Week 3 - WMC

I missed a couple of days.. I guess it will become like that once I get busier again. Ah well, expected.

This week's visit was to Wesley Methodist Church. Unlike the prior two, I went for two services; the pretty much newly started TSS (The Saturday Service, official name, srsly!), and a traditional service on Sunday morning at 9.30am.

One strong takeaway - They are magnificent timekeepers! I didn't quite notice the ending time for the Sunday service, but it was definitely around 1.5 hours; TSS was 1.5 hours flat, give or take 5 minutes. At TSS, they even had a small timer at the bottom right of the screen! I'm not sure how intentional that was, but they really kept to it.

Sermon was a quick 20 minutes; short, concise, and to the point. More on it in a bit.

Alicia was my host on Saturday, wonderful dear even brought an umbrella to me because I was sheltering in the nearby SMU campus due to the torrential rain. So sweet la. Risheng was also there, so they were pretty much the main people I spoke to after the service. That was really a God-send IMO, WMC young adults largely resembles GMC, albeit on a larger scale; everyone was friendly with the people they knew, but not anyone else. Eh. Anyhow it is good to know Risheng was part of the TSS team, good on you mate!

Sunday was a quick in and out affair. Traditional services in Wesley are very well attended, and I guess, reminiscent of our 9am service, fairly stagnant newcomer wise. I have to admit this was the first time I did not identify myself as someone new... it felt a little too intimidating.

It felt good to sing hymns once again. I didn't know half of them of course, but hymns are pretty easy singing. This was also probably also the most liturgical service I've ever been for, which was a good and insightful experience. A lot more singing and a lot less preaching than I expected though. Still, a refreshing experience.

TSS's sermon was on the Holy Spirit, in particular, His fruit. We were all given a card on which to write down on aspect of this fruit we wanted to grow further in our lives; I drew a heart on mine. Rev Melvin's drive on the topic was that the fruit of the Holy Spirit was essential in dealing with our sinful nature, and how we grow this fruit, in particular, through spiritual disciplines.

Pruning and Nurturing our personal spiritual "trees" are both important, and these take the forms of various spiritual disciplines, like fasting, confession, worship, and celebration, just to name a few. It was around here that the sermon ended, to be continued the next week I suppose. It really felt quite short at 20 minutes!

Interestingly enough, the Sunday service followed the same theme, but started on defining the aspects of the fruit in turn, and yes, we started with Love. How appropriate. Heh. I'm just going to type out my notes for the sermon, its quite short.

Love is the measure and goal of Christians. We are freed from the law in order to subject ourselves to one another. Love is an inner quality expressed as an outer attitude to another, in that we serve and place the interests of another before our own. This is not based on anything but a matter of choice, as God first loved us. Just as Jesus humbled himself in love, and gave Himself for us, so we have an example to live by and strive for.

Something to pray about, to work out, in my own life, in the coming months.