Preaching – BLOGPASTOR

Category: Preaching

MFIS Pastors Consultation: The Teacher

17 March 2025 blogpastor Leave a comment

I was early. I was graciously granted a book table to share a book I wrote, “The 26 Gifts of Christ’s Finished Work.” The Full Gospel Assembly(FGA) staff were very welcoming and helpful. Ps Maureen and Josefa helped me set up the table and helped me “man” it.

The focus of the consultation on 13^th March 2025 was on the ascension gift of the Teacher. The MFIS have consistently continued their series on the five-fold ministry of Ephesians 4:10-12. The speakers were Rev Calvin Lee, Rev Rhordan Wicks, and Rev Chua Hock Lin. Calvin Lee gave an overview of what it meant to be a teaching church: the what, the why, the how. Hock Lin spoke out of the burden the Lord laid on his heart. He preached passionately about the need to unleash the supernatural in the church through preaching the Word and allowing for the manifestations of the Spirit, particularly the gift of tongues, which is the doorway to the supernatural gifts. It was appropriate that he took the final session because it culminated in corporate heartfelt prayer.

Rhordan Wicks gave a practical and helpful teaching about teaching. He is an eloquent and articulate communicator and shared seven practical and vital principles of communication from the pulpit. Each principle was illustrated with analogies and examples that made them crystal clear. The seven principles were:

Relevance brings resonance – use language the audience understands

Build bridges not walls

Fillers drain power from your message

Your voice is an instrument -play it well

Your body speaks before you do

Your notes should support, not script your delivery – scaffolding brings freedom

Slides should support, not steal the spotlight.

To top this off, he demonstrated how to design impactful and elegant slides based on a sermon outline he had prepared earlier. He did it on the spot without prior preparation. Thus, we were let in on a real-time demonstration. His mantra is “LESS IS MORE!”. I loved the demonstration and it inspired me to try out some of his practical tips for my slides when I guest preached on Sunday.

I thought it would be wonderful if this impactful presentation about practical communication and presentation skills could be uploaded onto YouTube for a wider audience to benefit. Sadly, it was not recorded.

The consultation ended with prayer and some announcements about future events:

MFI Conference 2025 (17 July 2025 9.30am -4pm) – VFC Tampines

Thanksgiving Dinner (20 Nov 2025 5.30pm -8.30pm) – to be confirmed

Combined Fellowship Teams Gathering (15 May 12noon -2.30pm) – The New Church

How did the book sales go? Not good. Even with the moral support of my two Tung Ling friends, Dr John Sim and Benjamin Foo, my publisher. I brought 100 books and I sold only 10 books. For sure, I am not Rick Warren. However, I was at peace about it as I wrote not out of the need for money or an ego boost but simply to obey the Lord’s word. God will work things out for good. This book sale was disappointing compared to the launch in my home church, when 150 books were sold. I am always thankful for the support of members of my home church, World Revival Prayer Fellowship.

“The 26 Gifts of Christ’s Finished Work”: the Journey

3 March 2025 blogpastor 2 Comments

Overjoyed

I feel so much satisfaction to hold the first book I have completed in my hands. Someone mentioned that the process is like giving birth. I can abstractly relate to that: first the pain and sorrow, then the joy and relief that the delivery went well. When the books were delivered to my home, Benjamin Foo, my publisher and founder of iPossible, was there to share in the joy. Without him, I would not know what to do next. I simply took it a step at a time. For each step, I had to trust in the Lord, leaning my whole weight on him. At the right time, Benjamin generously offered to help me through the process and I grabbed it. He is still helping me with publicity and sales.

One of the first things I did was to deliver the book to the book cover designer Grace Phua founder of O’ live & Write. Her work was amazing and elegant. I wanted her to be among the first few to see her creation in her hands.

It began with blogging and personal prophecy

Believe it or not, my journey began with blogging. The Lord blessed my blog posts and I received many affirmations and encouragement. It felt good that what I wrote enlightened and edified many Christians. I then wondered if there was a book in me and what kind of titles have been divinely deposited in me waiting to be birthed. It was nice to think about it but in those days of pastoral ministry, there was no bandwidth for such aspirations.

When I retired in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was invited to a dinner by P.J. John, as were Prophet Amos Jayaratnam and others. After dinner, the host requested prayer and Amos gave encouraging prophecies to everyone present. His prophecy to me was to write books. I received that word with gladness since it confirmed the aspirations that God had planted in my heart.

Since then, I have started musing and praying about subjects to write on. There were several titles and chapter outlines. I started depositing drafts into my blog chapter by chapter. When all the chapters were done, I began the tedious tasks of re-writing and editing. To my surprise, my draft required repeated edits and proofreading by a few competent persons. Then the cover was added, endorsements sought, and many other tasks that Benjamin did for me like formatting, table of contents, and ISBN registration.

I have seen how a prophetic word has inherent power to effectively accomplish what God intended it for. That power is released as we continually believe it will be fulfilled.

I also received encouragement, prayer and advice on pricing and promotion from Rev. Gabriel Han, the lead apostolic elder of Ministers Fellowship International, Singapore. I have two groups of pastors whom I met with regularly throughout this journey and they often prayed for me when I had writer’s block or procrastination cramps. Much prayer went into this book and I am most grateful to God for the strength, inspiration and insights he gave me.

Steps ahead

Now, I trust the Lord for the next step of promoting, distributing, and selling the stack of books against a bedroom wall at home. There are many ways the book may benefit readers:

Meditations for Lent leading to Good Friday and Easter.
Church or personal gifts to baptism candidates to ground their faith in the gospel.
Sermon ideas for a sermon series.
Bible study material.
Discipleship 101 material for one-to-one or cell group discipleship.
Slow reflection by believers who want to experience the length and breadth, height and depth of the love of God.

I hope to get this book translated and published in Third World countries like Myanmar and Nepal. In my missions to these countries, I noticed that this book can be a study for believers who want to be established in their faith and to disciple others. Furthermore, many church plants are small village fellowships where the pastors were bi-vocational and untrained. This book can be a resource material for sermon or Bible study preparation.

Deaf Faith Fellowship: Preaching to the deaf congregation

8 November 2024 blogpastor Leave a comment

They may be deaf or hearing impaired physically but spiritually their ears are opened by the Lord and they have come to know Christ and to follow him. Pastor Barnabas Phua has retired after decades of faithful and fruitful service and the ministry staff Mui Keng is now in charge. While I was their senior pastor, I could not help them much. I preach there once or twice a year because I have to be at the English congregation most of the time. Now that I have retired, I have more time to preach there. In fact, after retirement, I preach there four or five times a year.

Kenny, Ps Barnabas, Mui Keng, Daisy (sign interpreter)

I do enjoy these preaching opportunities. Communicating with the deaf has its challenges. Abstract ideas are difficult to communicate. To give them a definition of “faith” in abstract terms makes it difficult for them to grasp. I have to concretize it into a story like how Abraham believed in God and demonstrated his faith by forsaking his household gods to follow God, and by accepting God would fulfil his promise and give him a descendant when Sarah is barren and he is already old. To make it even clearer, I have to provide them with practical examples of what faith looks like in today’s life situations and context. It trains me to condense a message to its bare essential truth and explain, illustrate, and apply it multiple times. I learn to keep it simple and understandable. In other words, I have to preach the way Jesus preached!

Jesus did not have to do PowerPoint slides, but I had to do many slides because though they cannot hear, they can see. A picture is worth a thousand words and it really helps them understand.

I work with someone who translates my message, using American sign language and gestures of face and hands that express what I mean. This in itself isn’t easy. Furthermore, I like to converse with them from the pulpit to keep them engaged, asking questions, and hearing their replies. More work for the interpreter! This requires thorough and earlier preparation so that the interpreter can have the slides and message notes beforehand. This helps the interpreter to get ready. The advantage of an interpreter is that I have time to frame the next sentence while she is interpreting my earlier sentence. I can also observe the cues from their body language that tell me if they understand and are engaged with what I have been saying.

The deaf members appreciate my preaching. They find it relevant and helpful. I normally pray that God will fill up where I may fail to deliver. God is faithful and he always does his work of guiding them into all truth.

If you know of deaf people who need a church family please direct them to Deaf Faith Fellowship. They worship in the same building (on the third floor) as World Revival Prayer Fellowship , and are the deaf congregation of the church.