Search Results for “church”

Search Results

New Horizon Church: Blessed with Hope and a Future

15 October 2024 blogpastor Leave a comment

New Horizon Church is the only three-in-one church in Singapore. What do I mean by that? It has gone through two mergers. The first was a merger of two churches – the older Herald Assembly of God with Agape Christian Community, another Assembly of God church. You can read more about the merger HERE. The merger resulted in a new name “New Horizon Church”. The second was recently, a merger between New Horizon Church and Revivalife, an independent, charismatic church of about thirty members. It took about a year to integrate the two bodies. The former senior pastor, Lawrence Koo, had longed to retire and move into a new chapter, and the pastor of Revivalife, Joshua Lye, was appointed to succeed Lawrence.

Pastor Joshua Lye the new senior pastor

I came to know the new senior pastor decades ago. He was one of the members of Lutheran Church of our Redeemer who was touched by an outpouring of the Spirit. It gave him a hunger to study and feed on God’s Word and he became gifted in the teaching. He felt the Lord wanted him to plant a church. I lost touch with him until one day we met and he told me he had started a church and was the bi-vocational pastor. Over a year ago we met again, and he said he was in Singapore Bible College and amid a church merger. I am glad the merger process went well, and that in the end, both pastors found the respective places where God wanted them: Joshua Lye as senior pastor of the merged church, and Lawrence Koo, retired, and launched into an exciting new chapter of his ministry.

Pastor Lawrence Koo in an exciting new chapter

I knew Lawrence Koo from my travels with him and Andrew Khoo to the United States. We visited Willow Creek’s annual leadership conference, Toronto Airport Church and Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. He went to Willow Creek annually and later brought the leadership conference to Singapore, the well-known Global Leadership Summit. After retirement, he joyfully launched into a preaching and leadership training ministry. It is a ministry twelve years in gestation. During that long time, he waited on God, longed for and prayed for the new phase. When I guest preached in New Horizon on Sunday, he was in Malaysia ministering. He has preaching and leadership training scheduled in Baguio (Philippines) and Agape AG in Seremban (Malaysia). He regularly ministers in Batam and China too. In fact, he is also willing to help facilitate the merger of small churches, provided certain prerequisites are evident. This is called retirement for pastors! Pastors retire from a position with all its responsibilities and privileges, but never from their calling or gifts. Their ministry takes a new expression.

*The board members prayed for the pastors*

Pastor Appreciation Sunday

It was Pastor Appreciation Sunday and this church honoured their pastors. I preached on the topic, “What you can and cannot expect from your pastors”. The congregation comprised a good mix of young and old and was receptive and that encouraged and fired me. After the message ended, they affirmed their pastors (including those who retired) and even me, the guest preacher. The present felt like a bar of gold. It was bottles of bird’s nest drink, which we needed more than gold. I take that back – actually, we needed a bar of gold more! Many churches do not know about this annual celebration on the second Sunday of October. Maybe pastors are too paiseh to plan an event for themselves. If that is the case, the lay leadership should take the initiative to recognise their pastors and to promote pastor-congregation understanding and mutual respect.

Pastor Joshua brought me around their newly renovated fourth-floor space for infants, children, youth, and the Chinese service. This is another occasion that I met my former church members during my guest preaching ministry. It’s Dick and Amy who were with us for many years before they moved on. I was happy to see them settled in the church and using their gifts for the Lord.

The church was in a good location. A car park spot was reserved for me in a car park for about 15 cars. However, I was told there is a lane behind the church where up to 40 vehicles can park free. Furthermore, I was told there are three MRT stations within one kilometre of the church.

I felt great joy ministering to the congregation, said my goodbyes, and drove to my home church about 5 minutes away. My thoughts were about the church, praising God for how he worked his plan in two churches’ future and two pastors’ lives to produce a fruitful outcome that no well-crafted succession plan could surpass. God is faithful and always works to give his people hope and a future. New Horizon Church is indeed a blessed people.

To visit NEW HORIZON CHURCH website go HERE.

To read more about my visits to different churches go HERE.

(Great photos from Dennis Thong, so I had to post more of them or it would be a waste.)

Kum Yan Methodist Church: Church with a Missional DNA

2 October 2024 blogpastor Leave a comment

It was with a sense of awe that I read about the history of Kum Yan Methodist Church (KY) in a May 2021 excerpt from the Methodist Message about the 103rd-anniversary celebration: “…. I learned how KY’s founding father, Mr I.C. Lam started the church because he sensed the needs of the people around him. As a teacher at Yeung Ching School, his heart was stirred and filled with compassion for the Cantonese migrants who did not know Christ. So, he started a fellowship and reached out to them with the Gospel. As the congregation grew, they eventually needed a place to worship, so he began a Sunday worship service at the school.” Kum Yan has a missional DNA.

I was invited by Pastor James Chan, their missions pastor, to preach in the English worship service. I knew James from the early years of the charismatic revival of 1972. We were in the same church immersed in an intense outpouring of God’s love and power among students from different schools. Out of that revival, a fierce love for Jesus propelled us into four decades of dedicated ministry. We served together for several years until James travelled to the U.S. and Canada for his theological studies while I completed mine at Tung Ling Bible School and Trinity Theological College. James had extensive and varied experience in churches of different sizes and cultures. He taught and ran a missions training centre (Bethany), led YWAM Singapore as its National Director, and gave member care and leadership training. For several years he was doing missions in China. Later over lunch, I heard that next year he would head to Japan as part of a church planting team. For me, I stayed and served the home church for forty years before I retired in 2020.

Ps James(L) and Pastor in charge Philip Lim (R)

I received a warm welcome at the car park from James and Joanna, whom I knew from my years serving in Church Resource Ministries Singapore. It was with a strange mixture of excitement and anxiety that I entered and surveyed the worship sanctuary. It was a beautiful sanctuary, built like a junior college auditorium with plush crimson seats, and a huge cross as its central focus. The service was about to begin and the worship team and pastors were praying. I met the pastor in charge and recently elected bishop of the Methodist Church, Rev Philip Lim, Pastor Simon Say and Pastor Stephanie.

The songs of praise were a wise combination of new (at least to me) and familiar songs. The over 300-sized congregation comprised a majority of young and middle-aged people (65%) in the 20 to 60 age group, and about 35% who are over 60 years old (the young old and middle old). The age group breakdown is a good mix for inter-generational discipleship and ministry. The prayers and announcements reveal that this church has a missional heart, praying for their missionaries in Lebanon, and giving a report about their recent mooncake outreach event. It also shows there is good collaboration between the English and Chinese congregations.

James had invited Salome Wong our former church missionary to China. He wanted to catch up with her. We walked to a nearby place for an early lunch and a long fellowship together. We had hoped to meet up with Sarah (James’ wife) but she was busy with ministry to the children’s church. That is Sarah: always dedicated and responsible.

Yishun Christian Church (Anglican): A Space for God’s Word to Form You

5 September 2024 blogpastor Leave a comment

When I received an invitation to preach at Yishun Christian Church (Anglican), I was happy to accept. I heard of this church long ago, when the church I served was searching for a permanent church facility. This was the first example of two churches sharing one building facility in a HDB land tender in a housing estate. It made a lot of sense as it halved the development cost and doubled the usage. As it turned out the Lutherans, being a mainline, liturgical church, is a good match in terms of the sanctuary design, nave and altar, pews and culture. A few other churches have followed suit and improved on this model: Clementi Bible Centre, another building in Yishun shared by Tabernacle of Christ and Life Centre Church (formerly Smyrna Assembly), and in Jurong West a church building shared by Victory Family Church and Centre of New Life. In fact, the government had plans for more churches to share buildings similarly but there had been no updates thus far.

Passionate about forming members in Christlikeness

The present vicar is Rev Daniel Teo. I was quite impressed with his broad experience. He was with Youth With A Mission for a season and served as ordained priest with St John’s-St Margaret’s for many years. He loves learning and holds a Master of Divinity (Greek track) and Master of Christian Studies from BGST, Singapore. Currently, he is close to completing his Masters in Theology. It became obvious he carries a passion for the Word of God and expository preaching. I noticed that the vicar and staff team had been preaching through the book of James. More importantly, they desire to see transformation towards Christlikeness as the word is applied in the members’ lives. I noticed that the English congregation pastors Japheth and Richard were likewise passionate about teaching God’s Word.

I was happy to see Beth, a former church leader who married pastor Japheth. I was pleased that she had integrated into the church well as a ministry staff. It was painful for the church I still attend to lose her, but I take comfort that she will bloom wherever she is planted and she is happily married to a pastor. She led the praise and worship songs in the monthly family worship service where the children and youth joined the adults in an inter-generational service. I believe such integration is healthy for the church, even if it is done monthly. This church had also experienced the charismatic renewal and unlike other churches, members are permitted to flow with the Spirit during the worship service.

I preached on the topic, “Being Single and Fulfilled” and placed the accent on being “fulfilled” because there were many married couples, young families and empty nesters. The attendance was over 200. I surprised myself because I preached for thirty minutes. I usually preach for forty minutes. On the Sunday before, I preached for an hour in my home church! It helped that I knew that after the 8:30 am Anglican service, the Lutherans would hold their worship service, so I was motivated to keep to my allotted time.

After the service, I caught up with Hedy Chua and her husband Christopher. We lived in the same neighbourhood in Princess Elizabeth Estate. Many decades back, I got to know that she attended this church. It was good to see her still rooted in the same church. These days loyalty, gratitude and faithfulness are rare qualities. People leave churches for the weakest reasons: a misunderstanding or dissatisfaction. Many left their home church simply because they unknowingly acted like consumers, searching for what was best for themselves, and not thinking of how they could contribute to the church they were dissatisfied with. This is a generalization of course but it is true for a sizeable percentage of church migrants.

When I left, I received a gift book, “The Bible’s Grand Story” written by the vicar himself. This was published in 2019 before the covid pandemic. I scanned it and felt it would be a good addition to the many books that local Christian writers have written in the past two decades. It’s another reminder to finish editing my book draft, which halted abruptly in the past month when I came down with pain in my back shoulder. This is the Lord’s nudging that I must finish editing my book draft.