Film / Book Reviews

What does a Christian Creative do with their gift? This is the question that Irrevocable Gifts, a collection of essays by six Christian creative practitioners, addresses. “Creating is making meaning of life,” Dawn Fung writes in the Introduction. “For Christians, the process and fruit are meditative, so much that we often blur the lines between […]

Is anything ever an accident? The Rev Ling Kin Yew, pastor at Fairfield Methodist Church, ponders this question in his book Accident? When Life Takes an Unexpected Turn. One early morning in May 2005, the Rev Ling received a harrowing phone call from his sister, Dawn, who was in Mobile, Alabama in the US. Their […]

Good News for Bruised Reeds Volume II: Mental Health & the Gospel Community Mental Health & the Gospel Community, the second in the Good News for Bruised Reeds series, continues Graceworks’ effort to “[open] up conversations among those who are struggling, those who care for them, and those in the gospel community who want to […]

In this delightful collection of poems, Leong Kwok Thye employs the basic devices of this literary genre—meter, rhyme scheme and imagery—to give eloquent voice to his deepest thoughts about God and the Christian life. The first impression that one gets from perusing the 22 poems in this collection is their simplicity. Their vocabulary is penny-plain […]

Witnessing about Jesus to non-believers can be daunting. After all, one must be prepared to handle the barrage of questions that are sure to follow such an attempt. Even though Jesus Himself commanded us to spread the Gospel across the nations, there still exist ethnic, cultural and social boundaries that may appear to be immovable […]

“The focus of worship is God.” Bishop Emeritus Robert M. Solomon, the author of In Spirit and in Truth, takes pains to remind his readers, again and again, what the focus of worship should be, and what the modern worshipper has often forgotten— that “we should be careful that we do not sacrifice faithfulness to […]

Storytellers have long used anthropomorphic animals as characters in morality tales. Anthropomorphising helps children to identify with what they are reading on a metaphorical level, encourages imagination, and interweaves morals into fantastical plotlines that might not otherwise make sense if the characters were human. And of course, bears are cute. Dr V Gilbert Beers, the […]

While liturgical worship received a boost from interdenominational exchanges during the late 20th century, another shift in worship culture occurred in the opposite direction. The modern “seeker-friendly”, “contemporary” movements downplay the former’s more formal structured style, prolong singing and ministry time, and give prominence to the congregation’s “felt needs”. The Rev Dr Jeffrey A. Truscott […]

Good News for Bruised Reeds derives its title from Isaiah 42:3—“a bruised reed he will not break”. It seeks to encourage friends and family of those with same-sex attraction (SSA) who are seeking God and have likely faced more prejudice and rejection—and burdens of guilt—than most.  At the same time, the book aims to “challenge […]

All of us experience anxiety, feel worried or lose sleep at one time or another.  Scripture exhorts the Christian not to give in to fear and Jesus tells us plainly not to worry. Yet for many of life’s uncertainties, our pain and limited control over outcomes lead to emotional, spiritual and even physical distress. Dr […]

It has been reported that Singapore was bestowed the mantle of being the “Antioch of Asia” by the late Billy Graham, 40 years ago during his crusade held in Singapore. A decade later in 1988, Patrick Johnstone, a well-known researcher in his book The Church Is Bigger Than You Think, cited statistics which showed that […]

There is much that can be said about how music can influence our lives, that it can be deeply uplifting, poignant and more importantly, utterly personal. Thus, when a young Bart Millard wrote I Can Only Imagine following his father’s death from cancer in 1999, he meant it as an outlet to express the loss […]