Where your "born again" experience makes you a member.
Welcome to the website of the Church of God in Singapore
Theme for 200: "Equip God's People for the Ministry".
Our Vision: To be a growing community of Christ-centred believers committed to honouring God and sharing His love.
FEBRUARY 2009 (This Editorial Page is updated Quarterly)
REFLECTION Neville and Anne Tan
One of the songs that I love to sing every now and then is the song called "Remind Me Dear Lord." Especially the chorus that says:
"Roll back the curtain of memory now and then Show me where you brought me from and where i could have been. Remember I'm a human and humans forget so remind me, remind me dear Lord."
In 1976 we stepped out in faith, trusting God for all our needs and started a church in our home. The congregation was made up of mostly ex-prisoners, drug addicts, street kids and their family and friends. We were staying in a rented house at No. 1 Guan Soon Avenue and later moved to Jalan Pari Kikis.
We supported ourselves doing a small home industry binding books and printing calling cards, invitation cards and stationery. In 1979, God gave Neville a vision to build a proper church and led us to this place. It was then quite undeveloped and actually a low lying swamp land. There were large bamboo clusters growing beside the property with a couple of wooden houses behind and a Malay kampung house (on concrete pillars) immediately next to us.
Someone described the property as situated in a "God-forsaken" place. Yet Neville was so sure that this was where God wants His church to be. Neville knew the owner, a son of Koh Sek Lim. He was also the father of a girl who attended the Wednesday Bible study fellowship in our home.
Neville was offered the property for $80,000.00. It was a very reasonable offer but the church we were with then were not supportive of our plans. Neville wrestled with the thought for several weeks and finally decided to go ahead by faith to purchase the property and start a new congregation. It was about this time that he also met Sidney Johnson, a veteran missionary of the Church of God who had served in India for more than twenty years. He was then stationed in Thailand, in Bangkok. He was introduced to Neville by Mr. Tan Kok Beng an evangelist of the Asia Evangelistic Fellowship. Sidney Johnson introduced us to the Church of God Movement during his visits to Singapore to have his visa extended.
At first we were very wary and suspicious because of the name Church of God. We also questioned the need to start yet another denomination when there were already so many, but Sidney Johnson patiently and meticulously explained to us the beliefs, teachings and what the Church of God stands for. It was a movement of God's people, he told us, not another denomination. The Church of God in fact does not believe in denominations but believed in the one church. God's church. The church that He purchased with the blood of His own Son Jesus Christ and that all believers who are "born again" are members of this Church. The Church of God does not believe in any "test of fellowship" that is to say that we need no other qualifications to belong except by the blood of the Lamb. He told me of the lyrics of songs typical of the Church of God - "I'm so glad I'm a part of the Family of God" and "We reach our hands in fellowship to every blood washed one." My vision of the church has always been a simple fellowship of like-minded believers who gather regularly to glorify God, to edify one another and to share His love with others. Ever since I came out to serve our Lord full-time, my ministry to ex-prisoners, drug dependents and street kids has always been modeled after the family concept. There were times when we had up to a dozen people living with us in our home and we were always a family. I did not want to be in a "churchy church" with all the "things they do in typical churches" that makes life so confusing and frustrating. The church I felt I really belong to was the church we had in prison, every born again believer was a brother and a member of the family of God. To us the church was never a building. It was God's church. The place where we worshiped was called the "prison chapel""a place where we met together for prayer and worship. The call we heard each time it was time to attend chapel was "sembayang." A local word that means worship, (a combination of two Malay words, "sembah" worship "yang" Him or the One). That same year 1979, I was invited to the Centennial Celebrations of the Church of God in Anderson, Indiana. I was not even a member of the Church of God then and I had not even identified myself with the movement and yet when I arrived in Anderson, my very first time in the United States of America, I was welcomed and treated as though I had always been a part of the Church of God. The person that met me at the Indianapolis Airport was a total stranger, yet he gave me a big hug as though I was his long lost brother and carried my luggage to his car. Never once did I feel a stranger among other Christians. I was accepted based on the fact that I am a Christian, a born-again believer. What a fellowship, what a joy divine. I could sing with all the thousands other believers even though it was the first time I sang that song - "I'm so Glad I'm a part of the family of God" and truly believe it.
