Preaching – Page 4

Tag: Preaching

St John’s Chapel: a missional family church

31 July 2022 blogpastor 4 Comments

It was early Sunday morning at St John’s Chapel, and I was warmly welcomed by Revd Tang Wai Lung, the experienced priest who was newly appointed to lead the English congregation. He showed me around the lovely church sanctuary with parquet flooring and three-pointed arches that led your gaze upward to God. He showed me a set of four plaques that was preserved from their old church building in Jurong. He informed me that St John’s Chapel was originally a church plant initiated by Revd William Gomes and Mr Cheok Loi Fatt to reach out to farmers and villagers in Jurong in 1872. By 1884, a church building was erected and a congregation established. The church was missional right from its birth. Thankfully, true to its DNA, St John’s Chapel has remained a strongly missional church that encourages all members young and old to sign up and embark on mission trips every other year. When the government took over the Jurong building for redevelopment, St John’s Chapel moved to St Margaret’s Secondary School, and has been there since.

Two pleasant surprises

I had two pleasant surprises before the service began. I met an old friend, Boon Sing, whom I knew from the Christian fellowship in Mindef, while doing my National Service. I recalled how we memorized verses and prayed together. The second surprise was that he was in the traditional choir of the church and they sang a lovely “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus”. Why did the song at the prelude and this song moved me? The Lord was reminding me of his presence in the meeting.

Preaching the good news

I was asked to preach a gospel message and I had only one thus far and I have preached this five times before. I still had to sit before the Lord in prayer, hovering over the script, and making minor modifications and improvements. It took time for me to warm up to the new faces in front of me, but as I proceeded, the delivery of the message got better and better. I was glad that people responded to the invitation to pray in the front, for all the kneelers in front of the stage were occupied. A period of prayer ensued and I prayed that these precious seekers of God would be rewarded with real answers to their prayers. While I have been praying for souls to be saved through my preaching, there was no response to my invitation to non-Christians present to follow Jesus. Strangely, I was not discouraged about this. I trust God to anoint his word and let it germinate in its time.

*Kenny, Revd Wai Lung, Revd Barry Leong*

A missional and family church

After the service, I had refreshments at the school canteen with the priest Revd Wai Lung, and Canon Barry Leong, the acting vicar, and my old friend Boon Sing. I found it amazing that Barry had to oversee three churches in the past, and is currently overseeing two churches for the time being. He said the secret to doing this is to have the right people in place and to trust them. After he left to go to attend the service of the other church he was overseeing, I continued to chat with Wai Lung and we talked about the Revival of 1972, different church polities, the culture of St John’s Chapel and other Anglican churches. He told me besides its missions emphasis, St John’s was a family church, a close knit caring community, which gives deliberate intention to include all generations into its activities, whether it be games, church retreats, or ministry. I thought these qualities are wonderful strengths for smaller churches to have. My observation is that the quality of community closeness fades as the congregational size enlarges. So this is the strength that small churches can cultivate and leverage, and be different from big churches.

Well, this was a visit and ministry I enjoyed. Taking on speaking engagements while you are still pastoring, is different from doing them after you have retired. With retirement, you are well rested, you have more time and space for God to move your heart and prepare yourself, and you are able to preach with more energy, restfulness and grace.

If you are interested to know more about this church and its services, you may visit their website HERE. Other churches where I have guest preached in or visited can be read about HERE.

Of Mother’s Day Sermons and Preaching at Shekinah Assembly of God

14 May 2022 blogpastor 2 Comments

It was a joy to preach at Shekinah Assembly of God on Mother’s Day. Blessed to return to in person worship and fellowship. I was told that they have moved their services to the Holiday Inn Singapore Atrium, along Outram Road. We seldom speak of Covid-19 positively, but thanks to it, they had a good, blessed rental arrangement and terms with the hotel management. The location and facilities suited their needs perfectly, to the praise of God’s provision. It reminded me of those days when the church I served had to sojourn from hotel to hotel, till the Lord gave us a resting place in Geylang.

I rejoice with all Christians and churches everywhere in Singapore. What a joy to be back to in person worship services! Yes, we had to wear masks but we were allowed to sing aloud! Certainly, we can worship without singing aloud, but it was good to be able to vocalise our praises again. I was blessed by the worship. I preached about “Real Faith” using the story of blind Bartimaeus to illustrate the four aspects of real faith. We could even have time at the altar for prayer and ministry. I pray all churches everywhere will allow for 5 to 15 minutes at the end of the service, in front of the stage, for people to pray and to be prayed for. We should trust God to visit his people with a fresh touch of the Holy Spirit. It is time for people to return to intimacy with God and authentic fellowship with their church friends. Spiritual social distancing has to end!

My wife was also given the Mother’s Day gift package of two bottles of Scoop tea leaves. This is a generous church and Pastor Hock Cheng and his wife Camelia hosted us to a Japanese lunch at Great World City.

The quandary of the Mother’s Day sermon

The Mother’s Day sermon usually lands the pastor in a quandary. The sermon has to recognize the importance and contribution of mothers, without forgetting the fathers (they will have their day weeks later). The quandary is that single men and women are also present in the church service, both young and mature, and they are important to the church too, but there is no Single’s Day. Maybe churches should initiate a Singles Day to celebrate these people’s freedom from anxieties; and extol their ability to give undivided attention to pleasing the Lord (1 Cor 7:32-35).

Ways to preach Mother’s Day sermons

I have preached quite a few Mother’s Day sermons. Some of these sermons focus on the important role, influence and virtues of a godly mother. This is usually the time people like Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, Jochebed (remember her?), Hannah, Naomi, Mary, and some lesser known unnamed female characters in the Old Testament and the gospels get the spotlight on Sunday. Other sermons deal with the more didactic passages like the famous (or infamous) Proverbs 31, that makes most mothers feel they are failed mothers or have fallen short of the glory of God. Other sermons compete with Reader’s Digest to give practical tips for mothers to upgrade their parenting skills.

These are certainly a few ways to go about developing the Mother’s Day sermon. However, the pastor needs to be conscious of the brokenness, discouragement and stresses that modern mothers face today. They need encouragement, affirmation and refreshment. We need to point them to the privileges, blessedness and resources of mothering. We need to point them to the grace, wisdom and power of God available to them as they love and form their children into godly adults. No mother should have to leave the sanctuary crestfallen, feeling condemned and a failure as a mother. They should leave feeling assured of God’s forgiveness, inspired with fresh hope for the calling, and certain that God will faithfully watch over and work on their children, despite all their parental shortcomings and regrets.

Directed at mothers mainly

The pastor does not want half or more of the congregation feeling the sermon is largely irrelevant to them, so for such sermons he needs to use general truths and principles that are just as applicable to singles and fathers as well. For example, the pastor can talk about how Mary the mother of Jesus pondered over significant events that accompanied Jesus’ birth, and while mothers will find it specially relevant, it can be used to exhort the whole congregation to be more attentive and reflective about what God may be doing and saying to them through the significant events that dot their lives.

Directed at all God’s people mainly

The other way, which I prefer, is to preach a sermon that applies to everyone but with a few sermon applications and references towards mothers. This helps gain the attention of all God’s people gathered for worship, and defuses or reduces feelings of irrelevancy or being slighted. Such a sermon could dwell on the attributes of God, or kingdom virtues like faith, hope and love revealed through a biblical event, teaching or character. I chose to do this in Shekinah Assembly. I preached about Real Faith and made a few applications to mothers.

The middle path is of course to use a variation of both approaches during alternate years. Whatever is written here applies to Father’s Day as well. I forgot to mention that it would be wonderful to make some truths relevant for non-Christians in the audience too, as they sometimes visit the church during such special days, but preaching with an evangelistic slant is another topic for another day.

If you are interested in visiting the SHEKINAH ASSEMBLY OF GOD, their website is HERE, and I wrote about them in an earlier blogpost HERE.

The Joy Of Preaching Returns

20 April 2022 blogpastor 2 Comments

It was a joy to preach to the “embodied” church again after mostly doing pre-recorded or online services in most of the last two years. Most of the members have begun to return to the worship gatherings since the government gave the green light and loosened restrictions recently. The timing was good too, for the holy week, Good Friday and Easter services. Most of us were happy to be back and to be able to chat after the service and have two hours lunch fellowship to catch up with people.

The young people have returned too and that is a great comfort to me. During the off and on, back and forth of constant change from online to in-person services, and vice-versa, young people got frustrated and tired. Restricting meals to two persons killed the joy of being with other young people. Now even five or more can sit around a table and have a meal in the coffeeshop or hawker center.

Rising enthusiasm

There was excitement in the air and people were generally enthusiastic about worship (now they can sing with masks on), and receptive to the message. Preaching to real people I know and not a totally online audience is refreshing. You are able to see how listeners are responding to what you are saying. You can sense whether you are connecting the truth with their lives, whether they were attentive or lost in other thoughts, eager or jaded, wanting more or saying with their body language, Please end. Preaching is not all about delivering all you have prepared. You can make immediate adjustments to the content, adding new inspired ideas or completely cutting off a whole main point.

During the Easter sermon I preached from Matthew 28 about the two Marys. I never intended to dwell on their devotion to Christ. In my notes were two main ideas: how God keeps his word and is trustworthy; and the different responses of people (the two Marys, the religious leaders, the soldiers who guarded the tomb) to the greatest event in history: Christ’s resurrection. I found myself speaking about the devotion of the two Marys. I ended up expanding on this line of thought as the Spirit gave me words to speak. A whole main point was added on the spot. It was a pleasant experience of the Spirit’s hand upon me.

This freedom to add and subtract is a healthy freedom. It is not a license to ramble. It gives space for God to inspire and lead me in surprising ways. This can be risky, but exciting. It makes me feel that God is actively involved in the delivery of the message, that he cares enough about his people to intervene to enhance and enrich whatever I have prepared.

Giving space to God

Two things help me to give space to God to move and inspire new thoughts in the sermon. One, I do not use powerpoint presentation. This way I do not feel a need to complete and use everything I have prepared. I can change the order, the content, and the length of the message without distracting the people listening to the Word. I have other reasons for not using presentation slides for sermons but it is not the subject here.

The second thing I do is to preach without looking at my notes too much. I have all the main truths, background information, illustrations, applications thought through, and the main stuff are in note form. I memorise the main points and the illustrations and applications that belong together with each point. I go over them in my mind, rehearsing them mentally. Then when I am on the pulpit, I trust the Spirit to guide the delivery. Some information I researched is unused, some I had read about but discarded, the Spirit brings to mind. I trust that what was subtracted was not meant to be heard, and what was added was meant for someone to hear. If I get stuck or got lost along the way, I go back to my notes and look at the underlined main truths to re-calibrate the route to the destination.

The joy of preaching

Preaching is more fun now that it is not so frequent and I have no other pastoral and administrative cares to attend to. I remember that when I was pastoring, a lot of good intentions, commitments and promises made to people and ministry got buried or neglected by other important and urgent tasks, by my own inner turmoil, or were simply forgotten. Usually I gave the highest priority to preaching preparation, including prayer. “Devote yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word”, was the apostolic priority (Acts 6). I did not always succeed in this, because urgent ministry matters overwhelm important matters. If a funeral suddenly falls on your lap, or there is an administrative deadline to meet, I found my sermon preparation challenged. I no longer have these things to distract or harass me as I prepare my messages, praise the Lord!