The Words of the Feddema Family |
Report on Hoon Dok Family Church (HDFC) Activity in New Jerusalem District
Masako Feddema
September 24, 2007
HDFC District 3 Coordinator
Mrs. Masako Feddema.
How We Started and Developed
The New Jerusalem District (#3) consists of New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. We have about 400 blessed central families, with about 85% of them in New Jersey. We started to create HDFC small groups in August 2007, after one year of education by Rev. Dong Woo Kim, the former Regional Director, on HDFC and small groups through various vision seminars and workshops.
We started out by forming 14 small groups last August, and after one year it expanded to 40 small groups throughout the District. Out of 40 groups, 35 groups are in New Jersey. Therefore, naturally we concentrate on developing our small group activity and education system centering on New Jersey, where we have our District Headquarters.
As of today we have 225 families involved in HDFC small groups in our District. Thirty groups have weekly meetings consistently, and the rest of the groups have biweekly or monthly meetings. Last year 102 guests were invited to the small group meetings and gateway programs (Japanese Family Night, Healthy Home Cooking, Marriage Enrichment Programs, BBQ gathering, Origami Class, Picnic, Talk on the Spirit World, Card Making Club, etc.), that are very effective venues in bringing new people. This year we have invited 236 guests so far. (Some of them are repeat guests.)
One Group Successfully Multiplies
Mrs. Yoshiko des Laurier started out with five families last August. She reached out especially to distant families. She and her husband personally visited them often. One family (American and Chinese) had been distant from the church for several years. They were invited to the meeting and came after several invitations. Since then they have been regular participants of the small group meetings and became connected to the church activities again.
One brother joined the movement two years ago, but was not actively connected to the church. He joined Yoshiko’s group last year and came to the meetings regularly. He decided to go to the blessing this summer and he got matched and blessed.
That way her group expanded to 12 families. Three guests have received the Ambassador for Peace certificate, and two more are in process. They have four guests who are coming regularly to the meeting and six guests who come when they can. A Japanese brother in her group went to Hoon Dok School and got inspired to become her assistant. In September this year he successfully became a new leader of a divided group. They both had six families each when they divided; however, they are already increasing the numbers of the families.
Hoon Dok Family Church Sunday, September 16
Our goal for this year is to involve all blessed central families in our District to the HDFC small groups as Dr. Yang has been emphasizing since 2006. In order to accomplish this goal, we organized a HDFC Sunday Service on September 16. We asked all the small group leaders to create their own posters to promote their small groups and activities.
Most of the leaders participated, and they used their own artistic talent and creativity to create wonderful, inspiring, and innovative posters! These colorful posters were displayed at the wall of the hallway of the school (we rent a school auditorium for our Sunday Service). The members got very inspired and gathered around the posters, looking curiously and carefully checking each one of them.
One second generation got very excited to find his picture on the poster and shouted "I belong to this small group!" This event clearly conveyed the spirit and importance of the small group to the community.
Besides the poster display, the entire Sunday Service was dedicated to the theme of small groups. Mrs. Masako Feddema presented Rev. Won Pil Kim’s testimony of Father’s ministry in Pusan, which is the origin of HDFC activity.
We had testimonies by Mrs. Beatrice Bell as a member of a small group and Mrs. Hope Igarashi as a leader. Mrs. Bell testified how she was helped to go through a difficult and challenging time of her life (her son’s cancer) by the support and prayer of small group. She is now more involved with church activity and has more awareness of reaching out to others.
Mrs. Igarashi testified that because of the team work as a group she could take care and educate her four guests to become associate members. She testified that she was no longer alone in witnessing to her guests.
We are planning continuously to reach out to the blessed central families who are not in a small group yet; hopefully they can get involved in the small groups by the end of this year.
Leadership Has Grown Strong in the Last 12 months
We have our regular HDFC small group leaders’ meeting on the first and third Sunday of the month after Sunday Service (12:30pm -- 2:30pm). Through these meetings, consistent education has been provided to train and guide them as small group leaders.
We have a HDH reading, reports (providential update), testimonies, PowerPoint presentations (book reviews and review of vision seminar material), discussion, and questions and answers. It seems that those who attend the meeting regularly learn a lot and grow confident in their leadership. Also, leading a small group meeting consistently over a year has helped them to develop their leadership. After trials and errors for a year, they are now clearer on how to lead their groups in multiplying.
HDFC Manual (Curriculum) Helped the Small Groups to Grow
We created a HDFC Small Group Manual in January of this year. Since then, we have been encouraging the leaders to use the curriculum in the manual at the small group meetings. Most of the groups are using the manual well, and it has helped them make a breakthrough in sharing and discussing deeply during meetings.
The key is the effective discussion questions. We are planning to revise the manual by creating curricula from the Peace Messages and Chung Song Gyeong, following the advice of Hyun Jin Nim. It is a work in progress, and we will complete it by next January (2008).
Despite all the good things mentioned above, we still have our challenges to overcome. Our challenges are:
Strengthening the Education Track: (Two Wings Concept)
As the number of guests increased at the small group meetings, we recognized the need to strengthen our education. It is important that the District Headquarters support the small group by providing an education track. We have a system set up already; however, we have been having problems of stabilizing manpower (staff members, lecturers, etc). We plan to recruit more people to create an Education Team and make it steady.
Clarifying the Identity of Sunday Service:
We tried the last three months to have "guest friendly" Sunday Services; however, they did not work out well for many reasons. In general our concept of "guest friendly" Sunday Service is to copy Christian types of Sunday Services. We got confused and went through trial and error.
However, the experiences of the past three months taught us clearly that we have to have our clear identity as Unificationists to hold our own Sunday Service. We don’t have to hide our identity at the Sunday Service.
The guests should be educated and prepared first through the small group meetings before they come to the Sunday Service. Now our small groups are steady and strong enough that we can do this in our small groups.
Increasing our Contacts by Creating and Distributing Leaflets:
We recognized that we did not have enough contacts to invite to our regular small group meetings. In reality many members do not even have four or five people to invite to the meetings and events. Therefore, we (the District Headquarters) created a few different leaflets so that the members can use them for their convenience, visiting door to door, when shopping, on the bus, etc. We need to reach out more often and to as many people as possible.
Developing Programs and Curricula for Children
As more blessed central families get involved with small groups as a family, we are facing the problem of dealing with children while the adults are having their small group meetings. We are planning to create some activities for younger children and programs and curricula for older children.