XS & JXS MINISTRIES
The Ongoing Journey
First of all, the leadership team of XS & JXS would like take this opportunity to thank you for your support and understanding of JXS combined events with XS.
In the JXS, in general, the youths have been learning about various spiritual disciplines and gifts. Moreover, they have also been taught on Lordship of Christ besides counting the cost of following Him.
In addition, the JXS leadership team together with the respective teachers is planning to have a meet-the-parent session. We will keep you posted and hope to see you then.
At XS level, I thank the Lord for the desires of our youth to be more Word and Christ-centered. We have two combined cell meetings on the first two Saturdays of the month to foster closer bonds and fellowship. The XS leadership seeks to instill in youths their identity in Christ and in the process build their esteem and character.
By the way, if you have relatives or neighbors who belong to any of these age categories: P6 to Sec 3 for JXS, Sec 4 and above for XS, feel free to invite them. It is our desire to see these young people grow to be more like Christ and be a people after God’s heart.
Finally, let’s pray together for our youths that they will continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ – to be God-fearing men and women who love the Lord and desire to offer Him their faithful service.
(For more information on recent activities, please refer our bi-monthly publication ‘XScalate’.)
~ Alex Lim, Youth Ministry Staff
Dear Charisians,
With the blessings from God, Alpha@Charis is successfully going into its 9th run! Through Alpha, we have managed to reach out to pre-believers and believers alike and helped them draw closer to our Father God.
To date, with Alpha, we have touched a total of 167 guests, amongst whom 27 have come to embrace Jesus and 35 have rededicated their lives to Him! This motivates us to go on touching more lives and we couldn’t have done it without your involvement!
The Alpha course is a 10 week course which explains what is Christianity in a non-threatening environment.
“There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called.” Ephesians 4:4
Join us once again as we begin our Alpha 9!
Put your faith into action:
~ Ask God to reveal to you the people you should invite.
~ Invite your guests to attend the Introduction Dinner. It is free!
~ Attend the dinner with your guests.
Alpha Course has made evangelism so easy and non-threatening for pre-believers. Through your collective effort, we know that we can spread the joy of the Gospel to those around us whom we care and love. The Introduction Dinner for Alpha 9 is 31st July 2010, so hurry and invite your guests today!
~ Alpha Core Team (ACT)
CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
(from the book ‘Companions in Christ’)
“My secret is very simple: I pray. Through prayer I become one in love with Christ realized that praying to Him is loving Him. The poor who live in the slums of the world are the suffering Christ… through them God shows me His true face. For me, prayer means being united to the will of God twenty-four hours a day, to live for Him, through Him and with Him.” (Mother Teresa)
Throughout twenty centuries of Christianity, various schools of spirituality have emphasized either action or contemplation (eg. Mary or Martha) while maintaining that both contemplation and action are integral components of Christian journey.
Do some Christians believe that contemplation is beyond them, reserved for only a few?
Many persons are unclear about the meaning of contemplative prayer. There is a subtle belief that to pray contemplatively, one has to be an otherworldly eccentric who experiences visions and other mystical phenomena. If you consider contemplative prayer as out of reach, it is time to look again at your understanding of this way of prayer.
In simple terms, contemplative prayer is “a way of making oneself aware of the presence of God who is always there”. It differs from meditation, which involves reasoning, words and images.
In true contemplative prayer, one abides in mystery, open to being taken by God in love along a way one cannot know. Throughout the history of Christianity, spiritual guides have regarded contemplative prayer as an encounter with the “unknowing”. Because intuition and awareness rather than thinking are central to this experience, such prayer tends to be unitive: we find ourselves — our true selves — in God.
“Only when we are able to ‘let go’ of everything within us, all desire to see, to know, to taste and to experience the presence of God, do we truly become able to experience that presence with the overwhelming conviction and reality that revolutionize our entire inner life.” (Thomas Merton)
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How you can participate in prayer?
1. Join the twice-monthly prayer meetings on 1st Wednesday and 3rd Friday of every month at 8pm in the Chapel.
2. Come for the weekly Sunday prayer sessions held at 8.30am in Room 201 or at 11.15 am in Room 304.
3. You can be a prayer intercessor through email, by signing up for: Charisians Praying group.
To find out more please approach Janet Lee or Sin Lee, or email to slyou@singtel.com.