Tuesday, June 19, 2018

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This post is written by a member of the Messianic community in Israel or guest contributor. The opinions and views expressed are solely those of the author and may not necessarily reflect those of Kehila News Israel.

First “All Israel Conference” in Singapore highlights eight Israeli Messianic ministries

Chan Siew Fong

Jun 19, 2018

The first All Israel Conference was held in Singapore on May 25-26, 2018. The theme of the conference was Building Bridges Between the Body of Believers in Israel & Singapore.
The conference was a “one new man” event with the stage shared between ministry leaders from Israel and Singapore. Each session featured an Israeli speaker and Singaporean speaker about the same topic. Conference participants from both nations interacted with one another between sessions throughout the two days. Joseph Magen, founder of Kehila News Israel, and Ian Toh, pastor of 3:16 church in Singapore, co-organised this two-day event.

The highlight of the conference was the closing session on Saturday evening, entitled A Night to Honor the Messianic Community in Israel. Leaders from eight ministries, seven Israeli Messianic Jewish ministries and one Israeli Arab-Christian ministry, shared first-hand about their work, with absolutely no “hard sell”. These ministries are fruitful and well known within Israel, but not widely known outside of Israel, especially not in Asia. The purpose of the All Israel Conference was to raise the awareness of these Israel ministries and build bridges between our believing communities.
The Israeli ministry delegation to Singapore included:
1) Return Ministries helps Jews immigrating to Israel (called “Aliyah” in Hebrew) to begin a new life in Israel.
2) Be’ad Chaim (or pro-life in Hebrew) serves women contemplating abortion and has, to date, saved more than 2000 babies.
3) Lech Lcha runs a 3-month after-army discipleship program.
4) HaChotam focuses on discipleship of youths and children, teaching and production of Hebrew Messianic literature and songs.
5) The Joshua Fund reaches out to the poor and needy and blesses many Israeli Jewish and Arab ministries.
6) Kehila News Israel, an online news portal for the Messianic Jewish community in Israel has a key role to disseminate news about the Body of Messiah in Israel to the rest of the world.
Two other Israeli ministries, Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking, also shared about their work.
The final session of the conference ended with the Israeli delegation praying for Singapore followed by a group of Singaporean pastors praying for Israel.

This was the first time Israel supporters in Singapore got to know about these eight Israeli ministries. These are not nascent but established ministries worthy of our support. I later found out that several of these ministries are under-supported as the larger body of Messiah outside of Israel do not know about their work. Yet these are amazingly strategic and needed ministries. We can give an amount (in Singaporean Dollars) to be shared among the eight Israeli ministries via kehilanews.com/support-Israel or give directly to the various ministries at the links above.
This initiative has opened up new opportunities to bolster the work of reaching God’s chosen people as well as to strengthen the Messianic Body in Israel, not just for believers in Singapore but potential supporters worldwide. The broadcasting of opportunities to support God’s work in Israel must not stop at this conference. We must share with our fellow church members and contacts further afield who have not started to give to Israel work yet.
Future “All Israel Conferences” can feature representatives from other ministries in Israel as well as leaders of Messianic Jewish congregations so that hand in hand, as Jews and Gentiles, we can co-labour together to fulfil our common mandate to bring light to the nations of the world, and especially to His Chosen People.