Goodbye ECOS, Hello Trinity

When I was 4, my aunt brought me and my sisters to church, Emmanuel Church of Singapore. 25 years in this church, this family of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Pastor's Death in Apr 2010 - The Departure of Spiritual Authority
Ever since pastor died, I feel something has changed. Man has come to try to make some changes - renovation, upgrade musical equipment, host children's party with the themes of Transformers, Lego, hold anniversary celebrations a la company D&D. Perhaps these are good things, but I feel that we have lost our focus, there is no spiritual authority to lead us and guide us along a direction we used to be going. I was shocked when David told us at a meeting that we are looking more for a youth pastor than a pastor as the leaders of the church think that's where we need more help. Who are we supposed to talk to when facing a difficult moment in life?

While Pastor has not been one whom u can just call up to lim kopi, he has been the one who make decisions on how the church spend its resources. He was a thrifty man, he focused on building relationships, he would go around asking how are you in his sincere manners. We lost a good man.

Where are we now?
Uncoordinated schedules - discipleship class that goes fortnightly that is the same time as youth bible study.
Youth succession plan of a brother who has left and a brother who is not interested in leading.

I made up my mind to leave the church, but keep the relationships. So we toned it down and gave the convenient reason that Alex doesn't understand the Chinese sermons. Lo and behold, Zhenzhen's reply is to take it as learning Chinese. Her persuasion to stay is that the church needs people to serve in PA and other areas. Really difficult... even Jiayan could say that this is not appropriate reasons, people simply don't go to church to learn chinese?!

But I have no guts to rebutt Zhenzhen. And I'm not interested to argue with her.

Hello Trinity
So we are attending Trinity Christian Centre at Paya Lebar now, few reasons:
- Alex used to attend Trinity at Adam road
- we are comfortable with the worship and sermons, there is a key message every week. sometimes a theme runs through a few weeks, such as the Open Hearts Open Heaven over the past two weeks and Attributes of God over the next five weeks. i love the challenges from the pulpit every week which make me be more of who i want to be during the week
- we would love to join a small group to share our lives with a closer group of like-minded people
- my cousin also attending Trinity clearly has well-behaved kids. she is also able to talk about her pastor like a friend.
- i love the large scale events at Trinity, especially the musicals. hehe. Another one coming up this weekend!