BPCIS Update
- Grace B-P Contributor
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
30 November 2025
CROWNING THE YEAR
“You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance.” Ps 65.11 (NIV)
As we complete the 14th year of BPCIS, we have much for which to thank and praise God.
In 14 years, BPCIS has ordained 15 men for the ministry of teaching God’s Word
and shepherding God’s people, including 3 ordained this year.
This year, we have a record 99 pastors and leaders at the annual Leaders Retreat, including a delegation from Perth, Australia.
For the first time, a dozen of us met for an Envisioning Exercise, seeking God and His will for the decade ahead, 2025-35. (August 2035 will mark the 100th Anniversary of John Sung Revival in Singapore.)
Though still a work in progress, an Endowment Fund was mooted and later fleshed out. When in place, its investment returns will go to help smaller churches engage pastoral and admin staff.
This year, we witness the “twinning” of 3 pairs of BPCIS churches. In the sharing of resources, we work together in the revitalising of weaker churches.
LOOKING AHEAD
“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’” I Sam 7.12 (NIV)
The message of Ebenezer takes us back to the past, but does not stay there. It points us to the future. As the Lord has helped us in the past, He will continue to do so into the future.
After two years of centralised Good Friday Services, next year will see combined English services decentralised in 3 locations: West, Central and East (3 April). They will be hosted by Mount Carmel, Zion Bishan and Shalom respectively.
The Chinese services will be decentralised to their individual churches. With the favour of the authorities, we will meet again at McRitchie Reservoir for our Easter Sunrise Service (5 April).
Our Leaders Retreat (7-8 July) will be special as we will have our own speakers, three of them, each from a different generation.
Finally, our Annual Presbytery Meeting (19 September) will be a Thanksgiving Service for our 15th Anniversary. We have commissioned a video to be done of how BPCIS began in 2011, some two decades after the BP Synod was dissolved in 1988.
“Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” Psalm 90.17 (ESV)
Pastor David Wong, General Secretary, BPCIS
Postscript: Visit our BPCIS website (bpcis.org.sg) where our churches are taking turn to share testimonies, updates and stories from their leaders and members.
Excited about Christmas, Less So about Christ
By Uche Anizor
We love Christmas and we truly do love Jesus. Yet, we can sometimes be apathetic about the latter, even during Christmas.
Causes of Christmas Apathy
Apathy is not care-less. Rather, it is care-adrift, care-misplaced. This is what happens at Christmas time. We love the trappings but are indifferent about the main thing.
Here are three suggested potential contributors to our perplexing apathy toward the Christ of Christmas.
Familiarity
Close acquaintance with someone, makes it easier to take them for granted. This can happen in our relationship to Christ and beautiful Christian truths. Every Christmas, we are reminded of the mystery of the incarnation. The baby boy in a manger is God with us, Immanuel. Yet, the constant repetition of this magnificent mystery sometimes dulls us to its grandeur.
Excess
At Christmas, the big and the small, the meaningful and meaningless, are given equal billing. When everything about Christmas is treated as maximally and equally important, it becomes harder to feel the bigness of what is truly important. We are numbed by the excess trappings of Christmas.
Warfare
The causes of our apathy are spiritual in at least two senses. First, behind the scenes there is an enemy —the evil one—who relishes our apathy and delights in distracting us. What greater victory than to get Christians to yawn at the incarnation.
Second, there is a real war between our new self, which is created to be like Christ, and our old self, which would be perfectly content living apathetically (Col. 3:9–10).
Possible Antidotes
Some suggested practices to help us overcome our apathy surrounding Christmas.
1. Make the familiar less familiar.
Do everything in your power to engage the Christmas story in fresh ways. Fight by doing things differently.
2. Simplify your Christmas.
Filling our Advent with more time for reading, listening to Christmas worship, and quiet reflection help us not lose sight of the main thing. Simplifying Christmas may be the kind of radical step you need to take to bring Jesus from the periphery back to the center of Christmas.
3. Pray for a rekindled sense of awe.
Pray earnestly that God enables you to feel the enormity of the incarnation. Or, pray that God would give you a sense of what it felt like for Israel to finally see its Messiah.
May we, with God’s help, fight the good fight for joy in the Christ of Christmas.
Taken from Excited about Christmas, Less So about Christ by Uche Anizor, Copyright © December 12, 2022. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org
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