the conference, we can realize that the main theme was that the work of God is performed mightily by the Holy Spirit, and not by our own might or power.
Empowerment Presentations
The conference program began with two empowerment presentations on the work of God in history. Msn. Jeremiah Jung (Denver) reported on the great work of God in the Pyung Yung revival of 1907 and Sh. Charles Wilson (Downey) reported on the mighty work of God through Reinhard Bonnke’s “Christ for All Nations” ministry in our present times. Through these presentations, we were struck by the power of the Holy Spirit to perform a mighty work of God in contrast to our own feeble efforts.
Africa Mission Report
Msn. Isaac Kim (Downey) gave a report on the work of God through UBF in Africa. Through his report, most of us were struck to realize the vast size of the African continent. Because of the distortions that occur when flat maps are drawn from a curved globe, most maps do not accurately represent the vast size of the African continent. When we look at an equal-area map of the world, we can see that the landmass of Africa is greater than that of the USA, Europe, China, India and Japan combined![1] Most importantly, more than one billion people live in Africa, which is 15% of the population of the whole world! May God to raise up harvest workers for this mission field!
We were moved to hear how much our UBF coworkers are struggling and suffering to serve this mission field, and challenged to see their faith to entrust their children to God’s care and blessing. Most of all, we praise God for raising up native shepherds and native African missionaries. We pray that God may continue to bless the building of the Bethesda Mission Clinic for his work in Uganda. We pray that God may reach out to 53 nations through African shepherds and shepherdesses. We pray for God’s grace upon all our missionaries to become self-supporting and to educate their children well in a challenging environment.
Biblical Preaching
Pastor Mark Vucekovich (Lincoln Park, Chicago) presented a lecture on biblical preaching, from Haddon W. Robinson’s book, Biblical Preaching. His lecture was encouraging, challenging and practical. The main point we learned is that we must study God’s word diligently and prayerfully so that our ideas are coming from God’s word and not our preconceptions. After that, we must work hard to craft our Bible message to present the main point clearly in a way that helps our members to grow in God’s word and put it into practice.
How to Do One-To-One Ministry
Msn. Andrew Hwang (Stanford) took on the challenging topic of “How to Do One-To-One Ministry”. He reminded us that our concept of one-to-one ministry is based on God’s work in the Bible, centered on Jesus’ love for one person (Lk 15:4). The biggest problem of our generation is that we are lacking great spiritual leaders. Therefore, our prayer topic for our one-to-one ministry must be to raise great spiritual leaders. Our practice of writing Bible reflections is one way to help our Bible students find their own identity in God. He reminded us that we must take time to make friends with our Bible students and to be quick to listen and slow to speak (James 1:9). One shepherdess listened patiently to her atheist Bible student for two months until he had nothing more to say. Then he began to listen to her.
Biblical Book Digest: Nehemiah
Msn. John Baik (El Camino) presented a digest of the entire book of Nehamiah. We would not have imagined that we could cover an entire book of the Bible in 20 minutes, but Msn. John was able to do so! He encouraged us to think of making disciples as building the wall of Jerusalem. Just as the wall of Jerusalem served as a barrier between the world and the Jewish people, we have to consider how to help our disciples build up their identity as a holy people of God. Ezra led them in intensive Bible study, because only the word of God could give them true fulfillment through a good relationship with God. They wept for their sins and repented deeply. Then they made a binding agreement before the Lord in order to break their vicious cycle of sin. Nehamiah revisited them in ten years in order to help them maintain God’s blessing.
Relationship-Building, Discussion and Prayer
One of the greatest gifts of our short conference was the unscheduled time planned into the program. Through these times, coworkers could talk and pray in pairs or small groups. Some discussed difficult questions (“How do we apply Old Testament scriptures to our current times?”) or discussed concerns in our ministries or with our chapter members. Although we might think that in our short time we should pack as much content as possible into our program, these unscheduled times allowed us to grow in our personal relationships and mutual understanding and helped us to minister God’s grace and rest to one another.
Planning and Prayer
After breakfast on the second day, we met to plan our future cooperation and to pray together. We were able to quickly decide our tentative dates for our next regional directors conference (January 3-4, 2014), but when we tried to discuss the content of the meeting we seemed to reach an impasse. However, after we shared our personal prayer topics and prayed together, we found the issues were easily resolved. One person later shared how during our prayer the Holy Spirit showed him that the differences we had perceived were really not so great at all. In short, we experienced God’s intervention in our midst through a modern-day miracle. This experience provided us with a clear demonstration of the power and necessity of the Holy Spirit in our ministry. We all are believers with good intentions in serving God and his flock, but humanly we could not agree. However, the Holy Spirit was able to clear our confusion, quiet our emotions and lead us into peace and good fellowship. It is the same in our ministries. Even though we talked throughout our conference about the importance of the Holy Spirit in our ministries, it was more natural for us to focus more on strategy and tactics. What a surprise to remember that although we work hard to be his instruments, only God can do the work of God! “‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.” (Zechariah 4:6b).
We thank our Denver coworkers for their love and hard work in hosting this conference, and God’s servants for their hard work to prepare the spiritual food of our program. May God bear lasting fruit through it.
A more complete record of this conference can be found on Msn. Isaac Kim’s blog: the path of life
