Rev. Charles Chua from the Presbyterian Church in Singapore is a Partner in Mission currently serving with the Presbyterian Church of Wales in Swansea. On a recent trip to Singapore, he stopped by the CWM office where he spoke to us about his work in Wales.
In these past 12 years, Rev. Chua has seen the 2 chapels (one in the city and one in the suburbs) he has been working with evolve and grow. In particular, the Tabernacle chapel has grown from about 8 members (mostly the elderly) to a vibrant space where the community has made the chapel their home in many ways. Rev. Chua says that credit for this goes to Timothy Hodgins and his wife, a young couple on the Mission Support Programme, whom he is mentoring and who have played a big part in bringing the local community back to the church. With activities like “Coffee morning” every Friday where locals gather to chat over coffee and sandwiches or the Monthly family service, Rev. Chua says he can “see God’s sovereign work” in the chapel.
At the moment the chapel is raising funds to extend the building so that there is space to make it an effective community mission centre. On learnings he is bringing back to his home church in Singapore, Rev. Chua said that the “churches in the West are also mission fields”. He noted that we often forget that people need to be drawn into the church – we cannot simply assume they will just come, and so there is a lot of work that is being done and needs to continue being done in the churches in the West.