blogONELike a chapter straight out of Homer-Dixon’s The Ingenuity Gap, there are a bunch of unknown unknowns right now. One of these things is the “ACF” which may be formed on UOIT. When I was still applying for university, I felt that I had a calling from God to help start a CCF at UOIT, seeing as how there wasn’t an existing one already. God put things into action, and the first thing He did was get me into early acceptance at UOIT. Of course, just to throw some variety, doors were also opened to U of T and McMaster; I knew it was planned for me to go to UOIT. So more pieces of the puzzle fell into place as time passed, with me meeting up and thinking about CCF with Aaron Szeto; we went to Frosh Connexion, kept in contact with Yu-Ling and even wondered who this “Dennis Li” person was (he was currently running around trying to get signatures for CCF). But as time is in God’s hands, events occur out of our hands, and by the time first year was going to start, CCF didn’t look like it would form.
I had heard [from Aaron] that the existing fellowship at UOIT, called Campus Church, wasn’t all that welcoming and good. Since I am who I am, I decided to go give Campus Church a shot and check out for myself how this fellowship was. The first step in my relationship with CC was at the UOIT Frosh, where I went to a booth explaining what CC was. It was there that I began to inquire about what they did, and for some reason, I felt the need to talk to someone there about CCF. This is when I was introduced to Adam Doran, the current president of CC. We had a small chat and stuff, and we’ve kept in contact since Frosh. When classes started, the large fire that was burning for starting a CCF at UOIT was quickly growing dimmer and dimmer. By the end of the first week or so of classes, the thought of the calling had perhaps totally faded. But certain events, unique in their placement in our timelines, continued to play out. There would be random times when I would just bump into Adam and we’d just start talking about CC ministry and stuff.
Throughout the school-year the thoughts of CCF weren’t of ones about forming one, but ones about what had gone wrong. But it’s quite evident in the events which have happened in the past 3-4 weeks that nothing had gone wrong. Nothing had gone wrong – the time wasn’t right. How is it that Adam emails me out of the blue to meet up to discuss ACF while I am still in HK, which enforces the need for me to reply? How could it be that I finally searched up “Dennis Li” on Facebook and messaged him regarding what he did? This past Thursday I met up with Adam to talk about ACF and Campus Church. We discussed a lot of things, one of the most important being whether the Asian-focussed ministry really needed to be explicitly called an ACF or CCF; would people (ie. Asian Christians who have grown up with TC) just go to it knowing that it was a place they could be “safe” or comfortable, or would they go to it simply because it was explicitly called an ACF?
What is the most important thing a leader requires, if they are to be effective in their leadership roles? A Vision. Despite all the thinking, all the dreaming, all the talking, all the meetings and all the praying…I now have a scary realization that I do not have a Vision for the ACF (loosely termed) at UOIT. God put the thoughts into me, but a Vision He has not blessed upon me/us yet.
Q: Where do you see the ACF going? What do you envision it to be?
A: I don’t know, and I can’t sense anything. I do not want to put my hands on this ministry and create something out of my own image, but I want God’s hands to shape and mould it instead.
Is it time for me to step away from this then?
I really don’t know…but saying that an ACF should be formed just to “create more opportunities for Asians to evangelize to non-believing Asians and to grow in faith” seems…empty, a bit?
