Sidang Injil Borneo Church Kuala Lumpur is widely known to many as SIBKL. It originally started with the divine calling and the labor of love of three Australian missionaries, Hudson Southwell, Frank Davidson and Carey Tolley. The three set sail from Adelaide and arrived in Sarawak in the year 1928. Together with a timber merchant, they established a base on the little-known island of Borneo and started the Borneo Evangelical Mission. As the story goes, the three pioneering missionaries mastered the Malay language and the local native dialects as well as began sharing the love of Jesus to the indigenous people of Sarawak. As the years passed by, God rewarded their perseverance and hundreds and thousands of natives turned to the Lord, first in Sarawak and later in Sabah. A symbolic step was made when it was decided to change the name of the mission to the Malay “Sidang Injil Borneo” (SIB).
In 1993, a small group of East Malaysian Christians began meeting in the home of Pastor Richard and Stemmah Samporoh and with the arrival of Dr Chew and his wife, Lee Choo. SIB Semenanjung was inaugurated in November 1993. Since then, they have grown tremendously and there are now over 40 SIB congregations throughout West Malaysia. The SIBKL English Congregation started with just 15 people in 1994 and grew to around 130 in 1998 when the church moved to CP Tower, Jalan Damansara, Petaling Jaya. In this particular premise, the church continued to grow to over 1500 members. Their present location at Bangunan Yin where they occupy four floors of the building initially started off in the year 1996 and that in time brought up the congregation of SIBKL to now close to 4000 members.
Currently they are in the process of getting ready to expand and reach out to even more people with their SunwayMas Community Centre located in Kelana Jaya, Petaling Jaya. Pastor Victor of SIBKL says they hope to begin their services by the end of November 2012. Extraordinarily, SIB has received many blessings and managed to get this particular building for much less. For those who do not know, during the 2008 recession the building became open for sale but no one bid for it. The asking price was only RM8.0 million which was the cost of the land and the building. Early 2009, the property market crashed allowing SIB to purchase it for only RM 3.2 million! A huge bargain and only due to the work of an awesome God! SIBKL since it has occupied four floors, has managed to accommodate people from the young to the old. They even have their own library and large Toddzone for little children, a place for them to grow and build an early foundation.
An Honorable Kind of Boasting?
Pastor Victor Wong an Executive Pastor of SIBKL preached today about boasting and how important it is to know when to and when not to, because boasting is normally associated with pride, a deadly sin. As far as we know, the Bible shows that boasting is not good and displays it in different areas such as in Proverbs 27: 1 which says, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” or in James 3: 5 which states, “In the same way, the tongue is a small thing that makes big boasts. But a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire.”
However, on the other hand with close observation, the Bible also shows how boasting is not a sin. Pastor Victor says, “There are areas in our lives when boasting is a necessity, and that is when it is done to defend Gods preaching, to defend God’s men or to display God’s power.” According to 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says, “I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord.” In the same reading in verse 5, Paul also goes on to say, “I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses.”
In his sermon Pastor Victor then shares several stories and explains further on how boasting can be done to please the Lord, how it can enable one to help oneself in a positive manner and how it can possibly help many others as well. At the end, he ends his sermon by quoting a verse from the Bible according to Jeremiah 9: 23 and it says, “This is what the LORD says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches.”
To listen to Pastor Victors full sermon or to find out more about SIBKL please visit http://www.sibkl.org.my/
