Pastor Nenglian’s Speech
Like the day of wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine, the program gradually becomes sweeter. Pastor Nenglian Vualnam, Special Invitee to deliver a Short Exhortation, unleashes the wisdom and insight he receives from God. It was absolutely worth listening!
The Pastor exhorts one and all by addressing the issue on “the basic necessities for success in Christian Ministry”. He clearly spell out that (a) Walking with God, (b) Being available and accountable to God and (c) Being consistent are the three basic prerequisites for success in Christian ministries.
The pastor preludes his discussion on the topic by pointing out on “the challenges that we are facing around us here today”. Firstly, the challenge from secularism/worldliness school of thought. In other words, we can also sub-titled as ‘worldliness’. The forces coming from this angle is very strong within the Christendom. We need to put up a good fight with it. Secondly, the challenges we faced with Christian ethics. It includes our dress code ethics, facebooks ethics, mobile phones ethics, to name a few. Thirdly, the Pastor pointed out that ‘professionalism’ is another challenge for us Christians, more so for the full-time ministers. He quoted John Piper who had thus said, “we’re not professionals, but we’re disciples (of our Lord Jesus)’. It is very easy for pastors to perform professionally. Whenever we do things out of professionalism, spirituality has no more space and we ended up entirely out of context. The fourth challenge the Pastor points out is ‘spiritual dryness’. He clearly spells out the shallowness of our spiritual lives that result in mere absence of spiritual powers.
In order to meet these challenges, we therefore, need to take note of the following and ensure that we adhered to them. These are the basic necessities for success in Christian ministry.
(1) Walking with God. Noah walked with God. If we walk with God, we will have deeper understanding of God. In order to maintain this sweet fellowship, we have to have some kind of spiritual discipline too. Develop spiritual disciplines your own. It may include your regular Bible studies, prayers or fasting prayers etc.
(2) Availability and accountability to God(In secular term we can use ‘proactiveness’). Availability is one of the spiritual discipline we can inculcate. We must be available for God and accountable to God.The Pastor adds another beautiful insight here. He said, active-ness does not mean you are effective. You could be effective while being lesser active too. The meaning is - activeness is our part as humans and effectiveness is the part God has to play upon our activities. Therefore, without God playing His role is our activity we can’t attempt to be effective. So, effectiveness has to do with doing our part and God doing His’. Be available for God, that’s human part and at the same time be accountable to God. This is the path to effectiveness for God.
(3) Consistency. To maintain consistency is important because people don’t see our good intentions but they saw what we are doing and what we actually did. The Pastor quoted the following beautiful line again – “ you know yourself by your good intentions, but people judge you by your actions”. The Pastor also added, saying – the one issue that plays a very crucial role in disturbing our consistency and our relationships is ‘rejection’. Non acceptance of one another, between co-workers, couples etc are due to rejection. And, rejection resulted in accusations. When this point is reached, then the atmosphere is normally all about accusing and fault finding.
With this the pastor ended his short, insightful and inspiring exhortation.
(a write-up by Mr. Sonpi Vaiphei on Miss T Euniki’s successful completion of Master of Theology from South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies(SAIACS), Bangalore. @4pm, 13th April 2013. House No 48(SF), Nivedita Kunj, RK Puram, New Delhi)
