18 oct 2020 ordinary 20 11am online service - trueway ......2020/10/18 · [email protected]...
TRANSCRIPT
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Pastoral Staff Rev Lee Kien Seng Mobile: 9815 2589 / Ext 104 [email protected] Rev Edwin Wong Mobile: 9477 0727 / Ext 115 [email protected] Pr George Ang Mobile: 9657 4460 / Ext 105 [email protected] Pr Loliro Sani Worship Director Mobile: 9129 7546 / Ext 116 [email protected] Pr Png Eng Keat Mobile:9819 8901 / Ext117 [email protected] Ms Chan Suet Fong Children Ministry Director Mobile: 9870 6048 / Ext 112 [email protected] Ms Suttiporn Radeerat Thai Service Mobile: 8862 3457 / Ext 111 [email protected] Church Manager Mr Ray Hsu Tel: 6474 3527 / Ext 122 [email protected] Facility Coordinator Mr Chee Hock Guan Tel: 6474 3527 / Ext 122 Fax: 6474 6572 [email protected] Administrative Assistant Mr Alvin Yip Tel: 6474 3527 / Ext 114 Fax: 6474 6572 [email protected]
October Memory Verse
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to
God.
Colossians 3:12-16 (ESV)
*11am Online Service
18 Oct 2020 8.30am Service &
11am Online Service
25 Oct 2020 8.30am Service &
11am Online Service Sermon Stewardship And Suffering Colossians 1:24-2:5 Rev Lee Kien Seng
Sermon Alive In Christ Colossians 2:6-15 Pr Loliro Sani
Worship Leader Eld Peter Goh
Worship Leader Angie Chia
Pianist Tang Ern Chi Heng Ji En
Pianist Tang Ern Chi
Holy Communion Servers Eld Chong Yoke Fooi Eld Peter Goh Eld Chan Kin Ming Eld Eddy Teo
Holy Communion Servers Eld Lek Siang Hwa Eld Chng Chee An Eld Florence Chua Eld Chng Say Tiong
Count Offering Eld Chong Yoke Fooi Eld Peter Goh
Count Offering Eld Lek Siang Hwa Eld Chng Chee An
PA Soh Lay Suan Tony Cheung
PA Ang Lay Choo Alvin Chia
Computer Lee Kien Meng
Computer Lee Kien Meng
Ushers Kwek Lee Lee Wu Mei Hui Chua Li Hua Sandra Mok
Ushers Yip Cheng Wai Ng Sock Kheng Eld Tan Teoh Khoon Terry Chia
Temperature taking Dn Andes Poh Yvonne Tan
Temperature taking Dn Chen Li Qun Alvin Chia
Online Service Crew Chow Koon Meng Evan Lim Ming Bao
Online Service Crew Jonathan Tham Jeremy Goh Gracia Lee
18 Oct 2020 Ordinary 20 11am Online Service
GATHERING TO WORSHIP Prelude Call to Worship Opening Song: O Worship The King* Prayer of Praise & Confession* Song of Praise & Adoration: Consider Christ* PROCLAIMING THE WORD Scripture Reading: Ephesians 3:1-6 Sermon: Stewardship And Suffering Colossians 1:24-2:5 RESPONDING TO THE WORD Intercessory Prayers Offertory / Doxology* Offertory Prayer* Announcement SENDING FORTH INTO THE WORLD Closing Song: Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me* Benediction & Threefold Amen* Postlude * Please stand as you are able
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ANNOUNCEMENTS Welcome We welcome all our worshippers who have tuned in. Condolences We extend our condolences to Kenny and Peggy on the home-calling of their beloved mother and mother-in-law, the late Mdm Loke Mui, on 8 Oct (Thu). We also extend our condolences to the grandchildren Zachary and Zelig. 100 pax 8.30 AM Worship Service in Church We are now holding our 8.30AM services every Sunday for up to 100 congregants. They will be held in Sanctuary 1 (Chinese Church sanctuary). Do take note of the physical distancing instructions which we would need to comply with. The advisory video with the instructions can be found on the 8.30 AM Service Registration page on our church website https://truewaypc.com/2020/07/05/ticketing- for-8-30-am-sunday-service/. The ticketing system will remain in place and the broadcast of the 11 AM Online Service will be without change. We thank God for the concession of the authorities and the graciousness of the Chinese Congregation. Membership Class (via Zoom) Date: 22, 29 Oct; 5, 12, 19, 26 Nov; 3 Dec (Thu) Time: 7.45pm - 9.30pm Those wishing to be baptised, confirmed or transferred in December this year are required to attend our church’s Membership Class. Please register via email with Mr Alvin Yip and indicate whether you are registering for baptism, confirmation or transfer. Volunteers Needed - Angel Tree Project 2020 The Angel Tree Hamper Project is an annual project by Prison Fellowship Singapore. Each year, more than 1000 Singapore prison inmates write letters to their family members before the Christmas season. This year True Way has once again partner with Singapore Prison Fellowship to support the project, with the commitment to deliver 20 gift cards (instead of hampers) and letters to the families of the inmates. We are praying for volunteers to help distribute gift cards and letters, and by God’s grace, make friends with their family members. The gift cards and letters is to help mend and restore relationships between the inmates and their families.
To qualify as a volunteer, you will need to 1) NOT have any ministry or work-related activities with Singapore Prison, 2) Have at least one other adult partner to go along with delivering the gift card and letter, 3) Attend a compulsory volunteer briefing via zoom on 19th Nov - 8to9 pm, 4) collect and distribute the gift card and letter between 24th Nov till 24th Dec 2020, 5) Complete and return the feedback form.
Please register through google form link: https://forms.gle/PsKbXSteMnCSQgxd8
You may contact Richard Chua at 98786216 for additional enquiries. Do register early as the gift card distribution is based on first come first serve basis. Bears for a Cause "The Elderly folks at Presbyterian Community Services Senior Activity Centres have specially made Christmas Tree Decoration Bears which can also double up as door gifts, prizes and bag accessories. They hope to raise $3,000 with the full proceeds going to Presbyterian Community Services. Please help them fulfill their wish to help others in need by purchasing these bears as part of your purposeful year end donations. To order, please go to https://forms.gle/jRSEcdrMjc5snxPF9. You can also check out the e-flyer in the inserts. Thank you for your generous support!"
Are You a Newcomer at True Way? If you are a newcomer who has just started tuning in to our 11am online service or attended our 8.30am live service, we would like to connect with you. Do contact Ps George at [email protected] and he will get in touch with you. Looking for a Discipleship Group (DG) If you have been worshipping with us for a while, we would like to encourage you to join a Discipleship Group (DG). For more information, please email Pr George Ang at . Bible Reading Plan (BRP) Bible reading is a good spiritual discipline. You are encouraged to embark on this journey of reading the Bible from cover to cover. If you want to know God, you would need to know God ’s Word because He has revealed Himself through His Word. You may choose between reading the Bible within a year, 2 years or even 3 years. If you are keen to start your BRP or if you have any queries, please email to Pr George Ang. Change of Email Address If you have changed your email address, kindly inform the church by sending an email to both Mr Alvin Yip and Pr George Ang . Christian Education Classes Online The Ezekiel and Colossians CE classes are now online. You may view them on our church website at https://truewaypc.com/2020/09/10/christian-education-classes/. Online Outreach Resources For online outreach resources, you are encouraged to go to the TWPC-English Congregation website https://truewaypc.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-resources/ and click here for online outreach resources, to look for suitable materials for your personal evangelistic efforts. Digital Giving of Tithes & Offerings There are 3 ways to give our tithes and offerings: 1) PayNow - Launch your mobile banking app
- Scan the QR code using the app or key in UEN: T12SS0173B - Indicate whether it is ‘tithe’ or ‘offering’ in the narrative field “Enter UEN / Bill
Reference No.”
2) Internet Transfer to DBS 1629002650. Kindly indicate your name and purpose (tithes offerings) while making the transfer.
3) Write a cheque payable to "TWPC - English Congregation". Kindly indicate your name, contact number and purpose (tithes/offerings) behind the cheque. Mail the cheque to 156B Stirling Road Singapore 148947.
https://truewaypc.com/2020/07/05/ticketing-%20for-8-30-am-sunday-service/https://truewaypc.com/2020/07/05/ticketing-%20for-8-30-am-sunday-service/https://forms.gle/PsKbXSteMnCSQgxd8https://forms.gle/jRSEcdrMjc5snxPF9https://forms.gle/jRSEcdrMjc5snxPF9https://truewaypc.com/2020/09/10/christian-education-classes/https://truewaypc.com/2020/04/15/covid-19-resources/
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Two Perspectives on Lying
Imagine getting knocks on your door one evening when you aren’t expecting
guests. You open the door to see a wild-eyed and dishevelled figure staring
at you through the gate. It’s a friend of yours and from the frantic words
sputtering out of him you discover he’s being pursued. He was attacked
outside his residence but managed to give his assailant the slip. Now he
wants to seek refuge in your apartment while the police are called in. You
quickly let him in and get him settled in the guest room. Soon after doing so,
you hear ominous raps against your door. This time, you open the door to an
angry person brandishing a pistol and demanding to know your friend’s
whereabouts. You figure he’s your friend’s assailant. What do you do?
It’s highly probable you would think to mislead the assailant. Perhaps
you might tell him your friend didn’t come by at all, or that he left your
apartment after using the bathroom. Intuitively, we find this use of deception
acceptable, even though we know lying is a sin. That’s because we feel that
lying to save a life achieves a greater good than telling the truth but getting
someone murdered.
Such a hypothetical moral dilemma was a reality for the Christians
who resisted the Nazi Germans during their occupation of Europe. Not a few
of them worked to rescue Jews who were being persecuted and rounded up
by the German Gestapo. However, such clandestine work required
deception and lying, and many Christians experienced a conflict between
the morality they’ve been taught in church and the demands of charity for
their neighbour.
Christians who decided to participate in resistance activities, often for
the most humane reasons, found themselves drifting towards a moral
whirlpool where traditional rules and guidelines no longer operated.
Resisters were ineluctably drawn into a series of unforeseen actions
as a logical consequence of their commitment to oppose Nazism.
A Scottish Presbyterian minister Alexander Miller describes how moral lines
were blurred because of the necessity of the resistance efforts:
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Not to resist Nazism was to acquiesce in it. There was no living
alternative at all. Yet to resist Nazism was to be plunged into the same
chaos. For to resist one must stay alive and one could stay alive only
by forgery and deceit. Ration books must be forged or stolen.
Propaganda and organization must be carried on clandestinely and by
trickery.
In order to save Jewish lives, there was no alternative but to engage in lies
and deception. Considering how nearly 6 million Jews were killed in the
Shoah (the Holocaust), perhaps we could admit on hindsight that such
violations of the Christian injunction to truth-telling were acceptable for the
sake of Christian charity.
Thus, it might surprise us that St Augustine of Hippo, arguably the
most influential theologian of the Western Church, would’ve vehemently
disagreed with such a conclusion. St Augustine was the first theologian of
the church to write a treatise on lying. The De Mendacio was written in 395
before he became the bishop of Hippo, and in it, he argues rather
persuasively that any kind of lying is a sin, and no Christian should ever lie.
About 20 years later, he asserts the same in his Enchiridion—his short
handbook on the Christian faith. He defines a lie as speaking “contrary to
what is in [a person’s] mind with the intention of deceiving,” and is adamant
that every act of lying must be considered a sin. That’s because a lie
violates the will of God for human language: “Words were surely instituted
not so that people could deceive each other with them but so that each
person could make his thoughts known to another. So, to use words for
deception, and not for what they were instituted, is a sin.” A lie is evil in itself
apart from whatever effects it may have.
Therefore, he insists that Christians can’t lie to achieve a greater good
even in the case of saving a human life, because we mustn’t “do evil so that
good may come” (Rom. 3.8). To lie is to incur divine judgment on oneself,
and it makes no sense to lose one’s eternal life by saving another’s temporal
life. No matter how beneficent the sinful act, it can’t be justified before God.
If so, then we ought to avoid even those seemingly harmless white lies we
might’ve resorted out of sheer convenience.
Concerning our hypothetical situation given above, St Augustine would
counsel us to say, “I know where he is, but I will never show.” Truth is told
but there’s also the refusal to betray your friend by answering the assailant.
While you may be killed for your reply, he would think it’s better for you to
die than to sin. What if the assailant kills you and then kills your friend in the
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apartment? He would say it’s the assailant who sinned and not you; it’s still
better to not sin and leave the outcome to God than to save someone by
sinning.*
While St Augustine’s ethics might be a hard pill to swallow, we cannot
but sense his deep reverence for God and how seriously he regards sin. It’s
no wonder that this has been the default position of the church catholic (both
Roman and Reformational) on lying since. Yet, if one was to consistently
apply this ethic to the German occupation of Europe, then there would
scarcely have been any organised resistance at all, and the many Jews who
were otherwise rescued would’ve been consigned to the death camps.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, theologian, and martyr, whose
ethics were forged in the crucible of resistance against the Nazis, disagrees
with St Augustine. He regards St Augustine’s definition of lying as
inadequate because it would “include, for example, even the most harmless
April-fool joke” or “the necessary deception of the enemy in war.” Instead, he
considers a lie as the deliberate denial of the reality of God revealed in
Christ Jesus (1 Jn. 2.22).
This might sound abstract because Bonhoeffer doesn’t view ethics as
simply obeying specific divine laws or doing what we think is good. Rather,
for ethics to be Christian, it must stem from a faith in Christ and a denial of
self. Ethics is the question of how we bring about in our lives the reality of
God that’s revealed in Christ; it’s a participation in the reality of God in Christ.
Since, Christ for us is the God who communes with us in his humanity,
then our ethics is about community, about being there with and for others.
Furthermore, because Christ comes to us in history, our ethics must also be
this-worldly as well. What this means is that ethics is relational and
contextual. Our ethical responsibility is toward God and neighbour and
cannot be divorced from the specific situation we find ourselves in.
Therefore, when it comes to lying, Bonhoeffer wouldn’t insist that it’s
an absolute sin. Rather, it’s a sin only if what is expressed brings about
something which is contrary to the reality of God in Christ; when what is
expressed is not for the sake of others whom we love but for ourselves. In
the final chapter of his incomplete work Ethics, he gives three concrete rules
to guide truth-telling: a) who is it that I will be speaking to and what entitles
me to speak; b) what is the situation am I in; c) how does what I am about to
speak relate to this situation. Applying it to our hypothetical situation, it
means you won’t tell the assailant the truth because he doesn’t deserve the
truth and right now your friend requires you to not tell the truth. Out of love
for your friend, the best course of action is to misdirect the assailant.
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This quick survey of two different responses to a hypothetical situation
shows that the ethics of truth-telling isn’t as simple as it seems. This is
because we’re sinful creatures living in an imperfect world thrown into
situations where moral obligations sometime seem to be in conflict. But it’s
safe to say that in Singapore we’re scarcely put in situations where we have
no choice but to lie. Whether you lean toward St Augustine or Bonhoeffer’s
ethics concerning lying, lying is never an act we take lightly, but if there’s
ever a situation we are moved to do so, we do so boldly and leave all
judgment of our action before a holy and merciful God.
* What about the Hebrew midwives in Exodus chapter 1? St Augustine doesn’t think their act of lying is meant to be exemplary or prescriptive for Christians. While they sinned by lying, God rewarded them not because they lied but because they feared God and were merciful.
Pr Png Eng Keat
18 Oct 2020
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Seminar on “The Christian and Mental Health” over Zoom
Date: 31 Oct (Sat)
Time: 2-4 pm
Speaker: Associate Professor Leslie Lim
Please register with Alvin Yip with your full name, contact number and email.
Synopsis
We all feel depressed, discouraged and anxious at certain times in our lives. Are these emotions indicative of a mental health issue that requires medical attention?
How do we know if a person has a mental illness? Could the person be demonised? How do we tell the difference? What causes a person to have a mental illness?
Many Christians hold to the belief that if they exercise enough faith they will not succumb to mental health issues. Some even advise their friends that psychiatric medications are addictive, harmful to one’s health, and should be discarded.
These are some of the myths surrounding mental illness, many of which are propagated by people who have never received mental health training. In this day and age of fake news, there are certainly a lot of misconceptions regarding mental illness by members of the public, and the church.
Come and find out the answers to the perplexing questions concerning mental health and the Christian. Come and learn about the signs and science of mental disorders, how Christians can overcome them and how family and friends can help those struggling with poor mental health.
Biodata of the speaker
Associate Professor Leslie Lim, a senior consultant psychiatrist from a public hospital in Singapore has been practising psychiatry for over 30 years. After obtaining his medical qualification from the University of Singapore, he pursued psychiatry training in London and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the United Kingdom. He was chief examiner in Psychiatry in Singapore, and was conferred the Distinguished Psychiatrist Award by the Singapore Psychiatric Association.
He completed his theological training from TCA College where he obtained a Master of Arts in Ministry. He is the author of 5 books, the latest “Victorious Living in a Depressed World: biblical perspectives for overcoming depression” is scheduled for release in October 2020. He and his wife worship at the Bethesda Bedok- Tampines Church.
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