Preaching at Care Community Church camp
Care Community Church camp at Pulai Springs, Johor
Pulai Springs, Johor is a good resort for church camps. We arrived there from Singapore within two hours or less. We had ice breakers and orientation and settled into our rooms. The haze however spoiled what would otherwise have been an ideal place for relaxation, seminars and meditation. The food was excellent and the rooms were above average. So was the service.
The Care Community Church is a warm and loving family church. Their welcome quickly put us at ease with them. Meals were pleasant as we got to know different members of the church. As they responded to us warmly, we in turn enjoyed a growing rapport with them. When I am relaxed and feel at home with an audience, I find I can preach and teach more effectively. I found the church to be friendly, unique, and blessed with many talented and faithful people. You could tell they have been cared for and loved.
Pastor Amos Yap has been their pastor for more than a decade. I got to know his family better: Juliet, his wife who gives tuition with a twist – counseling and guidance! and his son and daughter. They are a lovely family and all are serving the Lord. The theme was about personal renewal and rebuilding the church. I dealt with the common symptoms of an unhealthy spirituality.
Pulai Springs, Johor is a lovely hotel with good service and food
I adapted some ideas I got from Peter Scazzero’s “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality”
and filtered them through my experience, and shared 8 symptoms with them over two nights. Detecting some of these symptoms will help people unlock some of the hindrances to the Christ life in them. I also did two morning workshops on the spiritual disciplines of the “Examen” and “Lectio Divina” – fancy Latin names for a review of the day and devotional reading. Short explanations and 25 minutes of actual prayer, followed by 20 minutes of group sharing and prayer. I kept the practices brief and manageable so
that the young people can enjoy a taste of these spiritual practices. These are disciplines that will position them to receive and experience more of God’s grace and love on a regular basis. On the last night we had a wonderful ministry time praying for the sick, prophesying and blessing people in the name of the Lord. The presence of the Lord was amongst us.
There was more hunger and faith among them than I had assumed from the first session. In the final morning session, I encouraged them to rebuild the church together, doing a bare bones expository message of Haggai’s second prophecy.
Euclid Tan was my room mate, a young man who had been in Bill Johnson’s school of the supernatural in
Group sharing and prayer increases learning and application
the US. He was a great help. He gave me input on the messages, helping me to angle it to young people and contributing stories as well as trimming off unnecessary fats. May the Lord raise a new generation of ministers who will excel in faith, hope and love.
Pardon my rambling all over the place. This is a symptom that I need to slow down, slow down.
Care Community Church camp at Pulai Springs, Johor
Pulai Springs, Johor is a good resort for church camps. We arrived there from Singapore within two hours or less. We had ice breakers and orientation and settled into our rooms. The haze however spoiled what would otherwise have been an ideal place for relaxation, seminars and meditation. The food was excellent and the rooms were above average. So was the service.
The Care Community Church is a warm and loving family church. Their welcome quickly put us at ease with them. Meals were pleasant as we got to know different members of the church. As they responded to us warmly, we in turn enjoyed a growing rapport with them. When I am relaxed and feel at home with an audience, I find I can preach and teach more effectively. I found the church to be friendly, unique, and blessed with many talented and faithful people. You could tell they have been cared for and loved.
Pastor Amos Yap has been their pastor for more than a decade. I got to know his family better: Juliet, his wife who gives tuition with a twist – counseling and guidance! and his son and daughter. They are a lovely family and all are serving the Lord. The theme was about personal renewal and rebuilding the church. I dealt with the common symptoms of an unhealthy spirituality.
Pulai Springs, Johor is a lovely hotel with good service and food
I adapted some ideas I got from Peter Scazzero’s “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality”
and filtered them through my experience, and shared 8 symptoms with them over two nights. Detecting some of these symptoms will help people unlock some of the hindrances to the Christ life in them. I also did two morning workshops on the spiritual disciplines of the “Examen” and “Lectio Divina” – fancy Latin names for a review of the day and devotional reading. Short explanations and 25 minutes of actual prayer, followed by 20 minutes of group sharing and prayer. I kept the practices brief and manageable so
that the young people can enjoy a taste of these spiritual practices. These are disciplines that will position them to receive and experience more of God’s grace and love on a regular basis. On the last night we had a wonderful ministry time praying for the sick, prophesying and blessing people in the name of the Lord. The presence of the Lord was amongst us.
There was more hunger and faith among them than I had assumed from the first session. In the final morning session, I encouraged them to rebuild the church together, doing a bare bones expository message of Haggai’s second prophecy.
Euclid Tan was my room mate, a young man who had been in Bill Johnson’s school of the supernatural in
Group sharing and prayer increases learning and application
the US. He was a great help. He gave me input on the messages, helping me to angle it to young people and contributing stories as well as trimming off unnecessary fats. May the Lord raise a new generation of ministers who will excel in faith, hope and love.
Pardon my rambling all over the place. This is a symptom that I need to slow down, slow down.
Care Community Church: a family church in a heritage site
A unique place of worship
This is definitely the church with the most unique of locations. There are those that worship in the home, the shophouse, the industrial unit, the shopping mall, an association building, the cinema theatre, restaurants, schools, even the columbarium, but this is the first time I
experienced worship in the Arts House at 1 Old Parliament Lane. The Care Community Church uses the premises on Sundays.
experienced worship in the Arts House at 1 Old Parliament Lane. The Care Community Church uses the premises on Sundays.
Heritage site
This refurbished old dame, was once owned by rich Scottish merchant John Maxwell. Later it was bought over by the colonial government and during its short illustrious past, used as a courthouse and then as the Singapore parliament. The place gave a sense of a grand and sombre colonial past. Serious business had been conducted there in its several large rooms and corridors. Its walls had heard the footsteps and earnest voices of Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Toh Chin Chye and Rajaratnam, the fathers of modern Singapore.
Old parliament seating
After the Chinese service had ended at about 10.30 am, the auditorium cleared and the congregants of the English service sauntered in. There were over 60 of them, and more than a third were young people. The musicians tuned their instruments, and went through their final preparations. A plaque stood out on the left to indicate that the room was once used by the first Parliament of Singapore. The seating arrangement had been left unchanged. What would the service look like when the seating shouted “parliament”?
Worship and Word
Everyone stood for half an hour singing worship songs from the last decade. They all faced the overhead screen and the musicians. These were songs I could sing and relate to and all the songs were melodious. Then Pastor Amos Yap, an
amiable and caring pastor, who embodied well the DNA of the relational and family church, took to the pulpit and dealt with a passage I never once touched in all my years of ministry: 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 – the passage about headship and “hair”. Evidently the church was going through the book of 1 Corinthians and one of the strengths of such systematic expository study is that the preacher and congregation have to wrestle with difficult passages like these. He gave the big picture, went through the passage verse by verse, and then summed up with the big idea and followed through with applications. All in 40 minutes. He won my respect for courage and perseverance, ploughing through the rocky hard earth.
amiable and caring pastor, who embodied well the DNA of the relational and family church, took to the pulpit and dealt with a passage I never once touched in all my years of ministry: 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 – the passage about headship and “hair”. Evidently the church was going through the book of 1 Corinthians and one of the strengths of such systematic expository study is that the preacher and congregation have to wrestle with difficult passages like these. He gave the big picture, went through the passage verse by verse, and then summed up with the big idea and followed through with applications. All in 40 minutes. He won my respect for courage and perseverance, ploughing through the rocky hard earth.
The seats were very comfortable but the physical arrangement worked against eye contact and the members were scattered all over. Perhaps this may be a good setting for dialogue with the congregation to overthrow the burn-out sermonic monologue. Such a dialogue integrated into the sermon may result in an interesting and edgy learning experience Sunday after Sunday. Such an experimental format could be a tool that connects well with the postmodern Facebook generation.
Shepherd at heart
After the service, we had lunch with his lovely family at the Funan Centre food court and talked shop over kopi siew tai (milk coffee 
with less sugar) at Ya Kun on the ground floor. Pastor Amos was a good listener and quickly connected with me, like plug and play. Earlier I had seen how warm he was with his “little flock”. He does not treat them like units of productivity. Such personal care cannot be found anywhere nor everywhere.
with less sugar) at Ya Kun on the ground floor. Pastor Amos was a good listener and quickly connected with me, like plug and play. Earlier I had seen how warm he was with his “little flock”. He does not treat them like units of productivity. Such personal care cannot be found anywhere nor everywhere.
Personal thought
Meanwhile my wife and kids were over at my home church. Getting used to worshipping separately from my family was not difficult. It was a pleasant change, and as I sat in the MRT train back to the Chinese Garden, I fiddled with my new smartphone, the Sonyericsson Xperia Arc, and the Android apps I have downloaded. These relaxed and pleasant moments must be savoured to the maximum, all the more as from the corner of my eye, I could see 1st October hurtling towards me.
Article taken from: http://www.blogpastor.net/2011/08/care-community-church-a-family-church-in-a-heritage-site/
Thank You Message from Messiah Christian Assembly
THANK YOU, CARE COMMUNITY CHURCH , SINGAPORE
We would like to express our gratitude to Ptr. Amos Yap and the brethren of Care Community C hurch , Singapore for sponsoring the feeding program last weekend. We had feeding program in our two daughter churches, Cogon, Cebu City and Dialog, Talisay City , and one outreach, Tisa, Cebu City
May God bless Care Community Church.
Abstract Taken From: http://messiahcebu.multiply.com/journal/item/10/We_Are_Growing
