the New Covenant Church – Page 2

Tag: the New Covenant Church

Update on the New Covenant Church, Petaling Jaya

17 September 2012 blogpastor 4 Comments

It was a good time of catching up with the founder of The New Covenant Church, Pastor Peter Sze. It’s been some time since I wrote about the church that I have tracked since it opened its doors almost 3 years ago. Here are some interesting and amazing facts about the new church in Petaling Jaya.

It is the fastest growing church in Malaysia. Starting with a few families and some friends it has multiplied and having maxed out their previous sanctuary, they recently expanded and leased a whole third floor besides the floor they were at.

Despite its size there are no full time pastors or administrative staff. Everyone chips in as they best can, including the pastor, who holds a busy managing director’s post in a Malaysian multi-national company.

The pastor was a Methodist lay leader who has “been there, done that” in every charismatic wave from spiritual gifts, church growth, worship, to prayer warfare, and missions and cell group system, etc. What finally liberated and gained a permanent grip of him was the message of grace which he first heard from Joseph Prince’s tapes. They ran with the message but at the same time made it uniquely theirs.

There is no personality cult and the pastor is a level headed, humble, unassuming and wise leader who also welcomes and allows others with gifts and maturity to help in the task of serving God’s Word and His people. He has built a strong team of preachers and teachers of grace.

He is discerning and wary of doing church the way he used to, having seen the futile and frustrating fruit of human-reliant efforts. So he observes the motions of grace and life in the congregation and facilitates their expressions, rather than imitate whatever is currently popular in the conference circuit, or merely adopt best practices of bigger churches. “Want to” instead of “have to” is one such sign of such movements of grace within the church. The church is growing naturally and organically and at a pace that does not become a yoke of burden.

The church does not teach tithing and believes that it is part of the Old Covenant but believes that new covenant giving comes out of gratitude and overflowing life and the amount given should be as a person decides in his own heart. There are no offering bags passed around but there are boxes located at different parts of the facility for those who wish to give.

They teach the Bible systematically in their services working through books of the Bible or topical themes and highlighting and explaining how the texts point to Christ, the new covenant and the grace of God.

They have informally networked with many other “grace-based” churches in Malaysia and are helping a network of churches in Jakarta, in addition to their partnership with Cambodia’s Barnabas Mam’s church planting movement.

You can read my other reports on the new covenant church in these links:

Jun 2010 report

Jan 2011 report

April 2011 report

The New Covenant Church: this is how church is meant to be

12 April 2011 blogpastor 8 Comments

Grace happenings

Pastor Peter welcomed me warmly with a dinner on Friday evening at Duck Inn- a place where the lowly duck has gone four stars. Eusoffe and Joey and he regaled me with story after story of how God had been at work in the New Covenant Church. Changed lives, healings, answered prayers, and marriages in reconciliation. The last time I was here was January, but the stories they told animatedly were mostly fresh. From 8 we talked, or rather they talked and I wah-ed, till 10. A distinct thought came to mind – This is what church is meant to be. There should be wondrous grace happenings that are not cooked up by human shoving and whipping. Where Jesus was exalted, and the actors felt they were privileged to be in the front row to watch what God had done. This is what church is meant to be: people focused on what God was doing and not on what the church was lacking.

More grace happenings

The next day, Simon Yap brought me out for lunch. We wanted to eat from a famous K.L. “all black” Hokkien mee stall, but it was closed. As it turned out, we had food to eat that was better: stories of faith and God’s grace in action. He shared his journey and some interesting grace happenings that took place some years ago and some as recent as a week ago. Ahh…another immersion in wonder. God’s grace is amazing. Again I thought, This is what church is meant to be. Exciting. Christ-exalting. No one taking the glory. Believers who were deeply satisfied and caught up in one lovely surprise after another. When I sensed a “cloud” of his presence settled, I told him- I want to be alone to process this and spend some time with the Lord.

Sitting quiet in the bible college apartment, I whispered – Lord, this is what church is meant to be. This is what church is meant to be.

Bow bent, string drawn

The rest of the day was spent to order the thoughts for the message for the church on Sunday. What have I to say to these people who seem to be experiencing the early showers of a book of Acts downpour. I was too smart to have accepted this invitation, I thought. Should have told Peter I was on sabbatical, period. However, by evening, all was ready, and the bow was bent, and the string was drawn.

Sunday, Facebook, and healing

At Sunday breakfast, Peter was sharing a pastoral case, as he didn’t want me to get the wrong idea that there were no problems. Being with the New Covenant Church was comfortable because I was there before and because of Facebook. Wanted to see friends I had added, but wondered if I would recognize them if they had not introduced themselves. As it happened, I could not.

The praise and music had progressed and there seemed to be an enriched sense of God’s presence. The worship leader, Karen, was with it, and in it, and caught up in Him. This was followed by holy communion, which they served every Sunday. Later Chermaine testified how she had been suffering from chronic pain after giving birth to her child twelve years ago. The piercing pain would shoot down her back to her legs occasionally when she stood up. One night she was prayed for and she felt a lasting warmth on her back. After a few days she discovered she was completely well and could even jump about for joy. It was no small thing for her to be set free completely.

Baptized in the Father’s Love

The title of the sermon I preached was “Baptized in the Father’s Love” and I dwelt on two key passages: Mark’s account of Jesus baptism, and Zephaniah’s famous 3:17-

“The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you in His love, He will rejoice over you with singing”.

It was a gradual build up, and their warm response to what I was saying, and the anointing, lifted me beyond self-consiousness, and I felt the message was getting through. I told the Sunday morning crowd, which seemed fuller than three months ago, This is what church is meant to be: where grace happenings fall like gentle rain week after week. We ended up with a beautiful response: we stood and worshipped, and the Lord soaked us in His love.

E-book

They served lunch every Sunday and I caught up with the people I knew like Aileen Tan, Billy, Simon and Alex. Talked for quite some time with Billy, an entrepreneur who had just recently ventured in an online business. What perked my interest was that he had already been selling an e-book and audio book online for some time, and I found out more. Lord give me an idea for an e-book.

the New Covenant Church in KL- from strength to strength

11 January 2011 blogpastor 15 Comments

In about one year, the New Covenant Church, in Kuala Lumpur has outgrown the premises at Atria Shopping Centre and has moved to the Wisma TA on the 1.1.11. They seem to have nearly doubled in six months.

The improvements were visible and audible. The four forbidding video cameras, the mood-shifting lighting, the projection systems and the understated tasteful interior. So has the music, with a worship leader with stage presence, and bold and anointed vocals. These certainly increases the appeal of this church to working young adults. And there were visibly more of them than six months ago.

Saw some familiar faces from Facebook and my previous visit. It was nice just to meet Simon Yap, and catch up with Alex and Karen. This church preaches the gospel of grace but has many “law”-yers. Alex remarked that since experiencing God’s radical grace, he has been more excited, blessed, more active in ministry, and gave more than he had ever in his whole Christian life. Talking about giving, this church does not pass offering bags around and nobody is paid. There are offering boxes around, but giving is a low key thing. Even when they needed more than RM$600,000 to move to this new premises the amount was raised within three weeks without much drumbeating.

The message blessed my heart. It was pastor Barnabas Mam from Cambodia who gave a verse by verse expository message on New Covenant transformation. It was enlightening, helpful, inspiring. Interwoven into the explanations and catchy outline were stories from the church planting fruitfulness of Cambodian indigenous church planters trained and supported by the institute, and regularly supported by the New Covenant Church through teaching teams and finances.

Later, we had a relaxed sharing over coffee with pastor Peter and his daughter, Joey. Barnabas was amiable, perceptive and unassuming in person despite his stature as one of the notable leaders of the Cambodian Church. Peter and I talked quite a bit about the church. When asked about what caused the recent growth spurt, he replied that it was God’s grace. Whatever humanly analysed factors you deduced would be of no use if not for the grace of God. In another place or time, with the very same factors present, the growth may never materialise. He was concerned that tNCC became a community, not just a large collection of individuals. He felt that’s an important element in any church that preaches the gospel of grace. That also came across strongly in the course lectures and interactions in class about making disciples I had been attending. The culture in a Christian community is so strong it influences and shapes the groups and individuals in the church: it disciples them.

The extended four generations Sze family celebrated the one year birthday of Esaias at a country club. Well my timing was good. Four nights confined in a hostel room reading and doing my assignments had made me shamelessly bold. So I joined them for makan and they later graciously sent me back to Kuang, not Kluang, not Klang, but Kuang.

Now driving me back was something because Kuang, as I now know, is not part of Kuala Lumpur, but is a town north of the city. The Malaysian Bible Seminary bought over this country farm/golf club and it is located in an ulu kampong area (countryside) that needed three Szes, a Volkswagon and an iPad to locate. The daughter Suzanne was driving to spare the tired father; her husband, Yew Juan was navigating with the iPad; and Peter should have stayed home to rest, but accompanied me. So how do you think it made me feel? I wasn’t even the preacher! Like the labourers in the vineyard who came to work late but got the same wages, I got what I did not deserve.

“Should I feel guilty or what?”, I asked Peter. “Just be grateful to the Lord”.

And I was, as I laid my head on the stiff pillow at 1am that night.