Reactions to New Creation Church record $21 million fund raising

30 August 2010 37 Comments

Joy Fang of My Paper reported today that New Creation Church collected $21 million in less than 24 hours!

In fewer than 24 hours last Sunday, members of the megachurch donated an impressive $21.1 million towards its multimillion-dollar building fund over four services held at Suntec City and Golden Village Marina. The sum breaks the church’s record of over $18.8 million raised last February, and $18 million raised in April 2008. In comparison, last year’s President’s Challenge raised a total of about $10 million for 37 beneficiaries. When “My Paper” broke the news last year that the church raised about $19 million in a day with about 21,300 people in attendance – what the church said was a “new record attendance and collection done during a worldwide recession” – it caused an uproar among netizens in online forums. This year, a record number of over 22,000 people attended the special service last Sunday,
called Miracle Seed Sunday. Church members donated money to help fund the construction of the Integrated Hub complex. Located at Vista Xchange at one-north in Buona Vista, the civic and cultural complex will house a 5,000-seat auditorium when it is completed in 2012. It is being co-developed by Rock Productions, the commercial- development arm of New Creation Church, andmall developer CapitaMalls Asia. New Creation Church will be the auditorium’s anchor tenant and hire the venue for its services on Sundays. With this new amount, the total sum raised so far by the church for the project stands at about $259 million, or more than half the $500 million needed.

There will be a wide range of responses from different people. Blogpastor imagines some:

Governance regulators: “Let’s keep a close eye on them!”

Politicians: “How can we get our party members to donate that much in such a short time?”

Finance/Marketeers: “It must be an investment scam!”

Organizers of President’s Challenge: “How can we harness religion for fund-raising?”

Christian idealists: “Why don’t they do the same for the poor?”

Secularist: “Churches should be taxed!”

Other megachurches: “Will we be able to match that?”

Small churches: “Can we have the crumbs that fall off the table of plenty?”

Parachurch organizations: “With that money, we can send 21,000 workers into the harvest fields”.

Fundamentalist: “20,000 deceived by prosperity doctrine in less than 24 hours!”

Roman Catholics: “How come our folks do not give as much?”

Gambler who lost $26 million at the casino recently: ” If only…….”

Unsaved dad: “I told you the church is filthy rich. Stop giving your salary to them!”

Arsenal fan: “We could get Shay Given with that amount!”

Blogpastor: “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.”

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SIB Grace: abounding in grace

9 August 2010 5 Comments

SIB Grace English service

Elder Thomas teaching the WordSunday worship service

We entered an empty spacious basement car park of the Crown Towers, an office building. SIB Grace leased the 9th Floor auditorium and halls. There was space for 500 but a third of it was used as a fellowship area, while the rest were filled with seats. The attendance ranged from 150 to 200 every Sunday. The newly started early morning Mandarin service, and the Sunday school each has 50 in attendance. The English service started at 11.30am. After the singing and communion, Elder Thomas, taught the Word verse by verse. The topic was the stewardship of the Master’s goods and the believers’ progress. The offering was taken, notices given and a closing song wrapped up the service. There was a sense of restfulness about the service, with no one straining to pump up adrenalin, or make things happen, or worry about “Were the people touched by God during the service?”.

A stunning miracle

The lunch area overlooked a lovely view of the Sarawak river. Over snacks we met Bartholomew, a male nurse who worked in the city’s hospital. He could not attend services as regularly as he would want to because of his shift duties. However, he prayed for patients in the hospital, and had seen a few answers to prayers for healing. Improvements in leg movements and the pain of patients as a result of Jenny, Kenny, Bartholomewprayer. Other times, he prayed audaciously for patients who died to rise, but they never did……until recently. He shared with me, “The doctor had declared a sick patient dead, and the distraught family had cried over him. I was sent to get him ready for the mortuary. I prayed a simple prayer for God to raise him. To my utter surprise he came back to consciousness. The doctor was called back and was shocked to see it. Later, a church elder visited the patient as he recovered in hospital.” This was a sign and wonder. This low-key but stunning miracle reminded me of another memorable story of a brain-dead member who came back to life in the deaf fellowship of World Revival Prayer Fellowship, where I pastor.

Re-installed by grace

Elder AlexLooking for empty seats at the Kuching food festival was difficult. When we finally did, and others went to order different food, elder Alex, who does most of the preaching in church, shared with me about his journey. During the charismatic revival in Kuching in the 1980’s, St Faith Anglican church was the center of action among the Anglicans. There was so much intensity and activity during that revival. The next two decades saw many who suffered burn-out, including himself, a committed youth leader. On one of his trips to Singapore, his cousin brought him to his church, NCC. There God ministered to him through the message. When he returned to Kuching he wrote to the church and it sent him 22 cassette tapes. He studied all the messages. Alex had severe asthma so that even the air-conditioning of a car could result in an attack. After hearing the tapes, he was completely healed!

Jenny, Kenny, elder Alex, Alan, Penny, Richard

Church gripped by a message

Later, Alex met with Thomas and other acquaintances of the charismatic revival. They met above the Crossway Christian bookshop, and had energizing discussions about the books and tapes of Joseph Prince. From there the idea of starting an SIB preaching point began. That preaching point grew and after persevering through difficulties, became SIB Grace, a church that abounds with the grace of God.

(Footnote: The Borneo Evangelical Church or SIB (Malay:Sidang Injil Borneo) is one of the largest evangelical Protestant denominations in Malaysia with membership at about 500,000. SIB Grace is part of this denomination.)

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The righteousness of God imputed

28 July 2010 25 Comments

the reformersThis doctrine that we hear as part of the “grace message” of Joseph Prince has roots that go back to the Reformation. The early Reformation creeds give evidence of this. Creeds are succinct summaries of the teachings and faith of groups of Christians. The ones quoted below are from the Calvinist reformers of the Protestant movement. They express the crux of the message that generated  the great revivals of the Protestant Reformation. Study them and you will see that these reformers believed that justification…

…..is an undeserved gift of God’s grace;

…..is not just the forgiveness of sins but also the imputation of the perfect obedience and righteousness of Christ to the believer;

…..is received by faith alone apart from works of law, yet this faith is never alone but works through love;

…..cannot be separated from regeneration.

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) was written by Zacharias Ursinus, professor at the University of Heidelberg, and Caspar Olevianus the court preacher.

“Question 60: How are you right with God?

Answer:  Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.”

The Belgic Confession(1561) was written by Guido de Bre`s, a Reformed Belgian preacher. Article 22 contains these statements:

“And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified “by faith alone” or by faith “apart from works” (Romans 3:28). However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us – for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness. But Jesus Christ is our righteousness in making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place. And faith is the instrument that keeps us together with him in communion with all his benefits. When those benefits are made ours they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.”

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) was written by 131 pastors and 30 laymen at Wesminster Abbey in London. It is a Puritan Calvinist creed.

XI.1 :“Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; ….by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.”

“Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the [only instrument] of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.”

This message of justification, especially the positive imputation of Christ’s righteousness and its manifold applications, have not been preached much from most Protestant pulpits. The  Pentecostals and charismatics and other evangelicals have preached being regenerated and sanctified and anointed, but not much on being justified. Even traditional denominations like the Presbyterians, Methodists,Anglicans, Lutherans have jettisoned justification, deemed as risky and with an antinomian aftertaste, in favor of a more popular taste: the “char kway teow” of user-friendly, practical sermons. My plea is for a more Reformation flavor in our pulpits, especially, the one that is at the heart of the gospel: the message of justification. This is something all churches must do if they want to have healthy disciples. We lose a great source of assurance if we do not. This is my firm conviction.

(Source:  Hoekema, Anthony A. “Saved by Grace”, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989, p 170-172)

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The heart of the gospel

27 June 2010 22 Comments

The heart of the gospel: justification by faith

George WhitefieldThe heart of the gospel is justification by faith alone. St Paul wrote, “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous shall live by faith’”(Romans 1:17). “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”(Romans 3:21,22).

Message for the baptized too

This message is basic, and many pastors feel it is only for the unsaved, and therefore not needed anymore for the baptized.  There is a gospelution going on that underlines the need for this “heart” to be preached to the baptized too. The baptized need to hear it over and over again, cooked and served in a hundred different ways, from Old and New Testament texts, to keep them from straying into the unmarked side trails that lead to condemnation, religiosity, Phariseeism and legalism.

Message of the Reformation

Some think that this message originated from Joseph Prince. It does not: it was the message of the Reformation; the message of Martin Luther and John Calvin, and it is still preached today, and needs to be preached much more from all the pulpits  in Singapore and Malaysia. R.C. Sproul is a Reformed theologian and John Piper is a pastor. They are respected by many and I include myself among them. Watch them here teaching or preaching about the “heart” of the Gospel.


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Give Joseph Prince a fair hearing

5 February 2010 56 Comments

DTRJoseph Prince’s devotional

Last year I received through the post a book gift from a fellow blogger Malcolm Loh of Rootss. It was Joseph Prince’s “Destined to Reign” devotional. Malcolm wrote in the cover, “Dear BLOGPASTOR, Felt led by the Lord to give this to you. 🙂  Continue to blog for His glory.” I tried to read the devotional book day by day, but I did not make much headway. I changed tactic and simply read it like a book, as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted, and I am now at May 8. The devotional contains interesting insights and though I couldn’t agree with everything, I benefited from it. I like that it had more gospel than law (Law as in  Luther’s perspective), more indicatives than imperatives. At the end of 2009, I in turn bought four of JP’s devotionals and gave them away, three to my pastor-colleagues, one to a relative. The book is expensive at $34, and I suspect a percentage went to the One North project. 🙂

Put down your guns

Pastors should not just go by hearsay and what they read of others’ comments, but actually go to the source and give Joseph Prince a fair hearing: read his books or listen to his tapes. Put down your guns and set aside the warning label called “antinomian” for the time being, put down your gunsroll the sleeves, and do some honest research.

Pentecostals and charismatics have been on the painful end of labelling in the past. There was a time when the label “Pentecostal” or “Charismatic” were like warning signs akin to “POISON”. Later the people who spread horror stories of tongues, rolling on the floor and swinging from rafter to rafter, are rocking and rolling from holy laughter in dignified pews and grand cathedrals…to the dismay and secret glee of the Pentecostals.

There are few who will agree with everything another pastor/writer says. There are things Billy Graham, RT Kendall, Henri Nouwen, Michael Horton, John Stott have written that I do not agree with but it never stopped me from reading and learning from them. Its the same with Joseph Prince. Or even Richard Dawkins.

Interest stimulated to study Law and Gospel

I have hesitated to comment about what Joseph Prince espouses because I have yet to give sufficient attention to what he has written. I have heard what others have written or said, but I prefer to go to the source (one thing I learned from seminary): hear his CDs (I have heard his old pre-grace cassette tapes but not any of his more recent CDs except the one on Holy Communion); and read his key book, “Destined to Reign”. Until I have read enough of his stuff, and heard enough of his messages(which Stillhaventfound has given me a fortnight back) to get a fair perspective, better to keep quiet. I have been asked to comment on his theology, but what can I comment when I have not gone to the source and done this reasonable homework?

I must say that what I heard from his supporters, and read in blogs, has also perked my interest in understanding more fully the intriguing 5 views of the law and gospelrelationship between the law and the gospel, a study that has occupied many Lutherans and Reformed folk in interesting debates over centuries, and in recent decades about the “new perspective” of St Paul. If brilliant enlightened Lutherans and Reformed folk could not come to agreement on this, what can this Pentecostal pastor add to the debate? Perhaps the missing ingredient: tongues and interpretation. 🙂

I went to Trinity Theological College and borrowed an old book, Five Views of the Law and Gospel, and I aim to study these and if possible post summaries of them in my blog and discuss. What an ambitious project.  I am well-intentioned but now what I need is what Singapore pastors have little of: time, space and motivation for studying those long chapters and reflecting on them.

I probably need a year!  🙂

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