PJ John
After the Saturday morning Hill climb with my wife and brother in law, Kenneth, we were at a hawker center eating when we saw Pastor P. J. John and his wife Martha and children, Darlene and Elisha.. They joined us for teh aliah. John really looked good and in health - the Lord has healed him - his speech is back to normal and he looked like he lost weight, and in his usual cheerful self. Darlene is real pretty young teen and my wife says she smiles like Andrew though she is a spitting image of Martha. Elisha was quiet. It was a brief but happy time of catching up. Invited them to join us on Saturdays.
In the afternoon, it was a worship ministry meeting and Zack was stepping down as leader of the audio visual ministry. It has been 5 years and I don’t think this has been easy for him. This ministry isn’t an easy one to handle and those in the sound control know they need to have social skills, besides being technically sound as well as managing high expectations of people in an auditorium not built-to-purpose. I respect Zack for his resilient, even-handed and meticulous service. Others would have lost their cool. Shaun Goh too will be handing over the worship ministry to Cedric and Christina at the end of the year but that is another story for another time. Such changes are usually good though we have to get used to new adjustments. Felt satisfied though physically spent from the morning’s exertions.
It was good to see the worship hall jam-packed with the youths and adults in the Sunday service. The worship was well-led by Christina with a good balance of new and old worship songs. It does take some finesse to fit in and pull off a “How great Thou art” seamlessly. Andrew Goh was in his element and he really inspired us, with pungent humour, to be bold in our testimony to Jesus. (I actually planned to sit through a GNK meeting but they were having a Children’s Day special and I just wanted to check out a normal children’s church meeting.So gave it a skip.) The EOGM meeting was good: good constructive questions with good intentions and good to see new leaders like Mark Cheong and Joseph Soh answer queries though it required an experienced hand Paul and a legal eagle Florence to top it up before the vote. In the end, this church has always steadily moved forward in unity and trust as a community and that in itself is a great blessing of God. There is apprehension, and it is natural when we look at our wallets and bank accounts. But as God’s people we must ever remember the 5 loaves and 2 fish. We have to look to God who takes all that we offer him and that will be enough!
Sunday was tiring because of MEL training workshop from 2.15pm to 4.30pm. I was wanting to impart communication skills to this new generation of emerging leaders and this was a workshop session. It was fun when everbody had to practise restatement…..fun for me of course, not them! But they will gradually get the hang of speaking and get better and better. Leaders need to communicate in a variety of situations and I try to give them simple tools and practice so that they can do so. We also learned to analyse a verse which will develop into a talk. Near the end we were all tired, real tired. I felt gratified for the privelege of co-mentoring them with Abe Sim but it is forbidding to think that these guys will be analysing me when I preach in the light of what I taught them. ha ha.
Add comment September 26th, 2005
