By Rev. John Kao

According to some saying from the early church settlers, when John the Apostle was very old, his body was weak and his mobility was limited. He needed someone to carry him to preach in different places.

John always preached, “Dear children, we should love one another.” After the sermon, people would carry him to another place to preach. John the Apostle would preach again, “Dear children, we should love one another.” Those who followed him to different places would say, “This must be an important message that he repeated. We must remember this by heart.” When John’s followers heard John preaching the very same message again and again, which is “Dear children, we should love one another.” They were wondering if John was too old that he probably lost his memory. That’s why he reported the same message over and over again.

Finally, someone asked John the Apostle, “Our brother John, when you were following the Lord Jesus, did not you hear many different sermons? Why did you only preach “Dear children, we should love one another? Don’t you have other truth to share with us?” The elderly slowly responded, “I was carried to preach in different places, what other message is more important than this?”

That is right. ACEM has always put “Unity in the bond of love” as the top priority. Now, the ACEM churches have been growing, number of churches are increasing and the congregation sizes are expanding. We need to remind ourselves more often that we should love one another. This will become the most important lesson for all of us, much more important than disciple training, church planting, world-wide mission and community services. If we cannot carry out the Lord Jesus’ commandment-Unity in the bond of love- we are qualified to be called Christ’s followers. All our achievement will only bring selfishness, arrogance, envy and dispute. Dear Lord Jesus! Please fill our hearts with your love so that we can truly “love one another”.

1998 is the year with a test for ACEM churches to love one another. ACEM has lots of missions to achieve. We must do these tasks with our love towards one another. Only then will these tasks be meaningful, fruitful and be pleasing to God.

Among all these tasks, the first one will be to improve the ACEM structure. The existing ACEM model has been in place for more than ten years. We hope, through discussion, we can get ourselves reorganized so that ACEM can be a more effective organization.

Secondly, ACEM will be holding the 20th Mission Conference. We hope we can have breakthroughs in world-wide mission. Thirdly, few years ago, we have a corporate target of planting the 10th ACEM church by year 2000. We are busy working towards this goal. Fourthly, ACEM churches have different church expansion or building projects. We should bear the principle of “love one another” by encouraging and helping out each other.

Last but not least, we emphasized on building up new servants. We need to train more young people to go on theological training and/or to missionary fields. At the same time, we should not forget the benefits for the elderly pastors who will be retiring soon.

For all the tasks listed above, it takes all the ACEM churches to have a united heart to achieve them. Let’s all hold hands together to work towards these goals.