Dear BPCWA worshipper, Today, I will summarise the final message preached during the camp. Thus far, we’ve seen how the church must function as the covenantal house of God, doing God’s business. We must commit ourselves to God’s church because it was purchased by Christ’s blood. In this commitment, we must give ourselves fully to champion God’s church. This commitment must include fighting against errors and wrong practices in the church. The charge to the family. Paulrepeatedly charged Timothy to take care of the church. In 2 Timothy, as Paul bid farewell to his beloved spiritual son, he charged Timothy once again. As the father of the spiritual family, the pastor of the church has a higher charge to feed
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, Having covered the past 6 messages of the camp, I will be covering sermon 7 today. The cautions to God’s house. Timothy had “professed a good profession” of faith (1Ti 6:12), but Paul charged him to pursue a higher standard. He had to bear witness like Christ Jesus (1Ti 6:13) so that the church would learn from him and do likewise. This is also what we must do today, to protect BPCWA. Because it is the church of the living God, we must be very conscious not to taint it with worldliness, especially in worship. The church’s music must not pander to parents’ or members’ desire to showcase skills. Church is not about performing music pieces to
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, we will recapture messages 5 and 6 this week. I pray that these reviews will help all remember the key aspects of the messages and rekindle our resolutions that we made at camp during our private reflection times. The collective witness – the Achan effect. Each individual’s life affects the church’s witness. The “collective witness” of the church refers to its shared responsibility to reflect Christ’s teachings. Because the church is considered one “body” (1 Corinthians 12), individual sins impact the entire community. They can delay, detract from, and even destroy the church’s mission, let alone its witness. They can also weaken its spiritual vitality. This notion of personal sin and its consequences on the community is
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, As we saw last week, God’s house is the church of the living God. Today, we will focus on the 3rd and 4th messages. The commitment to God’s house. Once we truly feel that God’s house is family, we won’t need to be reminded and pushed to think of God’s house and work for its betterment. The instruction to the pastor was, “Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1Ti 4:16). The pastor’s commitment is the example for the flock to follow. There ought to be a commitment to live it out and “save” or protect God’s sheep in
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, After having summarised the camp’s morning devotion messages, I will now recap God’s lessons for us from the thematic messages, centred around our theme verse, “But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1Ti 3:15). This Epistle was written by Paul to Timothy, who was left in Ephesus to care for the church and correct errors. Paul was aware that Timothy would face an uphill task. Hence, Timothy must handle things seriously. For BPCWA, it is apt to understand what we should do as a church in times of peace,
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, By the time of this pastoral, I believe most of you would have noticed that the walls of the new sanctuary building are up, with most of the tilt panels having been raised on 22 July. This is another milestone in the church extension, made even more significant with the Camp and Retreat theme song echoing in my mind, “I love Thy church, O God! Her walls before Thee stand, Dear as the apple of Thine eye, And graven on Thy hand.” The protection. This is common knowledge about walls. While we love the great outdoors, few, if any, would consider building a church without walls, which protect those within from the elements outside. Walls were significant
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, We learned from messages 1 & 2 how sanctification surely follows a Christian’s salvation. It is both the responsibility of the individual and the work of God within the Christian through the Holy Spirit. Its effect on our lives. Sanctification has 2 effects on us: 1) An inward change of a contented heart. This allows us to “do all things without murmurings and disputings” (Php 2:14). A murmur is a secret or a solid discontent that makes you grumble and complain, harbouring a discontent and becoming bitter. We know this was the condition of the people of Israel in the wilderness, when they wanted to return to a life which was more pleasurable to their flesh. Discontentment
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, Thank God for another year where we could spend time away from the world and seek His face at the Family Camp. This year, the topic I chose for our Morning Devotion messages was “The Christian’s Sanctification”, taken from Philippians 2:12-15, preached by Rev Lingkang Ko in pre-recorded video sermons. What is sanctification? The answer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s question 35 states that “Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” Sanctification is the work of God whereby we become spiritually mature when we are more and more like
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, We saw in last week’s pastoral how the understanding of “church” is changing in today’s environment. This week, we want to understand whether God had a framework He intended for His church. Many modern movements say that they are following the church model from the book of Acts by worshipping in homes. If so, then they should also be worshipping and preaching in synagogues, as was done in Acts. God has left us 27 books in the New Testament to document not just how the early church started, but the expected state of the church thereafter. The Bible speaks of a church model that every true church must endeavour to follow, despite periodic challenges (such as when
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, Our theme for this year is “The Church of the Living God”. This is the theme that was covered earlier at our Chinese Retreat and will be the topic of our thematic messages during our English Family Church Camp starting today. While Google Maps may attribute a “church” to the name of a building (and rightly so for its purpose), we are not referring here to the mere physical building where the church gathers. We are somewhat familiar with Israel being a unique nation established by God as His witnesses. It was intended to be God’s national witness amongst the nations. However, when they rejected Christ, the Messiah, they were temporarily set aside. This ushered in the
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