In any Christian community there is bound to be strong differences in opinions and convictions about disputable matters. This can sometimes lead to heated arguments, strained relationships, arguments, fractures in families, cell groups and even congregations.
Some people cannot live without clear black and whites, laws and regulations, and fine lines. They take a position and insist that others follow suit. They want uniformity, not unity. They feel uncomfortable and want to impose their convictions on the rest.
This is not the way of Christ, according to St Paul. He expressed this in Romans 14, 15. It seems that the network of home churches in Rome were grappling with such arguments and disputes specifically about what could be eaten and drank, and what are special holy days. These strong opinions seem to stem from the diverse cultural religious backgrounds of converts from pagan religions as well as Judaism.
It is no different in today’s church. There are disputable matters that can overturn peace and harmony in the church. Matters like eating food offered to idols, consumption of alcohol, dressing and musical styles in church, yoga, acupuncture, tai chi, martial arts, tattoos, dancing, and in recent years, vaccination. What are the guidelines as to how we are to relate to people with different opinions about such matters? In short, they are:
WHAT NOT TO DO (how to un-love)
DO NOT QUARREL OR FIGHT OR SPLIT (IMPOSE ON OTHERS) – Rom 14:1
DO NOT DESPISE OR JUDGE OTHERS – Rom 14:3
DO NOT CAUSE OTHERS TO STUMBLE – Rom 14:13
WHAT TO DO (how to love)
BE FULLY CONVINCED IN YOUR MIND – Rom 14:5,23
ENJOY YOUR LIBERTY BUT BE WILLING TO RESTRICT IT – Rom 14:14,15,22
SEEK UNITY & EDIFICATION – Rom 14:19; 15:5,6
I dealt with this in a sermon that was part of a series of on Romans done by World Revival Prayer Fellowship pastoral staff. In this sermon I talked about what disputable matters are, who are the “strong” and “weak” Christians, and how we are to handle such hot potatoes and relate to people in love throughout. I also talk about why it is important for us to do this and what is important to the heart of God. Finally I summed up the book of Romans. You can listen to the sermon titled “DISPUTABLE MATTERS: HANDLE WITH LOVE” in the video below:
It was a joy to preach at Shekinah Assembly of God on Mother’s Day. Blessed to return to in person worship and fellowship. I was told that they have moved their services to the Holiday Inn Singapore Atrium, along Outram Road. We seldom speak of Covid-19 positively, but thanks to it, they had a good, blessed rental arrangement and terms with the hotel management. The location and facilities suited their needs perfectly, to the praise of God’s provision. It reminded me of those days when the church I served had to sojourn from hotel to hotel, till the Lord gave us a resting place in Geylang.
I rejoice with all Christians and churches everywhere in Singapore. What a joy to be back to in person worship services! Yes, we had to wear masks but we were allowed to sing aloud! Certainly, we can worship without singing aloud, but it was good to be able to vocalise our praises again. I was blessed by the worship. I preached about “Real Faith” using the story of blind Bartimaeus to illustrate the four aspects of real faith. We could even have time at the altar for prayer and ministry. I pray all churches everywhere will allow for 5 to 15 minutes at the end of the service, in front of the stage, for people to pray and to be prayed for. We should trust God to visit his people with a fresh touch of the Holy Spirit. It is time for people to return to intimacy with God and authentic fellowship with their church friends. Spiritual social distancing has to end!
My wife was also given the Mother’s Day gift package of two bottles of Scoop tea leaves. This is a generous church and Pastor Hock Cheng and his wife Camelia hosted us to a Japanese lunch at Great World City.
The quandary of the Mother’s Day sermon
The Mother’s Day sermon usually lands the pastor in a quandary. The sermon has to recognize the importance and contribution of mothers, without forgetting the fathers (they will have their day weeks later). The quandary is that single men and women are also present in the church service, both young and mature, and they are important to the church too, but there is no Single’s Day. Maybe churches should initiate a Singles Day to celebrate these people’s freedom from anxieties; and extol their ability to give undivided attention to pleasing the Lord (1 Cor 7:32-35).
Ways to preach Mother’s Day sermons
I have preached quite a few Mother’s Day sermons. Some of these sermons focus on the important role, influence and virtues of a godly mother. This is usually the time people like Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, Jochebed (remember her?), Hannah, Naomi, Mary, and some lesser known unnamed female characters in the Old Testament and the gospels get the spotlight on Sunday. Other sermons deal with the more didactic passages like the famous (or infamous) Proverbs 31, that makes most mothers feel they are failed mothers or have fallen short of the glory of God. Other sermons compete with Reader’s Digest to give practical tips for mothers to upgrade their parenting skills.
These are certainly a few ways to go about developing the Mother’s Day sermon. However, the pastor needs to be conscious of the brokenness, discouragement and stresses that modern mothers face today. They need encouragement, affirmation and refreshment. We need to point them to the privileges, blessedness and resources of mothering. We need to point them to the grace, wisdom and power of God available to them as they love and form their children into godly adults. No mother should have to leave the sanctuary crestfallen, feeling condemned and a failure as a mother. They should leave feeling assured of God’s forgiveness, inspired with fresh hope for the calling, and certain that God will faithfully watch over and work on their children, despite all their parental shortcomings and regrets.
Directed at mothers mainly
The pastor does not want half or more of the congregation feeling the sermon is largely irrelevant to them, so for such sermons he needs to use general truths and principles that are just as applicable to singles and fathers as well. For example, the pastor can talk about how Mary the mother of Jesus pondered over significant events that accompanied Jesus’ birth, and while mothers will find it specially relevant, it can be used to exhort the whole congregation to be more attentive and reflective about what God may be doing and saying to them through the significant events that dot their lives.
Directed at all God’s people mainly
The other way, which I prefer, is to preach a sermon that applies to everyone but with a few sermon applications and references towards mothers. This helps gain the attention of all God’s people gathered for worship, and defuses or reduces feelings of irrelevancy or being slighted. Such a sermon could dwell on the attributes of God, or kingdom virtues like faith, hope and love revealed through a biblical event, teaching or character. I chose to do this in Shekinah Assembly. I preached about Real Faith and made a few applications to mothers.
The middle path is of course to use a variation of both approaches during alternate years. Whatever is written here applies to Father’s Day as well. I forgot to mention that it would be wonderful to make some truths relevant for non-Christians in the audience too, as they sometimes visit the church during such special days, but preaching with an evangelistic slant is another topic for another day.
If you are interested in visiting the SHEKINAH ASSEMBLY OF GOD, their website is HERE, and I wrote about them in an earlier blogpost HERE.
It was a joy to preach to the “embodied” church again after mostly doing pre-recorded or online services in most of the last two years. Most of the members have begun to return to the worship gatherings since the government gave the green light and loosened restrictions recently. The timing was good too, for the holy week, Good Friday and Easter services. Most of us were happy to be back and to be able to chat after the service and have two hours lunch fellowship to catch up with people.
The young people have returned too and that is a great comfort to me. During the off and on, back and forth of constant change from online to in-person services, and vice-versa, young people got frustrated and tired. Restricting meals to two persons killed the joy of being with other young people. Now even five or more can sit around a table and have a meal in the coffeeshop or hawker center.
Rising enthusiasm
There was excitement in the air and people were generally enthusiastic about worship (now they can sing with masks on), and receptive to the message. Preaching to real people I know and not a totally online audience is refreshing. You are able to see how listeners are responding to what you are saying. You can sense whether you are connecting the truth with their lives, whether they were attentive or lost in other thoughts, eager or jaded, wanting more or saying with their body language, Please end. Preaching is not all about delivering all you have prepared. You can make immediate adjustments to the content, adding new inspired ideas or completely cutting off a whole main point.
During the Easter sermon I preached from Matthew 28 about the two Marys. I never intended to dwell on their devotion to Christ. In my notes were two main ideas: how God keeps his word and is trustworthy; and the different responses of people (the two Marys, the religious leaders, the soldiers who guarded the tomb) to the greatest event in history: Christ’s resurrection. I found myself speaking about the devotion of the two Marys. I ended up expanding on this line of thought as the Spirit gave me words to speak. A whole main point was added on the spot. It was a pleasant experience of the Spirit’s hand upon me.
This freedom to add and subtract is a healthy freedom. It is not a license to ramble. It gives space for God to inspire and lead me in surprising ways. This can be risky, but exciting. It makes me feel that God is actively involved in the delivery of the message, that he cares enough about his people to intervene to enhance and enrich whatever I have prepared.
Giving space to God
Two things help me to give space to God to move and inspire new thoughts in the sermon. One, I do not use powerpoint presentation. This way I do not feel a need to complete and use everything I have prepared. I can change the order, the content, and the length of the message without distracting the people listening to the Word. I have other reasons for not using presentation slides for sermons but it is not the subject here.
The second thing I do is to preach without looking at my notes too much. I have all the main truths, background information, illustrations, applications thought through, and the main stuff are in note form. I memorise the main points and the illustrations and applications that belong together with each point. I go over them in my mind, rehearsing them mentally. Then when I am on the pulpit, I trust the Spirit to guide the delivery. Some information I researched is unused, some I had read about but discarded, the Spirit brings to mind. I trust that what was subtracted was not meant to be heard, and what was added was meant for someone to hear. If I get stuck or got lost along the way, I go back to my notes and look at the underlined main truths to re-calibrate the route to the destination.
The joy of preaching
Preaching is more fun now that it is not so frequent and I have no other pastoral and administrative cares to attend to. I remember that when I was pastoring, a lot of good intentions, commitments and promises made to people and ministry got buried or neglected by other important and urgent tasks, by my own inner turmoil, or were simply forgotten. Usually I gave the highest priority to preaching preparation, including prayer. “Devote yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word”, was the apostolic priority (Acts 6). I did not always succeed in this, because urgent ministry matters overwhelm important matters. If a funeral suddenly falls on your lap, or there is an administrative deadline to meet, I found my sermon preparation challenged. I no longer have these things to distract or harass me as I prepare my messages, praise the Lord!
To be able to combine two pleasures is a great blessing. I enjoy catching up with pastor friends and cycling, so to have these two pleasures combined is time well spent. I have had the pleasure of doing this recently in two cycling trips with pastors. One was from Khatib MRT to Labrador MRT following the Round the Island route. A second was from East Coast Park (car park D1) to Changi Point and back.
Khatib to Labrador (RTI)
When National Parks published the partially completed Round The Island (RTI) route, it inspired me and I asked a more experienced pastor, cyclist and YouTuber, Eng Hwa if he would like to do this route. He said yes and we agreed on the date. Later I invited one pastor Paul Loh to join us. Paul was a pastor in charge of logistics in New Creation Church before he began his own regional ministry of equipping pastors and church planting. They both lived in the north, one in Sembawang and one in Yishun. I lived in Jurong East. So I folded my Brompton bike at Jurong East MRT and took the train to Khatib MRT station. It was 23 Feb at 7am when I boarded the train. The ride all the way to Changi Point was predictable with a few familiar scenic places, where we stopped at to take pictures and rest.
Seletar North Bridge LinkMarina Bay
At Changi Point we ate at the hawker center and we got to know each other better, lingering over cans of 100 Plus, a necessary isotonic drink for such long-distance rides of over 70km. It helps to prevent cramps.
After lunch we continued our ride and took regular timeouts to rest, drink and chat. We were stuck for about 15 minutes at a bus-stop along the East Coast because of sudden rain. After that we kept going all the way to Marina Bay and passed the many bridges along the Singapore river.
Finally THE END
Fatigue began to set in along the Alexandra PCN. From then the going was tough but somehow by God’s grace, sheer perseverance and 100Plus, we finally reached our destination with great joy and a sense of satisfaction. We reached Labrador MRT station at 5.23pm. From there we took the train home with our folded bikes. What an unforgettable trip. I now have a deeper respect for those who do the full round the island route like it was a piece of cake.
East Coast D1 to Changi Point
There were more pastors on this trip because it was organised on a Monday so a still-working Anglican pastor Vincent could join us. Another pastor Richard Wong is executive director of T-NET, a disciple-making ministry. Although he is working, he has a flexible schedule. The rest of us are retired pastors Eng Hwa and Seng Chor and myself. We enjoy doing whatever the Lord bids us to do in this new season of our lives. We have the greater flexibility.
At D1 car park
This was not our first pastors cycling trip. We met at a free car park D1 at the East Coast Park. The day was beautiful but according to the weather report, sunny at noon and rainy in the afternoon. It was one of those days when the weather forecast was highly accurate. We had fun riding all the way to Changi Point and chatting over Tiong Bahru chicken rice, and later downed with chendol dessert at another location opposite the hawker center. The talk over the table was about the church during the pandemic, catching up with each other about what’s happening in our lives, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Richard, myself, Vincent, Seng Chor, Eng Hwa
On the way back, the rain hit us in the afternoon, and we had to speed up and ended in the exact same bus stop as during the February cycling trip, all wet from the rain. After a while we decided to ride in the drizzle until we reached the hawker center near the Bedok Jetty. There we loitered for quite a while over hot teh tarik, and left under a drizzle because the rain refused to stop.
I gave a ride to pastor Vincent who lived fifteen minutes from my home. Thankfully we could put two foldable bikes in the car. Although we were drenched, it was an eventful outing, and I enjoyed the ride of 40km, and the camaraderie. This is one kind of environment that helps men to build relationships: doing things we enjoy together and tossing in some meaningful conversations. We are planning another cycling trip, this time from Jurong East to Marina Bay and back.
It was a joy to be welcomed by Pastor Bernard. His church Harvester Community Church was hosting the event. I knew Bernard from the Christian fellowship at CMPB when we met for times of prayer and encouragement, before he completed his National Service.
My joy doubled as I saw various pastors I know among the groups of five that were seated around tables: Ps Lawrence Koo, Ps Francis, Ps Justin, Ps Ben (one of the panel speakers), and of course my cycling buddy, Ps Richard Wong. I felt relaxed and at home.
Joining MFI Singapore
I joined the Ministers Fellowship International Singapore after my retirement. They are an association of ministers that intentionally facilitate meaningful relationships among ministers. In doing so they hope to strengthen churches. They also believe that the Church would be strengthened when local churches recognise and allow for the development of the five-fold ministry amongst them. The two main key leaders of MFI Singapore are Ps Chua Hock Lin and Ps Gabriel Han.
Pastors Consultation 2022
This Pastors Consultation began at 9.30am and ended around 1pm. Surprisingly the three and a half hours passed quickly, which was a good sign. The theme was “Leading With Clarity In Uncertain Times” and the speakers were seasoned pastors: Ps Chua Hock Lin, Ps Jeremy Seaward, Ps Ben Lee, and Ps Joey Bonifacio. There was also an interesting panel discussion of three youth pastors: Joel Tan, Jay Ong, and Jess Ong. On the whole, the program fulfilled the purpose of helping pastors gain the clarity to move forward. The program was ably helmed and facilitated by Ps Rhordan Wicks. Every speaker and their respective topic, and the panel discussion contributed to expanding and developing the theme. It was an enriching time, though more time for processing on the insights we gained would have made the meetings more fruitful. However, pastors are busy people and we have to leave it to them to reflect on what the Lord stirred in them personally, and pray about the implications and action to take.
Clarity For The Church
For me the session about “Clarity For the Church” was inspiring in its centrality and simplicity. The church needs to stop being pre-occupied with reacting to the rapid changes triggered by government covid regulations, necessary as this was, and let Jesus come and give us clarity. He used Luke 5, where Peter was pre-occupied with cleaning the nets and Jesus facilitated a process of revelation where in the end Peter realised his real call was to be a fisher of men. This however was but the first of three encounters where Jesus came and clarified things for the disciples. The other was during post-resurrection, when Peter and the disciples went back to fishing, and Jesus came and clarified their call. The last was when the disciples asked Jesus when would the kingdom come, and Jesus in effect said, Do not be pre-occupied with such matters of last days timing; rather let the Holy Spirit empower you to be My witnesses. I could feel that the pastors were moved by the simplicity and clarity and directness of the message. It was a timely rhema word for the Church in the midst of pandemic uncertainty.
Jeremy SeawardChua Hock Lin
Ps Chua gave an overview about what he believed the Lord is doing in the midst of this pandemic. He is shaking what can be shaken, and judgment has begun in the house of God, so that the Church would be purified and prepared as the Bride for the return of Christ.
Ben LeeJoey Bonifacio
The other speakers spoke about “Clarity in the Family” and “Clarity in the Personal Life”. Here are some of the insights and catchy lines delivered to us:
Clarity addresses uncertainty; it does not remove it. You cannot have certainty but clarity is the next best thing to have.
Covid had made it such that parents could not outsource the discipleship of their children to the children’s programs. It had to be done by them at home.
Families need to root themselves in the local church and not move from screen to screen and church to church because the children and teenagers need more than the input of mums and dads – they need adult uncles and aunties to enrich their faith and lives. This can only happen if they root themselves in a local church and stay put.
Online or physical services better? Most important thing is to be fully present. In which format can you be more fully present to what God is saying and doing?
Youth Pastors Panel Discussion
Jess Ong, Jay Ong, Joel Tan, Ps Rhordan Wicks
The youth pastors panel was interesting as you get glimpses of what today’s youth pastors are like and what are their perspectives and experiences of ministering during the pandemic. Some points that struck me:
Young people prioritize authentic relationships.
They are tired of being online behind the screen and prefer face to face. At the same time, they need help to relate to others and have authentic conversations.
They want to engage and make contributions that make a difference and would participate in social causes and justice issues in tangible ways.
They feel a sadness to have lost two years of precious experiences due to covid restrictions.
They need and would appreciate the humble sharing of the ups and downs of life stories from people older than them, as it helps them imagine what their life can be like in the real world and give them hope.
Reflection Time
At the end, we had a time of quiet reflection and then in our groups we shared about the insights that struck us the most. This was a good time of collaborative learning and of iron sharpening iron. Some good news also came through as it was announced that by next week groups of ten would be allowed, and wearing masks outside would be optional! Someone remarked: I hope this does not undo the good that the pandemic has done in the church. A great way to end the consultation.
