Every now and then (some people say, most of the time), we just don’t feel like praying. What do we do then? Most young people find Christian music soothing and inspiring, a helpful way to connect with God. Maybe I am not a music kind of person. I hardly use this to help me. When I am stuck and not in a mood to pray, I may…..
It was a wedding to remember. My wife’s childhood friend Lai Lin’s daughter, Joy, got married (click on pics to see pop-ups). It was held at Barker Road Methodist Church. The sanctuary was modest in decor and size, an old building upgraded: traditional and dignified. It looked Methodist, a decor marked by moderation and pragmatism, accomodating ugly projectors and screens, yet with traditional stained glass that silently declared the praise of God, which drew people’s thoughts beyond.
However it wasn’t the building but the men in SAF officer’s uniform that made my heart skip a beat. The juxtaposing of hard with soft, steel with silk, quickened my senses. The pleasant electric bolt hit me when the white uniformed men marched in with swords, followed by the flower girls, and then the father with the bride. Rev Kenneth Huang gave a good exhortation and led the whole service in an elegant fifty minutes.
The evening banquent at the opulent Shangrila ballroom was fast paced and multi-dimensional with quickly edited video of the morning’s solemnization, and snippets of congratulations from friends here and abroad- a neat way to kill time while the latecomers trickled in. The dinner was top notch and was interspersed with lots of frank, affirming and grateful speeches. The emcees and family and friends got people cheering and cracking up and tearing with well prepared brief talks. The father of the bride, Nick, talked about how a father might feel about giving away his daughter. He remembered how his father in law gave out a loud cry at the end of the banquet for he had felt he lost a daughter. Nick said that for him he felt he had gained a son. It made me wonder what I would be thinking when my turn comes around. Anyway, the highlight for me was when Chinese music came on and the bride came in a Chinese wedding sedan with the groom gamely striding alongside. And it even ended with the husband and wife taking the dance floor to live music, and later with some guests joining in.
This banquet was nothing like the weddings of the past.
Empowered by new money; driven by creative expression; well crafted and executed; unfettered by tradition.
Is this a new style wedding: a sign of our young people’s new confidence and liberty of expression?
I was listening to one of our church missionaries and learned another acronym: BAM . It means business as missions - one of the many innovative ways of doing missions. Restricted access in many nations to missionary work has spurred creativity among God’s people. So missionaries enter a country on a business visa, set up a small business, and use it as a platform for reaching a target group of people. It may be a cafe, a restaurant, a consultancy company, a hostel or guesthouse, a gifts or craft shop, language school, whatever. The intention is of course to win the lost to Christ and to disciple them. The business is a means, a vehicle to help the missionary do it. The missionary in business often reaches out to his employees and as a result small cells of believers are formed. So you have factory churches, restaurant churches, etc besides the underground churches(churches that meet in secret). There are already successful and fruitful models in existence. One is a garment factory from which profits have been used to resource church plants. Another is a guest house cum restaurant that hires the unreached people and they got saved and discipled in the place of business.
It got my creative juices flowing and I came up with RAM. That’s retirement as missions. Go to a country which gives special visas to retirees. They are welcome as long as they keep certain sums of money in deposits. You settle among the unreached you want to reach and do the work! A few countries like Malaysia and Thailand have this program.
In June, when I was on a missions trip to Chiangmai, Thailand, I interviewed a few pastors in a hotel. Timothy works in Fang, a town just a few hours north of Chiangmai. He was born in Singapore, studied and worked in Australia, married a Thai Chinese, and his vision is to reach the tribal peoples of northern Thailand. This is his simple story of how he answered God’s call.
I attended the GO FORTH National Missions Conference the last few days at Suntec City. I attended all the morning sessions which I found very insightful and informative. They gave me a better perspective of the landscape of modern missions. The challenge of urban missions, globalization and the need for innovation. The topics were well planned, systematic and covered good ground. I was informed as well as inspired.
I attended the workshop presented by Campus Crusade titled “Generation NeXt: Youths, Media and Missions” (click on pics) which challenged me with using Web 2.0 and other media tools to reach out to this generation of media-savvy, post modern generation of hooked up young people. I call them a new people group though I cannot use the adjective “unreached”. There are no borders and they speak all kinds of languages and hail from different cultures and nations. However, and they have one thing in common: they surf and use and cannot live without the internet. This “internet tribe”, whom I would like to call “webbies” can be reached for Jesus, and we Christians can be “missionaries” to them- stay at home missionaries, unpaid, yet passionate and committed missionaries. This is a new frontier in missions.
The Sunday Times featured an interesting article on Lawrence Khong, probably a marketing promotional for his coming magic shows. It gave some insights into his colorful personality. I want to write something from a Christian perspective without making any value judgments on him or his ministry. Pastor Lawrence Khong is in my opinion one of the most outstanding indigenous Christian leaders of Singapore in the post-war period, if not in the last century. He is a strong natural leader anointed with gifts of faith and extraordinary leadership. I have never seen anyone with such great ability to cast visions, inspire people to believe and mobilize them to united action. He is now a leader of thousands but could certainly be one of hundreds of thousands. He is a rare gift to the body of Christ in Singapore and beyond.
I think it was the Cell Church revolution that thrust pastor Lawrence Khong into the spotlight and to the larger Body of Christ both in Singapore and the world. And the church loved what it saw and heard and felt. Many pastors and leaders were empowered during the FCBC annual cell conferences and this led to growth and changes of no small scale in many churches. FCBC had been more than generous in sharing its resources to all who needed help. The 1990s was a good season for churches that successfully applied the principle of the cell church.
He founded Touch Community Services, a non-profit welfare services with 18 centres in Singapore, helping over 100,000 needy and underprivileged through its programs since 1992. This would in my mind be one of his premier achievements: to work with the poor and needy is something close to the heart of the Lord and his apostles.
His ministry was of course no pleasure cruise as controversies inevitably follow on the heels of people who are on the cutting edge as he was. He left Grace Baptist Church in painful circumstances. He led the Love Singapore movement and it blossomed under his inspiring and rallying leadership. I could see that this man was a leader of hundreds of thousands even then, but the 2001 year of harvest sputtered, and the movement went through a tough time.
His controversial decision of shedding off the ‘old’ wineskin of FCBC cell church structure, held by many as the gold standard, though it was at a plateau in his church, and adopting the Group of 12 model was one that left many who followed him into the cell church revolution stranded and at a loss. The adoption of magic and movies as a means of introducing the message and values of the kingdom to a world obsessed with entertainment was a strategy that made sense. But the magic thingy stirred up a lot of dust and left many with logs in the eyes. Of course it was obvious the magic were illusions and tricks and not demonic. But all kinds of rumors and criticisms swirled around him.
It was during this difficult and controversial period that several hundred members left the church and moved to ……. other megachurches. Megachurches gain weight by the hundreds, and they shed pounds by the hundreds too, and they do musical chairs among themselves every once in a while. Lately FCBC announced that they have turned the corner, for hundreds have joined them since the losses. The ST article did not mention his able lieutenants, Pastors Melvyn and Eugene, and a score of others but these were the loyal and mighty men without whom things would not have turned out so well for him or FCBC.
The question is what legacy will he leave behind? He still has many years to go, forty perhaps if God is willing. What would he be remembered for? What would be the ultimate contribution of this sovereignly gifted leader to the kingdom? Would he be remembered as a colorful pastor of a megachurch (so what’s new?) or the leader of hundreds of thousands - a Christian statesman who had an enduring impact on the spiritual map of South East Asia, or even the new ascendant Asia.
Though multi-talented, the magic of Lawrence Khong lies singularly in his anointing of faith and leadership.
Oops! I clicked a reset button in an attempt to amend something and my custom header disappeared with the lovely pic of the Annapura range…… and all the king’s men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.
“I think in football there is too much modern slavery, transferring players or buying players here and there, and putting them somewhere. And we are trying now to intervene in such cases.” -Sepp Blatter .
“It’s true. I agree with what the president of Fifa said. I know what I want and what I would like. We have to see what happens. I do not know where I will begin next season.”-Ronaldo.
Since then all hell has broken loose in the football world. Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, has a notable penchant of making controversial statements to generate discussion or obtain attention, and usually gets both. Remember his remark that woman footballers should wear tighter shorts, like women volleyball players, so that it will be a more popular sport? That’s vintage Blatter.
So is Ronaldo, likely to be World Footballer of the Year, a modern day slave together with all modern footballers trapped in their contractual employment terms?
Most young people find Christian music soothing and inspiring, a helpful way to connect with God. Maybe I am not a music kind of person. I hardly use this to help me. When I am stuck and not in a mood to pray, I may…..
The Sunday Times featured an interesting article on Lawrence Khong, probably a marketing promotional for his coming magic shows. It gave some insights into his colorful personality. I want to write something from a Christian perspective without making any value judgments on him or his ministry. Pastor Lawrence Khong is in my opinion one of the most outstanding indigenous Christian leaders of Singapore in the post-war period, if not in the last century. He is a strong natural leader anointed with gifts of faith and extraordinary leadership. I have never seen anyone with such great ability to cast visions, inspire people to believe and mobilize them to united action. He is now a leader of thousands but could certainly be one of hundreds of thousands. He is a rare gift to the body of Christ in Singapore and beyond.
