Singapore local churches – Page 8

Tag: Singapore local churches

Zion Full Gospel Church: convenient city church with unusual origin and congregational mix

13 September 2011 blogpastor 6 Comments

Unusual mix and origin

The building looked like a ship that is cruising on calm waters at Hoot Kiam Road. In the worship hall there were Africans, Australians, and Americans peppered among the locals in the 100 or so people who attended the 11am Sunday service. This mix is not unusual as surrounding the church’s location were scores of condominiums, private apartments and shop houses. Even expatriates need a church, and it must be the Lord that drew them. Zion Full Gospel Church is about 300 strong and they have an unusual Finnish origin. Sisters Nilja Nikkanen and Aira Kolkka were missionaries who left China after the communist takeover in the 1950’s and were led to preach the gospel in Singapore, playing the guitar and singing Mandarin songs in the Street. Out of this grew the first among several churches started by the Finnish mission.

Alfred Yeo and Assemblies of God

Rev Alfred Yeo had invited me to preach in the service and I was happy to accept as I had often noticed the church as I drove past the main road and wondered about it. Confident and friendly, Alfred is one of the more forward thinking Assemblies of God pastors who moved early into ministry to social needs , something generally put on the backburner in most AG churches. He was an executive director in the AG when this church asked for the fellowship’s assistance and he was released to be their interim pastor. This later developed into a permanent appointment.

A few firsts

ZFGC was the first church to house its worship in a shopping center. Way before it became popular with the megachurches in Suntec City, Zion held its worship services in Queensway Shopping Center, and later made it the base for their coffeehouse ministry, another first.

Silence and prayer please

The worship leader chose songs that were in line with the message even though he did not know what I was speaking on. That encouraged me in my preaching and I believe my prayer for the service that the Lord be revealed clearly, and loved more dearly was answered. The altar call I gave was a call for them to spend five minutes in prayer and silence where they were seated. Many services need more time of prayer and quiet. We tend to fill every minute, ever second, with sound and voice and noise. We do not make space for stillness and prayer and listening to the Lord. We squirm or look around listlessly after 2 minutes of silence. Thankfully the congregation was able to pray and experience His presence in the stillness and quiet as from the pulpit I could see people deep in prayer or visibly and emotionally touched by the Lord.

Tennis friends and lunch

Later I had a nice chat with Ruth and Ron, friends I used to play tennis with, but unfortunately we could not lunch together, so my wife and I went to Great World City’s food court, a five minutes stroll away. Convenient.

Woodlands Evangelical Free Church: shining light in the north

4 September 2011 blogpastor 6 Comments

Much has changed

The last time I visited this church they were still called Bukit Timah Evangelical Free Church and they were located at King Albert Park. The pastor then was Rev Lee Twee Kim and his wife, Poh Choo, who was for a while my Sunday School teacher. When I was in Primary school, my parents sent me to the Sunday School there, to learn good morals, I suppose. A van would faithfully pick me up from the Princess Elizabeth Estate bus terminus, and send me to church where I would listen to Bible stories with flannel board illustrations, and weekly we would receive pretty cross-shaped bookmarks. The church was at Yarwood Park, and then it moved to the Singapore Bible School premises at Adam Road. They were quite serious about their work for I remembered how the teachers came to visit my home when my brothers and I were absent for a long stretch. I doubt Poh Choo, would ever have imagined that the boy who occasionally attended her Sunday School class, would one day be a pastor.

New modern facilities for expanded ministry

This Sunday morning, I visited the church of my childhood again. Woodlands Evangelical Free Church is its new name, as it has moved to the heart of the Woodlands HDB housing estate , a 20 minutes car drive away from where it once was in a wealthy suburban area. They have been in Woodlands since the middle of 1990’s but have just moved in July 2011 to a spanking new building. They have outgrown the first building so they tore it down and erected a completely new one for 8.5 million. Compared to the former building, this new facility is superior in design and finishing. The place of worship gave me a feeling of being in a modern worship space, with a beautiful ceiling that reminded me of a rippling effect of God’s grace on the surrounding community. The fan-shaped configuration and generous seat space maximized warmth and eye contact with the ministers on stage. The fellowship hall at the ground floor has tripled in size and the ceilings were padded with material that absorbed sound so that Kenny and I could chat without shouting to be heard.

Strong in exposition, active in ministry

It was meant to be a surprise visit and I was looking forward to hearing an expository message on a new series Rev Kenny Fam had started on the book of Ecclesiastes called “Purposeful Living in A Secular World”. This church has a tradition of expository preaching of the books of the Bible, even from the days of his predecessor. However, most surprises get unsprung, and it was so in this instance: it happened to be the Yellow Ribbon Sunday and they had invited a guest speaker, Rev Chiu Ming Li, a prison chaplain, to share God’s Word and something about the Yellow Ribbon project – which ministers to prisoners and help them re-integrate back into life after they have served their prison term.

The service started at 11.15am and I was glad there was a car park lot available at the open air car park next to the church. The songs were familiar worship choruses of the decade ago, sedate songs people aged 35-55 would be happy to sing. It was communion Sunday and I liked it that they took their time to celebrate it. They had two videotaped testimonies of ex-prisoners whose lives were transformed by Christ while in prison and have settled well into the church and life. That was encouraging. What I drew from the message was a glimpse of what it meant to have rivers of living water in your life. He was painting a portrait of a person who can feel as God would feel, a human alive to feeling the pain of others, who would make life’s decisions from that posture, and who would live courageously, nobly and with hope. His avoidance of cliches about the abundant life, and his use of fresher words like “courage”, “noble”, “admirable” to describe a person overflowing with rivers of life, concretized for me what such a person would look like.

Shining light in the north

There were about 500 in attendance in this main service in an auditorium that seated 900 and I thought it was wise of them to cordon off with red plastic tape the two wings of about 200 seats each. The church has a total of about 1,200 in attendance. Besides their expository preaching, the church is also very strong in community work, prison ministries and missions. They are a shining light in the north, a witness to that needy and neglected part of Singapore.

After the service, Kenny Fam showed Kenny Chee around the building. The church office smelt of brand new carpets and furniture, with glass-walled offices for all the pastors and open space for the administrative and support staff. We went downstairs and he bought me lunch, Malay nasi goreng in a packet, and we chatted briefly while talking. This was no time to catch up as he had a speaking engagement in the prison and had to rush off. It did not matter as I have known Kenny for some time. We meet with Rev Vincent Hoon of the Anglican church about 4 to 6 times a year. He is a person of integrity, full of faith, and with the courage to speak and stand on his convictions which were formed out of his study of Scripture, years of reflection, and life shaping experiences. Anyway I’ll meet him with Vincent another day. We will have more time then. Sundays are usually not good days for lim kopi with pastors. They are usually busy; their minds can be occupied with many matters; or they may be tired from the day’s output.

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.