50 Years of God's Faithfulness

I seldom write much about my church in this blog.. maybe it's such a regular part of my life that it seems just normal..

But this I have to blog. Because this weekend, we celebrated FBC's 50th anniversary in a grand way - with the theme `Celebrating God's Faithfulness'. (Yep, my church is older than Malaysia by two months ;) )

Having been worshipping at this church since I graduated and a member since 1993, it's like an extended family of mine so naturally I feel very much a part of the celebration of this family turning big 5-0 and commemorates its Golden Jubilee!

On Friday, we had a grand formal dinner at the Sime Darby Convention Centre whereby close to 1,000 people attended!

The hall was decorated with many white and gold balloons - very festive feel indeed :) Our peer group has already bought 3 tables so we were seated among friends. Among familiar faces were also many guests - including our former pastors and para-church leaders etc..

We started off with a time of singing - the songs were the nostalgic type from the 70s! ;) The program included slide presentation from the past (albeit poor quality on our screen), a few testimonies by the more `mature' church members, a short message and in between, we had vocal and violin performances. And of course, food in the form of a 8-course Chinese dinner.

As the evening progressed, some of us including myself decided to socialise and made our ways to other tables to mingle around.. Somehow the photos I took were all with girls!! Guess we looked prettier when dressed up than the guys ;)




It was indeed a memorable and a nostalgic evening - and many hearts were filled with thanksgiving. A particular moving moment was when a sister paid tribute to all the past and present pastors by recognising each of them on stage.. and they rightly deserved a standing ovation from all! I had to sneak my way closer to the stage and managed to snap this not very good pix.



The next day, we had a special anniversary worship service in the afternoon in church. For me personally, it was the starting of a busy time! I rejoined the church choir a month ago to participate in singing for the anniversary and we had been working quite hard. And a week ago, I was asked to help to lead worship in songs for the service! By God's grace, I managed to gather a team quite fast and had our practice only on that morning itself.. indeed, it's an honour to be able to serve in this way during such a momentous occasion..

But... was so busy that I didn't get a chance to take any photo that afternoon!

The service began with the choir presenting two songs: our theme song `Great is Thy Faithfulness' and a song written by a former pastor of our church entitled `In Him'. It was a lovely song with deep and meaningful lyrics.. however the tune and timing were really difficult to sing! And although we spent so much time learning and practising it, unfortunately the result was still less than desired.. but I guess we've tried our best..

The congregation also had a good time of worshipping the Lord together, giving praises and glory to His name in one voice.. It was such a joy to see a group of older members presenting us `Voices of the 60s' with a medley of upbeat songs. We had a charismatic and great speaker, who gave us the message that again pointed to the faithfulness of God. The service then culminated with a hi-tea.

The celebration continued to Sunday's worship services. The choir was to sing in both Subang and Pantai centres. Incidentally, a few of us from the choir also belonged to a small a capella group and we had been practising a song for while to present on this Sunday too!

To me, it was the most challenging part because we had to be in Subang by 7:30am! I got up at 6:20am - a time closer to my normal sleeping time than waking time! But praise God, the singing went well early in morning even..

Here is a photo taken during a break between 1st and 2nd service - showing some choir members in our `uniform' - light blue top and gold scarf.



I also signed the Church Covenant today - it is to express the nature of a member's relationship with the church. Something new to me but apparently it was practiced in the church in her early days and now reintroduced.

We're indeed blessed by the many committed members who have served the church tirelessly over the years... and remembering the first batch of overseas missionaries and local people who formed this church 50 years ago. But above all, as reminded by our theme, it is God alone who has been faithful to us and preserved this church for His purpose..

And with that we are humbled.. Like the sermon preached this morning, lets move forward - by striving to love Him, obey Him and serve Him more and more in our lives...