Senior pastor of JPCC and successful businessman, Pastor Jeffrey Rachmat reveals strategies to success in one’s life in the physical, spiritual, marital and business realms.
At City Harvest Church on the weekend of 2 and 3 March, founder and senior pastor of Jakarta Praise Community Church (JPCC) Jeffrey Rachmat preached an encouraging message on seeing oneself through God’s lens.
Pastor Jeffrey encountered the Lord as a teenager studying in the Netherlands where he started a small fellowship group among Indonesian students. After returning to Indonesia, he worked in a bank for five years. He heard God calling him again into ministry, and started a fellowship group among his friends which quickly grew to 700 people. In the midst of that, God told Pastor Jeffrey to start a church and he stepped out in obedience without any “training”—JPCC was born with a team of more than 60 people on the 4 July 1999. The church now has three worship locations in the capital of Indonesia.
City News sat down with Pastor Jeffrey to hear his thoughts on ministry and marketplace leaders, and the call of God on the church.
City News: Hi Pastor Jeffrey, your birthday was on Friday (1 Mar). Happy birthday! What’s your birthday wish for this year?
Jeffrey Rachmat: Thank you. For the next phase of our lives, I think we will take on a role as father figure for many, especially the younger pastors, the businesspeople and leaders. That’s the kind of role that I can see myself filling. My wish is that this (transition) will go very well, that my wife and I can embrace that new season of our lives. It’s going to be exciting.
That is something to look forward to! In your sermon last weekend, you said that having the wrong self-image prevents us from enjoying God’s promises. How can we tell when we have the wrong self-image?
All of us, at some point of our lives, struggle with that. We are human and we sin against God. And because of that, we devalue ourselves, and we put the wrong values upon ourselves. The whole thing is a process. My message reminded people of what to do and what the real situation is when you are living far from God. Getting back to the right self-image is a whole process and the Holy Spirit will be with you every step of the way, restoring your self-image. As you get to know God better and better, you will increase your value, because the truth will always increases value.
It’s like a puzzle. When you start to put all the pieces together, more and more, you will gain confidence. When you’ve pieced more than half together, you’d already have an idea (of the whole picture), even though it’s not perfect. That’s the right image, even though it’s still missing a couple of pieces. So we are still in that process, all of us including me. You don’t need to have all the pieces in place to feel confident of the outcome.
What about young Christians, youths in the church, who are just getting to know themselves and getting to know God. How do they start getting the right self-image?
You start by reading your Bible, to renew your mind with the Word of God. Otherwise, this world will inform you about a lot of things that you only will get more confused about. That’s why we need to go back to the Bible: that’s the standard from God’s point of view, and that’s the truth that we need to embrace.
You said our authority is connected to identity. For a leader in the church or in the marketplace, how can one resist the temptation of power and authority, and remain grounded in one’s God-given identity?
Understand that power is for service. Understand that you’ve been given power and authority, not for you to boss people around, but for you to serve others. Have the mindset that Christian leaders are called to serve the people. It’s what we call servant leadership. Having that in mind will enable you to understand, and to put balance in the authority and the power that you have been given. But if you lose sight of that, you will easily fall to the other extreme, thinking that you have the power and that authority is for you to push people down, instead of serving people and use it for the good of others.
When we talk about leadership in the Christian world, and in the business world, it’s all about the people. It’s not about the leader, because the success of a leader will show in the success of the people, not the other way around. Jesus says, if you want to be great, serve others. Don’t do like the world does and boss people around.
Thanks for clarifying that, Pastor. The vision for JPCC this year is “Stronger”. What is God doing in the church in Indonesia and the rest of Asia?
Looking to the world that we live in today with all its issues, we are bombarded with so much information, especially the young people. There’s so much knowledge that they can easily get from social media, and now there is artificial intelligence. We find it important as a church to get deeper in our understanding of who we are, who God is, to having a strong connection to God. That’s why the word “stronger” came into play, because we want the people to get to know the Lord even more. We are providing them with the tools: we are equipping the parents, the children, the next generation with all the things necessary for them to gain knowledge of God.
We made the vision so simple that many people will understand it. I don’t know about churches in Singapore, but in Indonesia, so many churches have lost the youths, more so during the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, it’s hard to get them back. We don’t want that to happen to our church. That’s why we need to equip the parents first, so that the parents will know what to do—not to judge or condemn their children, or to drag them to church—but how they should behave, what attitude they should have so that they can inspire their children to go back to church and find God. When parents turn to God in their daily activities and routine, their children will see that.
Last year, at the Marketplace Dinner, you talked about a kingdom principle that you personally live by from Matthew 13. How can Christians in the marketplace live out the character of God?
Well, this is interesting! Because actually I wanted to talk about this instead of what I preached. But I sensed that the prodigal son story was more suitable for the season.
I’m glad you asked this because as Christians, we believe that we live life from the inside out. Guard your heart with all diligence, because from it spring the issues of life. But there’s a problem, because nowadays people try to live from the outside in. Social media makes it easy for us to look at others’ lives without having to go outside our house.
The inside is where your heart is. Whatever it is that you need to go out to do, like your business, your career, even ministry, that’s the outside. If we want to live life from the inside out, we need to be strong in our relationship with our loved ones first. Our family, our marriage, our children come first. We need to be strong on the inside first, because the inside determines the outcome.
But nowadays, people want to do well outside first. They want to be successful, to be great businessmen, to build companies, to have good careers—all these things in the outside world—without having their inside built strong first. It’s like the parable of the two foundations, the two houses that were built on rock and built on sand. Which do you want? A lot of people can be successful outside. But if they fail inside, then what profit is it for them?
I’m not against building successful careers or successful businesses—we teach all the Bible principles for the people to be successful outside. But we’re supposed to live life from the inside out, and not from the outside in. So if we want to have a stronger life, we need to start to build our foundation first on a solid rock, then we can build up.
If you are not having the success that you want, but you have a strong family relationship, your marriage is intact, and you have a healthy marriage, you will be eager to go back home because home is where you recharge yourself and get ready to go out again the next morning, to win the war and fight again until you achieve what you want. You become eager to go back home because home is where your heart is.
But let’s suppose you fail to have a good relationship at home, but you’re successful outside. What happens? Your feet get heavy when you have to go home. Because, when you go home, no one applauds you, praises you or embraces you. But when you go out, people roll out the red carpet for you. They applaud you. They praise you. They want to know the secrets of your success.
The Bible says what profits a man to get the whole world, but lose his own soul. My version: what profit is there for you to be successful outside, but fail inside, in your own marriage, in your own family? That’s my message to the business people. Especially for the youngsters now because they all want to have quick success.
When you’re successful on the inside, and you go outside with your family and your children supporting you, you’ll be eager to go home because that’s where your heart is. All the outside success won’t make you proud and won’t make you lose sight, when everything is done for the people in the house.
Speaking of family, congratulations! You and Sister Angela celebrated your 26th wedding anniversary in February. What is your secret to making marriage work?
The key to open a door is small. I’ve never seen a key as big as the door. It’s the little things. If you do the little things right, it can open the door of happiness for you. But the same key that you use to open the door is the same key that you use to close the door. So if you neglect all the little things, then the door won’t open. I think the key is not to look at the big thing, but all the little things. I’ve never seen or never heard divorced couples complain about the big things. The reasons of divorce is often little things that were piling up unresolved, and then they couldn’t take it anymore. So it’s the little things.
