Create an environment for Spiritual Growth & Reproduction

As I listened to the Prime Minister’s National Day message concerning Singapore pro-creation policy, many thoughts crossed my mind about why people choose to remain childless and Christians cease in spiritual reproduction as well. Political leaders and Christian leaders are both concern about raising the right kind of leadership and population growth. I shall share my experience on raising leadership some other time.

Singaporeans are busy people, those of us who have traveled or stay aboard will agree. We are busy with our career to the extent of neglecting our social lives and are not ready for marriage. Then there is another group who is married but for personal reasons, chooses to remain single. Parenting is a burden and a hindrance to their career path and freedom (to travel, leisure, etc). This is a sign of immature thinking. The third group chooses to remain childless are usually because of health reason.

As Christians, we too need to ask ourselves honestly why we are not reproducing. Witnessing, evangelism, reaching out to others for Christ, are hard work. If we are not clear of our faith, it can be a burden and hindrance to our comfort zone, a sign of spiritual immaturity. Reproduction is God’s way of creation – “Be fruitful & multiply”. All living things (plants, animals, organism and humans) reproduce as they mature. Then there is another group of Christians, who are not spiritually healthy. These are the one who will give up their faith at a sign of crisis or trials. We are busy Christians with our job, family, church and leave little time to make a conscious effort to reach out to our friends and colleagues. We often use the word “fear” to describe our feelings. For the older ones, we may be now “spiritual menopause” Christians.

Thank God, for this year, we started building a “women court”- a ministry for the ladies in our church, after 3 years of voicing this out in the committee. I have received some encouraging feedback from visitor. Although it is important to build up our “Holy place” and the “Holy of Holies” – worship ministry, as a church, we need to continuously enlarge our “Gentile court”, creating an environment where we feel at ease to invite friends into our midst. Are our Share Groups “non-Christian friendly”? Are our ministries meeting the needs of the community? The Church exists for the world, because Christ came for the world (John 3:16). What ministry or projects will meet these needs? A discipleship/evangelistic environment is one where the norm is to share our lives, how we live in the awareness that God is with us, with one another – to Christians by our encounter with God, to non-Christians by our testimony and Gospel. My first 3 years as a Christian was in such a discipleship environment. It was where sharing daily devotions, loving and caring for one another was the norm for a Christian community. This naturally led to witnessing for Christ. Maybe, we were young then, and also homogenous, we were all students. Can a church create such an environment? Yes, but it is difficult as we are busy Christians. I have thought of many possibilities. It is not just about providing a training evangelism program. You may want to think about it also.

We need to raise up Christians with a mindset of spiritual growth. But it can never be an individual effort. We must create an environment such that it is a norm to grow & reproduce. People must see that not to grow and bear fruit is abnormal. We have not created such an environment yet.

Let us be like a good Jew, who is taught to do 3 things in his lifetime – Write a book, plant a tree, raise a child. For me, a Christian - write my thoughts, bear spiritual fruit, raise a spiritual child.

Mark Lim