Campus outreach 16/8/12

Date: 16/8/2012 (Thursday)
Venue: table outside STA travel, campus centre, Monash University Clayton Campus

As usual we hand out event flyers to promote CCM's compassion film 58 event. There were a couple of people that we managed to talked to quite a fair bit of time. Andrew and me have talked to Natalie, Leonard and Kirsten.

Natalie is a Catholic but she doesn't seem to have a close relationship with God. Basically Andrew and I challenged her to find out God's calling for her while she is on campus. We presented the gospel and encouraged to share the Good News with her friends around her.

Leonard is a biomedical science student from Singapore. He was skeptical whether there is a God. Through our conversations with him, we used the evidence of the nature and the intelligence design argument. In the end, his opinion changed to perhaps there is a God.

Kirsten was a woman from the U.S., who grew up in a church environment. However, somehow along the way she had some bad experience with church and she stopped attending church. Kirsten was really open about talking about God and the problem of sin and suffering. Although she admitted that she would be guilty under God's standard, she still felt that she is a good person and does not deserve hell. We presented the gospel to her and pledged to her that she might make a decision that changes her eternal destiny.

We all left a gospel tract with the people we talked to. Please keep Natalie, Leonard and Kirsten in prayer.

Charlie Lam
Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley

Campus outreach 9/8/12

Time: 9 August, 2012, 12-2pm
Place: table outside STA travel, Campus Centre, Monash University Clayton Campus

Today we went to do surveys and hand out flyers on Monash Clayton campus. We talked to a couple of Chinese students who were interested in Christianity, as well as some other local students. I learned that I need to discern whether someone is ready to hear the Good News. Some people that I talked to thought they were a good person even when they admitted that they have lied, stolen things and looked at woman with lust. So I left them a gospel tract and hopefully God would speak to them through the tracts.

Charlie Lam
Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre

Jesus Week 2012 and CCM Oceania meeting – revival is happening at Monash and beyond

I would like to share a testimony about my journey with God in the past four years, especially about how God fulfils the five year vision that he showed me in 2009. Back then I was a new believer and I hardly know anyone outside CCM. However, God has put such a burden on my heart for unity between Christians on campus. I cried out to God regularly for this to happen on Monash Clayton campus. The breakthrough came this year when five Christian clubs on Clayton campus signed the statement of faith and created the unity flyer. It was a significant milestone in the history of campus ministry of Monash. It sends a clear message to believers and non-believers alike – that we are united and not a divided army of God. The statement of faith signatories precedes Jesus Week 2012, in which the five Christian clubs participate in a four-day outreach event before Easter (2-5 April, 2012). We also make use of this opportunity to establish Monash University Clayton Christian Network (MUCCN).

There are a couple of praise points for Jesus Week:

- Statement of faith – demonstrate the Christian clubs agree on the same doctrine and we are working towards the same goals for Christ – to reach out to the campus and make disciples.

- There are unity flyers that accompany the statement of faith. It has the clubs’ logo and short description of what each club is, along with Jesus Week logo and Monash House of Prayer, a prayer network for all Christians across all Monash campus in Australia and overseas.

- United prayer: the club representatives pray for Jesus Week before the event, during the event, and give thanks to God and share testimonies after the event.

- Unity between local and international Christians groups, demonstrated through prayer, people visiting each other store and an event list from different groups were compiled.

- Monash University Clayton Christian Network (MUCCN) is established with its Facebook page. The purpose is to facilitate discussion for future united prayer and events.

- God’s provision for finance (manage to raise $200 from CCM; other clubs also raise enough funds for the hot cross buns). Bakers Delight Pinewood provided generous discount for the hot cross buns (40% off).

- Give out hot cross buns to bless the campus – hot cross buns from bakers delight 1600 across four days, CCM gave another couple hundreds buns from Coles and Woolworths.

- There is at least one salvation – Amy (student life) and many seeds of the gospel are sown.

- Hundreds of gospel tracts are given out: with each hot cross bun, we gave out a gospel tract. Also, we were able to have spiritual conversation about Easter and the gospel with a couple of people.

- CCM has live worship that share the love of Christ to campus. Great to work with worship ministry development! We realise that worship allow people to participate in outreach.

- We share the good news with many people. Doing evangelism can be simple and fun, and there are many ways to do it.

Jesus Week is the result of consistent, persistent prayer. This breakthrough came partly because of the prayers that my friend Jonno and many other watchmen on campus before us. Here I would like to acknowledge the sacrifice of their prayers to God. Last year we had a weekly campus-focused prayer meeting. This year this proliferates to daily prayer meeting groups springing up in different faculties. Miracles and breakthrough came because of prayer!

SWOT VAC outreach (30 May 2012) is the second combined event under the banner of MUCCN. This time the Navigators also participate in this exam time outreach. With Navigators on board, every Christian club on Clayton campus is present. There was a great sense of unity and partnership across believers from different cultural background and denominations. No matter you are local or international students, we are all one body of Christ striving to fulfil the Great Commission on this campus harvest field.

During Oceania Convention this year, I shared what happened at Monash when I met about 30 CCM representatives from various states. Originally I only anticipated a dozen of people from Victoria and Brisbane. However, James from UQ managed to invite other people from Perth, Tasmania and Adelaide as well. Back in 2008, God showed me a 10 year vision in which every CCM across the Oceania region will unite together before. Recently, God revealed to me that it will start as a prayer support network and empower people to reach their campuses for God. This meeting is a major milestone towards this direction. A CCM national network is not something new but it once existed some 7-8 years ago. Overall, the meeting was a fruitful time of sharing testimonies and praying for one another.

There are many students hungry for God and waiting for people to tell them about Jesus. With all these breakthroughs this year, I believe a new wave of revival is going to start at Monash and other universities in Melbourne. I sense that God has a purpose for me to unite not only the Christians on Clayton campus, but also those on other campuses in Victoria.

As I face such a great task ahead, I really need God’s strength and wisdom so He can guide my steps in the future. One thing is certain – we will do greater things in the future (John 14:12). Instead of just praying for revival, let’s go out and do what God commanded us to do – share the Good News and make disciples, love our neighbours as ourselves. We are the answer to our own prayer. Please pray for more labourers to rise up on our campuses (Luke 10:2b). We can all be part of this revival.

Charlie Lam

Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverely Centre

Outreach report 21 June 2012

Today Andrew, Angela and me went out to the Clayton train station and handed out the Regal Standard newspaper. It was a rainy day but the weather did not deter us from doing outreach. We managed to hand out a couple of newspaper before being stopped by the newsagent owner. Never mind. We decided to give out the newspaper to people in the Monash University bus loop instead. Dozens of people took the newspaper within half an hour. We pray that God will speak to these people by that newspaper.


Lessons learned: 
1) never hand out newspaper in front of a newsagent
2) rainy weather is not helpful for a outdoor outreach. Next time we should pick a date with good weather.


Charlie Lam
Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre

More ARE Coming.

I'd like to share a testimony of what's happened in the last year and six months in our life group, QUT 2.


We're one of the Christian university groups in Brisbane, and like many Christians we evangelise and hope to see people come to know Jesus personally.


In 2011, we didn't see anyone welcome Jesus into their lives in our group. For me personally, it was discouraging 'coz I longed to see the lost saved. But God did have the salvation of the lost in mind - it just wasn't in the way we thought. In the end of 2011, four members from our group went for a mission trip to Philippines where we saw over 53 people start a relationship with Jesus and many more responding to know Him more! It was a mind-blowing experience - all glory to Him!


In the last six months (2012), we thought we hit another time of 'unfruitfulness'. We had many new people join our group, people who weren't Christians, but none repenting and acknowledging Him as Lord. But again, God's hand had always been at work. After waiting for 5 months, we saw 5 people making a decision to welcome Jesus into their lives within 2 weeks time.


1 was a friend of a friend that joined our life group once in 2011 and decided to join us again.
1 was a classmate of one of our members in our group in her English course.
1 was a another course mate of one of life group members.
1 was a friend who stopped coming to church after 3-4 times but suddenly felt 'lost' in life and decided to find out more again.
1 was a friend who joined our life group for a long period of time and finally decided to take the first step into something new.


Each 1 is 1 precious life.


All glory is God's - for it is by His grace that these people have found salvation in Jesus Christ.


Let's never count God out in our reaching out. More salvations ARE coming!


Isaiah 55:9, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." (ESV)

Allan Gonzales

QUT 2 Life Group, Hope Church Brisbane Afternoon Service

Campus evangelism testimony 23 May 2012

I would like to share my testimony for our weekly Wednesday evangelism outreach at Monash University Clayton Campus.

Date and time: 23/5/12 (Wed), 12-2pm

Place: outside STA travel, campus centre

It is encouraging to see Rachel Chiang coming along to the evax session. We went around and initiated conversations with people by using surveys and the curved illusion gospel tract.  A few people declined our offer to do a survey but they had no problem receiving the ‘Are you a good person’ gospel tract. Don’t be discouraged when someone rejected you, we can always let the gospel tract to do the talking for us. Eventually we managed to talk to Ariel and her friends in the main dining hall. We used the curved illusion tract to start the conversation. They were amazed by the gospel tract and I proceeded to say, ‘you know one of the biggest illusions in life is that people think that they are good people, would you consider yourself to be a good person?’ We managed to go through a few of the Ten Commandments before her friends came. After that, Ariel showed her friends the curved illusion tract and did the eye test on them. Thank God we managed to give out two other curved illusion tracts to her friends as well.

Apart from that, Angela and I both had a heart for Chinese students so we decided to talk to Chinese students about the Good News every week. This week we used Mandarin to talk to Tony and his friends who were from China. We found out that they were Buddhists so we went through the five precepts from Buddhism with them using the ‘are you a good Buddhist?’ tract. 

The five precepts are:

1. Do not kill (similar as the sixth commandment - you shall not murder)

2. Do not steal (similar to the eighth commandment – you shall not steal)

3. Do not indulge in sexual misconduct (similar to the seventh commandment – you shall not commit adultery)

4. Do not make false speech (similar to the ninth commandment - You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour /lying)

5. Do not take intoxicants 

I found it surprising that Tony and their friends have never heard about the five precepts before. The five precepts are different from the Ten Commandments in that they are more like guidelines rather than commandments for Buddhists. However, the five precepts are excellent tools for building bridges for using the Law to convict the heart of Buddhists. Tony thought he probably had broken a few. Remarkably he had heard about Jesus before because some missionaries have talked to him on that topic. Although they made jokes about the commandment while we talked to them, they were open to listen to the gospel.

After that, we did a questionnaire with a local student called Alex. After we went through a few of the Ten Commandments, he appeared to get offended by the questions. This is better than an apathetic response because his conscience was convicting him of his own sins. Apathy means that the person might have a seared conscience (1 Tim 4:2).  Paul in Romans 7:7 said ‘I would not have known what sin was except through the law’. Don’t be afraid when people are offended, because it is necessary for the Law to expose the true condition of people’s heart. If the person’s self-righteousness is not humbled by the law, he won’t be ready to accept the grace of God. How will they realize the need of a saviour when they don’t even understand the trouble they are in when they face God on the Day of Judgment? Anyway, we thanked Alex for his time and left him The Regal Standard newspaper. The Regal Standard is a newspaper originally designed to counter the atheist convention in Melbourne in April 2012, with contents such as science and faith, a prominent atheist renouncing atheism and the problem of suffering. I find this newspaper a useful tool for spiritual conversation starters with friends. I have tried that on my housemates. It worked. Every week we handed out dozens of Regal Standard and I believe the newspaper can change people’s life. You can read the newspaper on this website and share it with your friends: http://regalstandard.com.au/

Charlie Lam

Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre

Campus outreach testimony 17 May 2012

Here is a brief report of what happened on our Monash Clayton weekly outreach on 16/5 (Wednesday).

It’s great to see Jean Marc coming along for an hour for our outreach session, and he did some surveys with Angela. Andrew and I did some treasure hunting and we talked to Esther, River and Joseph. We found out that Esther and River were Korean Christians. Esther was shy but she told me that she was deciding whether to go for further study. So I told her not to worry because God holds her future. Sometimes in treasure hunting we offer words of encouragement when we are prompted by God. We also offered to pray for Yali and Jessica for their studies but they kindly refused us. That’s OK. We all learned from trial and error.

After that, I managed to talk to Alice and James from Mannix College while they were promoting their ball. Alice was a nominal Christian. However, when I asked her whether she has kept the Ten Commandments, she was not sure. So I went through the Ten Commandments with her. She realized she was guilty and probably will go to hell because she broke God’s law. I explained the work of Jesus on the cross using the legal transaction concept in the court. I sensed that she understood what I said, but somehow something was blocking her from coming to accept Christ. Please pray for the halls people, for many of them do not know Jesus.

Other than that, God has put on my heart to talk to Gordon, a local senior who sells ‘the big issue’ on campus every week. Therefore, I buy ‘the big issue’ from Gordon every week and start a spiritual conversation with him. In my conversation with him in the past few weeks, I discovered that he used to go to Sunday school, and he was disillusioned with Christianity because of the conflicts between his Christian and Catholics relatives. This week I tried to open up the Ten Commandment with him but half way through he told me he was busy. Never mind, I will try again next week.

On Thursday I met with up Mike for lunch. Mike used to visit my life group last year. We talked about his future, especially about his major in his degree. Then I switched to the topic of where he will spend eternity with the ‘are you a good person’ gospel tract. I shared the gospel with Mike last year but I felt that he didn’t quite get it, especially the part about the reality of judgment day and heaven and hell. So I went through the gospel with him again and mentioned the Ten Commandments and the judgment of God. What is his response? I think he understood what I said, there was no offense and we moved on to talk about playing table tennis in the near future.

Charlie Lam

Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre

Campus evangelism outreach testimony 2 May 2012

I am excitied to share with you what happened in our campus outreach at Monash Clayton campus today.
 Participants: Andrew, Angela, Brad, Adhit and me

Time: 12-2pm
Venue: campus centre, Monash Clayton

 A few of us prayed in the main chapel before the outreach to prepare our hearts. Besides giving out free drinks and gospel tracts, we also did surveys and had spiritual conversation with many people. Particularly, I would like to share my conversation with Grace, a 4th year Arts student from China. Being an agnostic, she was open to the things of God. Overall, we had a good chat for at least 20 minutes. In the beginning, I went through the Ten Commandments and the Day of Judgment. She believed that she would be guilty of breaking the Ten Commandment and probably would go to hell if she faced God on the Day of Judgment. However, it did not concern her because she did not believe in God. So I used the following illustration as an example: if you stand in the middle of the road and a truck is coming to you, even if you don’t believe a truck is coming, that won’t prevent you from being a road-kill. I also explained to her that we exercise our faith every day, and put our trust to people we don’t know. For instance, when we take an aeroplane, we trust the engineers of the plane whom we don’t know; our lives are depended on the pilots that we have never met. Until we put our faith on the pilots, we will never know the aeroplane can take us to our destination safely. Similarly, we cannot experience the forgiveness of sin unless we put our faith in God.


After that, I mentioned about the work of Jesus on cross. It is like a legal transaction. In a civil court, we break the law and incur a fine. Jesus comes to the court to pay the fine for us. In the heavenly court, we break God’s law and the punishment is death, Jesus came to pay the penalty for us, dying for us on the cross for our sins. That is what the gospel is all about. I mentioned that by repenting from our sins (turn away from our old way to turn to God), we received God’s forgiveness. Grace was a bit hesitant to put her faith in Jesus, but the seed of the gospel was sown. At the end of our conversation, she thanked me for explaining the gospel to her and left her contact details with me. The bible says, ‘those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy’ (Ps 126:5). I believe in all my heart that someday I will meet those I have sown the gospel seed in heaven, rejoicing with God. Please keep Grace in prayer for God is drawing her near to him.


Be encouraged, and please come to the harvest field, for we make disciples from the harvest.

 Charlie Lam
Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley

Campus outreach report 21/4/12

Date and time: 21/4/12 (Sat), 12-2pm

First, we watched the video ‘Hell’s best kept secret’.
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEUPcK6hi4s

We learned the importance of using the law before presenting grace when we share the gospel. After that Jean Marc Ng and me went to campus and used this curved illusion tract to do outreach about 15-20 minutes.
Link to the gospel tract:http://www.livingwaters.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=82&category_id=8&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=199
It was rather simple and non-threatening. Basically we approached people and said, ‘Hello! My name is Charlie and this is my friend Jean Marc. We are doing a simple survey about how people see things. Do you have a minute or two to spare?’ People usually responded positively, because we approached people who were sitting and seemed to be relaxed. There is a message behind each of the card and people gladly accept the gospel tract because it was so fun. I told them to show it to their friends. In this way, their friends can read the gospel message as well.
In summary, we went up to people, asked them to the optical illusion test and gave them gospel tracts. This method does not require you to speak much. You don’t need to be bible scholars or expects in apologetics to do that. Even if you are too timid to speak, giving out gospel tracts is already part of sharing the gospel. Never underestimate the power of these paper preachers. Giving out gospel tracts has never been so easy and fun!

The following is a short video (about 2 minutes) that demonstrates how to use this curved illusion tracts on university campuses to break the ice, and begin a conversation with someone about Christ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO4EGyXzSPU

Charlie Lam
Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre

Weekly Wednesday evangelism session at Monash Clayton campus

In the past few Wednesday, I have been involved in evangelism training in campus centre from 12-2pm. basically, we did surveys and shared the gospel, as well as giving out gospel tract. We had a couple of people who come to these sessions: Shaun, Andrew, Angela, Brad, Adhit, and Sharon. We usually go in pairs so we can encourage and learn from each other.

At the beginning I was a bit afraid of what others might think when I shared the gospel. However, this fear was unfounded. I soon discover that talking to strangers and sharing my faith is easier than I think.

The survey questions are simple. They are like this. How many footy teams can you name? How many beers can you name? Then, how many Ten Commandments can you name? In this way, we start our conversation in the natural, and shift to spiritual things easily. Then we followed the ‘what did Jesus do method’ (WWJD). We usually start with asking the person 'would you consider yourself as a good person?’ People usually say yes and we go through the Ten Commandments with them. Something like 'have you lied, have you stolen, have you looked at a woman with lust, have you used God's name in vain?' Contrary to our fear, I found that the majority of people are not offended by these questions, because we are asking them their favourite subject - themselves. We are not accusing them of committing those things but getting them to confessed with their own mouths. Once their hearts are humbled by the law and they realized they are guilty, and on the judgment day they are going to hell. It now makes sense to them why Jesus had to die on the cross for them. Patients do not think they need a cure only after the doctor showed them precisely the disease they had. In the case of humanity, the disease is called 'sin' and the cure is 'Jesus'.

In my conversations with strangers, I often get to the part of sharing the significance of the cross and calling them for repentance. After my conversation, I always leave them a gospel tract for them to ponder about God's judgment and grace. I also discover that there is no point sharing God's grace with proud, self-righteous people.

Overall, I consider our evangelism sessions a success because we plant many seeds of the gospel in people's heart. In one session we can have in-depth conversations with like 8 people per group. We do not force to convert a person. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. This change in my perspective encourages me tremendously to share the good news to people, and it takes pressure off me to 'see decisions'. I encourage every one of you to come as well, it is fun, and you store up treasures in heaven at the same time. What could we better spend our time than to change where someone spends in eternity?

Charlie Lam
Clayton Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley

Beijing exploration trip day 7

12/1/11 (Thursday)

During the trip, I could see that international students are the catalyst for change in the local Christian community.

We went to meet the people from Renmin University. Besides, there were friends from other universities as well as two pre-believers. Most of them were from provinces other than Beijing. Some people were brought up in a Christian family, while others got saved in university. We had lunch at the canteen in university and talked for two hours. We heard how they have fellowship and church life, as well as some testimonies of how they come to Christ. It seems that they had got the problem of many nominal Christians not being on fire for God. Also, they were so busy studying that they didn't have time to interact with other churches and fellowships. Generally, we felt that the local students still lacked the revival spirit that the international students profess. Apart from that, we talked about the political environment and the differences between Western and Chinese churches, especially on the concept of house church.

After that, we went to the temple of heaven to pray for China and restore that place as the house of prayer for all nations. We believed that emperors worshipped God in the past. I was glad that we managed to pray at such a significant place - the temple for good harvest. May God send out more workers to the harvest field in China.

In the evening, we had dinner with Jane and Isaiah, a brother from the U.S. We discussed our experience in Melbourne and Isaiah's experience to study in Beijing. One great insight was that the way people express worship and prayer is shaped by their culture. Churches from different culture can all learn from each other. In the past, it is always perceived that the Western church is superior. However, the Western church can also learn from the Chinese church.

Charlie Lam

Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre

Beijing exploration trip day 5 & 6

10/1/12 (Tuesday)

We went to meet a full time Chinese CCC missionary at Minzu University of China. She shared about the struggle to go full time, and stories in sharing the gospel and seeing Muslims getting saved.

After that, we attended a prayer meeting for uni students (Peking University). Dr Valient Cheung has started leadership courses in 11 universities, and next semester he is evening planning the orientation for Peking University. This was the fruit of years of prayer and God opened doors for them. We shared and prayed for 3 hours in the room where Peking University fellowship met. We prayed for revival in universities and market place. The presence of God was really strong. Valient also shared that prayer meetings are starting in big corporations such as Siemens, Pepsi, the Big 4 in China. Clearly, there is an important link between the university and market place.

Then we had dinner with Isaiah and Peking University people. I heard that someone read Genesis and got saved - another incident of people accepted Christ after reading the bible. Peking University people hoped to find a flat to be the house of prayer for Beijing students. We decided to make an offering to the prayer room they are finding. May God helped them to find one soon.

Overall, it was a great day of meeting God and seeing what He can do.

11/1/12 (Wednesday)

We had a 40 minutes prayer time with Elka for Peking University. Peking University's current campus used to be an university opened by missionaries. We prayed that God will restore the spiritual heritage and help people to find their true identity and real meaning in Christ.

In the evening Jonno and me went to Tiananmen Square to witness the flag lowering ceremony. Not only that, we prayed for China. I heard that many people received a vision of ten thousand people worshipping at Tiananmen Square, and the picture of chairman Mao replaced by a cross. Some people actually had enough faith to start buying sound equipment for public worship at Tiananmen Square. To be able to pray in Tiananmen Square was truly a special moment for me.

God told me that one day I will share the gospel to Chinese people in Tiananmen Square. Eventually God will call me to China one day. It's the second time that God told me this. I was both exciting and uncertain to receive this from God, but I knew that God would guide me to where he wanted me to be.

Charlie Lam

Science/Arts life group, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre