By Joel Choong
On 6 April 2024, Singapore Youth for Christ (SYFC) held its annual Project Serve Commencement. It was a celebration with supporters, friends, and family to mark the project servants’ completion of their internship term and more importantly, the beginning of their continual walk with the Lord in His service as they move on to their next station in life.
Project Serve is SYFC’s version of ministry internship. Young people are trained in gospel foundations for evangelism and join the full-time staff to meet and reach other young people. Each ministry has a slightly different twist as to what its project servants are exposed to daily.
Project servants from the Secondary School and Junior College ministry (SJM) join and lead LIFE groups, and plan events.
ITE Ministry’s LITE group members serve during their term breaks. They publicise evangelistic events like Gamers Connect, inviting new gamers and learning to share the gospel with them.
Polytechnic Ministry’s grad servants (Polytechnic graduates who join the Ministry’s version of Grad Serve) are engaged in outreach work in different campuses, and run evangelism equipping events for volunteers and students.
At the same time, EDGE Ministry has its project servants honing their skills in the arts or sports, so as to better engage and relate with ‘fringe’ young people.
While some of these approaches may sound fun, project servants are constantly synthesising biblical truths and ideas, and learning to apply them into everyday life in this postmodern world. For many, it is a personal shift from being Sunday Christians to being living sacrifices for God’s work. These changes are best explained by those who see them at their best and worst – their parents.
Gloria Lim serves with SJM and her mum, Helen Lee shares with gratitude to the Lord: “Gloria has grown bolder and more courageous as a Christian. Her personal walk has deepened, and she hopes her younger brothers will go for Project Serve soon.” She also observes that while Gloria’s friends were earning a lot more money in other jobs in the first three months of the year, Gloria was willing to give that up to serve God. In Helen’s eyes, Gloria is rewarded with deepened friendships with likeminded Christians who were set on youth evangelism.
While many grad servants already had first-hand experiences in planning and organising PEP (Prayer Evangelism Partnership) groups as students, Nat Ng had been stagnant in his faith and did not participate in PEP while in polytechnic. Yet full-time staff Kok Ting Han, who supervised Nat during Grad Serve, observes that through this exposure, “Nat is more aware of where he is lacking, and where he wants to grow in his faith. Realising he is a bit passive in his faith, he is willing to work with us on his spiritual growth.” Nat shared with Ting Hai that he is spurred on by the examples of the staff. Ting Han hopes that Nat will one day own his spiritual growth and in turn, spur on younger Christians within his spheres of influence.
The opportunity to witness growth and transformation in Christian teens is a joy especially for those journeying with them as they grow up. Zhou Hongguo, SJM staff and Elias Kwan’s secondary school LIFE Group leader, shares that “after joining Project Serve, Elias is able to handle God’s Word better and has grown closer in his walk with God.” Rev Kwan Kin Seng also affirms how his son has “grown in his love for the Word” since joining Project Serve.
Like Ting Han, the rest of us in SYFC, hope that all project servants will live out the gospel wherever they are, throughout their lives. May the Project Serve motto of “Hearing, Following, and Proclaiming Jesus” guide them as they serve with us, and as brightly shining Christians to the world around them.
