Archive for November, 2006
I just came back from Chiengmai, celebrated my wife’s birthday last night, and attended a Leaders’ Summit today at the Bethesda Cathedral, Chai Chee. It was a rather long wait with the meeting starting at about 9am with worship and a word from George Annadorai. Then it was lunch and the anticipated moment came when T.B. Joshua came in with entourage and cameras in tow. He preached about our weakness in spiritual things and our need of faith. Then he went down to pray for the sick people who registered to be prayed for 2 weeks earlier. We waited at the sanctuary for the second half of his message. It seems waiting is something you need to get used to for his meetings. When he came and completed his message and ministered and prayed for all the delegates one by one, it became pretty stunning, with demon manifestations and very accurate words of knowledge on very specific things like widowhood, divorce, disease, family information, emotional problems etc. Another three hours passed before he prayed for the church group I was with.
My sense of all this is that Joshua is a humble, genuine prophet with a strong revelatory and healing anointing that the Lord has raised to bless and edify the body of Christ. I understand of course that there are controversial criticisms about his ministry on the internet and in e mails, but based on my limited experience today, little as it may be, I am satisfied about his authenticity.
As an aside, when you read critical stuff, ask a few questions:
1. Who is the writer? What qualifies him to criticize or assess this ministry?What is his background?
2. What is the intention of the writer in writing this?
3. On what basis does the writer base his conclusions? Are his sources reliable and verifiable?
4. Did the writer quote the ministry’s teachings and interpret it in its context or lift it out of its context?
Greater objectivity, less fear and greater patience before casting a judgment, is needed in the body of Christ today. Let us also be willing to see it for ourselves if we have to before we become unwitting agents of doubts.
November 30th, 2006
We’ll take a little break from our series of blogging tips. I originally intended it to be a series of 10 tips, but since a blogging is a two-way communication, let’s hear about what are the problems you guys face, and I’ll structure my tips based on those.
In the meantime, I found this poem very meaningful. It showed me that only God can thought of something so perfect.
Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you desire
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?
Be thankful when you don’t know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.
Be thankful for the difficult times,
During those times, you grow.
Be thankful for your limitations,
Because they give your opportunities for improvement.
Be thankful for each new challenge,
Because it will build your strength and character.
Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach your valuable lessons.
Be thankful when you’re tired and weary,
Because it means you’ve made a difference.
It’s easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfilment comes to those who are thankful for the setbacks.
Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles and they will become your blessings.
November 28th, 2006
This is the wettest Christmas I can remember. Floods in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. The weather has been behaving oddly and we are probably reaping what the world, including us, have sown into the environment. I love the occasional rain that washes and cools our green and hot country, what I dread are these relentless and heartless rains that are indifferent to the plans of many parents who took leave for some outdoor family activities.
I have been having a cold and cough since last Monday. I am on medication and prayer, and I am recovering. So it has been my daughter and I, and now it has spread to my nephew Wen Por. Despite the dampening weather, I had a wonder-filled Christmas, as I gazed upon the Son of God, and the Christ-child, both in personal meditation and in a meaningful service we had last Sunday.
Everybody is back now: the staff from ministry abroad, many members and families from a mix of holidays, missions and work assignments. Every June and December school holidays, churches all over the country suffer from reduced attendances due to such things. This is a feature of church life that became a trend mainly in the last decade or more and we are going to see more of this, what with a recovering economy, cheaper air-fares, and a growing lifestyle of travel and leisure. We just have to adjust to it and see in it opportunities to direct it towards fulfilling meaningful ends.
November 26th, 2006
While I may not write the best content around, here are my 2 cents’ worth of comments based on my experience as a teacher and also, from the strengths of my favourite blogs from around the world.
- Use descriptive titlesMany people browse around blogs looking for something that interests them. By having a descriptive title, people can immediately tell what the subject of your post is about. It will also save a lot of frustration from reading entries that are totally not related to the title.
- Write using an hour-glass styleI know this almost sounds cliche, because it has been overly emphasised in school, but it really helps the audience to understand the point you are driving at when you introduce the topic properly.
- Readers love to skim through articles, so use subtitlesIn the increasingly hectic world, many people don’t have time to read each article in detail. Often, they would speed read by glancing at the subtitles. In addition, at times, your articles can become very long, and to help the reader focus on the main idea in each paragraph, subtitles help.
- Use a new paragraph for every new pointThis helps you to expand on each and every idea thorougly. A common technique taught by this ex-English language teacher
- Simplicity is the keyI think writing with a global audience in mind helps. Remember that not everyone speaks English as their first language. Write clearly and simply and you will find that you can bring your message across more easily.
- Use pictures, diagrams, variations in colours, lists, bullets etc.“A picture speaks a thousand words.†Most of us are visual learners:-)
- Don’t steal and all about plagarismThe point is never try to take credit for something you didn’t write, and I think that is an issue of faith. God has said that the thief is punished greatly, no matter what he steals. (I don’t know the exact Bible verse(s) but I’ll post it up when I find it). Plagarism is also a big thing in the blogging community
- Link to other sourcesProvide links to your sources because some users may be interested to find out more. It’s also a way of giving credit to the references you have used.
- Check and spell checkA grammatically-free and error free blog entry can help enhance a reader’s experience
- Have fun. If you write with passion, readers can tellReaders can tell that by the time and effort you put in to write each article. And most importantly, by the quality of your blog.
November 23rd, 2006
Following up on the entry on The blogging ministry, this series of posts is intended for anyone who wants to improve their blogs, but more specifically, for bloggers who wish to use the Web as a platform to reach out.
Why do you blog?
I can’t overstress the importance of knowing the reason for setting up a blog. In fact, this should be thought about even before you embark on setting up a blog. This will determine on the resources you need, the frequency of blogging, and the writing style required. But even if you didn’t think of all these previously, and you already own a blog, all is not lost. You just need to introduce change slowly.
The purpose for writing
Knowing the reason why you blog would determine on your target audience. I’ll illustrate my personal story here. In 2005, I started considering Christianity seriously and was pretty certain that I would accept Jesus as my personal saviour sooner or later. I was reading the Bible voraciously. I set up my personal blog with one intention in mind: To keep an online journal about my discovery and possibly walk with God. I was on the computer many hours a day, and much to the credit of a fellow teacher, she recommended that I document my journey at that stage of my life, where I was working just before I entered university. As such, my personal blog “Thoughts. Attitudes. Reflections†was born.
The purpose will determine your target audience
Yet, because I intended it very much to be a personal blog, I didn’t go out to attract people to visit my website. I didn’t make the readership grow even though I knew how to market a website. It was a blog meant more for myself. I just didn’t mind the occasional people leaving comments about my blog. But if you are in the blogging ministry, then you should leverage on the various ways to make your readership grow.
The purpose will affect your title and design
Because I was blogging to document my journey, and to reflect on what I could learn in the workplace, and what I could do to improve myself, I chose the title “Thoughts. Attitudes. Reflectionsâ€. Partly because of the title, but also to reflect the nature of my blog, a pretty sombre yet thought-provoking theme was designed. It was designed with the aim to set myself into a reflective mood, to think.
The purpose will determine which platform you use
If you are blogging for personal reason, then I think Blogger, Livejournal and Xanga will suffice. However, just like Pastor Kenny found out, when you are blogging with a larger audience in mind(note, a larger audience is no less specific), then Blogger, Livejournal and Xanga can become pretty restrictive. Why? It’s difficult to leave comments on such websites. On Xanga, you have to set up an account first, and login before you can post a comment. It’s difficult to add pictures, links, but more importantly, it is difficult to market your blog to reach your intended target audience. This is why Wordpress is so much more attractive. Which is also why Blogpastor decided to have its own domain name.
The purpose will determine your writing style
Each author will have his own writing style, but in general, the trick is to pitch your complexity of your sentences to that in which your target audience can understand. My blog was written with myself in mind, so I didn’t really care whether people understood what I wrote. But, I knew my blog turned a few people off even though they took a genuine interest in my blog. Their complains: They can’t read my blog without having a dictionary right beside them. They find that they have to flip the dictionary for every other sentence. This was where I failed. So don’t repeat the same mistake.
November 21st, 2006
While many would have heard of the worship ministry, the children ministry, but is there such a thing as a ’blogging ministry’? Well, this is a term that is relatively new on Web 2.0, but I believe that this ministry will grow. The blogging ministry differs from the normal journals and weblogs that people use to rant about their daily life. On the other hand, the blogging ministry is intentional, and it has a specific audience. It is a deliberate attempt to share with others how a person who is following Jesus is like. It is about sharing the joy in knowing the Lord and also the struggles we face at times because of the sinful flesh our souls reside in. For some blogs, depending on the target audience, it is also about feeding Christians with the Word of God. In a world where there are millions of blogs out there, quality content is king.
This is not to say that the design of the website or blog is not important. In fact, it is, because of high visual content has the ability to attract readers. I get turned off by websites which have content that are not properly organised. I find it unappealing to visit a website that is difficult for me to read. However a website that has traffic or many people visiting it must have quality content to sustain the readership in the long run.
In this series of articles, I will be sharing on developing a quality website, attracting readers and sustaining the readership. I will be breaking down the elements that make up a good website. In short, it is about improvement. While these tips can be applied to secular blogs as well, I will be gearing the whole series of articles towards using blogs and websites as a platform to reach out. Stay tuned.
So, why do you blog?
November 20th, 2006
Read chapters 2 and 3 of Dan Kimball’s book on the emerging church where he cited some interesting but unsettling observations of researcher George Barna about young people in USA.
1. Out of all the age groups, those ages 18 to 32 are the least likely to describe themselves as religious, as Christian, or as committed Christians.
2. Young adults today in the US seem the most open to exploring faiths other than Christianity.
3. Young adults are avoiding church: Church attendance is declining by generation.
4. Compared with teens throughout the past twenty years, today’s teenagers have the lowest likelihood of attending church when they are living independent of their parents.
5. The data regarding young adults also pose the possibility that churches are losing ground in terms of influence and may need to consider new approaches.
I wonder how much of these observations are also applicable to Singaporean youths and young people. Please give me your 2 cents worth.
November 16th, 2006
You voted in the People’s Action Party and now you have been duly rewarded with an announcement of a Goods Service Tax increase from 5% to 7%. Now let us see how passionately your Member of Parliament will speak up for the poor or even for us who, sandwiched in the middle-class, will be most affected.
November 15th, 2006
A month ago the Trinity Thological College’s alumni magazine published something I wrote for them about my blogging journey. As I will be away on a silent retreat in Chiengmai, Thailand, and don’t know if there is internet access there, I have here reproduced it to re-affirm the value of blogging for pastors and others. Hope you benefit from reading it :
With apprehension I entered blogosphere. I was computer-illiterate and internet-ignorant. I was not sure what it was all about except that it was a way of journaling your experiences online for your friends and anyone with internet access. I kept debating if it was worth the while, and whether I had the time. When I finally decided to plunge into this new technology, it was my son who helped me start a blog. Gradually I learned how to navigate in this new world, and my initial anxiety gave way to a surprising confidence.
This was because I experienced some benefits of blogging. There were many young people and some adults in the church who blogged. As I read about their struggles, hopes, joys, and their responses to different life and church experiences, my empathy for them deepened. These are real people with real work and school pressures. In fact, reading their blogs naturally led to inserting an encouragement or prayer for them.
It also helped bridge the gap between the pulpit and the pew. The perception of the “holy manâ€, distant and different from us, is laid to rest, as they read about a pastor with a wife, three teenage children and a mother with Alzeimer’s. They realize I can be opinionated, indeed quirky about some matters. They see my ordinariness and feel like they know me better.
I also influenced them intentionally and share how I live and serve God and how I view different aspects of life. I do not need to have the “correct†biblical perspective on all issues, and I constantly took risks and expressed my opinions and listened to comments which further shaped my ideas.
Blogging invited me to reflect on life experiences and ministry regularly and helped me to cultivate an awareness of how I reacted to what went on around me. It also opened my eyes to God’s activity in my life, work and in the world. Pastoring is demanding and these pauses for reflection kept my perspectives balanced and helped me keep my emotional life healthy.
I also realized that more people are usually reading your blog than you realize. Some of them do drop in and comment and a kind of on-line acquaintance is developed. Of course there are limitations with such rapport but it is nevertheless interesting and fun. On a rare occasion an hostile comment may be made. Once an online visitor “christisevil†inserted anti-christian comments on my post. Then I discovered that his blogname actually meant “Christ-is-evilâ€. I simply deleted his comments and barred him from further entry.
Blogging has now become my favourite way to keep in touch with friends, especially those overseas. They write and read whenever and as often as they want to, and respond with comments. Its more versatile then email or newsletters, looks better, feels current, and is free of charge.
I have a friend who blogs because he wants his archived posts to be a kind of legacy to his children and grandchildren, a treasure box of his heartfelt reflections about life and God, of the kind of father or grandfather he was. We are talking about data storage that can trace and endure several generations.
Recently my Trinity Theological College classmates gathered for a reunion and one of them expressed interest in blogging and has since become an avid blogger. Once separated by distance we have since been more able to be in sync with what we are both experiencing and thinking, he in Bolivia and I in Singapore. It got me thinking that with an alumni that is international, and most with ministries that are demanding, if Trinity graduates and lecturers, wherever internet is possible, could just blog regularly, whether weekly, fortnightly or monthly, it could become an internet community that sustains the sense of belonging which usually fades away after graduation. Why should community and learning cease on graduation when it is most needed after graduation, when we are in the thick of our life’s work?
November 14th, 2006
It has been a few years since you completely forgot what we usually do after we gather on the morining of the Chinese New Year Day. It confirmed our deepest fear about what had happened to you. Subsequent visits to the specialist have supposedly slowed down the regression of this dreadful disease. But we sometimes wonder if the expensive medication really helped, for you simply got worse and worse. Now we are strangers to you. In your child-like self you are so innocent, so affectionate and loving, but yet you do not remember that we are your sons and daughters-in-law and grandchildren. Even your aging sisters and brother, your friends in the ladies’ fellowship of St Andrew’s Cathedral feel they have lost a dear one. You are physically present but not there personally.
Today as we celebrate your 85th birthday, I want to thank you for all the love and sacrifices you have made for me. It was a difficult and stormy marriage, with dad all addicted to gambling, and his salary mostly spent on his bets and card games. You had to hold the family together, earn extra income through tailoring, bring us through school on a tight budget, and manage four boys and a girl through to adulthood. All the while you had to fend off the harassment of dad who kept asking and pestering and searching for money every raceday. It was very tough for you, but with the help of your brother and sisters you stayed in the marriage, till dad passed away. You have been courageous, noble, sacrificial, frugal, persevering, wise and pious. I owe you a lot and thank you deeply for caring for me.
How I wish you could hear and understand these words and that I could express them to you but alas I am just someone who looks familiar to you, but not your son. Nevertheless, my love for you still remains, and my prayer for you is that you will be spared a long drawn battle with illness before you go, for in my mind, you have suffered sufficiently in this life, and deserve a peaceful departure, and go to receive your heavenly reward, which I am certain will be abundant.
Affectionately yours,
Kenny
November 11th, 2006
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