Our pastors Thomas Tan and Newman Tay represented the wrpf at the pastors’ prayer summit this year. Here is  a report by Edmond Chua extracted from “The Christian Post”. It’s good for us to be aware of what’s happening as we have been a part of this movement.

MALACCA, Malaysia – Churches have tried and failed to come together under the banner of a common theology. Putting this aside, an inter-church movement has defined the three non-negotiables of unity: the cross, serving the people, and prayer.

The LoveSingapore movement, which started out as a small prayer meeting between pastors some 14 years ago, has gradually grown into a visionary, active, and expanding ecumenical movement that is ready to rally the churches to impact and transform the nation of Singapore. The reason for this unity – the cross-centered ecumenism between three church leaders from vastly different theological backgrounds and persuasions who decided to put aside their “little boxes”, not throw them away, according to one of them, because mankind is at best shallow and limited while God is infinite.

The atmosphere at the ballroom of Renaissance Melaka Hotel in Malaysia was liberating as Rev Lawrence Khong led the congregation of over 370 pastors and Christian leaders to dream the dream of God for the nation, a dream which as he says puts a sparkle on the eyes of believers and gets them all excited besides enlarging their faith to believe God for more when they have reached their peak.

For the first time, the LoveSingapore leadership publicly conveyed the vision and defined the core values of the pan-denominational movement and outlined the strategies and drew up the steps leading to a decisive point of Singapore’s transformation by the year 2015, commonly known among local transformation movements as the republic’s Jubilee year, during which God will bestow His choice blessings.

When it comes to the topic of national transformation however, the Church ought to be careful with what lies at the core of its initiative, a point which Khong emphasised during his presentation yesterday night. “Everyone wants to transform the nation. Unless the nation believes that we love them with the love of God, it gets scary,” he asserted. “But if everyone shows divine love, it will be winsome transformation.”

Hence, the LoveSingapore vision for transformation is simply the summary of all of God’s commandments as expressed in Galatians 5:14, which is: Love Your Neighbour. Khong explained that when Jesus summarised the commandments in the two Great Commandments, He had actually indicated that the second part – love your neighbour as yourself – is an exposition of the first – love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, according to rabbinical teaching.

“How do we know whether we love God?” The dynamic pastor asked the congregation. “Oh I really love God. Because when I worship Him I cry. We cry when we watch TV. How do we know we love the Lord? It is when we love our neighbour as ourselves.”

He also listed the three core values of the movement. The first is the unity of the Church around the cross of Jesus Christ.

Khong stated that the Church will never be united around a common theology. “Our God is so great. And our minds are so small. So theology has never been solved,” he said, referring to the tensions between Calvinism and Arminianism, cheap grace and legalism, and disputes over predestination.

The solution for the pastors who came together to form the movement is in giving each other free vent to believe what they want concerning nonessentials such as the definition of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, praying in tongues, and so forth, but at the same time unity around the essentials of faith, such as the efficacy of the cross of Jesus Christ. Khong recalled how when he and Rev Edmund Chan went to an Evangelical Free Church in Hong Kong to minister the local pastor had asked Chan if he could pray for him to receive the gift of tongues, and he politely declined and simply directed him to Khong to pray for him.

The second core value is serving the community with no strings attached. For this reason the movement will be organising both the biggest banquet for foreigners just to thank them for their contributions to Singapore, and participating in the Blessing Campaign where churches will commit their members to reach out to a certain number of people with a prayer of blessings – Faith Community Baptist Church successfully reached out to 100,000 people with 5,000 members two years back. Perhaps the Church would get some publicity that way and the republic and its government would come to see that the Church loves the nation. FCBC also successfully carried out a banquet for 20,000 foreigners. Khong cautioned against making ‘militant’ prayer walks in public because nonbelievers might misunderstand their intent.

A third core value is building a canopy of prayer over Singapore. Prayer, according to Khong, is the best way for believers to unite. “It’s hard to get a crusade to unite us. You get a prayer meeting. When we come before God’s throne of grace, we are all the same, whether we are from small church or big church,” he said, adding that it is important for the home cell structures that meet together to pray to expand into the other domains of society.

He went on to list the transformation strategies: firstly, to love my neighbour as myself. Secondly it is to mobilise and empower and equip every believer in Singapore to pastor the city in the marketplace – every believer is a minister, and everyone in the neighbourhood is the flock of the church.

Thirdly, to raise intercessory prayer for each of the seven pillars of cultural influence including: arts and entertainment; business, science and technology; communication and media; disadvantaged and marginalised; education and school; family and home; government and leadership. Fourthly, to encourage and equip every believer to attain high levels of success and excellence in the seven pillars of cultural influence – good students, for example, are better positive witnesses of the faith than bad ones.

Fifthly, to seek the establishment of Kingdom values and principles as marketplace norms and standards. Sixth, to seek elimination of systemic poverty which is prominent marker of transformation in the community – to influence policies and help foreigners to get out of ‘slave trade’ like working conditions, and help ex-convicts and drug addicts, and prevent corruption that eventually leads to systemic poverty.

And seventh, to make disciples and disciple-makers in the seven pillars of cultural influence – by breaking the mindset where church and the marketplace are compartmentalised, and guide believers to build cells in their workplaces, find disciples and mentor them.

The LoveSingapore leadership also drew up a schedule of steps until the year 2015. From 2009 to 2011, the movement will focus on synergy, equipping and modeling, for example by means of prayer groups and social programmes; from 2011 to 2014, the body will move on to saturation, where it will mobilise and saturate churches; and by 2015, the movement expects to send, where it will celebrate all that God has done in preceding years to put in place engines of transformation such as groups with a business programme praying for companies. In all of this Khong emphasised that transformation is a process, not a definitive point.

The Pastors’ Prayer Summit also saw LoveSingapore supporting other parallel events such as Rev Ed Silvoso’s Transformation Conference in May 1-2 – where he will grapple with believers over the Word of God so they can understand basic biblical principles and rationale underlying marketplace transformation – Global Day of Prayer 2009, and Celebrate Christmas In Singapore 2009.

In conclusion, Khong urged all Singaporean pastors to set the following as priorities: firstly, the Pastors’ Prayer Summit each year and Day of His Power! and the LoveSingapore prayer meeting held on the fourth Friday of every other month, the Transformation Conference with Rev Ed Silvoso, and the Blessing Campaign.

LoveSingapore was initiated by Rev Lawrence Khong.

For more information, visit The Christian Post.