Michael of Boys’ Brigade

Rest in Peace, Michael. You have fought the good fight, you have finished the race.

Michael was instrumental in strengthening and building up our Boys’ Brigade Ministry known as the 1st Johor Bahru Company. He joined BB in 1966 and assumed its captaincy in 1974 at the age of 22! He held this position on and off for many years until he retired in 2009.

In 1995, Michael was honoured by His Majesty Sultan of Johor with the “Heart of Gold” award for his outstanding BB work and service to the youth. He was also a Chairman of the East Asian Regional Fellowship and a National President of the BB Malaysia. We thank God for the privilege of celebrating his 65th birthday with him last September.

In 2002, this is what he shared in the 50 Years of Faithfulness, published in conjunction with Holy Light Church (English), Johor Baru, Golden Jubilee Celebration

I remember the durian trees in the church compound. They were probably the best durians you could find in Johor Baru. So much so that Church Members would ‘book’ the fruits even before they’ve ripened and fallen to the ground.

Church life was so laid back then. We had such great times, just hanging out among the Durian and Rambutan trees.

My association with the church started with the Boys’ Brigade. I was in secondary school at Sek. Dato Jaffar when a classmate introduced me to the BB. This was back in 1966.

I still remember my first time in “Sunday School” (which was held on Saturday). Coming from a strict Hindu background, I was awe struck on seeing the Cross in Church. Something about it shook me deep and strong.

The following two weeks, I absconded from Sunday School. It was not until my classmates persuaded me, that I went back to BB meetings. And, like they say, everything else is history.

BB changed my life. I found Christ through the BB in 1968.

Deacon Christopher Tham Kok Meng counseled me. His love and concern touched me & subsequently won me over. At that time, I just could not fathom why this Chinese man would want to care for a poor Indian boy like me.

That was my turning point. With Christ in my heart, I was ready to smile at any storm. I became active in Church – from the Choir, Youth Fellowship, Sunday School and, of course, BB. I had a burning desire to learn anything and everything about being a good Christian. Filled with youthful zeal and excitement, I even became a Church Deacon while I was still a Bachelor in my Twenties.

By the grace of God, I also moved up the ranks in BB. By 1967, I was promoted to L/Cpl, and then to Cpl and Sgt. I even had the honour to lead the BB band as Drum Major. And to cap it all, I was appointed Company Captain at the age of 22!

It was also in Church that I met my wife, Janet, who was in the Girls’ Brigade (who eventually went on to become the 1st JB Girls’ Brigade Captain). We were married in 1977, and during the last 25 years in marriage, The Lord has blessed us with four children.

I praise God that despite business and family commitments, I still manage to find time to serve in the BB. Today, not only am I the Captain of the 1st JB Company, but I also serve as the Chairman of the East Asian Regional Fellowship (EARF), which overseas BB work in Asia, and I am also the National President of the BB in Malaysia.

It’s only by God’s grace that I’m able to serve in such a capacity while still being actively involved in BB extension work in Thailand.

People often ask me. Why do you sacrifice so much time, effort and money in the BB? My answer is simple. This is what I enjoy doing best. And the greatest pleasure comes from seeing boys plucked from our streets and transformed into upright citizens through the BB; and to see them eventually come to a decision to give their lives to Christ. Just like I did, all those years ago.

I owe it all to God. I was a nobody. I did not particularly excel in school, neither do I posses any special skills or talents. And if I am a somebody today, it is only because God first loved me and gave me the opportunity to excel through the BB Ministry. And the Church, through Christ, has inspired me to do great and wonderful things ever since.

This Church will always hold a special place in my heart.

Source: HLCE FB Page

Technology and the Gospel

 

a printer workshop (Gutenberg Museum, Mainz)

Technology plays an important role in religions. Aside from technologies such as husbandry and farming, the invention of writing, writing materials, printing and digital recordings has an important role in the growth and development of Christianity and the spread of the Gospel.

Oral traditions have a significant place in the formation of concepts and ideas of a monotheist God during the early days of ancient Israel. The limits of oral traditions require practitioners with exception memories and the ability to recall verbatim. Often, this is not possible as additions and omissions affect the narratives. The invention of writing from its initiate scratches on bones or shells to a formalised cuneiform marks the end of the oral tradition. Writing necessitates the invention of a medium to write on. Initial writing materials were bones, which makes way for animal skins where were made into parchment. Pergamum, a city mentioned in Revelation was a centre of parchment production until the introduction of papyrus from Egypt. This technology leads to our modern paper. Paper is a stable medium and writings were bound up into codex (like our modern books) instead of stored as scrolls (parchment). The Bible and its various commentaries are the results of this technology of writing and writing materials. Books became the medium for the use in churches. Unfortunately, the early Bibles were written in Greek and Latin and hence incomprehensible to the common people.

Books were laboriously hand-copied by scribes until the introduction of the movable printing press. Printing was invented in 593 in China using carved wooden blocks. The movable printing press was developed in China in 1040. In the west, Lauren Coster from Denmark was the first to develop a movable printing press using wooden types but German Johannes Gutenberg was more well known for his movable type printing press using metal types in 1447. This date was significant because this was around the time when an unknown Augustinian monk, Martin Luther argued with the Roman Catholic Pope, and to his surprise cause the Reformation. Gutenberg’s press allowed enormous reprints of the tracts of the arguments (some of which were in German) to be printed and distributed widely in the Holy Roman Empire. Later in the Reformation, Luther and his friends translated the whole Bible into German. With printing, many people in Germany were able to read and understand the Bible in their own language.

facsimile of The Babylonian Captivity of the Church by Martin Luther,              Lutherstadt, Wittenberg

Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Latin: De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae, praeludium Martini Lutheri, October 1520) was the second of the three major treatises published by Martin Luther in 1520, coming after the Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (August 1520) and before On the Freedom of a Christian (November 1520)

The invention of the modern computers in the 1960-70s with its increasingly sophisticated word processing software marked another important milestones in the development of technology and religion. The move from analogy to digital and the interconnectivity provided by the Internet allows production and transmission of an enormous amount of religious knowledge. The number of platforms and devices in which this knowledge may be downloaded have also increased exponentially.

There seem to a close relationship between the introduction of new technologies and the expansion of the Gospel. Hand copied Bibles and books seem to limit the spread of the Gospel around the main European cities. With the Reformation and the printing press, the Gospel spread is wider to the rest of Europe, North America, certain parts of Asia and North Africa. The digital media seems to herald the expansion of the Gospel to the Global South. The smartphone has become the main platform for evangelism. It is now possible to bring the Gospel to the ends of the world. It will be interesting to see what the next technology brings.

The Luther Bible (German: Lutherbibel) is a German language Bible translation from Hebrew and ancient Greek by Martin Luther. The New Testament was first published in 1522 and the complete Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments and Apocrypha, in 1534

St. Jerome’s Cave

statue of St Jerome in the courtyard of St. Catherine Church

 St Jerome (also known as Hieronymus, the Latin version of Jerome) spent more than 36 years in the Holy Land. He was well-known for his ascetic lifestyle and his passionate involvement in doctrinal controversies such as one with Rufinus and another with the Pelagians.

At his feet is a skull, a symbol of the transience of human existence.

In the caves below the Church of the nativity, St. Jerome spent almost 30 years translating the Scriptures into Greek and Greek into Latin. His translation is known as the Vulgate. He started in 386 AD

Jerome died in 420 and was buried in one of the caves. His body was subsequently moved to Constantinople and then to Rome, where his bones rest today in the Basilica of 
<!–[if !mso]>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } <![endif]–>Santa Maria Maggiore.
 

chapel in St. Jerome’s Cave

The Chapel of the Holy Innocents. This is said to be the burial place of infants killed by King Herod in his attempt to eliminate the newborn “King of the Jews”.

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Random musings and reflections on life, God and all that stuff (movies, comics, science fiction, spiritual formation, Christian education, biomedical ethics, post modern parenting, books, theology and philosophy)

Review of Lim’s Life and Ministry of John Sung

Lim Ka-Tong, 2012, The Life and Ministry of John Sung, Singapore: Armour Publishing

This is a timely and much needed book in English on the biography of evangelist John Sung who played such an important part in the revivals in China and South East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. Unfortunately, John Sung is not well known or even remembered among the contemporary churches in Asia except for a few. Among these are those who actually met Sung and whose lives were changed as a result of that meeting. Even now six decades later, these people can remember Sung clearly and with joy their remembrance of their encounter with God as a result of this meeting.

The last significant biography of John Sung was by Leslie Lyall which was written 50 years ago! Lim Ka-Tong’s biography is a distinctive improvement with more new information from Sung’s diaries and letters. Lim, presently a pastor in Texas, is a graduate of Singapore Bible College, Dallas Theological Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary. In this book which covers Sung’s early formative years, the short 12 years of ministry and his dying years. Significantly it covers the five phases of his life; water (reimmersion, 1927-1930), door (opening, 1931-1933), dove (time to soar, 1934-1936), blood (wartime spiritual warfare, 1937-1939) and tomb (pastoral years, 1940-1944).

Lim’s book explores the impact of Sung’s ministry in the context of prewar and wartime China and South-East Asia, the Chinese worldviews and Sung’s own personal spiritual development. He does this by answering five questions:

(1)   What shaped John Sung? How did John Sung become John Sung?

(2)   In what ways did contextual elements contribute to the prominence of John Sung’s ministry and his lasting influence?

(3)   How did John Sung’s ministry contribute to the growth and indigenization of Chinese Christianity?

(4)   How did John Sung make such a great impact in so brief a time?

(5)   Why has John Sung been slighted by historical scholarship, despite his pivotal influence on Chinese Christianity?

In this book, Lim has succeeded in helping us to understand this complex and driven servant of God. He shows us the constant struggles Sung had in his spiritual life and his ‘unconditional’ surrender of everything to God. It is a hard lived life of seeking God and seeking his will in making choices. These choices including a life of comfort in the United States or poverty in China, ministerial ‘success’ or itinerary wanderings, theological conservatism (fundamentalist) or liberalism, being a ‘Chinese’ Chinese or a Western educated Chinese, and living a kataphatic or apophatic Christian spirituality. It is a result of these struggles that Sung was able to have such an impact in his ministry.

This is a highly readable and interesting book and a must for all Christians especially for those who want to appreciate the Asian and Chinese Christian heritage.

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Random musings and reflections on life, God and all that stuff (movies, comics, science fiction, spiritual formation, Christian education, biomedical ethics, post modern parenting, books, theology and philosophy)

Online Lectures on Augustine

Here is a good collection of online lectures on Augustine compiled by Marc Cortez, Theology Prof at Western Seminary posted on the blog Scientia Et Sapientia

• David Calhoun, Augustine’s Confessions
• David Calhoun, Augustine & the Pelagian Controversy
• David Calhoun, Augustine’s Theology of History
• Steven J. Lawson, The Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine of Hippo
• Thomas Lizo, The Mystical Theology of St. Augustine
• Thomas Lizo, St. Augustine’s Theology of History
• Nick Needham, Augustine and the City of God
• John Piper, The Swan Is Not Silent: Sovereign Joy in the Life and Thought of St. Augustine
• Philosophy Talk, John Perry, Ken Taylor and James O’Donnell – Saint Augustine
• Mike Reeves, Introducing Augustine, Pt. 1
• Mike Reeves, Introducing Augustine, Pt. 2
• Cornelius Van Til, St. Augustine

read more

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Healthcare and Hospitals in Christian History

The wonderful announcement appeared in Chris Armstrong’s blog Grateful to the Dead.
Enjoy reading this free issue! I have download it to read on my iPad.

The Christian History editorial team is celebrating the printing of Issue #101: Healthcare and Hospitals in the Mission of the Church. Full access to this full-color issue here.

The issue tells the fascinating story of how early and medieval Christians pioneered the healthcare institutions on which we now rely, including the modern hospital.

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Michael Moorthy and Boys’ Brigade in Asia

Well done Michael Moorthy. This article is reproduced from the City Harvest website citynews. An oversight in this article is that it fails to mention that the 1st JB Company is sponsored by the Holy Light Church (English) in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, and Michael Moorthy’s involvement since 1966 is fully sponsored and supported by the church even after he has chosen to worship with City Harvest Church in 1997.

A “Sure And Steadfast” Man

Posted on 05 April 2011

Business owner Michael Moorthy serves three posts in the Boys’ Brigade in Asia. He shares his passion for his mission.
Contributed By Nicolette Ng

Moorthy (right) with Singapore’s President S.R. Nathan. PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL MOORTHY

Michael Moorthy, 59, is not quite your average business owner.

Moorthy, the director of Anjung Segar Sdn Bhd, a frozen foods company, is “on call” for the Boys’ Brigade, which he serves as the president of Boys’ Brigade Malaysia, the president of Boys Brigade Asia, as well as the honorary captain of the 1st Johor Bahru Boys’ Brigade company.

The oldest uniformed group in the world, the BB is an interdenominational Christian youth organization, conceived by William Alexander Smith in Glasgow in 1883, which combines drill and fun activities with Christian values.

What sets the BB apart is that its activities not only cater to the physical and mental development of the youth, but also their spiritual development through Christian education classes and activities. This is also where the “graduated” pool of officers who are all volunteers comes in to train the next generation after being blessed by the BB. These people are role models and impact the lives of the young people entrusted in their hands. Their motto: “Sure and Steadfast.”

Having many youths in his care, Moorthy shares that as captain of the 1st JB Company, he is responsible for the overall direction and vision of where the Company is headed in terms of growth and planning their calendar for the year, whilst also ensuring that the weekly operations and meetings run smoothly.

Through a holistic program, the BB instils discipline and the development of three key areas: body, soul and spirit. While updating their programs regularly to mold the character and leadership skills of the youths is effective, Moorthy shares that it is important not to lose sight of sharing Christ with them in the process. The BB’s objective is “The advancement of Christ’s kingdom among Boys and the promotion of habits of Obedience, Reverence, Discipline, Self-respect and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness.”

It was in 1966 when Moorthy, impressed by the uniforms, badges and the marching band and caving in to the persistent encouragement of his classmates, joined the BB. There has been no turning back since. It was also through the BB that Moorthy got to know Christ as his Savior. It is no surprise that Moorthy’s greatest satisfaction from the ministry is to know that through the BB, they are changing lives and reaching out to young people who are transformed to become better members of the society.

The Moorthy family. PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL MOORTHY

Moorthy acknowledges that the success the Companies have had come about because of a group effort. “I’m only as effective and efficient as the team of fellow volunteer officers I’ve had around me over the years, and I have been blessed to have their support.”

To date, the 1st JB Boys’ Brigade Company has grown to become one of the largest Companies in Malaysia. One milestone for them was when their marching band played overseas in Thailand and China, and was featured in the Malaysian Book of Records for being the First Youth Marching Band to play at the Great Wall of China.

The City Harvest Church member and his family from JB first encountered the church in 1997. “We just fell in love with CHC, the praise and worship, the inspiring messages by Pastor Kong. The love and care from our friends over the years made us realize that CHC is not just a mega-church but a mega-caring church,” says Moorthy. Since those days of the church at Hollywood Theatre, Moorthy and his wife, Janet, and their four children have commuted across the Causeway every single weekend to attend service. It comes as no surprise that his eldest and second son were also BB members.

His is a life and a family that is dedicated to the cause of Christ. “It is my belief for my family and me, that we are all about tending God’s business, and will do our best to the measure He has entrusted to us.”

Random musings and reflections on life, God and all that stuff (movies, comics, science fiction, spiritual formation, Christian education, biomedical ethics, post modern parenting, books, theology and philosophy)

The Martyrs of our Modern Church

From Thinking Faith
18 March 2011

Photo by rosaamarilla at flickr.com

Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ

Next week, the 31^st anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero will be marked by people around the world to whom he remains an inspiration – in his life and death – as they strive for justice. His country of El Salvador saw many other lives lost as members of the Church were targeted by the authorities as a result of their protestations against an oppressive regime. Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ, who worked with many of these martyrs, tells their stories and gives an insight into the Church teaching that lay behind their deep commitment to justice.

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Rebirthing the Christian History magazine

1611 King James Version – title page

Here it is! You can now go here, put in your address and email info, and get a free copy of the forthcoming issue #100 of (the reborn) Christian History magazine, on the history of the King James Bible. 

To keep mailing costs reasonable, this offer is restricted to USA mailing addresses.

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Review on McDermott’s The Great Theologians

Gerald R. McDermott, (2010), The Great Theologians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press)

Gerald McDermott is professor of religion and philosophy at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia and a teaching pastor at St. John Lutheran Church.  In this brief survey he introduces eleven theologians which he considers to have contributed significantly to the development of theology. These theologians are Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Friedrich Schleiermacher, John Henry Newman, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

His approach is very useful. He first introduces them by giving a short theological biography about them, then highlights several main features of their theological contributions and then focuses on their main contribution. I find this very useful as a primer for non theologians and for people who wants to know more about theology but are afraid to ask.

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