See their live performance at The TreeHouse.

More photos of their performance.

Snooze @ TeenStreet! – by Crystal Soh

I was expecting the usual “play my keyboard, lead worship and go home”, but God had so much more in store for me in the 4 short days that we were at TeenStreet. The sessions we attended with the teens were short but left deep impressions as I was challenged to recognize and destroy my idols and to look to the Lord and then after to reach out to others. The program team left me humbled as I saw how obedient they were to God in the way they ran the camp. There were also tons of youth ministry tricks to pick up along the way! To me, the best part of the entire camp was really getting to know the youths and hanging out with them during our mini mission trip and captains’ ball match! I discovered my heart for youth ministry as I saw how each of them had so much ahead of them, so much space for someone else to build into their lives, and I was glad that I could be a tiny part of that.

Snooze @ TeenStreet! – by Shernise Khor

‘There is no one like our God’.

With that phrase echoing in my mind, I set off with the 6-member Snooze Band for TeenStreet Malaysia 2009. Four days later, the same lyrics rang through my head, but refreshed with new meaning and a deep sense of awe.

To my surprise, the song was requested by the youth leaders while we were there. It served as a divine reminder from God to me, that indeed there is no one like Him!

I must admit I was having mixed feelings about the trip at the start, being both excited and nervous for what was to come. Thankfully, the time I spent there opened my eyes to the many possibilites that God has in store for everyone who loves Him.

In contrary to the hype and the experience of playing in a band for past Christian camps that I’ve been to, this time round, it was certain groups of people that left a deep and lasting impact on me.

Firstly, never have I met a pastor who would himself mop the basement and our dirty dishes, or seen leaders who served our every need with such genuine enthusiasm. I saw spiritual leaders who really led with their lives and who planned such effective and simple programmes centred on God.

The campers, mostly 12-18 year olds, showed so much passion for God in their worship, that they inspired us to dig deep into our hearts to remember why we worship HimGod.

Another experience which our whole team was impacted by was the visit to a mentally disabled home on the last day of the camp. It was definitely an eye-opener, and a time where we learnt to love with God’s love, simply by offering our presence, touching and spending time with people who have felt so little love from others before.

At the end of the whole trip, it was inevitable for us to feel like celebrities when we were leaving for Singapore, being ‘mobbed’ by the teens with cameras and farewells. However, it was not these moments but the little conversations and moments spent with them that made this trip so worthwhile.

Truly, greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done when we’re serving a God who’s alive and real in our world today. Allah Bangkit! (God is Risen!)

As the principal shared about the various extra curricular activities and programs they had like Moppets (their version of puppetry), magicians’ training and field trips out to developing countries for exposure and to help to develop social enterprises, she was very intentional about encouraging the students to be different, to think out of the box and to get involved in the wider spectrum of school life because life was much more than just studying. All this in line with the event’s theme of “Be The Change You Want To See”. The inspirational speaker, Ian Tan, from Lifeskills Enrichment, went on to share about having passion and purpose in life, amongst other things. So it took very little for us to carry on the theme as we shared about our own journeys in life. I felt it was such a divine appointment because Daniel was Ngee Ann Alumni, quite a few students could identify with Yu Khing who’s a sports psychologist by training and I shared about my own ‘meandering’ journey through corporate world and teaching and then to music ministry. We performed the song, “Unwritten”, with a challenge to the students, “All of us were created to write a story with our lives. What’s the story you will write with yours?” and ended off with “Man In The Mirror” with the encouragement that everything happens for a reason, and so to embrace everything that happens in their lives to the fullest.

As I see these young people as the future pillars of our country, going out to impact our culture and community in their fields of expertise, I think God must really love them to put them in such a nurturing and empowering environment to prepare them for the future. Honestly, I had my own reservations about being involved in this, questioning what kind of ‘ministry’ we could possibly have. But God really opened my eyes to what a privilege it was to play just a small role in speaking into the lives of these precious ones. I’m so glad we did it!

The band in SF

Over 13 days from 22 April 2009, 7Days went to 6 different destinations in San Francisco, California, and shared the Gospel through their gigs with 12 different groups of audiences. They included middle and high school students from Cornerstone Academy, the elderly residents of Golden Heritage Living, as well as youths and adults of various congregations from 4 different local Chinese churches.

All in all, we are grateful for more than 1000 people exposed to the Gospel, out of which 100 indicated they prayed to receive Christ and more than 90 expressed their desire to rededicate their lives to God.

Download their newsletter

Our initial goal of taking part was to provide an avenue for staff and volunteers to have fellowship and fun in making a film while honing our film craft. By God’s grace, we won ‘Best Film’ and ‘Best Directing’!

The prize was an Avid Media Composer software which is an industry standard mobile non-linear editing suite.

Without further ado, here is WAP’s film, produced by Drew and directed by our volunteer Tan Siang Yu.

From March to October 2009, Snooze will be going into Presbyterian High School on four separate occasions, using music, stories, film and even drama to share about what a real relationship with God is like. The first installment of this series was on 11 March, and was received well by the Secondary 3-5s.

Next up is a drama “No one else knows” on 8 (Sec 1-2s) and 9 April (Sec 3-5s), as part of their Religious Emphasis Week. Do pray for the team involved, and for many in the audience to identify with the characters that they see onstage.

Band-leader and vocalist Sharon poured her heart with her very real love stories on stage while her husband Yu Khing accompanied on guitar! As different members told their stories, the evening moved towards a proclamation of how the love of God in Jesus Christ was finally the greatest love story the band members had experienced. Check out the highlight video of the evening.

We were asked to volunteer our answers to this at the opening of Pastor Garry Poole’s seminar on how to reach seekers.

My contribution to the responses: “We feel we have completely different values, so we have nothing to talk about.” Another one I resonated with: “They can’t have a decent conversation without the Christian diverting the topic to God and trying to convert them as if they’re just a project”. “Christians are just so intense all the time, and can’t seem to just relax and be chill.”

We were all nodding in agreement as Garry skillfully surfaced our real concerns. Thankfully he didn’t stop after prodding out the seeming mountain of problems with our ability to connect with those outside the church. I loved that he cast an irresistable vision:
Non-Christians in our city drawn to that rare combination of a safe yet exciting group setting having the liveliest, honest, and AMAZING time. They are freely sharing their thoughts about spiritual matters and being heard and engaged with respectfully by the one or two Christian facilitators who have learned to talk less and listen more, and eventually helping them discover God’s truth for themselves in that group. In a matter of months, members who joined the group as skeptics about Christianity have their ideas changed by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit through the sensitive, loving seeker small-group leader, and commit themselves to trust Christ as the true Lord and Saviour of their lives.

One testimony that struck me was when an older man said in the video interview that he had never found a platform where he could safely ask his questions about the Christian faith. Another woman said she thought she’d not be welcome in a group talking about Christianity just because she was Jewish, and how surprised she was that Christians were willing to have her and hear her views! By the time I heard seeker after seeker testify that, once they’d had the platform to discuss and have their doubts answered and discovered God’s Word about Christ, they became willing to trust in Jesus, I was convinced. I had to change.

You see, I began my experience in evangelism with the organisation that taught me everybody just simply is ready to hear the Four Spiritual Laws if you would trust in the power of the Holy Spirit. Through no fault of the training materials or staff members, I’d caught an imbalanced perspective that all I had to do was focus on the harvest. It didn’t matter if a person wasn’t interested – he simply wasn’t yet ripe, so I’d told myself to just move on and try to find and share with someone else who was.

Tim Downs, in his excellent book “Finding Common Ground” calls this narrow view of evangelism the “harvest mentality”: we just want to be there when people are at the point of decision to trust in Jesus. But what about all the other points before, when they also respond to the Lord, albeit not yet in deciding to follow Christ, but in opening their eyes to one new biblical truth, or put another way, to take one step forward in their journey towards becoming a Christian?

Garry Poole echoed the phrase that many evangelists have come to recognize: “Evangelism is a process”. And that means there will be points in the process when the person is not just about to make the commitment and receive Christ, but the Spirit is nevertheless working to draw him or her to God. Sadly, while most of us believe “seekers matter to God”, we have not learned to discern and respect the timing of the Holy Spirit and the various activity he is working in a person’s life, and be just as willing to get training on effective “sowing” as much as we train ourselves in harvesting.

I need that training on sowing, and God showed me at the seminar. Garry delineated the six steps of his methodology:

1. Catch the Vision
2. Build Strong Bridges
3. Extend Irresistible Invitations
4. Launch the All-Important First Gathering
5. Facilitate Captivating Discussions
6. Maximize the Impact

For me, the all-important deal-breaker was the second step: Build Strong Bridges. Specifically: build strong bridges of trust. How important? He simply said if you haven’t built these bridges, you shouldn’t even try to invite anyone to your group.

If you wanted to chase down the one reason non-Christians avoid Christians, and pin point the one biggest factor, it is in the one word “trust”. People are willing to open up to share when there is trust. Conversely where there is no trust, no amount of compelling argument will win a person to your view.

And there are elements for building trust that I’ve not learnt, or haven’t bothered to practice: I simply didn’t understand and respect this basic law of respect and love! How can I learn to have no agenda, to really mean the things I say, to not broadcast the attitude that what I want (which is their spiritual conversion) has over-arching importance above even their concerns?

There is simply a lot from his teaching. I’ll leave this short report with his first point: learn to develop friendships – genuine, authentic. A friendship that says: you matter to me, whether or not we have the same values, and whether you ultimately become a Christian or not. That means not viewing them as merely projects or targets.

Ultimately, it will have to be the power of the Holy Spirit that enables me to love as he loves, to care about people as God alone truly can. And I believe as we yield to him, asking for help as we say “I’m willing to be changed, Lord so please help me change”, he will.

Our hope of course is that it would encourage you on what God is doing in and through us, and the ministry He’s called us to.