Introduction
As EFCCA marks its thirtieth anniversary, I first want to thank the church’s pastoral leadership team for its clear spiritual insight into this generation. EFCCA has recognised the spiritual needs of young people from different cultural backgrounds and has therefore felt called and burdened to establish a cross-cultural congregation.
This is not a slogan, nor is it an easy undertaking. With the existing congregations and ministries already operating steadily, establishing another congregation requires much prayer, time, and resources, and it brings many practical challenges. Because the pastoral team not only saw the need but was also willing to act through prayer, the cross-cultural congregation moved from vision to concrete planning and finally to formal approval and implementation.
The church could easily have remained comfortable with the status quo and continued doing its existing ministries well. Instead, EFCCA chose to take a courageous step forward into cross-cultural ministry. This showed me that the church’s vision extends beyond the people and ministries already established toward those who have not yet been reached. Paul said that it had always been his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known. Today, an unreached place may not be far away, and unreached people may be right beside us.
I am also deeply grateful for the many co-workers and spiritual elders in the church who are willing to invest in the younger generation. They have no family relationship with these young people, yet because there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and because we share the salvation of the cross, they willingly offer time, companionship, prayer, and their lives to support and develop them. Like Paul and Timothy, they are not father and son by blood, but through the gospel they become a spiritual father and son and pass the faith from one generation to another. Through their example, I have seen that the salvation of the cross not only reconciles people to God; it also makes people from different generations and cultures one family in Christ.
Seven Years at EFCCA, in the Boat with God
First and most importantly, I thank our Lord Jesus Christ. While we were still dead in our transgressions, He chose us and gave us a place in God’s kingdom. The Lord Jesus laid aside the glory of heaven, became flesh, took on human form, and gave Himself for our sins as the atoning sacrifice. Before the church was established, His humble and self-giving life had already set the greatest example for everyone who serves Him. As Paul writes in Romans 12:1, “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”
By the end of 2026, I will have been at EFCCA for seven full years. I thank the Lord that, after moving house and changing jobs had left me without a regular church for nearly a year, He brought me to EFCCA.
Over these seven years, I gradually moved from being an ordinary member and observer to becoming a co-worker, small-group leader, and core team member. By the many graces the Lord has given, I have also had opportunities to stand before the church, testify for Him, and share His Word. The Lord has shaped me little by little—through grace and difficulty, through ministry and relationships. He has taught me what service, offering, and spiritual family mean, continually changing and blessing my life through these experiences.
In Scripture, the number seven often suggests completeness, and Solomon also took seven years to build the temple. Looking back, my own life is far from finished after these seven years, but I am grateful that God has been building my spiritual life step by step so that He may possess more of me and use me more fully. Many unreached places still remain within my own life: areas that need to change, lessons still to learn, and spiritual wildernesses through which I must continue to walk with the Lord. In the next seven years, I hope to remain willing to be possessed by God and to let Him continue illuminating, pruning, and building me, bringing me further out of darkness into light, into deeper experience of Him and greater usefulness in His hands.
During these seven years, I have also faced difficulties, challenges, and spiritual battles. Yet by the Lord’s grace, I have been upheld and brought through them again and again. Before I believed, I imagined that walking with the Lord would mean life would no longer contain so many difficulties. Later I came to understand that walking with Him does not mean God removes every storm. It means that while we remain in this world and continue to face trouble, the Lord places His peace, hope, and joy within us.
I often compare life with the Lord to the disciples’ experience of sharing a boat with Jesus. Having the Lord in the boat does not mean there will be no storms at sea; it means that when the storm comes, He is still in the boat. Sometimes one word from Him calms the storm. At other times, the waves do not stop immediately, our lives keep rocking, and like the disciples we become afraid and distressed—people of little faith.
Yet again and again, the Lord has given me peace in different ways and reminded me that He still reigns. As Psalm 29 says, “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood; the LORD is enthroned as King forever.” The storm may continue, but the God who reigns never changes. Looking back over these seven years, my greatest thanksgiving is not that life has been free from storms, but that I know I am not alone in the boat. The Lord is with me. Even when the waves remain, I can depend on Him and continue forward in peace.
Moved by the Lord, Working with the Lord
For me, participating in the cross-cultural congregation has also been a process of God changing me through prayer—from initial confusion, disagreement, and even unwillingness to participate, to a willingness to obey and learn to work with the Lord.
When I first heard that EFCCA had a vision to establish a cross-cultural congregation, I felt little personal conviction. When I later learned that the young adults fellowship would also need to participate, my first response was disagreement and confusion.
During my years as a core co-worker and small-group leader in the young adults fellowship, I saw firsthand how God led it to grow—from about ten people when I joined four years ago to more than thirty on many occasions, and sometimes more than forty. Even more encouraging, many recent newcomers have been seekers or brothers and sisters who had been baptised but were not yet regularly participating in church life. Seeing the fellowship grow both numerically and spiritually, I naturally wondered: if everything is going so well, why change now? Why add another ministry and more challenges?
Looking back, I realise how easily I had become satisfied with what was already good. God kept reminding me that the gifts, opportunities, and harvest fields He gives us are not meant to be protected while we remain where we are. In the parable of the talents, Jesus calls us to use faithfully what He has entrusted to us. Paul also writes that he had not yet taken hold of the goal, but was forgetting what was behind, straining toward what was ahead, and pressing on. His eyes remained fixed on places where the gospel had not been established: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known.” Paul did not remain where earlier ministry had already borne fruit; he looked farther ahead and even planned to travel to Spain. Through these words, God asked me: where are today’s unreached places and unreached people? Where is our Spain?
Through prayer, personal devotions, and fellowship life, God gradually allowed me to see the answer.
In conversations with newcomers, I often heard why they were willing to attend a small group every week but rarely joined Sunday worship. They valued the fellowship because discussion, sharing, and questions helped them engage with the Bible and explore faith. But for some young people who were new to Christianity and did not yet have deep foundations in truth, the message, format, and expression of a traditional Sunday service could still feel distant.
These conversations slowly changed my perspective. I began to understand that the cross-cultural congregation was not created simply to offer a different kind of gathering, nor to replace existing pastoral care. It seeks to build another bridge for young people who otherwise find church life difficult to enter—so they can understand, come in, and ultimately take root in Christ.
God was changing more than my view of a ministry model; He was changing the way I viewed service itself. At first I asked, “Why do we have to change?” Later I began to ask, “What do these young people truly need, and how can we help them come before God?”
I would not compare my experience with Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus, but the picture of opened eyes often reminds me that God’s plan is not usually what needs to change; God first needs to change my vision. I therefore began sharing these insights with other co-workers and thinking and planning together about how to support the establishment of the cross-cultural congregation.
Of course, this process of obedience did not happen all at once. I still had many uncertainties, questions, and areas where I did not want to change. One practical struggle was why the cross-cultural congregation would meet on Saturday. We were accustomed to Sunday worship, while Saturday was often treated as personal time for friends, rest, and recreation. I naturally wondered why our familiar way of life had to change.
During morning prayer one day, we happened to read Matthew 12, where Jesus passed through the grainfields on the Sabbath and His disciples picked heads of grain. The Pharisees focused on established rules and forms, but Jesus redirected attention to God’s true purpose and declared, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
That passage challenged me deeply. It did not simply tell me that a Saturday gathering was right; it made me ask again whether I was defending God’s purpose or merely a familiar practice. Sometimes “This is how I have always done it” slowly becomes “This is how it must be done.” But if a new arrangement can help more people come before God, am I willing to set aside some convenience and habit for the gospel and for the spiritual needs of others?
Throughout this process, I also came to understand more deeply how Moses may have felt when he was called. In Exodus 3–4, God called Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, but Moses did not immediately answer courageously. He voiced concern after concern: “Who am I?” He worried that the people would not believe him and said that he was slow of speech. Yet God did not abandon Moses because of his hesitation. In response to his inadequacy, God said, “I will be with you.” In response to his fears, God gave signs; in response to his limitations, God provided Aaron to work alongside him.
I see the same pattern in myself. Faced with a ministry I have never done before, I have many moments of not knowing what to do, thinking something is unsuitable, or asking why it must be done this way. But God did not require me to understand every question before beginning to obey. He led me step by step, changing my heart in prayer and using His Word, co-workers around me, and real needs to make His work increasingly clear.
Looking back, I am grateful that God did not simply agree with my original thinking and allow me to remain in familiar and comfortable territory. Through serving in the cross-cultural congregation, He taught me to move from disobedience toward asking, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” I increasingly understand that working with the Lord does not mean comprehending all His leading from the beginning. Often only after we are willing to obey and take the first step do we gradually discover that God has already gone ahead of us.
Serving Together, Building with One Heart
While preparing the cross-cultural congregation, we also witnessed much of God’s grace. I increasingly believe that God’s calling together of people with different backgrounds, personalities, and gifts—and teaching us to serve together—was itself one of the great graces of the preparation process.
The disciples Jesus called also came from very different backgrounds. Some were fishermen and one was a tax collector; they had different personalities and experiences. These people would not naturally have walked together, but because they encountered the same Lord and received His call, they set aside their former paths and began learning to follow Him.
Their following was not free from doubt. The disciples became afraid, showed little faith, and grew weak when they could not see the way ahead. After Jesus was crucified, they even scattered for a time. But the risen Lord appeared to them repeatedly. On the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Peter again experienced a familiar scene: after working all night and catching nothing, he obeyed one word from the Lord and brought in a net full of fish. It was as though he had returned to his first calling. There the Lord restored Peter, asked him three times, “Do you love me?” and entrusted him again with the care of His flock.
The disciples later proclaimed the gospel boldly not because they were naturally braver than others, but because they had truly encountered the risen Lord and experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. This grace enabled people who had once been afraid and doubtful to offer themselves and even pay with their lives for the gospel.
I believe the same is true of every co-worker serving in the cross-cultural congregation today. We did not come together because we were already fully prepared, but because each of us had experienced God’s grace and therefore wanted to respond to His call by offering our time, gifts, and lives.
When different people truly begin serving together, difference brings more than complementary gifts; it can also bring misunderstanding and friction. We may misread one another because we see issues differently, communicate differently, or carry different burdens for the direction of ministry, and sometimes people are hurt. I am grateful that God did not allow these differences to become reasons for separation. Instead, He used them to teach us humility, listening, and acceptance. I learned to apologise when I had acted poorly, to seek reconciliation when distance arose, and to return with others to God when opinions differed so that together we could seek His true will.
Looking back, I realise that before the cross-cultural congregation had even begun, God was already doing a work of crossing over among the co-workers—teaching different people to understand one another, turning misunderstanding into communication, leading hurt toward reconciliation, and transforming difference into partnership.
I gradually learned that unity does not mean the absence of difference; it means remaining willing to return to Christ in the midst of difference. Being of one heart does not mean everyone thinks exactly the same; it means we are all willing to lay ourselves down and let God change us so that we continue together for the same gospel and mission. Often what truly establishes a ministry is not only sound planning and execution, but God first forming a people who can love, forgive, and support one another.
I especially want to thank every young co-worker who has invested in the cross-cultural congregation. Everyone has work, study, family, and personal commitments and could have kept that time for themselves. Yet for a shared vision they offered many evenings, weekends, and hours that otherwise belonged to them. Some prepare worship, some handle technology, some plan programmes, some care for newcomers, and others pray, prepare, and serve quietly in places few people see.
What each of us does may seem limited, but when God gathers these limited offerings, they become vessels He can use. The opportunity to serve with this team is itself a gift of grace from God.
Of course, throughout discussion and preparation we often hold different views. A new ministry brings many questions without ready-made answers, and each one must be discussed, tested, and implemented. I often worry about how a ministry should develop, how plans should be carried out, whether progress will be delayed, or whether we will make mistakes—sometimes enough to lose sleep.
Yet through this process God continually reminds me: this is not my ministry; it is His.
The psalm says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” We must prepare carefully and fulfil our responsibilities, but God is the One who truly builds the church. Much of my anxiety comes from unknowingly taking on responsibilities that belong to God, as though every decision must remain under my control and everything must be completed according to my timetable.
Again and again, God teaches me to do faithfully what I can and entrust to Him what I cannot control. God may not work according to my timing or method, but He is never late. He knows when to open doors, when to prepare people, and when to bring something to fulfilment.
Preparing the cross-cultural congregation has therefore been more than learning how to begin a new ministry. It has taught me how to work with different people, how to pray amid uncertainty, and how to trust the Lord who truly builds His church when matters are beyond my control.
Crossing Cultures, Breaking Down Barriers
Looking back over these seven years and the experience of preparing the cross-cultural congregation, I increasingly see that God often intends not only to establish a ministry, but first to build the people who participate in it. Through storms He taught me to share the boat with the Lord; through prayer He changed my disobedience and taught me to work with Him; through brothers and sisters with different backgrounds, personalities, and gifts, He taught us to accept, forgive, and complement one another as we walk together in His will.
The barriers a cross-cultural congregation must cross are therefore not limited to language and culture. We must also cross distances of age, differences in upbringing, habits and traditions, and even the walls within us that say, “I am not used to this,” “I do not understand this,” or “I do not want to change.”
Paul says that Christ “has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” The gospel of the cross breaks down division, reconciles people to God, and reconciles people to one another. Cross-cultural should therefore be more than the name of a congregation; it should become the lived response of everyone transformed by the gospel.
May God use the cross-cultural congregation to move us beyond waiting for others to enter the church and lead us to go toward them. May we walk not only with people who resemble us but also draw near to those whose language, culture, age, and background differ from ours. Because of the same gospel, may we cross cultures, break down barriers, and become bridges connecting people with Christ. In Christ, what makes us one family is never a shared culture, but the same Saviour.
Finally, I again thank every pastor, leader, co-worker, and young person who has invested in the cross-cultural congregation. Today’s gathering exists because you were willing to deny yourselves and offer time, energy, prayer, and giving. I sincerely thank God for your service.
Along the way, God has provided many brothers and sisters who support and accompany one another in spiritual life and ministry. Since He has led us this far, I believe He will continue to give sufficient grace and make the cross-cultural congregation a channel in His hands—reaching more young people from different cultural backgrounds in Auckland so that they may encounter Christ, know Christ, follow Christ, and truly experience the grace of being called “out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
Looking back over the past seven years, I thank God for teaching me to share the boat with the Lord. Today I also thank Him for the opportunity to work with the Lord. May we do more than establish a gathering called cross-cultural; may we truly become people willing to step beyond ourselves for the gospel, move toward others, and engage this generation.
May we continue in the boat with the Lord and continue working with Him. May every brother and sister in the cross-cultural congregation be joined together by the same Saviour, cross cultures and break down barriers for the same gospel, courageously engage this generation, bear witness to Christ, and let more people see the work of God’s grace and power through the transformation of our lives.