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Watching Arsenal live in Singapore

20 July 2015 blogpastor Leave a comment

Watching Arsenal defeat Everton live in the National Stadium in the Singapore Sports Hub was a delight.

Where in the world can you pay SGD$49 and get two matches to watch. At 6pm Stoke predictably defeated a Singapore selection, and at 8pm we watched Arsenal brush aside Everton 3-1 in more earnest play. In England, a match between Arsenal and Everton would set you back over 75 English pounds.

I was treated to the match and a dinner by my friend Lewis. We had an early lunch at the famous frog legs porridge restaurant. Heard about it but it is the first time I tasted it. Really tasty, spicy and salty and over-rated. I was very thirsty during the match and that says a lot about the amount of taste enhancers inside the dish.

The stadium is less that a year old. I have gone to the former stadium for many a football match and many evangelistic events. This is definitely a wonderful upgrade. Bright with clear signage and a spacious pedestrian foyer that stretched all around the 23 stadium gates. We preferred the assignment of seats with back rest rather than the former free seating of wooden benches without any backrest. So even though we were already into the first half of the Stoke match we had our seats reserved. No need to go early to chope the best seats.

The National Stadium a sea of red: Arsenal fans

The whole stadium was a sea of red with only a small patch of blue where the Everton fans were. I love the retractable stadium dome roof. I love the coolness of the stadium artificially created with fine mist. I deliberately did not wear my Arsenal jersey as I expected it to be humid and sticky. I regretted not doing so. At least I wore the Arsenal cap. The football pitch did not look as beautiful as those in England but it looked acceptable. The excitement was palpable when the Arsenal players went onto the pitch for their warm up and when the game finally began. The game was more earnest and energetic than the earlier match. It looked like the teams wanted to win to give themselves a psychological booster. It was not as intense as what you would see in a real Barclays’ EPL match but it was pretty to the eye and for the most part entertaining. When the team you support wins you feel satisfied.

We left the stadium about 20 minutes before the end. How were over 50,000 people going to leave the stadium and get on the MRT? How long would that take? At least 2 hours. We were glad we left early. We were among the earliest kiasus to have boarded the train from Kallang MRT after a 20 minute walk from the Stadium.

Relieved and satisfied: a good evening.

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Interests Arsenal, Everton, National Stadium, Singapore Sports Hub

Revelation adventure

11 July 2015 blogpastor Leave a comment

I have started a series of sermons on the book of Revelation. I never thought that I would ever preach through such a puzzling book. A leader suggested it recently and my immediate reaction was that there were too many interpretations. A Bible study or small group discussion instead of the Sunday pulpit would be a better place to explore it. That was that. However, over a period of time something happened inside that I cannot fully explain. Like the tide, grace came in and I was ready to go for it. One reason could be the messages to the seven churches that I heard during the Turkey-Greece Bible tour. Another was simply a sense of the Spirit inviting me to get out of the safety of my Pentecostal boat and walk on expository waters over the long stretch. In addition, there was that inner freedom to delegate my other duties and to focus on maximizing my spiritual gift of teaching/preaching.

I know that the easy portions of Revelation chapters 1-5 would give me about 3 months to examine the more difficult terrain beyond. Beyond are the lands of dragons, seals, trumpets, beheaded saints, pale horses and all kinds of strange creatures. This is going to be an interesting journey. I hope to blog a little about the insights I gained while preparing these sermons. I trust I am not biting more than I can chew.

Last Sunday I preached Revelation chapter 1 and sort of gave an introduction to the series. The who, why, what, where, how and when questions were answered in the course of going through the text. The real meat was the vision that John had of the glorified Christ. It was an overwhelming vision of a Christ John never quite knew. John lived with, touched, saw, talked to the Word made flesh, the meek Lamb of God, but this time he had a startling vision of great majesty and glory of a risen, exalted, fierce Christ who symbolically revealed Himself as the Sovereign and Judge (Rev1:13-17). It was so powerful that strength and energy left him and he fell dead like one electrocuted by Life.

We always have to stay in the creative tension caused by the opposite pulls of polar truths. In this case it was Christ as both Saviour and King/Judge. If we see Jesus only as the King and Judge, full of ruthless severity we will cultivate a spirituality that tends towards being Pharisaical – full of hypocrisy and hidden sin, or a self righteousness and a joyless religiosity and pride. If on the opposite end we see Jesus only as the Saviour full of gentle kindness always, we will develop a spirituality that tends towards that of the Sadducees – tolerant to if not compromising to the values, practices and spirit of the world. But if we view Jesus in his fullness as Saviour and King/Judge, we live in a creative tension that grows a wholesome discipleship after Jesus own heart. “Make sure you stay alert to these qualities of gentle kindness and ruthless severity that exist side by side in God. (Romans 11:22 Message).

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Preaching Revelation

Crazy costs of owning a used car

7 July 2015 blogpastor Leave a comment

Looking at the online used cars market (sgcarmart) has been frustrating. Depreciation of used cars with one or two years left in their COE went at an average of $1,000 a month. This means I lose $1000 a month to own the used car. This is before adding the driving costs of insurance, road tax, petrol, repairs and maintenance. You wait and you wait and it does not get better. The prices of used cars went north. The costs of owning a used car in Singapore is crazy.

Was it ever like that in the past? I do not know. I drove a church van from 1985-2004, nearly ten years, so I never had to look at the car market. Only about ten years ago the church paid about $60,000 for a Hyundai Matrix. Today that amount is a wee short of paying for the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) – the permission to use a new car in Singapore for ten years.

But God answers prayer. He did say, Ask and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and it shall be opened to you.

Help came to me in the grace I have received from God to cope with using public transport. I admit it is tough during peak hours in the MRT and I avoid this whenever I can. So I was able to take the train or the bus to the church office or to Trinity Theological College library. His grace and my umbrella and short sleeve cotton shirts were sufficient.

Help also came in the form of friends who went on overseas vacations for one to six weeks and let me use their cars – a blessed convenience indeed. Thank God for that. Once an American missionary, James Creasman went back to USA, and let me use his Toyota Picnic for several weeks since its COE had not expired and that covered a busy December period when I needed a car badly, bless his heart, and bless the Lord o my soul.

My champagne Nissan Latio for the next few months.

Help came recently through a cell leader and friend Sunny Chong. He had been actively helping me to look out for a used car. One of his colleagues Andrew had a Nissan Latio with a COE that runs till mid-November. His daughter bought a new continental car and transferred her Mistsubishi Lancer to him since it had two years of COE left to run. He wanted to sell his car to dealers and they gave him low prices. Sunny suggested he sell it to me for an additional sweetener. Throw in the transfer fees, insurance and the sums show a depreciation of half of $1000. I was thankful for this blessing. It is God’s answer to mysearch and prayer. Does God care about such down to earth matters? Yes the God who is attentive to sparrows, lilies and grass that grows and dries up on the same day does care about COE and second hand cars. And God cares for the big picture too of course – world peace, poverty, natural disasters and human conflicts – everything serious and global.

For now I am just thankful I can go into my Latio and drive to wherever I need to tomorrow. As to whether I should extend the COE by another five years or pay a ransom for an eight year old car or go back to public transport, I have put it in God’s hands. Today’s worries are sufficient, and I do not want to add tomorrow’s fears to today’s list of concerns.

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Personal and family Nissan Latio, Prayer, Public transport, sgcarmart, used cars

Rev Dr Amos Jayarathnam: WRPF 2015 church camp speaker

30 June 2015 blogpastor Leave a comment

The camp speaker was Rev Dr Amos Jayarathnam and the theme of the camp was “Faith in the Face of Uncertainties.” It looked like we had to face the uncertainties right from the beginning when the advance party stepped into the hotel. They had a jolt with what they experienced. One had problem with room lights and another had problem with the bathtub. Will the people be able to accept this in addition to the hotel’s jaded look and facilities?

Avillion Legacy in Melaka is not exactly our ideal hotel except that this time we wanted to get a 4 days 3 nights church camp package for under SGD$300 pax for about 130 people. The hotel’s decor and colours are very ethnic Malay. It took a day to get used to. We were disappointed with the inadequate facilities. The swimming pool was the size of a badminton court. The hotel is an inconvenient 15 minute’s bus ride from the main shopping and food belt.

Nowadays, even with a strong Singapore dollar the hotels in Malaysia play hardball and charge a premium for church camps. Most hotels charge from $350 to $400. There are many churches in Singapore wanting to hold camps in June, and Johor and Melaka are popular places because of the relatively short travel needed. The hotels know this. Maybe the next time we should look farther afield at places like Bangkok.

What fell short in terms of facilities was made up for by great organization and the spiritual program. The organizers were young people: Huile and Tian En, with the steady and experienced hand of Ai Choo. I like it when there is an intergenerational team: “the young men and the old shall be merry” (Jeremiah 31: 13). This strict herding of youth from the adults is a sad homogenization that does more harm than good for the church. It may spur numerical growth in a few cases, but in most situations, it starves the church of the rich transmission of values, and the model loses the synergies that can be gained in an all-age congregational setting.

Rev Dr Amos Jayarathnam preaching the message

Mindmapping on the side for the primary school but others enjoyed it too — Aileen Goh mindmapping on the side for the primary school kids but others enjoyed it too

Lunch with Pastor Thomas, Pastor Amos, Agnes and Mark Chua

Rev Dr Amos is not new to us. He was in the WRPF family in the early years of his faith development. Now he is an internationally recognized prophet. He spoke on the theme in three sessions. His main point was that we need to learn to trust in God’s true character even in the face of circumstances and evidence that shows it is opposite. When things are uncertain, God is faithful and does not change. He spoke as one whose faithfulness and loyalty to God has been proven and tested. What he preached was seared into his life at great sacrifices, uncertainty and tears. Thus he was able to impart faith and courage and conviction. On more than one occasion, he risked his life and his family and was willing to die for the Lord. God saw that and entrusted him with great gifts and anointing. Despite that he is a very gracious, unassuming, and respectful man of God.

His God-given gift to give personal prophecies that were mostly accurate is priceless. Typically they described a person’s gifts and strengths and gave specific advice on pitfalls to watch and encouragement along the lines of their placement in the body. So typically after the message the campers went forward for prayer and ministry. Later we had to give out numbers on paper to campers as there were many more who had not been prayed for and he offered to pray for everyone. After the message we dismissed all but the 20 persons to be prayed for in the queue. By the time we finished on the third and last session it was about 2pm and most have gone off for the free and easy shopping afternoon.

In the end it was a memorable camp and most went home contented and encouraged to have been blessed with the strong messages preached, and each with a personal word from the Lord as bonus. They enjoyed the shopping and the durian pig outs. For me the personal prophecy affirmed my role as spiritual father in the church, and affirmed and watered the idea of writing books.

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Pastoral ministry Avillion Legacy, church camp, Melaka, prophecy

Ubike: best value for money foldable bike?

29 June 2015 blogpastor 2 Comments

I have been in conversation with him about folding bikes. He owned a mountain bike before but wanted to get a foldie. He researched Brompton, Dahon, Vert, Jazz and other foldable bikes and went to the bicycle shops to examine. His conclusion is that the Ubike is the best value bike in Singapore at the moment.

Brompton and its long tradition was certainly an attractive option. However he is one who is not into brands and will look at comparisons with an objective eye. He finally bought a Ubike citizen selling at SGD$980 for one main reason: it gives him the best value for the buck.

For one thing he found the Taiwan manufacturer is a tried and tested maker of durable bikes for many cities in Europe. This is their foray into foldable bikes and they won an award for design. The parts are Shimano and can be easily upgraded or replaced, unlike the proprietary Brompton. It came with mud guards and a rear rack. It has over 20 gear shifts. It’s frame is aluminium and when folded it can be pushed like a wheel barrow. Best of all you can actually buy 3 Ubikes for the price of one Brompton.

So when Sek Hong bought the bike I was eager to have a look and try it out. He came over from Holland Road and from my place in Jurong we cycled to the Jurong Lake Park Connector. I showed him the promenade, the fountain, passed by the entrances to the Chinese Garden and the Japanese Garden, and passed the view of the Jurong Country Club golf course.

At the end of the one way route, I tried out his bike. The bike aesthetics were good: paint, colour, the frame, the handlebars and tyres. The ride was smooth, effortless and quiet. There is no suspension but for recreational riding on the park connectors this does not pose a problem at all.

He was bowled over by the scenic and breezy ride. “I don’t know why you bother to ride the Ulu Pandan PCN when you have such a pleasant ride here.” “Yes there is no need to, but I do it for variety and to eat at Ghim Moh or Teban Gardens.”

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Interests foldable bicycle, Jurong Lake PCN