Singapore churches – Page 28

Category: Singapore churches

Chapel of the Resurrection: a church with stretch marks

29 August 2011 blogpastor Leave a comment

From Malan Rd to St Andrew’s Village

The 600-700 strong church was located at the St Andrews Junior College in Malan Road but have now moved with the school, to St Andrew’s Village at St. Francis Thomas Drive. Although I have heard about this very fruitful church, I have not been to their service before. It was therefore a pleasure for me to accept an invitation to preach at the Chapel of the Resurrection, plausibly the most reproductive church in the Anglican diocese. As I traced in my earlier post, this mother of many has given birth to six other churches that still bear witness to Christ’s resurrection.

Felt like home

Before the service began I met two ministers I knew. One was Rev John Sim, whose brother invited me to attend my home church. Back then John was an active lay leader in the Brethren church at Galistan Avenue. After he experienced the power of the Holy Spirit he moved to the Church of our Savior. After he was ordained, he was posted to a Woodlands extension, and then to the Chapel of the Holy Spirit. He had taken one of our children’s church camp, and I was pleased to briefly catch up with him.

Later in the worship hall, I met Rev Gerrard Jacobs, whose parents I knew from way back, and whose sister is Sister Rubina of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, Australia. He was here for a short while and would head for home in Christchurch, New Zealand, where he is pioneering an Anglican multi-ethnic work. Both of them were called out of fires of charismatic revival in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Pointing people to a covenant keeping God

It felt like home. The songs they sung, the light touch of tongues in the background, and the relaxed atmosphere. Before I knew it, I was at the pulpit preaching from Genesis 15 on the topic of “Our Covenant-Keeping God”. There were dark storm clouds looming over the world’s largest economy and it would overshadow Singapore, so I pointed them to the covenant keeping God. During the weeks before, I have been asking God to reveal Jesus Christ more clearly through the sermon, so that the hearers will love Him more dearly, and want to follow Him more nearly. That was my desire and remains my desire: that the message would bear fruit in the congregation.

Spiritual intelligence and yet at ease with a child

After the service, Rev Canon Daniel Tong and I had some time of fellowship. The first time I heard of him was from his well known book, A Biblical Approach to Chinese Traditions and Beliefs. This book is probably one of the better selling Christian books in the Armour Publishers’ Christian section. Later our paths were to cross when we met at a familiarisation tour for pastors to the Holy Land a few years back. While having coffee and chatting an interesting thing happened. A little girl, presumably from the Sunday School where he had earlier given out some awards or gifts, had skipped in and given him a hug and talked to him. She seemed like a niece or some relative but she was not. This Claudia Heng was cute and shy and I thought this was like some picture I had seen of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms. “Hey let me take a shot.” I knew a Kodak moment when I saw one. It was just a snapshot but besides being a pastor with spiritual intelligence, he seemed to exude a care and ease with both kids and adult members of the church.

Church with a great legacy

This church can stand tall as they have a great legacy of reproductive fruitfulness. They have caught the wind of the charismatic winds in the 80’s and sailed strongly. This church can proudly rejoice and celebrate its wonderfully lasting legacy. They can show off the stretch marks from all the childbearing and sending out of their apostolic laypeople to start extensions. It can be draining as any mother of six would tell us. Hopefully one day in God’s time, they would launch out again in such self-giving love and faith. Until then, here’s an idea for all the daughter churches: plan an event for all the daughter churches to come together and say a heart-felt “Thank you” to mum.

Aldersgate Methodist Church: keeping tradition and yet stepping beyond

11 August 2011 blogpastor Leave a comment

In the wrong place

It was a traditional service, but it took a step beyond the traditional.

Like clockwork it began at 8.30am and ended at 9.40am. That’s about an hour and a quarter, with the eucharist included. This was Aldersgate Methodist Church. It had been a long time ago when I last attended a Methodist service in 1981 when I was a seminary student.

I was early and ended up in an empty auditorium in the Fairfield Secondary School. Good thing an early parishioner told me that I was in the wrong place: they were the Holy Covenant Chinese Methodist Church.

When I entered the right church sanctuary five minutes later, in the primary school, I felt the warm browns of wooden pews. There is something about wood that conveys stability and tradition. This Sunday I chose to attend the earlier traditional service rather than the contemporary service at 10.15am.

In keeping with tradition and yet

After three violinists finished the prelude, the procession was led by the choir singing as they walked in redemptive red robes. The service continued with a call to worship and an old hymn, “O God Our Help In Ages Past”.

Then they did what I thought was a beautiful thing to do, something you do not traditionally do. Beyond praying for the world, and the growing rich-poor divide in Singapore, they prayed for their “competitors”. They blessed and prayed for the churches around the Dover/Buona Vista area, which included 3 other Methodist churches, St John’s –St Margaret’s Anglican Church, Shalom Baptist Church, Ebenezer Church, and even one that has yet to move to the area: the New Creation Church! And all these before praying for their own church needs! This 5 minute prayer said more to me about brotherly love and the unity of the Body of Christ than a hundred sermons. I very like it, to use Facebook lingo.

This was followed by the collection of the offering, and giving of announcements and the confession of the Nicene Creed.

Rev Dr Lorna Khoo had been in this new church assignment for about seven months and like Nehemiah had probably been just going around the city walls and surveying them before initiating changes. From the bulletin information you could see that she had begun to pray seriously about the region or parish that Aldersgate is in. She stood up and spoke a message about giving because it was a Pledge Sunday. It was an exposition of 2 Corinthians 8: 1-15 given succinctly in 15 minutes. Despite its compactness, it was filled with biblical goodness and clear powerpoints. The insight that interested me most was viewing the grace of giving from the angle of justice, an aspect of stewardship that is seldom highlighted.

The Eucharist was conducted prayerfully with liturgical efficiency. The participants went forward to the kneelers in the front circling the stage. There they received the elements that had been blessed and partook of it with devotion.

Contemporary service larger

The contemporary service usually attracted about 350 people, younger ones, but the traditional service attendance was about 150 faithfuls in the 45 plus age bracket. However, on this Sunday I could see that the congregation has thinned due to members probably out on a long weekend holiday in addition to the National Day holiday on Tuesday.

Brunch was on my mind and my right hand was full as I left the church doors out into the school carpark into the morning drizzle. I carried the Sunday bulletin, the Methodist Message – a denominational magazine, and Rev Dr Lorna Khoo’s book, Wesleyan Eucharistic Spirituality, which I bought from her.

Centre of New Life: insightful Pentecostal pulpit

10 May 2011 blogpastor 8 Comments

Two churches in one building

It was an interesting concept. Two churches sharing one building is not new. It had been tried in the Clementi Bible Center, shared by the Bible Church and the Mt Carmel Bible Presbyterian Church; and in Yishun Christian Church, shared between an Anglican and a Lutheran church. This was of a different model: like a semi-detached house where each church had their own separate living space. No bargaining nor quibbling over prime time or space. The Center of New Life, and Victory Family Center shares a building on a HDB church site in Jurong West opposite the National Technological University, across the highway. It made sense to share, what with exhorbitant bids for church sites despite their limited 30 years lease. More churches should find a partner to do something similar.

This visit to Center of New Life was prompted by wanting to visit the church some of my trekking friends attend. Linda Teo, Eric and Christine Ng, Jeffrey, and quite a few others are members there. They used to worship at Orchard Hotel but two years ago they jointly developed this present site with Victory Family Center. While retaining the city centre’s Sunday worship services, now in River View Hotel, the bulk of the church moved west to its present site.

Insightful preacher

The unique feature of the worship service was the preaching. This is an Assemblies of God church. Pastor Terence Ong, a good looking tall young man in his 30’s, preached from the book of Acts. It was the commencement of a series and in conjunction with the preaching on Sundays, the church was urged to read and reflect on the book of Acts during the week. What was interesting was that the sermon I heard was an intelligent man’s message. This was not the typical Pentecostal message with the emphasis on inspiration, loud passion, moving people to action, and probing the conscience. This was a message that gave insights and perspectives that were creative and progressive. It enlightened and gave you food for serious thought. This was a message for the educated, the professional, the thinking Christian.

The pastor began connecting with the crowd by making some humorous remarks about the elections. Smart move as everyone was thinking of that anyway. Then he went into the text to explain the concept of the kingdom of God, and how it related to politics and power. This was not the traditional Pentecostal interpretive framework: he moved beyond that. Was I seeing one of a new generation of Pentecostal young preachers who were widely read, and have ventured beyond the traditional and hackneyed? (I did wish he mentioned something about mothers though – after all one of those who waited with the 120 was the mother of Jesus – and it was ‘traditionally’ Mother’s Day!).

With friends

The service started at 11am and ended at 12.45pm. Mingling among the members, I chatted with Jason Jin and Sam, both of whom were from World Revival Prayer Fellowship a long time ago. Went for lunch with the trekking group at Lam’s Noodles at TradeHub 21 in supremely humid and hot conditions. It was nice to just attend church: carefree, relaxed, and be open to receive.