Dear family and friends,
As we continually re-align to God’s priorities and His heart, our walk with Him and our ministry expressions radically change. Over the past few months, God’s command to rest continues to shift our paradigms and approach to life and ministry.
When we rest, God leads us
In March, God spoke clearly to us to merge our two ministries Baan Dem Rak Community Centre and business-as-missions JSCO into one. We sensed to serve from a central leadership team to oversee the ministry and business-as-missions aspects together with our Thai leaders. While this was a sudden move, what was even more drastic was that we felt God’s leading to pause the web design work that we have been doing.
We sought counsel and confirmation from our elders and spiritual leaders here, they all agreed with a resounding yes.
Even though we are not doing web design anymore, the heart of it remains the same. As a business-as-missions, we are to be faithful to our calling which is to “Create Opportunities, Build Lives”.
While the Community Team of BDR oversees the community outreach aspects of ministry, our Business Team have been tasked to start revenue-generating projects to sustain our ministry. They have three objectives for these projects:
- Community Impact (the projects should generate employment opportunities for the youths and their families)
- Ministry Impact (the projects should bring in revenue to sustain our ministry work)
- Self Impact (the projects should help each BT member develop their passions and skillsets)
For now, here are the projects we are exploring and have launched:
- Urban mushroom farming
- Hydroponics farm
- Vintage clothing line
- Cheesecake
We will tell you more later about how you can support these young ones in their labour for God and the community!
When we rest, God works
It seemed like a far-fetched dream that our staff team could one day host teams by themselves. However, that’s exactly what happened! The staff team hosted a mission team from Sengkang Methodist Church in May while we were away for a pre-arranged retreat. While we fretted if the staff team would do ok, we felt the Lord telling us to go for the retreat, and that everything would be settled.
True enough, our team stepped up to host the mission team themselves, and based on the feedback, we see that our team did such a good job! During our retreat, we decided to fully trust God about the trip and disconnected from social media. We saw how God worked even when we rested, and He gets all the credit!
We are also seeing our cell groups growing steadily. Our adult cell group has 9 regular members, while our youth cell group had been split into 2 groups according to gender. In the past 6 months, we have been minimally involved in our cell group, trusting our staff to lead them well, and we are grateful to witness their growth.
When we rest, God heals
In April, we returned to Singapore for 3 weeks for home leave. In this time, God opened doors to let us meet many people who spoke into our lives and pointed us to God in many of our struggles. One of the greatest takeaways of this time is to be obsessed with God’s purpose, and not to let man’s purpose come in the way.
It’s easier said than done! Over the years, we have struggled greatly with how success is defined. On this trip, we had very healing conversations that helped us break off from human expectations and align with God’s purpose. We also found ourselves being yoked to the fear of losing financial support from our supporters, and God was addressing it directly. Thankfully, with God’s help, we can experience freedom and also the courage to follow what God is calling us to be and to do.
When we rest, God provides
We started off 2024 raising funds for our ministries, and we are very thankful for all who has responded and partnered us in our work financially. We rejoice that we can join hands to pursue God’s work in the nations.
Even as we find healing and walk in freedom, we see how God provides when we rest. In the month of May, we saw how God led many people to give generously even though we stopped sending out fundraising requests. We have worried for nothing.
If you feel God is leading you to give to our work, please drop us a message. Thank you for journeying with us!