• Home
• Vision
• Details
• Contact
• Prayer
• Registration

Vision

The Homecoming Chinese Gathering – May 5-8, 2010

On May 5-8, 2010 a unique event will take place in Hong Kong – the Homecoming Chinese Gathering. Unlike a conference with pre-determined speakers and pre-set teachings, in a gathering believers answer a call from the Lord to come together to worship and wait before Him, posturing themselves to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

“Being in a gathering was like nothing I had ever experienced before,” says Eddie Ma, Senior Pastor of the Shaukiwan Baptist Church in Hong Kong and one of the members of the leadership team for the Homecoming Chinese Gathering. “I and some other Asian leaders were invited to a gathering in Canada a number of years ago that was being organized by a group called Watchmen for the Nations. Watchmen is a relational network of Christian leaders from different regions, denominations, ethnic backgrounds and spheres of influence in Canada (church, business, politics, media, education, arts) who share a common heart cry to see the glory of God fill the church.

Some of us had met the director of Watchmen, David Demian, in meetings in Asia. He related stories of this “journey” that the Canadian church was walking with God to see the healing of their nation and its release into its destiny. So much of what he said resonated with our hearts for our own nations and the Chinese people. So we felt we had to go to Canada and experience this “gathering” for ourselves.”

“But we were not ready at all for what happened,” shares Tony Tseng, Executive Director of Good TV in Taiwan and another member of the leadership team. “As Asians, we like order and structure. When we do a conference, everything is planned to the last detail and carefully scheduled. But what we saw in Canada, was totally different. No plan, no agenda, no speakers.”

So does that mean the meetings were just completely uncontrolled with people worshiping and sharing whatever they felt?

“No,” explains Andrew Ho, Director of Kingdom Ministries in Hong Kong, “but rather than having an organizing team or committee, seasoned mature leaders from all across Canada that they call “spiritual fathers and mothers” provide oversight to the gathering. This team met about one hour before each session to pray and discern the direction the Holy Spirit was leading for that session, based on their own discernment but also the discernment of the body that is assembled for the gathering. Sometimes they felt something very clear – like a particular person or group should share. Other times, they just had a general sense of the direction and they decided to start with the worship and see how the Lord would lead them.”

“That is the part I found the most challenging,” says Pastor Ma. “The fact that they were willing to go into a meeting with thousands of people without any structure, simply relying on the Holy Spirit to lead them.”

“I remember very well that gathering,” David Demian shares. “I think the Asian leaders thought we were crazy but they were far too polite to say anything to us,” he adds with a laugh. “But I can understand what they were feeling because if it wasn’t for a clear word from God, I don’t think any of us could have ventured like this either.

The Gathering wasn’t something we initiated – it came as a mandate from the Lord. When Watchmen first began in the early 1990s, we were just a very small group of leaders who met together in Vancouver (the city in which I live) to seek the Lord about Canada’s destiny. Years before, Canada had received some amazing prophetic promises about our nation’s destiny to be a healer to the nations from respected spiritual leaders, such as Dr Cho from South Korea. Yet by the mid 1990s many other prophetic voices had begun to warn about an impending judgment coming to Canada. So we really needed to know from the Lord what to do.

“That’s when everything changed,” interjects Dr. Gideon Chiu, Senior Pastor of Church of Zion in Vancouver, Canada. (Dr Chiu is both part of the Chinese leadership team and an original founding member of Watchmen alongside David Demian.) One day a respected prophet met with us and he began to prophesy that God was asking us to convene a “gathering” and that we only had two months to get it organized. Now the term “gathering” wasn’t very common at that time and so what we basically thought was God was saying “do a conference”.

But we had done conferences before and we couldn’t see anything more that we could do. We knew many people much more gifted at running conferences than us and we had no desire to repeat something others were already doing. So we thought maybe this prophet had missed it and we ignored the word. Some weeks had passed when people in our church, who knew nothing of this prophetic word, started having dreams of conferences. And the Lord was warning them that there was a conference that needed to happen otherwise something would be missed.

“So,” David Demian explains, “we talked together and all agreed that we were tired of just “doing things”. If God had something specific for this “gathering” He needed to make it clear to us. We began sharing what we had on our hearts – what our dream of a gathering would look like. We wanted to gather people who were longing for the presence of God even as we were. And we wanted worship without time limits; we would worship until we felt the Lord released us. We didn’t want speakers announced because we didn’t want people to come because of names but because they wanted to meet the Lord. We would trust the Lord to speak His message through whomever He would send. Even if it was an 11-year-old child, we wanted to see that word released. We wanted to prepare people for His presence, His glory so the church of Canada could be made into His dwelling place.”

“As we shared,” Pastor Chiu adds, “we realized what we envisioned was something different than we had seen before and we felt God was giving us a green light to venture in it. We sought the Lord as to the place and time and then we prepared a simple brochure. We thought maybe a few hundred people might come. But to our surprise, thousands of people began registering, from all over the world. We had to shut off the registrations after only a few weeks because we had no more room in the meeting space. In fact, when we finally did meet, we had to remove most of the chairs and people had to sit on the floor so that we could fit more people.”

“That first gathering was amazing,” David Demian recalls, “most of us had never experienced the presence of God like that. The worship went for hours and God began sovereignly bringing healing and reconciliation in major areas of wounds in our nation.”

“And that’s the same thing I experienced at the gatherings I attended many years later,” Tony Tseng says. “There was such a strong presence of God. No one was controlling the meeting except the Holy Spirit and yet there was such a clear divine order to everything that was happening.

“There was a unity that was almost tangible,” Eddie Ma explains. “I was particularly struck by the worship team. There were seven different worship leaders all on stage together. But there was no competition. Instead they were all trying to sense who the Holy Spirit was moving through at a particular time and then they would all come behind that person. Not just spiritually, but even physically. When a prophetic song came on one worship leader, some of the other leaders would kneel at that person’s feet, praying and interceding for the song to come forth. I’d never seen such humility and love. It impacted me deeply”.

“And to see the way God would sovereignly lead people into prophetic acts,” Andrew Ho adds. “A team of more than 60 German leaders were onstage being introduced and welcomed. One Messianic Jewish leader stood before them and suddenly the Spirit of God came upon him and he began to weep. Other Messianic leaders joined him on stage and they entered into a deep repentance and release of forgiveness. Everyone in the gathering was captivated by the Holy Spirit and most of us were weeping profusely. “

“And yet none of this was planned,” adds David Demian. “We just asked the German leaders to come onstage so we could honour them for being with us. And then God took over.”

That gathering was a turning point for the Asian leaders.

“What I experienced transformed me,” Pastor Ma shares. “There was such a sovereignty of God in everything. We Chinese are very skilled at doing conferences but sometimes I think we schedule things so well we don’t leave any room for the Holy Spirit. And despite our many programs and activities and conferences , we are seeing very little real change in our nations. Yet here was this remnant of Canadian believers walking in simple obedience, gathering only when the Lord said and in whatever way He instructed. And God was leading them into prophetic acts and spiritual decrees that were producing measurable changes in the natural in their nation.”

“Ten years ago Canada was on the brink of judgment,” Pastor Chiu explains. “Our government was filled with corruption and pride that was an embarrassment to the whole nation. Our economy was weak – our dollar was only worth about ½ of the American dollar. A strong separatist movement in French Canada (Quebec) was threatening to split the nation apart. And our aboriginal peoples were facing terrible devastation from alcohol, drugs and suicide”.

And today?

“Our journey is far from over but we have seen some amazing changes,” says David Demian. “God led us into a national repentance ten years ago that transitioned our nation from judgment to His favour. Then corruption in political circles started being exposed eventually leading to a change in government. In a recent interview our Prime Minister was asked how he thought historians would judge him. He answered that he really didn’t care what the historians said, the only thing he cared about was God’s judgment of his life. This same Prime Minister has transformed Canada into one of the strongest allies of Israel on the world stage. Our economy has dramatically improved with our dollar almost at par with the US. And during the recent economic collapse, Canada was recognized as having one of the strongest, most stable banking systems in the world. The separatist movement in French Canada has dissipated. And just over a year ago, our government initiated a historic repentance to the aboriginal peoples of Canada, for abuses they suffered at the hands of our government.”

“When you begin to understand the journey the Canadians have been on in the last 10 years,” Andrew Ho explains, “you can see God has given them keys, an understanding about His Kingdom, that I believe could help us in the Chinese world.”

So does that mean the Chinese will be following the same journey as Canada?

“Not at all,” says David Demian, “because our journey is about Kingdom principles, not about creating a form or structure. We see too much of this in the body of Christ. God speaks a rhema word to someone – and the next thing you know, we’re acting like McDonalds, trying to create franchises of this same strategy in other places in the body.

Not one strategy that God led the children of Israel in was ever repeated. Because the actual strategy – march around the walls – carry torches in jars – wasn’t the point. The point of these stories was to show us that the power of God is released when we walk in obedience and faith to a rhema word from God.

Most of us are familiar with waiting on God for a vision. But once we have the vision, immediately we begin to plan in our own human wisdom and understanding to see how we can accomplish the vision. But what God wants us to do is lay down our own plans and ideas and continue to wait on Him for the strategy, the specific steps, and the timing. For example, God told Joshua that he was going to overthrow Jericho. Joshua was a military commander with tens of thousands of men ready to “take the Promised Land”. But if Joshua had just marched out in his military might, would Jericho have fallen? No, because the victory wasn’t in the might of the army, it was in obedience to the Lord. So God told them to do something seemingly silly – march around the walls, blowing trumpets. Not much of a military strategy. But that’s because the victory wasn’t in their ability – it was in the collective obedience of a remnant, a critical mass, that allowed God to release a measure of His authority that brought victory. And down came the walls. And it wasn’t the army but God who got all the glory.

Critical mass is a phrase that Demian uses often. “A critical mass in physics refers to the smallest amount of fissionable material that is needed to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. If you have the right critical mass, you will have a nuclear explosion. And throughout the Bible we see that God always uses a critical mass, or a remnant, to stand in the gap/break through for the blessing and release of the whole.”

So just what is the number of the critical mass?

“There is no one right number,“ David Demian answers, “for every purpose of God it will be different. In Gideon’s battle, God was looking for 300. And for Sodom and Gomorrah, God was only looking for 10. Imagine that - 10 righteous people would have been enough to turn the whole destiny of a city.”

Unity is another principle that the Watchmen team believes is key to establishing the Kingdom of God.

“There is a power in unity,” Pastor Chiu explains, “that the church has not yet fully grasped. When we speak of unity, mostly we mean churches and ministries combining gifts, resources, and influence in order to have more strength and success in accomplishing a “godly goal”. For example, when an evangelist comes to town to do a crusade, ministries in the city will band together to plan and finance the crusade with the godly goal of seeing the lost saved. But once the project is complete, we go our separate ways – back to our own lives, visions and ministries. I don’t think this is the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

“In many ways the church is still functioning in an Old Testament model,” David Demian continues. “In the Old Testament, God would anoint an individual – a prophet, a priest or a king – who would be given the authority by the Lord to lead. But in the book of Acts, at the inception of the church, something dramatic changed and the Spirit of God rested not on one man but on a corporate body of 120 that was in the Upper Room.

So as we move more into a model of the kingdom, we should expect to see the church Jesus prayed for being manifested – a body of believers, unified in a supernatural oneness walking as Jesus did. Jesus said “I only do what I see the Father doing and speak what I hear the Father speaking”. That is a picture of total submission to the will of the Father. And I believe this is the revelation the Early Church had – one body in submission to One Head. And because of it they walked in a tremendous authority and demonstration of the power of God.

So what does Demian think of the Homecoming Chinese Gathering?

“I feel a great excitement in my spirit because I really believe this is God’s timing for the Chinese church to redeem their destiny. Many years ago the Lord spoke to me about the unique destiny of the Chinese as a bridge for the Middle East. And as an Egyptian, I can see how God has positioned the Chinese as key players in His end time purposes. But I believe their destiny will only be realized when there is a remnant of people who are willing to lay down their own agendas and plans to journey with God and see His kingdom established His way among the Chinese people. “

The Gathering team echoes Demian’s beliefs.

“This is a kairos time for the Chinese,” Pastor Ma says. “And while we don’t know what the critical mass is for this step in our journey, we know if we release the call, God is able to make His people willing in the day of His power.”

“That’s why we are encouraging everyone to seek the Lord earnestly about this gathering,” Andrew Ho explains. “This isn’t about finding time in our schedules for another conference – this is about a divine appointment with God for the destiny of the Chinese. And if God is calling you to this Gathering then be persevering in your obedience. Don’t let the enemy hinder you.”

“Because it’s not just our obedience as a team of leaders that is going to make the difference,” Tony Tseng concludes. “It’s the collective obedience of the whole remnant that God is calling that will help release the destiny of the Chinese for such a time as this.”

By Stephanie Muzyka