As I write I’m in Jakarta for several meetings. I had some time yesterday and I decided to go look up a ministry I’ve heard a lot about – Club Sehat – or Club Health we’d say in English. Club Sehat is the brainstorm of some Adventist businessmen who wanted to follow the counsel of our Adventist forefathers written over 100 years ago. Here’s my paraphrase of that 100 year old counsel “In our Cities and in Resort areas let Health Restaurants with treatment rooms connected to it be started. Let them be connected to our churches as centers of influence. As customers come, the workers should be always be alert to the spiritual, physical, emotional and mental needs of those who enter the doors. Offer classes on health, cooking and treatment, etc.”
I called my friend Pastor Kaleb Segala who graciously agreed to take me on a tour of Club Sehat. The first of 2 stores we toured was the Club Sehat in Pluit (North Jakarta). As we arrived I was impressed by a nice looking store front in a nice area of North Jakarta. This is an old China town that has been majorly re-made into a modern area of mega malls and shopping centers, interspersed by high rise town homes and golf communities of Jakarta’s wealthy and mid-class people.
As we entered the store the store manager met us and introduced us to the staff.
4 or 5 full time employees work in this particular store. In every store they always hire 1 or more pre-Adventists who’ve been touched by Club Sehats ministry and usually they will be a member within a year or two. On first glance you think it’s just a health store. But as you read nicely designed advertising you see up coming Seminars are “How to Prevent Cancer”, “Weight and Diet Management”, “The Best Diet” and “Heathy Exercise”.
Then there is the large poster for the upcoming Club Sehat 2 week course in a Mountain retreat a couple of hours away from Jakarta. “Oh, Cool, there’s a cool class coming this Saturday,” I think to myself, “Wish I could come.”
Second Floor
Then they take me to the second flour where they teach the classes. It’s a simple room that seats 65-80. “How full do you get here on Saturdays I ask?”
“Well when we do our teaching about Cancer we usually have over flow to the 3rd floor. We have a closed circuit camera on the 2nd floor so we can project to the 3rd floor.”
I quickly calculate in my mind. “So you have 80 on the 2nd floor and how many on the 3rd floor?”
“Sometimes that many again.” Ellen answers
One Section of tables on the 3rd floor where they have healthy food potlucks.
We go to the third flour where I see the cook school room and potluck room and the consultation room for when they do seminars. The forth flour is still under construction but will house hydro-therapy and massage therapy rooms. Man, Jakarta won’t seem so stressful when they get that built.
“So what does your Saturday services look like?” I ask.
“We usually have Sabbath School first at 9:30 followed by a health teaser and then a sermon. Then we invite the guests, which are usually double or more than our members, to eat a healthy potluck meal that we plan. Then they can join us for the health lecture. After the sun goes down on Sabbath night we open the store because often the guests want some ingredients that they’ve tasted in the healthy potluck.” Ellen tells us. “We sometimes stay afterwards and eat popcorn and fruit salad and play games.”
Me: So have you had any that come back every week? I mean that’s a long day!
Ellen: Most. . . We collect their names and information all week as they come to the store and then we invite them on Fridays to come on the weekend for seminars or sometimes week night programs. Club Sehat has grown so fast that we’ve started 5 in 5 years and 3 of our locations have become organized Seventh-day Adventist churches. (Note: Pastor Segala tells us that no other ministry in the Seventh-day Adventist church in Jakarta has had this kind of success in growth).
Me: So who comes? Is this mostly Chinese Christians that we steal from other denominations or is this from Vegetarians in the city? And how do they come to find out about your Club Sehat?
Ellen: Let me answer your second question first. We get on local radio stations, usually the government station, and have them interview us about health. With millions of listeners its not hard to get people interested. Now your first question: We have a majority who are not going to any church when they first come to us. There are Buddhists, Hindu’s, Muslims, Christians and some who are no particular religion or some other type of religion that maybe I forgot to mention. If you want exact statistics we can tell you on our computer. (We laugh) (Note: I’m not use to such scientists of souls here in Indonesia or anywhere for that matter.)
Success stories written on the wall.
Me: Tell me a success story.
Ellen: On the wall in the grocery store and on our web site www.clubsehat.com you can see testimonials. There was one lady who came to us with Stage 4 cancer in her breasts, ovaries, back bone and neck. . . the Docs had given up. But she heard us on Radio and looked us up. We started working with her and within 4 months the cancer was seriously reversed – To God be the Glory. She joined us and continues to live the healthy lifestyle that we advocate. She has a tractotomy as her proof that the cancer was indeed so bad before. She was one of our first customers back 5 years ago. We worked together with a Doctor who prefers to practice prevention and we could watch her getting better. This was an amazing miracle. When the traditional Western Medicine had told her she only had a short time to live God did something to help us.
On the Forth floor will be a Hydrotherapy and Massage Clinic. Its still being built out.
As I shopped the grocery store I couldn’t help but think. . . wouldn’t this be cool to have in Papua? There were things like Flax seed and raw sunflower seeds and nuts of all sorts and whole wheat flour and then there were hundreds of little things that I have no idea what they were because I’m no cook. To you cooking sorts. . . next time you’re in Jakarta check out their amazing stores and ministry. You can shop online and see what they have. www.clubsehat.com More Club Sehats are in the plans.
The Screenshot of where we were at the Pluit Store.
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