LPN Vision

Pastor Albert Tan

LPN (Love Penang Network) Partnership Facilitator

I am very pleased to come and share with you the LPN Vision. We had a half day program at PCC two years ago to share the vision. That was shared by the pastors but now we want to go to the grassroots level which is all of you Christians.

We are going to show you two video clips.

The first are the views from the pastors with regards to the vision of LPN and how all these churches are partners to fulfill this vision. 

The next video is a collage of some of the work by LPN including some fund raising project and how LPN was started.

Then I am going to share with you the outline of our vision.

I have been traveling to the different LPN churches to share this vision. But now we realize that we cannot impact Penang the way we have been doing it.

I am going to show you the seven spheres were we can have influence and here we need you, the Christians at grassroots level to be discipled.

The Mission that compels us. 

We sense there was a unity amongst the 7 churches so the pastors looked at "intentional discipling". The pastors are looking at discipling a specific kind of Christian. We talked amongst ourselves and felt that we need a world Christian. Not a worldly Christian but a world Christian. A world Christian is very different from a worldly Christian. A Christian that sees and have the finishing line in mind. That before Jesus comes back, every people group must know Jesus. Some in this nation is not yet reached. We want to disciple Christians who will be involved in the great commission.

Christians are amongst those that have the biggest resources. And it is sad that these resources are inward by nature. We buy more houses and store up more money. We want to disciple Christians who know how to invest this resources into God's kingdom.

We want these to not just be discipled but to also disciple others. Not from the church but from bringing in unbelievers and disciple and produce Christians who will impact the world and transform our city.

We have 5% Christians (10% in Malaysia but that's mainly in East Malaysia) and if they are not world Christians then our impact will be limited. We have Christians everywhere, as businessmen, teachers, in politics, in the government etc and these Christians are in places of influence.

How many of you have been a Christian for more than 20 years? And how many of these have a younger Christian being discipled by you? Teaching them the ropes of being a Christian? Everywhere I go there is hardly any. We expect the church to do that. More bible studies. But that is only the giving and feeding of information.

We want to start planting churches. We need to bring in unbelievers and not just reach Christians. That is like taking a fish from one aquarium and putting it into another. We need churches that is local where people don't have to travel across the island to attend. We have different churches in different places with different languages.

We have to plant churches. How many? Unlimited. We want to saturate the city with churches where we can impact the city much more. We are planting into every area a lighthouse that can be a place for the lost in this city. Even if it is a group of 40 or 50, we are happy because number is not everything as long as the Christian is being discipled well. Not every church is a 1,000 strong congregation church.

When we plant churches where the leaders have to be implanted with the DNA that we are wanting to plant more churches. The speed of expansion is going to be dramatic when we do it this way. LPN event is open to all of us so you can see how some of these churches are doing their church planting.

Jesus wants us as believers to serve together. We want to network you. We want you to meet up with other Christians in the city within the same sphere. That way we can have better impact in the city.

When we do community service we are only doing the trimming of the leaves. We are not treating the root issues. Why are there so much hurts, so many broken homes? There need to be addressed bigger issues at policy level that is not being voiced. This is what we call structural evil that needs to be looked at. Unless structural laws are set in placed, the suffering will continue, like those of the migrant workers. Where some are even oppressed by Christian business owners. God looks at injustice with anger. He came for the oppressed and the poor and the marginalized.

But we cannot do this as one church. You may not even be able to fully reach Jelutong much less Penang. We have to do it together through the seven spheres.

The great commission involves shaping the culture of the city. God wants the city to have what we call His shalom peace. These seven spheres are influences that can shape the city's culture. All seven spheres are involved.

We have to reach the unreached people group. The rural urbanization is happening now because people are moving out to the city. 70% of the population is going to be in the city. That is why it is important to reach the migrant workers.

I am going to give all of you a form where you can tick two areas where you want to be involved with the spheres. Not more than two. It is usually an area of your work but not limited to it. We will want to pool all of you within the same sphere to come together and brainstorm how you can better impact Penang through your sphere.

Here are the PowerPoint presentation by Pastor Albert