I personally meditate every day. It all started in my first year of university when a staff member of a missionary organisation gave me a Bible meditation book as a birthday gift. He visited the university once a week to teach the Bible, but he made sure to share his own reflection notes before study. Now that I think about it, he taught me how to meditate on a one-to-one basis.
From then until the end of 4th year, I continued to reflect on the Bible and even through life as a minister, I still meditate every day. For me, this meditation habit has been a great asset in teaching and preaching the Bible.
Looking back, I realised I preached the Bible itself a lot but not as much on how to reflect and meditate from the reading. After attending a pastor seminar last year, I started to look back on my meditation habits and found some new changes which I would like to share with the church through a meditation seminar starting in February.
The sermons I have been giving since the end of last year have been based on important principles of Bible meditation. However, through the seminars, you will also learn the attitudes you should have when meditating and the principles you need to interpret the reading. The meditation I expect is personal worship where personal encounters with God can take place. Listening to the voice he speaks to me, repenting for turning toward him wholeheartedly, and experiencing practical changes in life through concrete obedience every day, rather than ending with just mere thoughts.
The meditation seminars will be held four times on Saturday in Central and Thursday in Wimbledon, and will have about two and a half hour sessions. There will be two 30-40 minutes of lectures and a small group meeting to follow. Not only will you listen to the lectures, but you will have time to practice what you learn that day in a group of 3 members. Even after the 4-week seminar, each group will continue to share reflection notes for a month to help make it a habit.
If we manage to repeat these seminars every quarter, I hope to have completed 4 sessions in a year. Pastor Hyungmin Kim and I will join as leaders together with 3 group leaders. So, we plan to recruit a total number of 30 people, 15 each from Central and Wimbledon. I will also find leaders among those who have completed the seminar to help with the next so we can take on more people.
Thereafter, when we have more than 100 people to complete the seminars, the next step will be to start a Bible study centring on them. The meeting intends to teach important Bible-related content, and when more people have completed this, I intend to start training disciples to experience the ability of the gospel. There will aways be meditation in all these processes. I hope that our church will be complete with the Scripture this year.
