Rev. Dishan Wickramaratne, Chairman / General Superintendent
The world we live in today is increasingly loosing their faith in the future and the desperation of the end times is leading people to look for a illusive solution. As we watch events unfold right before our eyes what is our response.
I am reminded of the Lord’s words “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor?” So, it is important that we, as a Pentecostal church with a hundred years of maturity behind us, do influence our nation effectively.
We live in rapidly changing times. Our nation is experiencing change and the wider Christian community is also experiencing change. We can see clearly a move of God in an end time context. There is a new and refreshing breeze of the Spirit over our land and we must be sensitive to what God is doing. As Paul says in Galatians “since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Many of our churches are refocusing on the work of the Spirit, and it is my deep desire to see a return to the first century patterns, with the free flow of the gifts in our services. We have taken meaningful steps in this direction as a body. We held the Senior Pastors’ Encounter camp in April, with a focus on the prophetic ministry, and the next Encounter camp would be in September at Pamunugama and conducted in the Tamil language.
In keeping with the spirit of evangelism I am happy to see that over the past few years our churches have been encouraged to develop a congregation that is involved in witnessing. Pastors need to keep this constantly before their people. We need to be involved in both personal and mass evangelism. We should be working on this in cooperation with other churches too – the world in which we live is desperately in need of the gospel. In this context the work of Rev. Roy Isaac with a vision for a mass witness to the nation conducting successful mass rallies in Colombo, Kandy, and Batticaloa, working together with the wider church community is commendable. At Batticaloa the President of the country accepted his invitation to be present, and made a very positive speech assuring Christians of his commitment to ensuring that all enjoy the freedom they are entitled to.
His presence gave additional recognition to the mission to bless the nation.
Our influence must reach the whole community, and ultimately the nation. I encourage you to be an agent of change in what God is doing in our land in these crucial days.
You are constantly in my remembrance and prayers.
Your friend and brother,
Assemblies of God Sri Lanka 