Recently, I’ve been thinking about my ministry in my church (CPBC) as well as my lifelong ministry. There’s been quite a lot of things happening in my cell ministry that’s making me understand what it’s really about, and having these things happen is also stirring me up to think about my other ministry, which I’m now calling Christian Values Media.
About a month ago, I was ordained as a cell leader, along with Huiting, to jointly lead our young adults cell, called Branches. (ref. John 15) Cell ministry is really challenging, but I’m glad I took it up… I think. And I’m especially glad that I have Huiting as a ministry partner and co-leader. I think we work well together, with complementary giftings. I provide direction and organisation and minister to the cell as a whole, she connects more and ministers to the individual cell members on a one-to-one basis. We’re starting to gel together well in our partnership and sharing, so by God’s grace we can become a really fruitful and effective ministry team for His Glory.
But still, God’s throwing several challenges our way.
We’ve got a non-Christian student from China who we met at an outreach event and who is joining our cell meetings quite regularly now. It’s kind of a struggle for me to find the heart to minister to him, because of the cultural and language differences, and also because by nature I find it difficult to reach out. I mean, it’s easy for me to be friendly and just have light chit-chat with him, but to deliberately follow up and minister to him, care for him and his spiritual growth… that’s harder. But I keep reminding myself that this is not MY ministry but God’s ministry, and it is His will, not mine, that I’m supposed to follow.
Then there’s this one rather non-participatory cell member whose father is hospitalised and whom we’re trying to invite back to cell. Huiting and I just went to the hospital to visit them last Sunday, a new experience for me. At first, I didn’t want to go, but on the way back home I kept on feeling this strong urge to go to visit her. At that time, I felt that it was the leading of the Lord, and so I went. I think I was right in sensing it, but still… this is all fairly new to me.
I’ve never really done hospital visitation before, so I guess we were both unsure of what to do. Eventually we just talked a bit with our cell member and sort of didn’t interact much with her father (who only spoke Mandarin). We actually ended up walking all the way out of the hospital before I finally got up the guts to say, “Can we please pray for you? I’m feeling very uneasy leaving without praying.” So we went off into a quiet corner and prayed for our cell member and her father.
Thank God, he’s now recovering, and has moved out of intensive care into a normal ward. And better yet, I think our cell member is starting to respond to us more and open up slightly. I mean, it’ll probably still be a long time before she’s ready to come back to cell, but at least we were able to show that we cared for her during this time. I think (I hope) God is starting to work through us. This hospital thing is the first clear experience I have as a cell leader of really trying to follow and obey God’s leading in practical ministry, so it’s a really good testimony if it turns out all right and bears fruit.
Then there’s Christian Values Media.
One good thing about having to draft version after version of articles about gaming for the VOH is that it really makes me think and rethink how Christianity and gaming are related. And I’ve come to realise that actually, they are largely unrelated. Unlike other forms of media, like music or television, film or books (or even websites, now), games are one form of media which Christianity has never really touched. At worst, Christians are on the opposite side of the fence, denouncing video games as evil. To make things worse, there are a lot of anti-Christian influences in games nowadays.
I think right now, the relationship between Christianity and video games is roughly equivalent to its relationship with rock music in the 60′s & 70′s. Parents hated it. They thought it was dangerous, it encouraged kids to rebel, and there were a lot of anti-Christian material in the rock music scene. There still is a lot of that today, but now there are Christian rock groups like DC Talk and others who are slowly bringing the message of Christ to the rock music generation. In fact, a lot of modern Australian Christian youth music has heavy rock influences – including Hillsongs United, for example.
But even so, it took around 20 to 30 years before Christianity and rock music started to merge. I’m guessing it’ll take roughly the same amount of time for Christianity and video games to accomplish the same thing. The video game is still growing and hasn’t matured yet as a medium of communication. It’ll take someone with a deep love for games as well as a deep love for God to combine these two together. God-willing, it’ll be part of my life’s ministry. But this will be the work of decades… an entire generation’s worth of work, to bear fruit in my children’s lifetimes. Am I really willing to dedicate that amount of time to it? Is it a noble goal that I can go into and spend my life upon? Will I be able to get parental and pastoral blessing upon this?
Even so, I’m struggling to start. Right now, even completing one project is going to be difficult. Continuing the rock music analogy, I’m roughly at the stage of learning how to play a few chords on the electric guitar. Even when I know how to play, most of what I’ll be playing will not be Christian music until I grow skilled and experienced enough to create my own songs.
I think, for starters, I want to complete one of the projects that I’ve left hanging for far too long – a visual short story on the delights of marriage. Wedding Vows was written nearly two years ago, but it’s been hanging about for the lack of an artist and a musician for a long time. Now I have access to both, but I’ll probably have to pay them for their work. Still… I believe it’s worth it. I want my project to be completed, and I’m willing to put my hard-earned money into the starting of my life’s ministry.
After that, we shall see. I think, since my boss wants me to propose a research project for next year’s GAMBIT, I shall start looking into what I call “empathetic games”… games which use social reasoning skills and empathy in order to play and win, rather than puzzle-solving or logical skills. If someone can create Charades or Bluff in a video game form, that would be what I’m thinking about. But this is also a step towards Christian Values Media… games which ask people to start paying attention to humans and human behaviour, instead of just treating the “humans” in the game as objects or systems to be manipulated.
If I start research now, I should be ready by March of next year.
