Woohoo, just got my L yesterday, it was a 2nd attempt, the 1st one was done abt 1 or 2 years ago, and I failed it.. The need for the licence is greater now since I now actually have money to buy a car :> 2 years ago, I was trying to get the licence just for the sake of having it..
Anyway, that means i would need to start practicing soon and find a 2nd hand Camry to buy..

Just had a swimming session today with FL, the guy that’s been meeting up with me for bible studies. Came to a revelation that my body is really out of shape, I no longer can do laps without rests, my body is now aching all over the place, sore eyes because of forgetting to bring my googles. But it was a refreshing experience, unigym’s pool is better than the last time I went there (a year or more ago)..
Had di
er for farewelling Vivi, she’s a lovely girl, someone who is just easy to talk to anytime any topic.. quite sad thinking that she’s leaving as we thought that she might be girl worth watching (well she has a degree in theology) because she was quite enthusiastic with her faith. Dont know her very well, so not affecting me too much emotionally. I do wish that she will come back, hopefully she can help out with indo church.. I hope that she will not making decisions based on her career stuffs (ok same goes for me)..
And then of course the upsetting conversation with the brother on the previous entry.. I will do an online driver licence test after this pouring out of emotion, I want to get a Learner’s licence this week, so that I can start driving soon..

Was deeply dissapointed and hurt by a brother today. I was telling one of my brothers that I am both working and studying, and I implied that I am happy with the job that I am doing right now. Out of nowhere, this other brother jumped in the conversation and asked me “are you kidding? come on.. get real, are you REALLY happy?”.. I was caught off guard, felt like snapping back at him, but it was in front of other brothers.. I think he basically just wanted to say “don’t be satisfied with this job, don’t give up, keep on looking for your dream job”.n Continue reading →

BRB here isn’t Be Right Back but it stands for Bible Reading Buddies. Well, it’s really not a new idea, just realised that I’ve done it with
Ongy before and Pelita guys there was this thing called MRB (Men Reading Books) which is similar to what I have in mind, but the aim is to encourage men to read christians book (by the way, MRB until this moment is just an initiative.. it never actually happened.. sigh).

BRB is very simple, basically it just getting two christians or more to meet together andread the bible.

Ideally, it would look like this:
1. Done in a short time, say meet once or twice a week, read a passage for 1/2 hour, thus not much commitment needed -> greater flexibility to fit with busy students/workers schedule.
2. No one needs to prepare the meeting (no leader). Less preparation -> less committment.
3. Read one bible book (not jumping around chapters of the bible). The two needs to decide beforehand what they want to read.
4. Some basic questions to answer: what’s the main point, what can we learn for our life, is there any encouragement for us etc2… simple questions, that don’t need too much time to think.

Objectives:
1. Get christians (most likely new christians) into the habit of reading the bible for themselves. A new x-an guy told me that he likes to read the bible with other people, but he finds it a struggle to read it by himself. For this kind of person, HOPEFULY he will see that reading bible is not hard (dont need a leader to always tell him what’s right or wrong) nor boring and be encouraged to read the bible himself.
2. Putting into practice “how to read the bible for yourselves”, as we are trained to do that in bible studies and church.
3. Build relationship with the buddies.
4. More exposure to the Word of God (too much is never enough in this case :))

Oh! For pelita people, so whatever happened to:
1. MRB (Men Reading Books)
2. Inviting friends to a couple of dinners with other pelitans in order to invite them to an evangelical dinner?
3. There was a men-only breakfast meetings with bible study.. it’s also gone without a trace.. I forgot what is it called..

Been thinking about church budgetting for some times, last nite’s Focus Team about Giving has prompted me to write on this issue, apparently I am not the first one as Victor has just made en entry on this.

Say if we view church as just like any other companies/organisations, then what is our position in the company or are we the consumer who get service from the church. If we are the customer then giving can be seen as we “pay” for the service that church has provided. However the biblical model of us being a church member is that we are partners in the gospel, thus using the illustration that church being a company, we are the stockholders, we invest our money (among other things) in hoping that the kingdom will be furthered in this world.

This leads me to the next point, if I am a stockholder in IUC (or CBS), am I happy with the performance of the church financially? To be honest, no, I am not, it’s kinda discouraging, to be hearing budget deficits over and over again, I guess with IUC is sort of expected (as I am well aware of the student giving pattern..) but with CBS, it’s just come out of the nowhere.. suddenly being hit by a letter, emails and a phone call asking for support.. Is it really that bad and why there is “suddenly” a deficit (or it’s just me who isn’t aware of the situation til now), is this deficit was expected before (as with the case of IUC) or not?

I cannot help to think that maybe the staffs need to bugdet “wiser”?? Or do we need to hire an independet accounting team to have a look at IUC/CBS’s finance?? Or maybe we can cut cost at some things??

Surely the printed outline is the first thing that we can do without (although I am not sure whether it costs a lot to print outlines), I mean students take notes on their own sheets right? And there are many people not taking notes during sermon as well, so putting the outline on the OHP might be sufficient.

IUC is planning to at least bring aboard three fulltime workers in the future, one for women ministry, one for indonesian ministry and one for the cantonese ministry. I truly see the enormous need of having these three ministers in our church, but I am now getting more skeptical in our ability to support them.. I would expect rigourous fund raising campaigns are needed..

Ohh.. I don’t know, I suppose God will provide.. but just frustating, you increase your giving, but the budget is also increasing, therefore deficit is just expected to carry on.. but until when? When would we have a budget surplus for IUC? Or maybe a budget surplus is not good as that means we are not expanding (being passive).. One thing for sure, I don’t ever want to be the church treasurer (sorry Arnold :)), it must be very stressful job to have..

Maybe the partners in the church should think on what we can do about the financial situation? Or maybe, we just need to buy more “stocks” to keep the our company floating..