Pretty Much Rambling

Had actually typed a really really long entry last night but it somehow got lost. Was so pissed.

Anyway, the weekened was pretty eventful. Went for the IDMC conference, at Covenant EFC, and the theme for the year was on the whole topic of post-modernity. Expecting to cover both the conceptual aspects of post-modernity, covering the whole social movement that led to the phenomena, followed by a coverage of how this relates to the church, then ending up with a more practical session on how the church can adapt to better reach out to the society at large, I guess I was pretty impressed that we did very little of all that.

Sure enough, we covered the philosophy of post-modernism, the culture that is post-modernity, and also traced some of the theological pitfalls of the movement... but the challenge issued at the end of the day by Edmund Chan hit me in a pretty profound manner.

He pointed us back to Ecclesiastes, and what the Teacher had to say about all the pursuits and happenings of the world. He was the one who tried just about everything, and found it all meaningless. He was the one who said that there is actually "nothing new under the sun". And he was the one who eventually concluded that the conclusion was very simple - fear God, and keep His commandments.

And the only way to do that is to firstly be biblically literate, then biblically competent. Its so simple. Yet so few of us, myself included, know our bible even a quater as well as we know our text books. As a literature student, I think I am doubly guilty of that. I can quote chunks out of certain of my lit texts that I liked. I can pick them up again after a few years, and re-read it with delight. Yet I can't remember the last time I've taken any delight in the bible, nor mastered it to any form of degree as my lit texts. I've been content with a general hazy opinion of what it says, and seldom have I tried to find out what it exactly says. Instead, I try to supplement myself at best with christian books that speaks of the bible, without actually reading the main text.

Kindda like doing Macbeth by reading only commentaries abou it, while not even reading through the text itself once, then sitting for my A'levels. Hehz...

And I guess at the conference, it was a humbling experience to once again realise that sometimes its so easy to get myself right before God, and embark on the straighter path towards God. Its always the call to return to the Bible, and be grounded in it. To keep the Word of God in my heart, as the psalmist says.

So simple.

Yet so hard to do.

Sunday marked the end of another major milestone in both my life and in the church. It was the very last week of our Youth Service. After 4 years of struggle and toil, the church has finally decided to adopt the Youth Service as the second service in the church. Even as there is much cause for thanksgiving and celebration, there is also a great sense of reluctance to put the youth Serbice down, and to go in the direction of the church. For the Youth Service had been our dream and labour of love for som many years amongst the few of us who were there when it all began. None of us felt ready to take up the challenge when we first began. but we all went into it because we felt it was going to be a decision we would all regret if we had turned the offer down.

So we kindda plunged headlong into it, in a rather foolhardy way. As a result, we witnessed the fallout between Andrew and the church leadership, the political strife that went on as a result of that. We also witnessed a lot of divisions within our congregation as well, many resistant to the changes that starting the Youth Service brought. I saw Henry leave the church for a full year, and the Levite Ministry struggling very hard to bear up under the load of leadership. I saw our numbers dwindle, and our youths opting to go to the Adult Service instead.

Then I witnessed the hand of God. With the arrival of Li Juan, and the step down of Andrew, the leadesrhip began to heal the division from within. Renji manfully soldiered on with a camp when everyone was telling him how stupid and foolish it would have been to keep it up - and we now are tasting the fruits of the community the camp planted and nurtured. And now that we have gotten our momentum going with the launch of our very own Discipleship Ministry, we are told we have to yet again move forward, and take on our new position as the second service in the church.

Its really an experience unlike any other I've ever gone through, seeing how God is truly the God of Providence. (Hehz... pun intended. But deserved, I feel.) In the past, the Israelites would always build and altar after God has intervened in their lives in a powerful way. And I can't help but wonder what sort of altar should be build in our service, to remind ourselves in the days to come, of how the Lord has always proven Himself to be the God who is faithful, even after we have all proven to have been faithless. 4 years ago, the opposition against our youth service was fierce amongst the leadership at the top. Andrew was the only one, it seemed, who was championing our cause. 4 years down, God has done an amazing reversal. The Youth Service that Andrew tried to close down has been endorsed by our leadership, and asked to serve as the second service of the church. Just on sunday, at my gym, with Jingliang and Henry, we were marvelling how God can really turn things around if we but give Him time, and have faith in Him.

The past few 2 or three weeks have been weeks where I've asked myself a lot of questions. Just the other day over lunch with Serene, she again asked me where am I headed. And I told her I still dunno. I'm still holding odd jobs, I still have no clue as to where I'm headed in life, and I don't seem to be moving anywhere at all - be it backwards or forward.

Sigh.

Its been a long time since I last did a personal retreat with God. Feel like I should do that this week, soon.