A new school year is commencing.  To prepare for the new school year, I scanned through the 7 churches in Revelation 2 & 3.  It was an interesting survey.

Of these 7 churches, perhaps the 2 churches most preached on are Laodicea and Ephesus.  These are the big established churches and look really good on the outside.  But from Jesus’ angle: Ephesus has lost her love and was stuck in a “rut” of passionless service; Laodicea was totally blind to her own conditions (worldly rich but spiritually impoverished) and was “rotting” from the inside out.  The church at Laodicea was the only one out of the seven that Jesus had not even one good thing to compliment her on.

And yet the two smallest relatively unknown churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia (known to be worldly poor and power weak), they were the spiritual dynamite. In contrast to Laodicea, Jesus had not a single bad thing to say of the church of Philadelphia.  These are churches under “renewal”.

It seems Jesus is saying “big” is not the adjective for revival; and “small” does not always mean rotting in a rut.  In fact, A.W. Tozer in his book “Rut, Rot, and Renewal” said that many times churches in a rut (like Ephesus/Laodicea) want to grow bigger because they want people to share in their rut, join in their rot, and celebrate their rote (routine). 

Our Situation and Progress

BTS is a small seminary.  We are part of a small denomination – Baptists.  Back in a 2011 survey, the denomination was bleeding from 2 sources – the leadership succession pipeline was broken, and our next generation were departing from the rear door. 

A year ago, God gave BTS a new slogan “Serving Singapore, Blessing Asia”.  In “Serving Singapore”, we aim to accompany the churches that desire to go on a journey from Laodicea (rot), to Ephesus (rut), to Philadelphia (renewal). 

AIM is our new arm, Advanced Institute of Ministry, which was founded last year to serve that purpose.  There are three parts to AIM – MAP, MEP, SMS.  MAP or Ministry Advancement Programme, is to mend the leadership succession pipeline through enhancing experienced lay leaders.  It is with great joy that I attended the launching of MAP’s first cohort with two churches (Good News and Shalom Chapel) and their 23 council members in a one-year programme.  Both are small churches that aspire to role-model after Philadelphia rather than dreaming to become the big churches at Ephesus/Laodicea.  Small and desiring to be revived is beautiful in God’s eyes.

MEP or Ministry Emergence Programme is under construction to be launched in January 2022.  It is designed to train emergent young leaders so that they can retain, recruit, and rejuvenate our young ones and stop their exodus from our churches.   We have recruited a faculty, a seasoned Next Gen Pastor, whose major responsibility is MEP.

And finally, there is SMS or Symposium of Ministry Skills.  We recognize that there are missing skill gaps in our midst and so we launched SMS.  In April, we kick-started our first SMS with the leadership of all three congregations of Thomson Road BC on Baptist Distinctives.  This was followed by a 2 month SMS in training preachers beginning end June attended by 17 leaders from 3 churches.  In September, we will be launching a new SMS called “Flying with Twin Engines – the harmonious leadership journey between the board and the staff”.   It will be limited to 50 people.

Your Prayerful Support

Even as we aim to assist our churches to move from rot to renewal, we have to ensure that we are on the same journey at BTS.  And for that we covet your prayers.  We covet your prayers for revival (Act 3:20) for the 2 MAP churches.  We covet your prayers for the trainee lay preachers.  We covet your prayers for our trainers that they will be disciplined to run a godly race lest that they after teaching others become disqualified themselves (1 Cor 9:27).  We covet your prayers for the 70 students at BTS that they will be unified on a journey from Ephesus to Philadelphia in this Covid season.  Many of them come from war torn and Covid afflicted countries.

In ending, I want to give thanks for your generous contribution in the last fiscal year.  We covet your continued support in our new fiscal year to enable us to expand our vision and staffing to “serve the churches” in this meaningful journey from Ephesus to Philadelphia.

Rev Peter Lin
President