Reach Out—Living Hope Methodist Church English Coaching Programme

charged a token amount to ensure commitment from the students. I wondered why they were so nice to charge so little and yet had to suffer when we were being defiant. Little did we know then that they were planting little seeds into our lives.”

Jeffrey says: “When John 3:16 was read to me during my teens, I felt valued and loved knowing that someone whom I didn’t know had died for me so that I could go to heaven. I looked at the many brothers- and sisters-in-Christ around me who loved me so much even though I didn’t really know them.”

Jeffrey has words of appreciation and encouragement for his tutors and mentors.

“Thank you for your many years of being a faithful servant. Though it was tough and arduous, your faithfulness to the Lord has made an impact on my life and in the lives of many more that you may not be aware of. Continue to plant the seeds. They will one day take root, grow, and be ready to be harvested.”

Now a youth leader, Jeffrey hopes that God will use him to guide other youths and let them know what he has learned.

Philip hopes more will step forward to volunteer as teachers.

“Today, the children from this neighbourhood, who once were lost, have found God. This is the best gift we can give to them”.

LIVING HOPE METHODIST CHURCH

Making mighty connections

A children’s English coaching programme with a difference

Terence Chua worships at Living Hope Methodist Church and is a student at Trinity Theological College.

Mighty Connection is an English coaching programme for primary schoolers

It was 2014 and Margaret Lim was serving in the Children’s Ministry— the weekly Sunday School—at Living Hope Methodist Church (LHMC). By then, her years of ministry were many but not for the first time, she wondered if more work for the Lord could and should be done.

There were already two major annual events on the Children’s Ministry calendar—the game-based Mighty Olympics and a children’s camp called the Mighty Kidz Camp. But these were events mostly for the Sunday School children. There was no specific outreach to the children living in the neighbourhood who were non-churchgoers.

To every Christian, outreach brings to mind Jesus’ final charge in Matthew 28:19 to his disciples before his ascension. Could the HDB blocks encircling LHMC’s idyllic location at Tampines Street 33 be counted as their ‘Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria’?

“There was no reason not to reach out,” Margaret recalls. But what form should the outreach take?

A simple programme with simple resources

Armed with the blessings of the church leaders but with no idea of how well it would be received, a small team of volunteers including Margaret worked quickly to design a simple programme. At that year’s Mighty Olympics, it was announced that LHMC would start a free-to-all English-coaching ministry, eventually named Mighty Connection, and the first session would take place two Saturdays hence.

As it turned out, 23 children attended the first session in a room in LHMC on 20 September 2014. Eight years on, Mighty Connection is still on-going every Saturday, except for the first Saturday of the month.

The programme designed at the start was a mix of English language coaching, Bible story and activities, and playing games. This model has not changed much.

Each 2-hour long session begins at 1 p.m. with 70 minutes of English enrichment, when ministry volunteers coach students (usually in groups of two or three, but not more than four) with the aid of English assessment books easily purchased in bookshops. This is followed by a 50-minute Bible-based activity or lesson which varies: watching a video, or playing light indoor games. Before the pandemic, the programme would conclude with 30 minutes of outdoor games.

With the pandemic, the programme like everything else had to shift online via Zoom. Despite the stresses, they soldiered on.

Labour, the most precious resource

Even such a simple programme is labour-intensive. By its very nature, a coaching session necessitates a high volunteer-to-student ratio.

Moreover, in order to build rapport, each volunteer coaches the same set of students. This means only volunteers who are able to commit three Saturdays a month, excluding the first Saturday, are recruited.

Friendship - the key ingredient that makes children come back each week

“Not many can afford three Saturdays a month,” says Tan Zhi Yang, 30, a mechanical engineer who has been volunteering since 2018. That the team of volunteers is relatively small makes it all the more challenging to balance keeping a high volunteer-to-student ratio and reaching out to more students.

Striking a chord with the neighbourhood

Today, LHMC continues to publicise Mighty Connection with announcements made during Mighty Olympics and Mighty Kidz Camp. A huge banner that has withstood the weather for many years still hangs in front of the church to draw the attention of passersby.

Despite the lean team of volunteers and the modest number of weekly participants, Mighty Connection is, in a small but nonetheless significant way, achieving its mission. Over the past 8 years, Mighty Connection has been able to reach out to many children in the neighbourhood. The team is heartened when they hear that parents of existing students have recommended Mighty Connection to other parents, and see students who had stopped coming for some time reappear voluntarily. One mother, Tiffany, told Methodist Message, “I started my son, Dylan, on Mighty Connection during the lockdown period as he was lagging behind in English. I was surprised to see how he enjoyed his first lesson and was looking forward to the next one. I love how the teachers are very engaging with the kids and even teach them life values through Bible stories. All these benefits prompted me to introduce Mighty Connection to my friend so that she could enrol her son, Raphael, and soon Dylan’s siblings will be joining too.”

Rather than simply for academic reasons, Zhi Yang believes it is friendship that draws the students. “It is the sense of community that keeps them coming,” he says.

Adds Margaret, “Our teachers are also warm and personable.” She fondly recounts how Zhi Yang cared for a student whose hamster was ill. “He ran out to the shops nearby to purchase some medication for the hamster, and even lent him a book on hamsters!”

The volunteers’ dedication and highly personal attention they give is probably why some students continue to attend despite not being in actual need of English enrichment. “I sometimes wonder why some students even come—their English is already so good!” Margaret laughs. “So I challenge them to do more composition work.”

An opportunity to love thy neighbour

Friendship, care, attention—in short, love—are what sustain Mighty Connection. Love is also what makes the team strive to refine the academic side of their programme—in recent years, besides implementing progress reports, they have kept up with the MOE syllabus with help from primary school teachers.

It was a joy to reap the fruit of their labour when a number of their students joined LHMC’s Youth Ministry after their PSLE.

Mighty Connection shows that there are many ways to fulfil the timeless injunction to ’love thy neighbour’ and these ways are seldom complicated. All that is required for the simple gifts of attention, care and friendship, is our time. What remains to be answered is, how will you and your church create an opportunity to love your neighbour?