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!

Akey feature of missions across geographical borders in the “new norm” is capitalising on the digital platform more than ever before. Both digital natives like millennials and students as well as the older digital novices need to creatively explore the digital platform to be on the frontiers of cross-cultural missions.

We can tangibly empower local Christian leadership in other nations with contextualised and creative new ideas, strategies and possibilities. Yes, we can indeed bring significant transformation through God’s love and hope to nations around us despite not being able to travel there due to the COVID-19 pandemic!

The Methodist Missions Society (MMS) seeks to be on the cutting edge and aspires to facilitate Singaporean Methodists to explore the potential of the digital platform for missions. In February 2021, a two-session series on crossing cultures digitally was jointly organised with the three Annual Conferences’ Boards of Missions.

Wesley MC’s weekly English tuition session for children from NBLPMC Wesley MC’s monthly health exercise programme for NBLPMC’s seniors

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. This session highlighted the practical digital channels employed by MMS and others from the Singapore Methodist community since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 to involve and engage children, youths, millennials, professionals, church leaders and seniors.

The MMS Training Chairman shared on the implications of COVID-19 for cross-cultural missions in the field, on the missionaries, and how Singapore churches need to adapt to the “new norm”. Citing concrete examples from different countries, she also underscored five simple digital ways to cross cultures through being E-Care Pals, E-Creative Innovators, E-Content Empowerers, E-Collaborative Funders and E-Christ Warriors.

Four Methodists shared uplifting stories of their “digital missions” ministry:

• Koh Geok Cheng, Wesley Methodist Church 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.

• 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

Flood relief in South Asia Flood relief in South Asia X-Culture-Collab participants

also taught how to manage a flood crisis, be financially accountable, facilitate crisis aid to their local community and even begin a small-scale mango tree livelihood project.

• Cindy Chen, Wesley Methodist Church Through cFriendz and SuiteMozaic, a group of Methodists with their non-Methodist friends promote digital networking among Christians to develop cross-border business and missions opportunities. This is to enhance capacity building of business communities, especially for millennials and young adults, through Youth Biz-Up Zoom Boot Camps across Asia and Africa.

“Broadened horizons”, “motivating, in-depth explanations”, “good spread of how individuals and churches can be creatively involved in digital missions” were some of the positive feedback received.

II. X-Culture-Collab

Sixty participants from 25 Methodist churches (three ETAC, nine CAC, 13 TRAC) and three non-Methodist churches came together for this four-hour Zoom session on 27 Feb 2021 to use their skills, gifts, ideas and expertise to engage and collaborate cross-culturally over the digital platform with MMS field partners from Cambodia, Thailand and Timor-Leste. It was a time to innovate, collaborate, build communities and meet real-world needs.

The participants were given an overview of six collaboration projects:

Cambodia: Empowering Decision-making of the Next Generation at COSI and COSY

Cambodia: Collection of Medical Data from Surrounding Villages to Set up a Clinic in the Future Thailand: The Puhada Livelihood Project for Underprivileged Women Thailand: The Good Soil Livelihood Project Timor-Leste: Empowering Business and Financial Management Skills for Tertiary-level Youth Timor-Leste: Enhancing Conversational English Skills for Tertiary-level Youth In the six breakout groups, the participants further delved into the details of specific needs and the types of help needed for each project. Each group came up with an action plan after brainstorming different ideas and assessing the available resources both in the field and in Singapore, sharing their plans with all present. The participants found the session useful, relevant, helpful and motivating as they learnt from one another. They acquired a better understanding of the needs on the ground and asked for more collaborative sessions.

The implementation of projects was followed up initially by the MMS Training team and subsequently by field teams spearheaded by their respective Area Directors.

An example was the group that discussed empowering better decision-making for the children and youth at COSI and COSY in Cambodia. Representatives from Bedok MC WSCS, Toa Payoh MC and Queenstown Chinese MC met with the MMS Cambodia field team on 30 March to further discuss the implementation of online befriending and training sessions covering general principles of decision-making, boy-girl relationships and purity, and money management. By mid-April and after checking with their church missions or WSCS leadership, the group had come up with an implementation schedule of the collaboration project, starting in June 2021 and going on until January 2022.

Digital Missions: Yes, we can!

God’s purposes and cross-cultural missions can go on via the digital platform despite the pandemic. Whether we be individuals, Christian groups or even a local church, we can be the hands and feet of Jesus in very practical ways after hearing and understanding real needs to empower those in faraway lands so that they, and we, can be God’s hope bringers!

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