Leadership is vital and essential for the growth of the Church or for any spiritual endeavour to succeed. In the past week, there are many happenings in Kota Kinabalu. Most of the newsfeed tend to the negative and worrisome, but sometimes we need to appreciate that many people are suffering. Some suffer when they fall sick due to Covid-19 infection. Some suffer when they lose their jobs and livelihood. Some suffer as a result of wars and have to flee to a safe haven in Poland or Romania. But many suffer as a result of failure in leadership. For us believers, it is not just a matter of avoiding evil or sin but actively doing good or seek to do good whenever opportunity avails us. "He who knows to do good but fails to do so sins". It is the sin of omission.
Recently, quite a number of pastors I know fell ill due to Covid-19 infection. Most of them were fully vaccinated including not a few having received their booster shots. One pastor in particular due to his other ailments is still recovering in the hospital. We pray for him constantly since he was admitted. Today the Pastor's group gave him a monetary gift and I am sure he was comforted. I just thought that the amount could have been larger. We are pastors in Kota Kinabalu, the capital city and we should do better for one of our own. When I was in Ranau, I served as the Pastors' Fellowship Chairman. We had an evangelist-pastor paid by the District who was getting only RM250.00 a month and every time we had a Pastors' fellowship meeting we made sure that he would return to his place of ministry with extra money. We could only afford to give him RM100.00. Just before the pandemic in late 2019, I visited this pastor-evangelist who was then serving in a KK church. I was surprised that after about 3 years of not seeing him, he told me straightway that he had just been discharged from the hospital due to sun-stroke. Apparently, he had some other ailments and his condition was worsened when he had to drive "grab" taxi to supplement his income and probably sitting in the car for hours on a hot day did not help him much. We managed to chat with two other church leaders. Then, he left us and I returned to the church for the second service. I realised when we parted, I did not give anything to him, so I handed a love gift to the Deputy Chairman and asked that this gift be given to my friend. Within months of our meeting, he went home to be with the Lord. When the earthquake struck Ranau on 5th June 2015, it happened that I chaired a Pastors' Fellowship meeting the following Wednesday and I proposed that we visit a family of a deceased, a "malim gunung" (mountain guide) who was killed by the tremor on top of Mount Kinabalu. We gave half of what we had in the Pastors' Fund, a sum of RM500.00. I could see that the whole family was truly blessed with our visit.
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