Edmonton Chinese Christian Choir

The 8th Annual Heart and Art Worship and Music Training
Act Justly, Love Mercy, Live out Worship

Summary And Sharing

◊ The vision of "Act Justly, Love Mercy, Live out Worship"
◊ Highlights of Training Program
◊ Community Serving Activities

Team 1: Serve meals at Mustard Seed
Team 2: Social issues walk and prayer walk in Downtown
Team 3: Serving hospital patients through music
Team 4: Visiting seniors
◊ Feedback from participants
◊ "If God's people pray" – Citywide Prayer Meeting
◊ Next Steps

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The vision of "Act Justly, Love Mercy, Live out Worship"

The 8th Annual Heart and Art Worship and Music Training was held on August 25-29, 2010. During the training week, 50 brothers and sisters from different churches gathered together to learn and serve. This annual training program was first developed in 2003 to educate worship leaders on their "Heart" and "Art" qualities in the area of worship and church music. ( More Training Photos)

When we started to plan for this year's training program, God challenged us with a question: "If worship stops on Sunday and stays within a church building, is that acceptable by God?" From Micah 6:6-8, we know that the requirement of worship that pleases God is how we live our life. Micah said what God does not need more physical offerings, but for us to act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with Him. Based on this passage, we decided to set this year's training theme to be "Act Justly, Love Mercy, Live out Worship".

We wanted to encourage Christians to extend their worship life beyond Sundays and into the community. Imagine if everyone in the Edmonton's Chinese Christian Community all join hands and "Act Justly and Love Mercy" in the community, it will bring amazing impacts. But this is not an easy task, and cannot be accomplished through handful of people only, it takes the whole Chinese Christian Community to make a difference. Therefore, the Edmonton Chinese Christian Choir hoped to establish a platform through this year's training program to mobilize brothers and sisters to join in this mission.

Highlights of Training Program

During the first main talk session, Rev. Roy Berkenbosch started by asking the question: "Does our worship lead us into a fuller appreciation that the God whom we worship is a God who loves justice, and does our worship call men and women into a deeper passion for, and commitment to the pursuit of justice?" Roy continued to say that worship and justice belong together. In fact, worship without justice is not authentic and is not acceptable to God.
At the same time, true Christian worship is necessary to help form obedient justice seeking disciples of God.

So what is Justice? Justice is the way that God's goodness is structured into the social, political, economic (and environmental) order of things.
The justice that God loves is restorative justice – healing justice, saving justice – restoring people in all their relationships, with each other, with God, with creation, so that shalom that rich Hebrew word that means the harmonious relations that God intended for the whole world can be recovered and celebrated in community.

Roy furthered the teaching by sharing on a few specific ways to incorporate "justice" into worship services:

Make sure that worship is inclusive and accessible
Remember that in worship, we act as priests, representing the needs of the world before God
Choose songs that draw attention to the full character of God
Diversify the language for God, making use of the full range of biblical metaphors
Confess that we live in captivity to the powers, that we participate in broken systems and structures and we can name these in prayer

The second main talk session was led by Mrs. Kwai-Fan Chan of Hong Kong Jireh Fund. Mrs. Chan shared that Christians are blessed by God's abundance that we can pray and worship God, and we should have the mission to share the blessings with others. Mrs. Chan encouraged participants to follow Jesus and look for those who are lost, who live under oppression, and who are in despairs. Christians should act as the "light" and to be the voice of Justice for those who are in distresses; Christians should act as the "salt" and help others from perishing.

In Luke 4:18, the scriptures read:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
   because he has anointed me
   to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
   and recovery of sight for the blind,
   to release the oppressed"

Therefore, let us desire to become genuine worshippers, who are faithful to serve God and who are faithful in praying for the city.

On the evenings of Aug 26 and 27, participants attended workshop sessions. Workshop speakers included Mrs. Kwai-Fan Chan from Hong Kong Jireh Fund, Dr. Herbert Tsang from Church Music Ministry of Canada, Rev. Roy Berkenbosch of the King's College, Dr. Joy Berg of the Concordia College, and Rev. Johnny Wong of the Edmonton Christian Community Church. Some of the topics of these workshops are: "Micah Challenge to Worshippers", "Singing the Global Church", "Obeying Vs. Offering", and "Caring for the community through worship and prayer".

Community Serving Activities

Besides the breakthroughs with the training program's vision and theme, one other significant change in this year's training program was the replacement of the mass choir participation with community serving activities on the afternoon of August 28. To put learning into actions, the 50 participants divided up into 4 teams to serve the community in 4 areas. Rev. Terence Chan acted as the mentor in this component, and he helped participants to integrate their learning of "Act Justly, Love Mercy, Live out Worship" through serving the community, and recognizing the needs of the people. Below is description of each of the 4 community activities.

Team 1: Serve meals at Mustard Seed

Mustard Seed is a Christian organization in Edmonton's inner city, with the mission to address poverty through the building of a healthy community, and to bring people into relationship with God and each other. The team was first toured in the facility to learn about its ministry and then prepared and served dinner meals to 300 patrons.

Team 2: Social issues walk and prayer walk in Downtown

Under the guidance of the Public Education Coordinator of Mustard Seed, the team explored the different reasons behind why people come to the inner city, as well as some of the issues that affect people once they get there. The team then visited the businesses in Chinatown and prayed for the people and the area.

Team 3: Serving hospital patients through music

In this activity, participants formed into a choir to present Christian music at various locations at the University of Alberta Hospital, to share with patients the message of love and care of God. Before the activity, Chaplain intern Mabel Yau shared with the team about the spiritual needs of hospital patients and the values of sharing love and care to them.

Team 4: Visiting seniors

The team visited the Chinese Elders Apartment and the Pioneer Place Senior Apartment, and had activities with the residents there. Mrs. Kwai-Fan Chan shared gospel message with the residents and brought more than 10 seniors to Christ at the events.

Feedback from participants

Here are some feedback from participants on what they learned from the training program and what actions they will like to take:

"One thing that I have learned most from the training program is that "justice" isn't the justice from my own understanding. As Rev. Roy explained, it is not as if someone's car hit a woman's son and the woman wants justice to put the driver in jail. The concept of justice was well explored in the training. One action that I would like to take as a result of the training program is to visit hospital and elderly home more often."
"I appreciated the learning of the connection between worship and justice, and how we are strengthened by God through worship to enable us to serve others."
"Worship is 24/7/365 without the boundary of time and place. Prayer is the immediate action that I can respond to lift up my worship toward social justice."
"I think the thing I learn most is that I need to actively care more about the people around us and the world. Although it is a big challenge and I won't be able to change it myself, but there are still things that we can do and contribute. For action, the first thing is to pay more attention to what's happening and try to cultivate the heart to pray."
"I was most impacted by the social issues walk. I see how different organizations in inner city all work together for the well being of the people"
"I was first nervous about practicum activity because that is beyond my comfort zone, but I was very thankful for the opportunity to serve the hospital patients through music and see how love and concern were expressed through music and touched their hearts"
"We should not be just "Church Christians" but should be more visible and involved in the community. Put our faith in action. It is joyful to be serving with brothers and sisters from other churches. One action that I will take is to renew my prayer life.....to really lift everything to God, and choose to believe He listens and cares."
"Was glad to have the opportunity to visit seniors at Pioneer Place. I wasn't sure how it will turn out but with God's provision, things went very smoothly. Some of the residents do not have anyone to visit them, and so just being there with them, chatting with them means a lot to them."
"Thanks for your great effort in arrangement the training. This is the breakthrough of our different training in ECCC. The most memorable thing that we learned from the workshop is "caring people in the community is the important role of all christians". We have to put more action of caring & serving people as deep & wide as that we receive from God. Community services will be our main objective in future and hopefully this kind of services will extend to all christians which eventually graces God's name. Keep it up !!!"
"The prayer walk was an eye-opening experience for me. Not that I was unaware of the problems in the inner city, but this was a much closer encounter than the usual "awareness from a distance". I also gained a better understanding of the work done by the number of organizations in the area. As we paused on the streets to pray for the people and the organizations, the pains and sufferings of the people became much more real to me. Even though only God can change the lives of people, any of us can be His channel of blessings."
"One of Rev. Wong's workshop talked about how to find strength through worshipping God even in the most undesirable situation, and by doing that, we are also empowered to carry out His mission despite hardship involved. The message is a great reminder and encouragement to me."
"I learned about the importance of praying, and that it is very doable."
"The learning from classes was deepened by integrating with practicum activities. I am grateful to be able to serve those in needs."
"Thanks for boldly leading the choir to step forward to experience the worship life in different level. It is always not easy to build new culture and life habit into a group, but I admire the vision and determination for doing that."

"If God's people pray" – Citywide Prayer Meeting

As a conclusion to the training program, a city wide prayer meeting was held on August 29 to pray for the city and its people. On that evening, brothers and sisters from different churches came together to profess that Jesus Christ is our Lord, His Lordship is also over Edmonton and Canada and all nations. In the prayer meeting, we prayed for the Chinese community in Edmonton, we prayed for the younger generation, we prayed for the traditional family system, we prayed for those who are sick, who are poor and those who are under oppression. We also prayed for the government, and the spreading of the gospel in the city. ( More Prayer Meeting Photos)

Next Steps

To sustain the learning and continue our impact to the community, we will expand the ministry scope of Edmccchoir to include serving the community with practical actions.

Below are a few upcoming plans as a starting point:

1) Prayer Network:
•	We will work with Jireh Fund (Hong Kong) to develop a prayer network in Edmonton that focuses on praying for the city and the people. If you are interested to participate and bless our communities through your prayer, please contact us at info@edmontonccchoir.org
2) Christmas Caroling at hospitals:
•	Our choir wish to organize a caroling team to share the good news at hospitals in December, and we like to invite you to join. Please contact info@edmontonccchoir.org for details.
3) Christmas Concert:
•	Our choir will join with ECAC to have a Christmas evangelistic concert on Dec 25, 2010 (Saturday) at 11am to share the good news of Christ to people on the Christmas Day. More details will follow.
4) The 9th Heart and Art Worship and Music Training 2011:
•	Tentatively, the theme is set to be "Worship in a Broken World". How can our worshiping life renew us and heal us when this world is filled with disasters, crime, sickness, poverty and hate? How can we live out the priesthood in us and bring the needs of people to our Lord? We will also look into the fact that our Lord wants to send us into the communities to proclaim His name, to serve and bless the people around us. More details will follow.

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