The Most Revd Dr John Chew, President of the National Council of Churches of Singapore, delivering sermon at National Day Thanksgiving Service convened at the New Sanctuary of St Andrew's..
(Christian Post Singapore)
The Anglican Bishop was addressing church heads from across denominations, Christian leaders, and other attendants who had gathered at the New Sanctuary of St Andrew’s Cathedral last Thursday evening for the NCCS-organised annual National Day Thanksgiving Service.
Taking from the passage where the Apostle John recorded the crisis and miracle that took place during the fateful wedding banquet at Cana, where the Lord Jesus turned the six barrels of water into wine and saved the day, the Bishop drew parallels between the Biblical scenario and society today.
In the day of Jesus, while everyone was partying and enjoying themselves, the wine ran out. Comparing this to worldly achievements, such as the national achievements of Singapore and even of China, the Anglican leader suggested that the Church may very well have fallen into the vicious cycle of focusing on outward things including statistical growth in the churches and amount of resources.
Yet it was the mother of the Lord, Mary, not even His disciples, who first noticed the lack. She did not fall into the rut, as it were, but was sensitive to the issues of her day. Which brought the Bishop to speak about a persistent and subtle crisis facing today’s churches: that of seeming to know just the right solutions to everything—that of being too quick and almost impatient to respond to the questions today’s society is asking, and losing grasp of the more essential questions many souls in today’s world are asking and seeking the essential solutions to.
In a context where people do not have much of a historical root, and during the all-important threshold years of a new century, a period that historical analysts identify as being pivotal, when globalisation has given rise to an unprecedented host of problems, and postmodernism has made evangelism all the more challenging, the Bishop had this to ask of the local body of Christ: “Does the Church of Singapore understand enough?”
The Church has failed twice in 1968 (Prague Spring Revolution) and 1989 (Fall of Berlin Wall) to engage and transform society, he noted from a British editorial article. The year 1997 was a turning point for Singapore, when it was going through the Asian economic crisis. This year, with the global food crisis, Singaporeans' lack of self-identity, the raging culture of materialism and consumerism so prevalent in busy Singapore, is another critical opportunity for the Church to arise, he stated.
The Thanksgiving sermon was entitled The Issue that Matters.
