Some of you may remember that this is about time of the year when we have Mission Festival. That is true. SBC used to have the event around the first week or the second week of November. However, this schedule will be changed. Last July, we had mission ministry meeting. Many issues were discussed and it was proposed that it would be better to have Mission Festival in early February rather than November. That proposal was accepted and it will be in place from this year. Therefore, mission festival will be February 5th through 7th of 2016.
There were several reasons for this change. First of all, it is not easy to form short term mission teams in November since the majority of mission trips will be during the summer of the next year. Also, it is difficult to identify mission locations due to the extended lag in timing. For the same reason, it is not easy to formulate the ministry work and set up plans. This imposes difficulty in preparing poster session for the festival. Many members who make mission commitment have difficulty to decide where to go since trip itself will be 8 to 9 month later. From the church’s point of view, for many months there is no care or procedure for those who made mission commitment and by the time when the mission education is offered, participants’ passion for mission during the festival could be considerably cooled down.
On the other hand, when mission festival is offered in February, it is much easier to prepare poster session since the location and the ministry activities are almost in place. Then, for the members who make commitment, it is easier to decide where to go since they have better idea what they will be doing. When the mission festival is over, mission education can be offered right away and each mission team can start having their small group sessions also. All those are the benefit of changing the timing of the event.
With this change, it would be fitting to move the annual revival to the later part of the year. After some consideration, it was decided that the first week of September is the best. That is the time when SBC starts new fiscal year. Therefore, with revival, we can start new period with new resolution. Also, it will be perfect time since many people returns from summer vacation and start anew this latter part of the year. One thing is that the next Monday is Labor Day holiday. However, based on the previous attendance record, there is not much difference in attendance during the Labor Day holiday. Maybe because many just returned from vacation and they do not go out of town again. Therefore, after the revival, Monday can be a day of rest…
The reason that each house church supports missionary and the name of house church is based on the name of the mission location is to emphasize that mission is not a special activity for special people, but everybody needs to be involved in mission and it needs to be part of our lives as our Lord gave us the great commission. Korea is especially indebted to missionaries from other countries during the modernization process. Therefore, it is my prayer to establish a culture where we all participate in short term mission trips and if possible, all house church members will visit their missionaries in their mission field.
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