I’ve been pastoring a church for the last three decades. But so far, I have not been able to build anything significant. What happened in the past was, I heard there was a great devotional plan from Taiwan, so I quickly imported it. A great small-group model in Hong Kong, so I adopted it; a great strategy for evangelism from the Philippines, so I adopted it; a worship style that caused great success in Singapore so we got that one; an effective church management structure in South Korea, so we got it, too. After some time, some of them didn’t seem to work so well for us so then I abandoned the current ones and adopted the newer ones that were popular. It was as if I were trying to build a car using the engine from Rolls Royce, the steering wheel from BMW and the seats from Mercedes Benz; they’re all high-quality components in themselves, but when I would pile them up together the car simply didn’t run.
After so many years, I finally realized what I need is not those components, but a holistic, comprehensive, biblical model of what the Church really is.