Preparing for New Year

I don’t think there are any surprises how a church pastor celebrates New Year. It is kneeling before God, waiting on Him preparing for New Year messages. I always try to preach the first two Sundays of the New Year to set the tone for the whole year. It might be ironic for me this time to start preaching from Proverbs, the whole chapter 8. The second Sunday could be on leadership since we are having our triennial AGM where we will elect our denomination’s leaders for the next three years.

It’s good to educate ordinary church members on the nature of leadership, though most church comers may come to have their spiritual needs met without thinking or wanting to know about the leaders or the leadership structure of the church. 

This could be a problem since we practise congregational voting every three years when each local church holds its AGM and elect new deacons and deaconesses for a three-year term. Unless, church members know how to evaluate leaders how are they going to choose leaders? 

And from local church leaders, we choose three representatives to the District level AGMs, which in turn send three representatives to our “Persidangan Agung” every three years to elect our top four executives and 17 general council members. This AGM will be held middle of next month, so the only available slot to address this important occasion is the 2nd week of January because by the 18th January 3rd Sunday of 2026 the newly elected leaders would have been installed. 

But my concern is caring of souls. The last two services of 2025 are now past. There was not a single musician available which is my first time experience. I have pastored several churches before and each Christmas service was conducted with musicians as we treat Christmas service as one of the highlights of the year. The excuse was that all the musicians went back to their villages for Christmas but the real reason was the lack of planning beforehand. But we will see what happens Christmas 2026. If I am still pastor I will not let that happen again.

Despite the disappointment, I want to look at the positives. On Christmas Day, we had at least 15 new comers and many stayed back for the drinks refreshments and I got to know a few of them. Likewise, last Sunday 28th Dec, I managed to talk to a couple of new comers and a few old timers and we had a good fellowship over noodles and coffee. One lady brought some cakes, and the youths loved it. 

Perhaps to crown the year with some hope for the future, one youth remarked that I looked younger than my age. This remark came when one older youth in his late 20s asked whether I would be attending the AGM and I said maybe not this time but three years down the road, I might just do that in late 2028 and I added that by then I may have retired (Malaysia’s official retirement age is 60 yo).