Recap of Members' Meeting (10 November 2024)
We held our Members’ Meeting on 10 November 2024, the agenda was rather full. We voted on the re-election of our elders and various members’ matters. Our elders also presented our church’s priorities that were reflected in the Budget for 2025 and took questions. We also heard of various updates about our life together as a church.
We held the last Members’ Meeting of 2024 on 10 November. Elder Gerald chaired the meeting and opened with a prayer committing the meeting to God.
English Congregational Meeting: Re-election of elders
With a packed room, the first official business was to hold the English Congregational Meeting for the re-election of Pastor Oliver and Elder Gerald. Members had asked questions of these candidates at the prior Q&A on 3 November, thus the meeting proceeded with voting by ballot.
Membership Matters
As votes were being counted, Pastor Jeremy led the next section on membership matters. Before he introduced the new members, Pastor Jeremy reminded us that our members’ meetings are our expression of biblical polity. He said that the recent EQUIP sessions on Baptist polity were a good resource for members interested in finding out more.
Ultimately, Jesus is the head of the church. All our decisions should be made under His leadership with the goal of pleasing Him. While God has given churches leaders as undershepherds to care for His flock and deacons to serve to meet practical needs within the church, members are to work together to safeguard practical gospel witness.
What does this mean practically? At GBC, we practise elder-led congregationalism. Our elders lead members who are believers that understand the gospel and are committed to obeying God’s Word. Members play an active role as meaningful members in the local church. This is shown in the receiving and seeing out of members, which the congregation does by vote. More than just administration, this is how we practically commit to the spiritual good of others in the church.
At the meeting, various elders who interviewed potential candidates came up to share how each candidate was converted and sought, and seeks to join GBC. Members could also ask any questions they had, and if there were none, members voted to affirm and welcome them into the membership. Two candidates joined us by baptism – Han and Timothy – four by transfer – Themreiso, Darius, Simone, Caleb, and two by statement – Roy and Pauline.
Pastor Jeremy led members to affirm that these brothers and sisters have, along with us, repented of their sins and believed in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. GBC members, too, commit to walk with them in Christlike love and unity, for our mutual encouragement and for building up the body of Christ. With the new members, we recited the Members’ Covenant together.
Pastor Jeremy also updated the church about members who were transferring out including their reason for their transfer, as well as the church they were transferred to. Members then voted to affirm their transfer. This is an important part of our church life too, as we have committed in our Covenant to “when we move from this place, join another Gospel-preaching church where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant and the principles of God’s Word”.
Finally, Pastor Jeremy shared a list of members who have not been attending for the past year or so. This was also shared at the previous meeting. He urged members to reach out to them if they knew them and to update the elders if they had any information on their well-being. While not shared here online, members may reach out to any elder or write to the church office to find out more. Let us continue to pray for our non-attending members that God will grant us opportunities to do spiritual good to them.
Budget Update
Next, Pastor Oliver and Elder Chuan-Xin took us through an important part of our church life – the budget. This meeting also served as time of Q&A about 2025’s budget ahead of the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) on 17 November.
Pastor Oliver first shared the priorities of the 2025 budget, which was to be voted on at the EGM the following week. This took a sizeable amount of time as our elders hope members recognise the priorities of the budget, why and how we hope to steward our resources.
As a church, we have two main priorities – build up this local body at GBC, and also seek to grow healthy churches.
Build up GBC
Building up GBC has been our constant goal, as we have been adhering to 8 aspirations under the categories of gospel, gather, grow and go. Specifically, we will be focusing on:
Gospel – Preaching, EQUIP, Children, Youth
Gather – Hospitality, Church Camp, Member Care
Grow – New leaders, women’s min, Counselling
Go – Outreach to neighbours, elderly; Missions
Gospel
We want to see the growth and advance of the gospel at GBC. This means the ministry of the Word from the pulpit as we teach and preach every Sunday. It also involves keeping up Christian education through EQUIP, as we equip and apply the Scriptures in all of life to Christians of all maturity levels.
Our Children’s Ministry has also seen significant growth. We only had 40 children when we first brought on a part-time ministry worker, but we now have 130 children on Sundays. Thus, we see the need for a full-time ministry worker, who also ministers actively to parents through platforms like Mums Connect. On a related note, our Youth Ministry is expected to see an increase in size as our children get older. In 2025, the team is increasing youth activities in order to better share the gospel with and disciple our youths. One such activity would be gathering after Sunday worship to discuss the sermons.
Gather
We want to make our gathering at church edifying for all. Through the work of our hospitality team and the way we receive new members, 50 new members joined us in the first 9 months of 2024. Plans to step up and double our coffee and tea for Sunday morning are underway.
In 2025, we will hold our Church Camp from 4 to 7 June. We aim for 300 campers to attend, including missionaries, who will return for this.
Our Member Care ministry is also exploring new ways to reach out to those who are shut in and unable to attend our gatherings.
Grow
We pray for God to keep growing GBC. To raise new leaders, we will expand our traineeship from 5 months to 10 months for deeper development. Our resources should be used to develop ministry workers more deliberately to raise up more gospel labourers. We also hope to train up new lay leaders to lead CGs.
The Women’s Ministry is another important area. We seek to help the sisters to grow a culture of discipleship among themselves.
The need to invest in counselling, including equipping members with skills to help each other, is growing. We are working towards establishing a fuller counselling ministry.
Go
Finally, as we go with the gospel, we will step up partnerships with neighbouring groups to reach our neighbourhood, especially migrant workers and elderly groups. We will also host, for the first time, a missions team from The Master’s Academy International in the USA to Singapore.
We are also going to regularise support for three new mission partners who will become GBC's supported missionaries. We hope to be able to send more from among us for missions.
Grow healthy churches in Singapore and beyond
Our second priority is to grow healthy churches in Singapore and beyond.
To do this, we want to strengthen other churches. Our pastors meet monthly with other pastors for encouragement, and through that, we have established networks with other like-minded partners. Acts Baptist (where Pastor Oliver previously spent 6 months at) and Covenant Baptist are based in Singapore, and we have had the opportunity to support them practically, and we intend to keep this up.
Beyond Singapore, we partner with Bangkok City Baptist Church (BCBC) and also a church in East Asia. With these partnerships, we have sent workers to intern and grow from ministry abroad. BCBC also helped us run the recent Weekender in September 2024 through which we encouraged and trained around 40 or so pastors in practical ministry. In 2025, other conferences, like Healthy Churches Asia, are good ways for us to also help encourage and train pastors for gospel work. We want to be able to resource these partnerships so that we are involved in work beyond our own church.
Given how God has grown us, our hopes to plant a church in Singapore are of particular interest. For 2025, we seek the congregation’s support to earmark resources for this. We intend to bring on a pastor specifically for church planting, and we pray for God to provide the right candidate. This desire is reflected in our 2025 budget so we can realise these planting plans.
Members were given time to clarify and ask any questions that they might have. Various members took the opportunity to do so!
Looking Ahead
After the Q&A, Elder Gerald shared some of the plans for the next few months. As we seek to grow in the Word, we will spend four weeks in 2 Thessalonians. In December, we will also have a four-week series titled “Life’s Big Questions,” which is also evangelistic in nature.
In January, we will have a short series in 2 and 3 John titled “Together in the Truth” before spending the rest of the first quarter of 2025 in the book of John in our series “Behold the Lamb”.
There are also a number of upcoming events for our participation.
Christmas Eve Service (24 Dec, 8pm)
Watchnight Service (31 Dec, 8pm)
Church Camp (4-7 June 2025) will be held at Le Grandeur at Palm Resort Johor. The theme is “Community on Mission”, and Ian Buntain will be our speaker! More details, including registration, will be provided soon.
Finally, Elder Gerald updated the church about some staffing changes. Church member Nicholas Quek will join our staff as a Ministry Worker in January 2025. Nicholas is currently serving as a lay deacon with the Young Adults ministry, and more details about his full-time role will be given soon.
Results of Election of Elders
Members were also updated about the results of the earlier voting. We thank God that the members voted in favour of the re-election of Pastor Oliver and Elder Gerald.
Closing Prayer
Our newly re-elected elder, Gerald, closed this busy meeting, and led the church to commit all our plans to our God, who has been so good and faithful to us.
Members, let us continue to keep these plans in prayer. Let us also continue to pray that God will continue to sustain and grow us in the gospel and enlarge our love for one another, and even for those outside of GBC.
If you have any questions about any part of this meeting, we encourage you to speak with our elders in person, or you can also write to them at info@gracebaptistchurch.sg.