Kevin Ng (interviewed by Tan Lay Leng)
My heart was heavy. Just before I started writing this story, my senior pastor had just released a message for us at Grace Assembly of God. Ps Wilson Teo has been tested positive for COVID-19 and warded in the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID). New cases linked to cases from Grace Assembly have also been confirmed. As a result, our church services and activities have been suspended for two weeks till further updates.
“This virus will not defeat us”: Senior Pastor Wilson Teo, Grace Assembly of God
Kevin is not a member of Grace Assembly but he was burdened in his heart when he read of the suspension of our church services. It was in the middle of the night when he was awakened by God, Kevin shared, and received his kingdom assignment. He knew what he had to do.
The next day, with a small team, he worked through the night till wee hours of the morning to put together a website to provide resources for churches as they shift to online video streaming of services and sermons. “Streams of Life”, a name cleverly coined, aims to give churches a series of guides on the available tools for services to continue running online. Based on advisories by the Ministry of Health and other relevant government bodies, “Streams of Life” is equipped with different software, tutorials and infographics to help churches set up live streaming.
God has already well-prepared Kevin himself. He has been working on long-term IT infrastructure projects for the larger church and charity community with the Bible Society of Singapore and Hope Initiative Alliance. The endowed skillsets Kevin possesses now facilitate his kingdom assignments for such a time as this. He sees the need, receives God’s prompting and acts on it.
Then, in his own words, something strange happened.
The system crashed at 8pm, in the middle of the rigorous preparation. He and his team were caught off guard! They had, at most, experienced system crash less than 5% of the time! Why did it happen, of all times, during this critical time? Making a quick decision, they switched to simpler tech-tools since they could not use the ‘powerful’ ones. Kevin candidly explained further, “It’s like we had a dishwasher that broke down and we had to turn to using a scrub.” What an apt analogy as we battled the virus.
Being very clear that this assignment is from God, Kevin and his team activated prayer support. The prayer warriors prayed and God answered their prayers. The system got back its ‘power’.
“Streams of Life” flowed smoothly, although Kevin and his team found sleep only at 4am. When they got back to work, many churches have responded with much gratitude and many questions. Traffic on ‘Streams of Life” was so heavy Kevin and I spoke a brief 10-minute or so and he had to rush off to work again! Generally, the churches were gaining help through this guide. Streams of kingdom partnerships began to flow incessantly and beautifully.
Dear Archippus…
Do we understand the urgency of the times we live in? When we do, do we remain apathetic? Ps Henson writes in his book Alignment Check, “Knowing about something or a situation and not responding in a correct manner is…misalignment. The more we learn about the kingdom of God, the more we are to become aware of where and how we feature in it. When we align more and more with God, we will want to move as Jesus did – with love, with compassion and with purpose.”
Let’s be praying that as His disciples, we will not remain apathetic, distanced or self-absorbed, but instead move on our assignments with certainty, fully convinced that our assignments will contribute to the greater agenda of the kingdom of God.
Go, Archippus!
About Kevin
In his spare time, Kevin likes to read, rock climb, and write poetry! He dreams up crazy business ideas that everyone will throw tomatoes at him for. He’s passionate about walking with entrepreneurs in their journeys and believes that they are extremely masochistic people.
Photo: Kevin (left) with Joshua and Emil