The picture is still vivid in my mind. As I stepped into the church through the huge doors of the old Ebenezer Chapel for the very first time, it was as if a wave of wind had hit me. Missions was possible after all. Why the thought you wonder, when so many churches are active in missions?  It was the year 1988. Our Baptist churches had not established the work of missions then. Thirty years ago, many were growing churches seeking to be self-sustaining in their ministries. Being involved in and supporting cross-cultural missions seemed only remotely possible. However, Singapore as a nation had become stable both politically and economically. These conditions would be the platforms for the churches to do missions.

Today, many of our Baptist churches support missions in many nations. Mission trips are a norm in the annual calendar of events and in budgets. As missions education and support grow, churches are sending out more and more missionaries. That deep impression has become a reality; Singapore has become an Antioch of Asia.

In this missions era in Singapore, “missions” is a recurring word in the pulpit. However, while churches focus on taking the gospel to the world, home missions in the form of evangelism seems to have taken second place. More often than not, while missions is justly given the emphasis through the annual missions month, evangelism as home missions is in danger of being relegated to a work of less compelling earnest.

The recent nation-wide Celebration of Hope event provided a timely call to churches to cooperatively recapture their primary call to evangelism, the prerequisite to making disciples of all nations. It was a call to reach out to our “Jerusalem,” comprising our family members, neighbours, friends, and colleagues who have yet to hear the gospel. Cross-cultural missions must not be a substitute for local evangelism. The church is God’s movement for the gospel to all. The church must first be faithful to the stewardship and given trust of the gospel in its geographical locality. When the church is healthy in its local witness, it sustains its missions endeavours, not only cross-culturally and across geographical boundaries, but also nationally as it strengthens its evangelistic witness and moves toward the future church generationally.

The time has come for Baptist churches to recapture their spirit of cooperation in this shared mission of evangelism, and to leave both a testimony and a passing of the torch of the high trust to which the church is committed. As the early Baptist churches set up BTS for the purpose of training workers for the church, she remains a platform for a vision of God’s movement where the clarion call for the harvest field necessitates the togetherness of the Baptist churches serving alongside one another with the same mind and spirit.

May our endeavour to reach our neighbours across the street bring in the reaping of souls to the glory of God the Father as we truly become His incarnational movement for the gospel where we are. Here is wishing you a Blessed Christmas from all of us here at BTS.

Emmanuel,

Sim Swee Kee
Interim Co-President