Reunions

Went back to SAJC for the annual SFC(Saints for Christ) reunion dinner last night. As I was talking to the J1 ex-co and getting myself updated with the Christian scene in my school (yes, I still regard it as my school!) worries flood my mind. Mormons and "Da Vinci Code people" are doing their own form of evangelism and apparantly, they are getting to be quite a strong group (all run by students of course).

All this is totally in contrary to what MOE is trying to do. MOE is getting to be "practically secularist" (read Tony Payne's "Islam in our backyard"; he explains this term) and they are trying to clamp down on all forms of religious evangelism in Singapore schools (Chin Cher sorta confirmed this when I was talking to him during the PTBC). But interestingly enough, all the official clamping down is only resulting in the mushrooming of small, informal religioius groups in our schools (it's roughly the same in other schools I'm told).

One thing I can draw from all this (some of what I'm saying is drawn from Tony's book) is that governments, in general, are regarding religion as something that should be hush-hush and only for the personal life of its citizens. "Do not bring religion into the workplace, school, etc." is the message that they are trying to bring (Which explains the major amendments to the Racial and Religious Harmony Act in recent years). However, despite all their efforts, more and more people are realising that secularism is not the way to go. Secularism does not fulfill and answer that deep "meaning of life" question/void in their hearts. (I love Pascal's words that say that we all have a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts) "Religion" seems to answer and fill that void.

Back to SAJC. Despite the increasing barriers in spreading the gospel, I am encouraged to see that this year, the numbers in SFC have ballooned. There is a healthy number of J1's this year. And though they are mainly charismatic, I thank God that there are youth who are willing to commit their 2 years in JC to doing the work of passing on this good deposit we are all called to carry. My prayer for my fellow brothers and sisters can be found in Philipians 1. (Quite a number of people have guided me to this portion of Scripture and it's something that I pray for my leaders and for myself as well)

As we toil on in ministry, may we learn to love.

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ--to the glory and praise of God. "

Phil 1:9-11