The unofficial launch of the Synod Youth Ministry blog

Greetings in the name of our Lord, on behalf of the Synod Youth Council, I welcome you to our Synod Youth Ministry blog! We have 16 contributors, mostly in pastoral (youth) ministry, some as lay-leaders, and a youth from my home church, Jubilee Church. We are all amatuers here in the blog world. We are no Mr Brown here! So, we do beg your pardon if things are not as professional. I will leave each contributor to introduce themselves.

This is a blog about events and life in the Synod Youth Ministry. The Synod of the Presbyterian Church in Singapore (PCS) is the collective body of about 35-40 Presbyterian congregations in Singapore (not counting the Bible Presbyterians churches nor independent Presbyterian chuches). We hope to use this opportunity to share about the news and updates in the Synod Youth Ministry, provide a platform for healthy discussions on youth (or non-youth) related issues.

The Synod is the head-quarter of the Presbyterian Church in Singapore. We have only 4 full-time stuff here at the Synod. Elder Richard Chong (Prinsep Street PC) is the Executive Secretary of PCS, Deacon Goh Huey Huey (Chen-Li PC) is the administration assistant to Eld Chong, Sister Bao Hui is the administrative assistant of the Chinese Presbytery, and I am the Synod Youth Executive.

Technically, the Synod is not a church in the common sense of the word (even though we have an Elder, a Deacon, a young Preacher, and one lay- member). The Synod does not have a congregation, although Maranatha Presbyterian Church uses our compound for their service on Sunday regularly.

For my "first" post, I would like to share the good news that the Synod Ex-Co has just recently accepted Jubilee Church's (my home church) nomination for me to be confirmed as preacher of the Chinese Presbytery. Usually, new preachers begin their pastoral ministry at a local church for a year as preacher-on-trial, or probational preacher before they are confirmed as official preachers, but as i was serving at the Synod, the current constitution does not provide for this adjustment. So i had to wait for a year for the Synod committees to sort out this matter. My was a special case, and they back-dated my preacher-on-trial status to the day i started work at the Synod, on 1 Feb 2005. I will need to say my preacher vows in Mandarin at the next CP meeting in April. And so, in Rev. May Tan's words, "I was a probational preacher for a year without knowing it!" :)