C.T. AUS: What was the most touching story to come out of the conference for you personally?
B.H.: It is our 40th anniversary celebration of CCCA's beginning in Australia. To hear different stories and the funny anecdotes of different people from the past was an amazing panorama of God's faithfulness to us.
Another was to witness the life of one couple, Ellen and Gordon Dodd, who are kind of like the grandparents of the organisation. They received a life-time award from CCCA, which began in 1967.
The couple really gave themselves to the younger generation, in particular to the new ministry staff. The couple encouraged them, prayed for them, and joked around with them and formed an amazing bridge which narrowed the generation gap.
C.T. AUS: Do you have any story from the CCC ministries that you can share with us that you heard in the Conference?
B.H: There is one ministry story, which I can share, coming from one of our global network known as 'GAIN' Australia, the aid and relief arm of CCCA, where one team had just returned from a short-medical mission in Cambodia.
Unusually, our people had received consent from senior Cambodian figures in the political and military hierarchy to go in with half-a-dozen people consisting of doctors and nurses, along with volunteers. We ran a bush-clinic where hundreds of people were lining up. We would ask whether they would like people to pray for them and usually everyone said, "Yes, please do." Thus, we had an intercession team doing that and then everyone was asked whether they would like to know what it meant to follow Jesus Christ.
We saw this project as bringing many people to Christ while at the same time addressing a practical need. Now, what was really fascinating was the generals and colonels in Cambodia who allowed us to come in had been influenced by CCC Cambodia through the English classes which we taught at the military headquarter.
The class paved the way for us to open up medical clinics. As a result, Cambodians had both their physical and spiritual health taken care of.
The bush clinics only allowed us to catch a glimpse of the country so we were unable to judge the current religious situation there. However, we could see a greater response to the Gospel in the small pocket where we were operating. In addition, we were beginning to see an opening within the country that we had never seen before and there was a strong responsiveness to the Gospel from the people.
C.T. AUS: What is CCCA's plan for the next few years?
B.H.: Most of our work is not event-driven but an ongoing process of working in the field, connecting with people, building them up and equipping them. We talk about winning, building, training and sending people.
We focus on a diverse range of people, such as high school students through to family, in order to bring them to know Jesus Christ.
This ministry is 'on the ground' where we have two dimensions to it.
The first is our staff evangelise, build up, train and equip people to know Christ. The second is connecting with 'strategic influencers' such as business leaders and church leaders to help them use their influence more effectively to build a process of multiplication.
We have major event campaigns from time to time. We had a number of events based around the JESUS film in community outreaches through churches.
Internationally, CCC has seen amazing things unfold through the film in its video/DVD format. In Rome, Italy, at a previous Catholic World Youth Day, over 600,000 copies of the video were distributed to attendees to take home and share with others. We are exploring whether there is an opportunity to work with the Sydney event this year so that everyone who comes here can have a very clear presentation of the life of Christ and use this opportunity to respond to Christ's calling as well as giving it to their friends once they go back to their own country. Each DVD can provide the film in seven languages. We invite readers to pray that this can be arranged.
C.T. AUS: What else has been developing?
B.H.: The success we are seeing in our university ministry, known as Student Life, is another highlight for me. In Monash and Melbourne University, there is a large body of international students that we have seen coming to Christ. During the year, we witnessed around 25 students from South-East Asia confessing Christ as their Saviour and they are now in the process of discipleship.
In the early part of the year, we had 170 students participating in the Melbourne conference where many of them came from diverse background. This is a little glimpse of the United Nation coming to study in Australia. Some are migrating and, to me, it was the most multicultural gathering I had ever seen. They were all worshipping our God and were excited in learning how to follow Jesus Christ in this complicated world we are living in.
C.T. AUS: Do you see Student Life expanding given the influx of international students over the coming years?
B.H: We are seeing an incredible response from students who want to know what Christians believe and what the Bible says. There is a thirst among students, particularly from China, to know God since there is a lack of information in certain countries. In addition, we are seeing a one in four response from students, and sometimes even higher, to gather and talk more about what the Bible has to say. In the Christianity class, where we usually do it on a one-to-one basis, the response is even higher.
C.T. AUS: What is CCC currently working on?
B.H.: We are relocating our national headquarters from Sydney to Melbourne. It is a major and historic move for us because ever since we started 40 years ago, the head office had always been in Sydney. We decided to move to Melbourne to make a strategic impact on the southern states as well as for economic reasons.
So next year, we will concentrate on establishing ourselves in the new location. This involves recruiting new people as we need extra workers.
We are also looking to recruit people with multimedia, IT and creative graphic skills in order for us to establish a multimedia team. The purpose of the team is to find ways to utilise the Internet and the Face Book phenomena so that we can integrate them with the short film and creative mode of communication in this new millennium. Right now, the media boundary is being blurred and in this age it is not about print media anymore.
Now, we can reach students throughout the world via the Internet. So, we want to establish a team who can use their professional expertise in order to achieve a breakthrough in this new and it's an exciting frontier mission field. We cannot be late adapters in this new communication field.