HBC-EFC Combined Service Redux: 12 December 2010

Here’s the weekly recap of the Sunday service at my home church. This week we joined in worship with brothers and sisters from the Evangelical Formosan Church NZ (a Mandarin-speaking congregation) – naturally there was quite a different, yet immensely exciting feel to the day! I led the service, which was ably translated by Paul Young from EFC. Peter preached from Isaiah 52:7-10 on what the prophet announced as “good news”.

Order of Service

(if you click on each title, you’ll get a link to a video or resource related to that item)

Call to worship – reading from Romans 15:1-13. This passage covers both the fact that salvation will extend to all nations, and that it comes through the Jewish lineage as correctly predicted by the prophet Isaiah. Since it was a bilingual service, our reading was done in English, then Mandarin Chinese.

In fact, we sang all the worship songs in both English and Mandarin – the singers swapped between the two languages while the congregation was free to sing in the language they were most familiar with. It was quite a sound to hear the same song sung simultaneously in two different languages. A foretaste of Heaven!

1. O Come, All Ye Faithful/齊來，宗主信徒 – Frederik Oakley, John Wade.


Often these carols are so familiar that it’s tempting to revert to a tried-and-true arrangement (in most cases, 4-part keyboard and voice). We tried to give it a modern arrangement while keeping it as congregational as possible. The chord progressions from Third Day’s rendition were a great help, and helped lend some exuberance to the singing of words like these:

Word of the Father,

Now in flesh appearing;

O come, let us adore him,

O come, let us adore him,

O Come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord!

2. Joy to the World – Isaac Watts, G.F. Handel.


This is a good carol as it not only rejoices in His arrival (verse 1), but also His atonement for our sins (verse 3), and His eventual return to reign (verse 4). There’s a number of carols that, although speak of good truths, end up leaving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in the manger. Thankfully, this is not one of them!

HBC Item: Hide Away in the Love of Jesus – Steve and Vikki Cook. In the time of Christmas, we need reminding that not everyone is in a festive season of life. Some may have lost their jobs, some may be under trials, persecution, and other reasons. This song (along with many others on Sovereign Grace’s “Come Weary Saints” CD) has powerful words that point us, in our pain and our sorrow, to find our refuge in Jesus Christ:

Come, hopeless hearts, do not despair

Hide away in the love of Jesus

For ten thousand joys await you there

Hide away in the love of Jesus

One of the first things I noticed about this song was that it would work with Chinese instruments, because of its pentatonic melody. For our arrangement, we were blessed to have the addition of a guzheng, a Chinese zither. Due to our stage layout, most people didn’t see the instrument, but the harp-like sounds were absolutely serene and intertwined beautifully with the heartfelt singing from our soloist, Mana.

EFC Item: Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion/錫安的兒女快樂歡欣 – G.F. Handel. (from Handel’s “The Messiah”). The lyrics of this aria are straight from Zechariah 9:9 – one of the prophecies fulfilled by the coming of Christ. This was sung beautifully by the EFC soloist.

EFC Item: 普天下去傳福音 Go and make disciples of all nations. This was quite cool – they had a 20-strong choir. Maybe if the Lord wills, one day…

3. Hear I Am To Worship (Light of the World) / 世界的光 – Tim Hughes. For those who have turned away from their sin and put their trust in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, the words from the bridge carry an extra depth of meaning:

I’ll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross

Those redeemed by His atoning work on the cross will never know how much it cost: the judgement they deserved was poured out on Christ instead… what amazing grace!


4. How Great is Our God / 我主真偉大 – Chris Tomlin (Listen in Chinese).

Good News – Isaiah 52:7-10 (Peter Somervell, Paul Young) from Howick Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Communion: I Offer My Life / 主我獻上生命給你 – Don Moen (Listen to our arrangement of it in English/Chinese). This was a little scary, as I tried to sing the whole thing in Mandarin. But thanks to the Lord and His provision of Google translate (which now includes a “read phonetically” function – try it!), I think it went alright! Update: you can hear the whole thing here: http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_6422830

Reciting the Apostles’ Creed. The EFC church do this every week, and it’s a great summary of the basics of the faith. We opted for the Lutheran version for English, so as not to stir anything up with the use of the phrase “the holy catholic church” from the original.

5. In Christ Alone / 耶穌是我唯一盼望 – Stuart Townend and Keith Getty (Listen in English |  listen in Chinese).

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Some further thoughts:

  • If you’re interested, here’s the powerpoint presentation we used during the service. And here’s the lyrics sheet that Mana and I used: since we couldn’t read Chinese characters, we cheated and wrote the pinyin pronunciation next to each word!
  • It’s always helpful to make everything as clear as possible beforehand so there’s as little distraction as possible – even if it meant planning all the songs, verses/choruses, repeats, readings, thoughts beforehand.
  • Thanks to one of the members of EFC, we got a bit of a video team together to help film the service and the items. So there’ll be more video to come (once it’s edited!)

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– William Chong

The worship team is much more than the ones on stage

On Sunday afternoon we had an end-of-year get-together/BBQ with many of  our home church‘s music, sound and multimedia servants, along with their families. It was a good group of about 40+ people, and a great time of fellowship and celebrating how faithful God has been to HBC over the year gone by.

I shared with everyone one aspect about the HBC worship ministry this year that’s particularly struck me. Although much of the worship ministry is public/corporate in nature, there’s so much more that goes on behind the scenes that most of the church family won’t typically see. Throughout the year, some of the most touching examples of faithful, joyous service to the Lord have been the less obvious ones. I’m referring to the quiet workers that contribute immensely to the worship ministry (and some aren’t even listed on the roster).

For example:

  • there’s the musician that makes every single practice, and sings so heartily because they can’t do so for the rest of the week when they’re with their unbelieving family
  • there’s the mum who tirelessly chauffeurs her son or daughter so they can make the 8:30 early morning rehearsals
  • there’s the singer that records a difficult alto part, then sends it to her sister-in-Christ to help her practise it for the Sunday service
  • there’s the camera and projector operators that serve joyfully, even though it sometimes hurts their eyes to squint at the screen over long periods of time
  • there’s the guy who pulls up straight from a 12 hour work day to set up the sound gear, and patiently waits till the end to pack it down again
  • there’s the wife or husband who manages the home and the children lovingly, and waits patiently for their spouse to return from a late practice
  • there’s the folk that meet upstairs each Sunday morning before each service, to pray and intercede to God, and ask Him to enable each person serving that morning

For time would fail me to tell of many other examples of quiet, faithful ministry. And I’m sure you have members like these in your church too.  One of the things I love about being part of the worship ministry is that, as members of the worship team, we’re uniquely blessed with the opportunity not just to sing praises to God and encourage others to do so, but also to minister to each other as brothers and sisters struggling along the same narrow road.

My hope is that all these “unsung heroes” will be lavishly rewarded for their service unto the Lord when he comes again to rule and to reign. But I’m so grateful that, for now, He’s left a whole bunch of humble and faithful servants here at HBC.

Can you think of any other examples of “unsung heroes” in your church?

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What you celebrate as a church: Kingdom People

Trevin Wax makes some really convicting points in this article. In it he describes a fictitious, but representative story of two Christians. They know the gospel, love Christ, but struggle to find a new home church that match up with their old church. An excerpt:

Rob’s Story

Rob grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the Deep South. His church believed the gospel and demonstrated genuine affection for the lost.

Even though the gospel was preached in Rob’s church, the deacons seemed to save their heartiest “Amens” for whenever the preacher went off script and started reminding them of all that set their church apart from the others in town. The preacher and congregation took pride in the fact that their church was traditional:

* Just gimme that “old-time religion” please!
* No need to project Bible verses up on some newfangled screen. (We actually expect people to bring their Bibles to church!)
* We like organs and hymns, and we refuse to dumb down our music for the 7/11 ditties you can hear on the radio 24/7.
* We dress up around here because we’re meeting King Jesus (and shouldn’t you wear your finest clothes for royalty?).
* Name the program you need and we’ve got it covered.
* From birth to heaven, our church offers an “old-fashioned” church experience in Southern Baptist style.

Rob went off to college in a big city and started looking for a church. He knew the gospel. He wanted to walk with the Lord. But in his new city, he had trouble finding a Southern Baptist church that felt like home. One week, he tried a church that turned out to be much too casual for his liking (they had a coffee bar!). Another church didn’t have enough programs to suit his taste. He found a church where he clicked with people and liked the preacher, but they had a screen, a drum set, and a singer with suspiciously shaggy hair.

Several months have gone by, and now, Rob is adrift. He feels disoriented. He sits down one evening and writes out a list of all the things important to his church experience. By the time he puts the pen down, he is frustrated that he can’t find “the right church.”

Thinking about it now, and reflecting on our own search for a home church a couple of years back, we did indeed fall into some of the same pitfalls.

Week after week, the churches emphasize and celebrate what makes them different from other churches. They celebrate their uniqueness — not the gospel uniqueness that shines light in a dark world, but a worldly uniqueness that would have us base our identity in stylistic distinctions between brothers and sisters.

Whenever we are formed within a context that celebrates certain cultural expressions over against other expressions, we begin to expect the wrong things from a church. So when the day comes for us to unite with a different congregation, our list of expectations is devoid of the gospel [emphasis mine].

It really was God’s grace that we didn’t go adrift ourselves and get disillusioned about not finding “the right church”, that ticked all our preferential boxes, that matched with all our distinctives.

I pray that we celebrate the gospel in a way that leads our church members to easily cross cultural divides because of the centrality of the cross. What we celebrate is just as important as what we believe.

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D.A. Carson:

“I have been teaching more decades now that I can count and if I have learned anything from all of this teaching, its this: my students…learn what I’m excited about. So within the church of the living God, we must become excited about the gospel. That’s how we pass on our heritage. If, instead, the gospel increasingly becomes for us that which we assume, then we will, of course, assent to the correct creedal statement. But, at this point, the gospel is not what really captures us. Rather, is a particular form of worship or a particular style of counseling, or a particular view on culture, or a particular technique in preaching, or — fill in the blank. Then, ultimately, our students make that their center and the generation after us loses the gospel. As soon as you get to the place where the gospel is that which is nearly assumed, you are only a generation and a half from death”.

God has been really good to us to put us in a church that celebrates the gospel!

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– William

Extol him, all peoples! Planning for a bilingual service

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging recently. December is a particularly busy season of ministry at Howick Baptist, not least in the worship ministry. In the previous two weeks, Craig and Simon have faithfully led worship for two very contrasting services. And this week, I have the privilege of leading the music team for a combined service with our brothers and sisters from the Evangelical Formosan Church.

We did the same thing around this time last year. When you’re singing the same praises to God in both English and Mandarin, it really feels like a slice of heaven!

HBC Service Redux: 21 November 2010

Here’s our weekly recap of the Sunday service at my home church. This time, I led the worship service while Peter preached from 1 Timothy 2:3-6, carefully explaining through some quite tough gospel dilemmas. We concluded the service by taking communion together in remembrance of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Order of service

Call to worship: In light of the Pike River coal miner incident, I tried to acknowledge the fact that we don’t worship in a vacuum but in real life, where there’s troubles, difficulties and events that sometimes just make it difficult to focus on God on a Sunday. This is what I said:

I’m sure many of you have been listening to the news to try and find out the latest about the 29 miners trapped in the Pike River coal mine. I don’t know what you were thinking this morning as you walked in, whether you’ve been wondering where God is in all this. And you may have your own trials, you might even be finding it hard to think of reasons praise God right now. It’s a difficult truth to grasp at the best of times, but we worship a God who is sovereign, who is in control.

Let’s remind ourselves then, as people reconciled to God through Christ, we have so many reasons to praise God!

In Psalm 147 it says: “Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praise to our God… he heals the broken hearted, and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. The LORD lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre!”

Well we’ve got more than a lyre this morning, we’ve got the voices of Howick Baptist here — let’s stand together and sing to our amazing God.

The funny thing is, I had prepared a completely different call to worship beforehand. but once the mining events that transpired became apparent, it didn’t feel as appropriate. I guess it always pays to be keeping up with current events. In any case these miners are still very much on my mind even today…

1. Indescribable by Laura Story. Much of the beautiful imagery in the lyrics about God’s authorship over creation comes from the book of Job, where God responds him in a declaration of His sovereignty. He asks Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.” (Job 38:4) “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons, or lead out the Bear with its cubs?” (Job 38:31-32). So it’s actually quite fitting therefore to sing in response:

“All-powerful, untameable, awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim You are amazing God!”

2. Salvation Belongs to our God by Adrian Howard and Pat Turner. This is a firm HBC favourite, from the 1980’s. The words are taken straight from Revelation 5, in the scene where multitudes worship the Lamb who was slain (i.e. Jesus Christ), saying: “Praise and glory wisdom and thanks, honour and power and strength be to our God forever and ever, amen!”

3. Come Thou Fount by Robert Robinson. An older hymn that speaks so strongly of God’s sovereign grace for His people. To help the younger congregants, we used a modified version which used another line in place of “Here I raise mine Ebenezer” (which is   an obscure, not well-understood reference to 1 Samuel 7); and changed a few words like “hitherto” and “fetter”, which people don’t really use today.

4. Grace Unmeasured by Bob Kauflin. A newer song by Sovereign Grace Music that do a really good job of presenting the gospel from the perspective of God’s amazing, undeserved grace.

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 1:3-24. Francelle read out one of the passages that speaks of God’s sovereign grace and mercy to believers, redeemed in Christ.

5. Oh the Mercy of God by Geoff Bullock. The words from this song are pretty much drawn from Ephesians 1, and also Colossians 1 in speaking of the divinity of Christ. It’s got a rousing chorus where in response to the gospel, we get to sing:

“To the praise of His glorious grace! To the praise of His glory and power. To him be all glory, honour and praise, forever and ever, and ever, Amen!”

How can you get more God-centred than that!

Sermon: 1 Timothy 2:3-6. This is definitely a sermon to rewatch and go over again. Peter revisited the text from last week and tried to work through a number of gospel dilemmas, apparent contradictions in scripture regarding salvation and Jesus’s work on the cross. As Peter holds a moderate Reformed position (he explains it in the message), many of our songs this morning were deliberately chosen to emphasise and support the sovereignty of God in His work of salvation.

6. Salvation’s Song by Stuart Townend. We played this for the church as they contemplated the cross and took part in communion. They’re beautiful words that work well in helping to remind us of the sacrifice Jesus made to pay for the sins of the world.

7. All I Have Is Christ by Devon Kauflin. A profoundly moving way to finish, by singing through the gospel:

“And as I ran my hellbound race
Indifferent to the cost
You looked upon my helpless state
And led me to the cross
As I beheld God’s love displayed
You suffered in my place
You bore the wrath reserved for me
Now all I know is grace…”

Once again it was a great morning of worship. I didn’t feel too confident about some aspects earlier on in the week, and my voice deserted me for a bit on Saturday – so it’s in times like these you really learn to trust and rely on God’s strength, not your own.

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-William Chong