If you are easily offended, please dont read this post. As I reflected on excerpts from two books, it made me think of how the modern Singaporean Church community ticks.
Source 1 - Page 11 of
Joining Children on the Spiritual Journey
"Sarah's parents and grandparents stood before the pastor, and the whole congregation stood behind them, pledging our support to this young family. The pastor held Sarah in his arms as he prayed, "may Sarah Jane become a woman of God." My heart responded, "yes, Lord." Later I wondered how that would happen. How could we as members of Sarah's church contribute to the answering of that prayer? What did Sarah need from us? What did her parents need? How could we know?"
Source 2 -
The Mingling of Souls
"In courtship, a couple are moving more and more toward entering the covenant of marriage, even if they are not engaged yet. In any event, the idea of marriage becomes a growing reality ahead of them, and because biblically speaking, marriage is a covenant between two people in the grace of God in Christ, it necessarily has the communal context of church and family.
The reason Christians get married “before the church” is not to give a religious appearance to the ceremony but because Christians hold the marriage covenant in the context of the community of the body of Christ."
So here goes.
Do we actually dedicate babies/children and attend weddings just for sake of doing them, or do we really understand the deep significance behind these actions? Do we utter prayers to God with no intention of being the agent to bless, and just cross our fingers, hoping that miraculous the child would become a God-fearing adult, and that the couple would grow old as well-respected elders in the church? What we have become when the young generation not only does not receive discipleship from those older, but have begun to hand over ministerial responsibilities as they look forward to being "normal members?"
Furthermore, to the millennial generation, the spirit of community collectivism of the boomers if but a concept we read in textbooks. We individualists are now forced to cut their teeth largely on their own, clocking in more time earning money to pay off that HDB Flat (or Condo/car/other material goods) than time spent in interacting with a biblical community. Twenty or thirty years spent labouring to get out of debt, raising money for an inheritance that would eventually be passed onto our children or loved ones. After the housing loan had been paid off, perhaps it would be time to look forward to retirement and extensive holiday making.
So far have we deviated from the early church community of Acts 2:42-47, where the believers converted excess wealth to share the proceeds with those who were in need. (The lazy would be dealt with by the church according to Paul's instruction in 2 Thess. 3:10 and by God himself, cf. the Parable of the Talents in Matt. 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28).
I wonder what it was like for our parents' and grandparents, to grow up in a "Kampung" community... They slogged as hard as, if not harder than any young professional today, just so that we the younger generation got to enjoy a better life than than they did.
I left just before the end of the Global Day of Prayer, and as I was outside the Sports Hub, the national anthem started to play. I stood at attention, and then a couple of older men followed suit. Tears began to well up in my eyes, because so many others simply did not bother to stop for that two or three minutes.
What will it take for us to experience a grateful and sacrificial tightly knit community? Perhaps only when there comes a day we have to stand at attention, to the tune of another country's anthem. Until then the ruling party would continually be forced to continually dig into the national reserves, so well stewarded by our forefathers, and implement more populist policies. Until then, the natural reaction to such a reflection like mine would be, "you talk so much nonsense Shaun, are you going to pay for my children's tuition fees?"
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