This Wednesday at 10am., I met the Nepali Pastor Govinda for a one-on-one meditation seminar at a McDonald’s in Croydon. I translated the study material into English and shared the content from Week 1. Govinda participated very enthusiastically, and we enjoyed our time together so much that we lost track of time. During the week, I realized it would be more convenient to provide the materials in Nepali, so I recreated the workbook in Nepali. Following the usual format of the meditation seminar, we are now posting our daily meditation notes together in our group chat. For the first four weeks, we will meet for teaching sessions and small-group meetings, and then for the following four weeks we will continue posting meditation notes until the practice becomes a natural habit.
After completing this process, Pastor Govinda plans to teach the members of his Nepali church. If there are church members who follow the process well, I plan to give them copies of QTin as gifts. This is because Pastor Kim Yang-jae previously gave a missions offering specifically to be used for QTin. I also plan to pass this training on to Missionary Anil, who leads a Nepali church in Birmingham, so that their church can adopt the same practice.
If this is successfully passed on to people of other nations as well, I would like to try it with key local pastors in India. I heard that around twenty key leaders gather for one week each month for training. If I can teach this to them, I believe many local churches will also be firmly established in God’s Word. There is probably no more effective form of discipleship than pastors interpreting Scripture every day and applying it to their own lives.
During my 19 years of ministry at God’s Vision Church, many of the young adults who came stayed only for a short time, so it was difficult to plan long-term training programs. Now, however, more young adults and older adults are staying long-term, creating a need for a systematic discipleship process. The meditation seminar became the first step in meeting that need. Even when studying the Bible, people typically gather once a week to study a single assigned passage. Meditation, however, is practiced every day. That means people engage with a much larger portion of Scripture while applying it deeply to their personal lives. I became convinced that there is no better form of spiritual training than this.
Thirty people completed the first seminar, and the second seminar is currently being conducted in two rounds for more than forty cell leaders, including additional supplementary sessions. I continue to update both the course materials and the teaching method, and I feel that the depth of the program grows with every cycle. We will take a break during August, and beginning in September we plan to continue offering the meditation seminar to the entire church.
Next year, I also plan to create a new discipleship training course that will be offered primarily to those who have completed the meditation seminar. Originally, I intended to build up biblical knowledge first before beginning discipleship training. However, I changed that plan because I came to believe that experiencing the transforming power of the gospel in one’s actual life is more important than first accumulating biblical knowledge. Once people experience God’s abundant grace, I believe a desire for deeper biblical knowledge will naturally follow.
Aside from the leaders, I have had few opportunities to meet personally with many church members. Through this discipleship process, I hope to meet many of them directly and raise up fellow workers who will pursue together the vision the Lord has given our church, just as the thirty-three mighty warriors helped establish David’s kingdom. My hope is for God’s Vision Church to become a church that is firmly grounded in God’s Word within its community while boldly carrying out ministry beyond its walls. I hope we’ll have many opportunities to meet together!
