Last month, Daniel Soh (BTS’s Management Board Chair) announced of my family’s pending departure from BTS in a few months (31st July). With the official announcement, as we Americans would say, it is a “done deal” – we are moving on.

We have purchased a plane ticket to go back to California. We have requested and have been granted permission to move into temporary subsidised missionary quarters (for one year) while we are seeking a more permanent zip code to “hang our hats”.

In anthropology, there is a word called “liminality”. Wikipedia defines it as “the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.” I am now officially in that state.

I will be heading back to a country that is drastically different from the one that I left behind in 1989. As a good Singaporean friend lamented: “I used to believe in everything that comes out of America. Now I would not even go to America to visit you. We will have to meet in Canada.” I feel ambiguous about returning to a country that I don’t know well. Yet I am ready to rediscover God’s place for me in this big new country that was once called “home”.

For the last 23 years, I have primarily been serving in Singapore. In many ways, if there is such a place called an “earthly abode”, Singapore would be that place for us. Our best years of service have been in this country. Our deepest and richest friendships and mentorships have been forged here. Leaving this place behind is like leaving a place that we have adopted as “home”. Yet, with a mix of anxiousness and eagerness, I am ready to make connections with extended families and long-lost friends to see how we can be of service to each other.

At BTS, we are also in that state of “liminality”. At the end of 2020, God gave us a vision which we announced in early 2021 through our vision statement and is condensed in our slogan “Serving Singapore, Blessing Asia”. Our strategy is twofold. First, to develop a new department called AIM (Advanced Institute of Ministry) that will help Singapore churches develop “laity team leadership” to lead the churches. In these three years, we have trained 190 lay leaders from 23 churches. Second, to redevelop our academic arm now named CPI (Contextualised Pastoral Institute) to focus on training missional-minded pastors (from Asia including Singapore). For that, we need a new curriculum, a new president, and an expanded faculty. God has “already” used the present leadership to begin our quest but we have “not yet” arrived. It will be on the shoulders of the next leadership to see its fruition.

There is a theological concept that aligns with the idea of “liminality” – already and not yet. Christ has come “already”. Our sins have been paid for. We have the sealing of the Holy Spirit. Victory is for sure. But we still have to wait patiently for the “not yet” – the second coming of our Lord in His glory for the consummation of all things. In this in-between time of the first and second coming, we experience the tension of waiting and its accompanying suffering. That is why Paul wrote in Romans 8: “¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed… ²² the whole creation has been groaning in the pain of childbirth until now.” One day this tension will be resolved and our present-day suffering will be no more. But in the meantime, we live in a state of liminality with its tension and sense of ambiguity. In this in-between time, we (you and I) are called to be a light that shines through its apparent ambiguities and be salt that cleans its sufferings and wounds.

Dear friends of BTS, together we have gone far in these past three and a half years (inclusive of the two and a half years of pandemic). AIM has “already” been formed and is actively ministering among the churches. CPI has “already” started on a major curriculum review. As we together look forward to the “not yet”, I have no crystal ball as to what the future holds.

But this I will pray from afar – “Lord, enable BTS to stay faithful to her vision; enable her alumni/students to persevere in the work of the gospel. This school is your handiwork, may it fulfil the good work that you have prepared for her unto the end.”

Friends, may I humbly ask you to continue to walk with BTS and join me in that committed prayer and faithful giving to His work in this school.

May I also invite you to attend the 32nd BTS Commencement Service to be held on Saturday, 18th May as we thank God for BTS students and lay leaders who have completed programmes at CPI and AIM in the past year. Please RSVP via https://tinyurl.com/BTSGraduation2024 to confirm your attendance.

Rev Peter Lin
President