All thirteen NSD, Union, and Conference/Mission leaders gathered for the PREXAD meeting in Regency Hotel in Macau on July 22 to 24, 2013. For three days, leaders reported the mission works that had been done in each Union or Conference/Mission. They also discussed some critical issues and mission strategies to bring spiritual and mission revival to churches in NSD territories.
PREXAD began with an inspiring message from CHUM president Bob Forkenberg entitled“the perseverance”. During the opening remark, NSD president Jairyong Lee reemphasized the NSD mission slogan, “Mission First”and to evangelize in NSD territory, the most challenging area. He quoted Jan Paulsen, former GC President’s statement about mission, saying “If mission is not the primary objective, then all our councils and meetings at every administrative level are simply a waste of time.” (Adventist World, October 2006). It means mission should be the top priority of all agenda in our all meetings.
On the second day, pastor Dae Sung Kim, KUC president lead the morning devotion and spoke about the relationship between spiritual revival as the result of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and mission revival. Reports and discussion were then discussed.
In regards to the city evangelism, NSD-wide evangelism will be conducted in Tokyo in 2013, which is also called ‘Tokyo 13’. Next year, each Union and Conference wide city evangelism will be conducted in around 20 big cities of NSD territories in 2014.
NSD has its unique and outstanding leadership program for leadership advancement which is CLAP. It aims at molding the future leaders with the communication and leadership skills. In the year 2013-14, 33 pastors, institution workers, and lay members have been attending CLAP.
NSD has developed some remarkable missionary projects such as the 1000 Missionary Movement (1000MM), His Hands Missionary Movement (HHMM), and also Pioneer Missionary Movement (PMM). PMM is the cross-cultural missionary work done by church pastors in NSD. Their main ministry is to plant new churches by training church members and sending them as church planters. As of 2013, there are 2 PMM’s in KUC, 2 in JUC, 12 in TWC, 15 in UT, 1 in HMC, and 4 in MM (Mongolian Mission).
According to the Great Controversy Book Distribution Project, each Union reported their ambitious plans and all the awesome works done so far. JUC printed 90,000 copies and distributed 90% of its copies. TWC printed 18,000 copies so far and they want to print 12,000 more. MM has 10,000 copies and planned to have 10,000 more copies. KUC printed 1.8 million copies with 20,000 full version of the Great Controversy. CHUM printed a simplified version of that book and has a plan to publish electronic versions in the near future.
Leaders tackled another big issue about nurturing and retention of the newly baptized members as well as the existing members. NSD President, Jairyong Lee suggested that each Union and Conference assign coordinators to reinforce the retention project in our churches. Every year around 70 percent of our new baptized members leave the church. While we dynamically win souls, churches must provide a disciple and nurturing program to retain members and reproduce disciple makers.
The three-day PREXAD meeting was over. The leaders reassured their allegiance to God and His mission with great expectations of International Mission Congress, which will be held on Aug 28, 2013.