Reach Out ¢ Missions Juliette Arulrajah is the Chairperson of the Methodist Missions Society (MMS) Training Committee. She is also the MMS Area Director for Cambodia and Laos. / Screenshots courtesy of MMS
Digital Missions Yes, we can!
A
Wesley MC’s monthly health exercise programme for NBLPMC’s seniors
key feature of missions across geographical
This session highlighted the practical digital channels
borders in the “new norm” is capitalising on the
employed
by
MMS
and
others
from
the
Singapore
digital platform more than ever before. Both
Methodist community since the onset of the pandemic in
digital natives like millennials and students as well as the
2020 to involve and engage children, youths, millennials,
older digital novices need to creatively explore the digital
professionals, church leaders and seniors.
platform to be on the frontiers of cross-cultural missions. The MMS Training Chairman shared on the implications of We can tangibly empower local Christian leadership in
COVID-19 for cross-cultural missions in the field, on the
other nations with contextualised and creative new ideas,
missionaries, and how Singapore churches need to adapt
strategies and possibilities. Yes, we can indeed bring
to the “new norm”. Citing concrete examples from different
significant transformation through God’s love and hope to
countries, she also underscored five simple digital ways
nations around us despite not being able to travel there
to cross cultures through being E-Care Pals, E-Creative
due to the COVID-19 pandemic!
Innovators, E-Content Empowerers, E-Collaborative Funders and E-Christ Warriors.
The Methodist Missions Society (MMS) seeks to be on Methodists to explore the potential of the digital platform
Four Methodists shared uplifting stories of their “digital missions” ministry:
for missions. In February 2021, a two-session series on
• Koh Geok Cheng, Wesley Methodist Church
crossing cultures digitally was jointly organised with the
From June 2020, various groups of WMC volunteers taught English on three different days weekly over Zoom to the children, youth and adults of Nong Bua Lamphu Methodist Church (NBLPMC) in Northeast Thailand. WMC seniors also connected with their Thai counterparts every month through healthy exercises and creative arts. All these led the NBLPMC pastor to be invited to teach English daily at a school using WMC resources.
the cutting edge and aspires to facilitate Singaporean
three Annual Conferences’ Boards of Missions.
Wesley MC’s weekly English tuition session for children from NBLPMC
I. X-Culture-Digi Seventy-nine participants from 30 different Methodist churches (six ETAC, nine CAC and 15 TRAC) in addition to six non-Methodist churches were actively engaged in this two-hour Zoom session on 20 Feb 2021 to explore and enhance missions ministries over the digital platform. Nearly 90 per cent of the participants were key leaders of local churches (LCEC, missions committees, pastors and staff) and Annual Conferences. 20
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METHODIST MESSAGE July 2021
• Teo Quee Lin,
Pentecost Methodist Church
Quee Lin, a professional educator and coach for pre-school educators, shared how she used the digital platform to encourage the local acting principal and teachers of the Methodist School of Cambodia Kindergarten to improve the quality of their resources, teaching materials and pedagogy. The impact was seen in the growing engagement of students and parents despite the challenges of online learning in Cambodia.
• Leong Jenn Yeong, Aldersgate Methodist Church God led him to motivate a Facebook pastor friend from South Asia and the latter’s pastor friends through weekly prayer meetings to be passionate, godly fathers. This led to two digital motivational conferences for 110 pastors who were later sent out to minister in 10 districts. These pastors were
