Happy Chinese New Year! As we begin a new year, we need to be aware that 2024 represents a year of challenges and opportunities. As ORPC seeks to build a Disciple-Making Church (DMC) and take on the Alteration and Addition (A&A) project, we need to earnestly seek God for the future direction of the church.
I’m no futurologist! I do not know what the future has in store for us. But our God, who is sovereign and unchanging, knows the future. As a leader of the church, my job is to prepare the church for the future. A top priority is for the church to mobilize God’s people and to equip them to become discipleship group leaders, deacons, and elders.
A Chinese proverb states, “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, train people.” When it comes to planning for the future, I think of James’ strong admonition in James 4:13-14, “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.”
How can church leaders, who have been entrusted with equipping God’s people for service, make plans for the future—3, 5, 10 years from now—when we do not even know what will happen later today? Of course, we know that James is not opposed to believers making plans for the future. What he opposes is for Christians to leave God out of his rightful place in the planning process. James calls Christians to make plans with one foundational thought permeating everything: “if God wills.” We are to seek God and his will in all that we do. James’ specific words are, “Instead, you ought to say, if it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this and that” (4:15).
It is quite clear that we must acknowledge human limitation in planning, since we do not know what tomorrow will hold. We must also acknowledge our human mortality, since only if he wills, will we even live. Nevertheless, with that in mind, we still are to plan to do “this or that.” So as we move forward into an unknown future, let us do so with strong faith and faithfulness. Let us seek God who is sovereign, all wise, and all-loving of his creation.
The ingredient for success in planning is not to focus on human ingenuity or wisdom but to seek the sovereign God, who knows the past, present, and future.