Reformed Evangelical Movement Seminar
Below is the link to the transcripts of the recent Reformed Evangelical Movement Seminar held in Singapore from Feb 23-26.
http://www.stephentongsermons.blogspot.com/
A couple of take-home points: Clearly the church in Singapore has much reforming to be done. Perhaps years of prosperity and personal affluence has left us with an extremely soft under-belly upon which the courageous Reformation spirit has been all but extinguished.
Speaking with Elder Yong after the seminar, he commented that many Singapore Christians are un-intellectual... prefering instead to dwell within the comfort zone of their own local church.
Another worrisome sign - in my observation - is the increasing compartmentalization of faith into the private sphere and there alone. The separation of church and state powers - which resulted as a recognition of the God-given rights of civil governance - is now brought to a situation (at least in the Western world) where the public confession of one's faith is generally looked down upon.
As David F Wells puts it: [Such faith/spirituality], with its individualism, its wholly privatized understanding, its therapeutic interest, its mystical bent, its experimental habits, its opposition to truth as something which mediates the nature of an unchanging spiritual realm, its anti-institutional bias, its tilt toward the East, its construction of reality, and its can-do spirit...is something which is emerging from the very heart of the postmodern world (Above All Earthly Pow'rs)
What then next?
http://www.stephentongsermons.blogspot.com/
A couple of take-home points: Clearly the church in Singapore has much reforming to be done. Perhaps years of prosperity and personal affluence has left us with an extremely soft under-belly upon which the courageous Reformation spirit has been all but extinguished.
Speaking with Elder Yong after the seminar, he commented that many Singapore Christians are un-intellectual... prefering instead to dwell within the comfort zone of their own local church.
Another worrisome sign - in my observation - is the increasing compartmentalization of faith into the private sphere and there alone. The separation of church and state powers - which resulted as a recognition of the God-given rights of civil governance - is now brought to a situation (at least in the Western world) where the public confession of one's faith is generally looked down upon.
As David F Wells puts it: [Such faith/spirituality], with its individualism, its wholly privatized understanding, its therapeutic interest, its mystical bent, its experimental habits, its opposition to truth as something which mediates the nature of an unchanging spiritual realm, its anti-institutional bias, its tilt toward the East, its construction of reality, and its can-do spirit...is something which is emerging from the very heart of the postmodern world (Above All Earthly Pow'rs)
What then next?
posted by Benjamin Ho at
7:46 PM
3 Comments:
Amen! We need to create awareness amongst the Christians to think after God's thoughts not just on bits and pieces, but as an all encompassing worldview...
That's only half of the tasks.. on top of that, we also need to live it out in a way that will be publicly engaging, existentially satisfying and missional... :)
Lets start a revolution!
Or Dave, some may argue that the revolution started allready, now we got to figure out how to use it to our desired ends.
Hmm... sounds like the war of Zion in Matrix-style. It seems that those who do decide to take part is often a minority - how then do we engage the "mainstream"?
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