I vividly remember a weird occurrence in 2020. The doctor was going to perform an endoscopy on me. The nurse first injected me with an anesthetic. What seemed like a lifetime passed and I was still fully conscious. A bit concerned, I asked the nurse, “How long does it take for the anesthesia to take effect?” She smiled warmly. ‘The procedure was completed half an hour ago.” How time flew by without me noticing!

Without time we cannot grow up physically. (As a little boy, I used to measure my height daily to observe growth.) But it takes reflective times for us to mature. No wonder Moses prayed, “Teach us to number our days, so that we may grow in wisdom.”

Since this is the end of the school year, I have been “numbering our days” at BTS. Please allow me to share in thanksgiving for God’s three most obvious evidences of his hand upon BTS:

1. A miraculous time frame: It usually takes a long time (months or even years) to give birth to a sustainable vision. On August 30 (my 40^th wedding anniversary), the board unanimously approved a new direction and new vision of BTS in miraculous time (45 days after my arrival). This led to a new structure in school (A.I.M.) and a brand-new direction in theological training that is different from other theological colleges.

2. A fantastic team spirit: Humanly speaking, staff are usually highly suspicious of changes in leadership. Here at BTS, within a matter of 6 months, we had 3 top leadership changes: a new President, a new Dean, and a new Senior Director. But the Lord has preserved our spirit of unity. One of the strongest evidences is what is taking place right now. In order to give the administrative staff a break from the stressful COVID situation, the faculty has volunteered to take turns manning the entrance and performing “Safe Entry” for the month of June. I have never seen this in my 20 years of Christian service.

3. A refreshing influx of new donors: When I first came on board, BTS’s fiscal condition was hovering over a deep “red sea.” Out of the 8,000 Baptist church members in Singapore, only about 100 were our active supporters. This year, thankfully God gave us 50 new donors.

I share the above news so that you can rejoice with us, but I have to confess that the responsibility of leading BTS has been extraordinary heavy in this COVID season. The inability to go home (like many of our students) to America to see my family has led to homesickness. The empty hallways in BTS due to e-learning has led to loneliness. The early pressure of finances and the later pressure of reorienting toward a new vision has been a heavy yoke. So the last 3 months have felt more like a wilderness experience than a paradise.

I took a silent retreat 2 weeks ago. The Lord taught me from Jesus’s 1^st battle with Satan, that the wilderness does not have to be a place of weakness. In fact, the Holy Spirit picked the wilderness as the location for the first spiritual battle after Jesus’s 40 days of solitude (Matt 4:1-2). In the wilderness, after solitude, Jesus was at the height of his spiritual strength, not weakness, to score a decisive spiritual victory against Satan. “Wildernesses” are where we can regain our spiritual vitality, provided that we will “number our days and get a heart of wisdom.” “Wildernesses” are places where the white noise of the world can be cut off, and we are once again totally dependent on the Lord and not “horses and chariots.”  “Wildernesses” can be  places of growth, if we will use them for that purpose. As for me, I emerged from the silent retreat, from my wilderness, prepared to run again.

May this also be your experience, as I know many of you consider the Phase 2 “heightened alert” is a “wilderness experience.” May you grow in the Lord as we remember to pray for each other to gain strength and become wiser in this wilderness journey.

Rev Peter Lin
President

P.S. Thank you for introducing new supporters to us. Please continue to help us to march towards a goal of 300 active donors, which will provide fiscal sustainability to further our vision of “Serving Singapore, and Blessing Asia” by “equipping lay ministers and cultivating missional pastors.”