It is said that one can last 40 days without food, 4 days without water, 4 minutes without air, and 4 seconds without hope.

What is hope?

American Pastor, Dr Chuck Swindoll, wrote the following about hope.

• • When we are trapped in a tunnel of misery, hope is what points to the light at the end.
  • When we are overworked and exhausted, hope is what gives us fresh energy to persevere.
  • When we are struggling with a crippling disease, hope helps us persevere beyond the pain.
  • When we find ourselves unemployed, hope tells us we still have a future.

Hope allows us to soldier onwards when all looks bleak.

In my commencement address (script available by clicking here), I shared with the graduands (from Joseph’s life in Genesis) that one of the three essential qualities of a good leader is having a clear dream. Why is that important? Because a dream ignites hope.

As the president of BTS, I get to visit many thriving churches. They all have one thing in common – a dream that is embraced by the majority of members in the congregation.

At BTS, we have a dream encapsulated by our slogan – “Serving Singapore, Blessing Asia”. “Serving Singapore” means raising the team leadership quality of emerging leaders and laity council members. “Blessing Asia” means cultivating pastors who are kingdom-minded for the service of Asian countries. And in light of that dream, I would like to update you about our progress:

1. 1. 31st Commencement: On May 20th, BTS graduated 28 students from our degree/diploma programmes. For the 1st time in our history, we graduated 96 students from our Advanced Institute of Ministry (AIM), which is made up of 26 emergent leaders and 70 mature laity leaders from 11 Baptist churches. (The commencement service can be viewed by clicking https://tinyurl.com/BTSCS2023.)
      
      
   2. Project Pipeline: On 5-6 May, we launched a pilot camp (one night, two days) at YWCA to call Singaporean Young Adults (YA) into full-time ministry. This camp is the result of kingdom collaboration between BTS, Calvary Baptist Church, Queenstown Baptist Church, and International Baptist Church. Forty-eight high potential YA attended. Twenty-two responded with either a request for pastoral mentoring, signing up for a seminary class, or AIM.
      
      
   3. Project Mission: During the next semester, in order to march forward in our dream of “Serving Singapore”, we are embarking on a journey to redesign our curriculum towards cultivating kingdom-minded leaders from among our students. An external panel of expert consultants has been engaged to guide us along this missional path.

Finally, in order to be of service to you, I want to call to your attention two items of interest.

1. 1. Ministry Skills Seminar (MSS): In this age of hyper-sexuality, “Elegant Sexuality” is a special seminar developed to equip our emerging leaders to walk with their peers toward a life of fragrant holiness for the Lord. It will be held on 2 September 2023.
      
      
   2. Open Class: The aim of Open Class is to give brothers and sisters with an interest in seminary education to have a taste of classes at BTS. Registration is open at https://tinyurl.com/BTSOpenClass (Jul – Nov 2023).

Rev Peter Lin
President