The ‘Antioch of Asia’?

In 1983, Ed Pousson picked up Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World prayer guide and read an entry on Singapore. In it, the Southeast Asian country was described as the ‘Antioch of Asia.’ 

The American missionary and his Malaysian wife, Lai Kheng, had previously lived and served in Malaysia and were planning to make their home there after leaving the mission field. 

Reading about Singapore changed the course of their lives. 

“It was a defining moment for both of us,” Pousson said. “We prayed and decided on the spot that when we returned to Asia, Singapore would be our home.” 

Singapore is the world’s most religiously diverse nation, says the Lausanne Movement’s State of the Great Commission report. Christians make up 17 percent of the population, while 26 percent are Buddhist, 18 percent are Muslim, 8 percent are Hindu, and 6 percent follow a Chinese traditional religion like Daoism (Taoism) or Confucianism, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Christians in Asia are most likely to be familiar with witnessing to their faith in contexts of religious difference,” the Lausanne report also noted.

The nation’s multicultural makeup and its location along major shipping routes are often cited as some of its strengths. It’s easy to draw parallels between Singapore and the biblical Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria—a cosmopolitan, multiracial, and multireligious society that served as a major trading hub and commercial center that connected various cultures, said Pousson. 

The blend of cultural influences from both the East and West has helped Singaporeans to be globally connected and culturally sensitive, said Manik Corea, national director of the Singapore Center for Global Missions. 

These cultural and geographical qualities have also primed Singapore to become a popular missions base for the region. Mission agencies like OMF, OM, and Wycliffe are based there, and believers from surrounding countries go there to study at seminary or attend conferences. 

As the Christian population in the country grew in the 20th century, the number of missionaries sent out also increased. Since 2010, however, missionary-sending activity has plateaued, according to the World Christian Database. 

Singapore’s mission force is slowing down as fewer people take up full-time missions and as missionaries grow older, data from a 2019 National Missions Study of 158 churches shows. 

The prophetic call for the country to be an Antioch of Asia has helped and also hindered mission efforts, said the Singaporean Christian leaders CT interviewed. Many also emphasized an urgent need to boost young believers’ missional mindsets. 

Mythic roots

Regarding Singapore as “the Antioch of Asia” or one of its other iterations—an Antioch of Asia or an Antioch for Asia—has permeated Christian consciousness in the country for decades. 

The prophetic saying is often attributed to Billy Graham, who visited the country for an evangelistic crusade in 1978. Others claim that this was prophesied by David Yonggi Cho, the founder of the world’s largest megachurch in South Korea. 

But no concrete evidence of the phrase’s origins exists. 

“As far as I am concern[ed], I did not hear from Dr. Billy Graham in 1978, between [the] last week of November and mid-December, while he was in Singapore, that Singapore will be ‘the Antioch of Asia,’” said Alfred Yeo, then general secretary of the Singapore Billy Graham Crusade. There were no papers or reports from the event that shared this either, Yeo added. 

Other leaders of the 1978 evangelistic gathering, like then vice chairman of the organizing committee, James Wong, said otherwise, noting that Billy Graham “prophesied that Singapore would be like Antioch in the New Testament, sending missionaries to all of Asia.” 

A Singaporean friend of the Poussons who attended the evangelistic meeting at the National Stadium in 1978 “would swear on a Bible” that he heard Billy Graham utter that prophecy, said Pousson. “That’s the only thing he remembers hearing Billy Graham say.” 

The phrase has been referred to at Christian conferences, written about by renowned local pastor Edmund Chan, and featured in magazine articles (including one published at CT in 2020). 

This idea has become embedded in the psyche of the Singapore church, whether valid or not, said Mark Syn, author of the book On Being the Antioch of Asia: Global Missions and Missions Partnership Through Asian Lenses. 

“Many Singapore Christians and mission leaders I know believe passionately that Singapore carries a divine mandate as God’s ‘Antioch of Asia,’” said Corea, the missions center director. 

“They believe God has called the Church in Singapore to be like the original in the book of Acts: the launchpad of Paul’s many missionary journeys and his original sending base.” 

Corea himself is “not bothered” about who gave Singapore this prophecy but says it matters whether this title has divine sanction and, if so, how Singapore ought to live it out in a way that’s faithful, appropriate, and realistic. 

While Antioch served as a base for Paul’s three missionary journeys, the city was slowly eclipsed by other major cities like Nisibis, Edessa, and Alexandria, which became important missionary-sending places, explained Andrew Peh, lecturer in mission and world religions at Singapore’s Trinity Theological College. 

“This accolade is a little bit self-aggrandizing,” he said. 

A modern marvel 

Apart from being seen as an Antioch of Asia, Singapore has received other accolades over time, ostensibly giving the country an edge when it comes to spreading the Good News and equipping people to do so. 

As “Asia’s wealthiest nation,” Singapore has the second highest per-capita GDP in the world. Christian churches reflect this wealth as well. A survey of more than 2,500 attendees of 24 churches conducted between 2009 and 2011 affirmed another article’s claim that “mainstream church-goers typically come from privileged backgrounds, while mega-church-goers tend to belong to the emerging/new middle class.” 

“Singapore churches are affluent,” Syn agreed. “That certainly has helped with funding missions.”

The nation’s multicultural society has often been seen as another advantage for mission work. Chinese people make up three quarters of the country’s population of about 5.92 million, while Malays are the next largest and Indians the third. 

Growing up in Singapore with an awareness of the need to respect and live harmoniously with people of different cultures and religions was helpful in his cross-cultural mission endeavors, says Corea. 

While serving at a church plant in England’s East Anglia, Corea pioneered an international student ministry at a university. “Personally, I found it easy to befriend international people and to get along with people, despite their different mannerisms, customs, religions and perspectives,” he said. 

He was also able to adapt well to a different culture when he served with his wife in Thailand for 13 years. 

Yet Corea doesn’t think Singapore’s multiculturalism is always beneficial, because there is a propensity to create ethnic enclaves, especially as the majority of people—and Christians—are ethnically Chinese. 

“It is possible—and I have witnessed it—for people to live within almost wholly Chinese communities, go to Chinese schools or churches, and not have friends outside their own ethnic grouping,” he said. 

In Corea’s view, Singaporean Chinese Christians do well as missionaries in nontraditional roles like community development, business as missions, or tentmaking. “Singaporean Chinese are typically pragmatic, goal- and crisis-oriented, good at business in general, and [good] at organizing things in a focused way,” he said. 

And while the country is as multicultural as it is global, its current approach to missions is “fairly parochial,” as many Singaporean believers tend to focus on serving within Asia, says Syn. 

“They say, ‘Oh, we can fly anywhere in Asia within seven or eight hours,’” Syn shared. “I would love it to grow up in that respect. … I would love to see Singaporean missionaries going to Europe and Africa in larger numbers than they are.” 

Singapore has the most powerful passport in the world, granting its citizens visa-free access to 195 countries. 

“Our passport gives us access to so many parts of the world, more than most countries,” said Ng Zhiwen, a pastor who leads transdenominational missions movement Antioch 21. “If we are not participating in God’s mission, then we will not be found to be a faithful steward of all that God has blessed us with.

“We believe that we have been blessed to be a blessing to the nations, in the spirit of Antioch.” 

A galvanizing force

Like Ng, many of the leaders CT interviewed say that conceiving of Singapore as an Antioch of Asia has served as a good rallying call for the church, despite its puzzling origins and potential for developing hubris. 

The gospel arrived in Singapore in the 1800s through British missionaries from the London Missionary Society. In the early 20th century, fiery Chinese evangelist John Song’s preaching in the country stirred up a nationwide revival, and by 1938, Christians comprised 11.1 percent of the population. 

The 1970s saw the birth of the charismatic movement in Singapore alongside the growth of evangelical presence in the country.

“The Graham Crusade was really the peak [of evangelical fervor],” said then honorary chairman of the event, Benjamin Chew. “I definitely see a greater evangelical influence in Singapore in the ’80s.”

Still, the first local missionaries from Singapore were sent more than a decade before Billy Graham landed on its tropical shores. 

In 1965, the year the country became an independent republic, Singaporean believers Kate Cheah and Tan Kai Kiat each left for Hong Kong on separate missions. Cheah served refugees in the notorious walled city of Kowloon, while Tan ran a medical mission there for a year, said Ng. 

More recently, other Christian leaders have advanced Singapore’s prophetic calling. 

The Antioch 21 movement, which Ng now leads, was founded by Rick Seaward in 2003 to encourage the country to live out its calling as Antioch of Asia.

“I believe that Singapore is supposed to be an Antioch of Antiochs,” Seaward wrote in an article for local Christian publication Salt&Light in 2018. “We are called to challenge other cities and nations to be Antiochs.”

The movement was relaunched in 2021 and led by Joseph Chean, former YWAM Singapore national director. He gathered pastors and leaders in the marketplace, education, health care, and mission agencies to pray and seek the Holy Spirit’s leadership in guiding the Singapore church, and he also established a sub-movement, Joshua 21, to mobilize believers aged 40 and below to go to the unreached, said his wife, Kim Chean. 

Seaward and Chean died in separate car accidents: the former in Três Pontas, Brazil, in 2018 and the latter in Istanbul last year. But their vision for Singapore as an active missionary-sending base persists through the Antioch 21 movement, which declared 2023 to 2033 “the decade of missions.” The hope is to raise up a new generation of workers to go to the least reached places of Asia and beyond, said Ng.

“In the 1990s, the church of Singapore was one of the top mission-sending churches in the world,” Ng said. “Back then, there were 300-plus churches. Today, the number of churches has easily doubled.” 

Ng’s main goal is to foster relationships among different churches and parachurch organizations to fulfill the Great Commission. 

There are a lot more independent megachurches now, and not all of them are regularly engaged in missions, he said. The upcoming Antioch Summit in October, which aims to embolden believers to become “an Antioch to the nations,” has 600 sign-ups so far, said Ng.

Other ongoing nationwide movements like LoveSingapore have also placed a strong emphasis on Singapore’s role as an Antioch church. In a video prayer devotional released last year, Jeremy Seaward, pastor of Victory Family Center and Rick Seaward’s son, highlighted the importance of having an Antioch spirit. He referred to Acts 13:2–3, where Barnabas and Saul were set apart for God’s work. 

The Antioch church’s example here is instructive for Singapore, says Corea. 

“The struggle is for Singapore churches to realize our gift may be to give away the best of what we have for the sake of new, greater centers and movements of God happening in places other than home.” 

Missing the mark? 

Several key trends, however, have placed Singapore’s prophetic role as Antioch of Asia on shaky ground. 

One such trend is the aging missionary population, which is also noticeable in other countries like South Korea. Fewer than 1 in 5 career missionaries in Singapore are under 40 years old, and more than 1 in 3 are 60 and above, according to the 2019 National Missions Study. 

Another trend is a decline in long-term sending and a rise in short-term missions. “The notion of being a ‘career missionary’ is virtually nonexistent now,” said Syn, the author. 

Singapore’s requirement for its men to enlist in mandatory military service when they turn 18 may well affect the duration of time spent in the mission field. 

Missionaries often choose to return to the country to fulfill these obligations. Those who serve abroad are often required to place a bond of at least $75,000 SGD (around $58,000 USD) with the government when their son turns 13 years old if they intend to stay overseas for two years or more, says Corea, whose family returned to Singapore from Thailand when his son was that age.

Other leaders are less convinced of the detrimental impact that mandatory conscription might cause. “It’s hard to say, because the majority of our mission workers are female,” Ng said. 

Young Singaporean Christians, meanwhile, may be less inclined to embark on longer-term missionary work because “they lack strong convictions about the lostness of people without Christ” or don’t want their children to miss out on Singapore’s excellent education system, said Lai Kheng Pousson. 

Some families are bucking the trend. Chean’s daughters, 19-year-old Ashley and 21-year-old Olivia, are open to becoming long-term missionaries. 

Ashley visited 14 countries, including Macedonia, Kosovo, and Lebanon, this year while attending YWAM’s discipleship training school, and Olivia will enter the same program when she completes her studies. 

“Missions is certainly in the hearts of the girls and myself,” said Chean. “They see the benefit of setting aside time to focus on growing as a disciple.” 

Yet one danger with the popularity of short-term mission trips is that missionaries may be “cultural novices [who] repeat the ethnocentric, imperialistic mistakes of the past,” Syn said.

Singapore’s enjoyment of religious freedom has led many missionaries to share the gospel in other cultures without recognizing or understanding the religious dynamics and composition of the people there, added Peh, the lecturer. 

Many short-term mission trips also do not go to unreached people groups (UPGs) but tend to focus on visiting existing ministries or adopting projects in other countries, said Syn. 

Findings from the 2019 study reflect this trend as well. “More than 60% of churches are not engaged in UPG work, and there has been limited take up of such work over the last 6 years,” researchers from the National Missions Study wrote. 

To some leaders, the history of how the Singapore church was founded is precisely why the need to boost mission efforts across the country is critical. 

“We were once an unreached nation, and it’s our privilege to pay it forward by also continuing the work to go to the unreached,” said Ng, the Antioch 21 movement leader. 

The Poussons, who are in their 70s, continue to pray, preach, teach, and write in Singapore. They hope to inspire young believers to “take up the Antioch challenge [and] be like Paul: strong in spirit, strategic in thinking, sacrificial in lifestyle, and servant in posture.” 

“We love Singapore,” they affirmed. “This miracle of God is blessed to be a blessing. To whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48).

“This little red dot [a moniker for Singapore’s depiction on a world map] has a big responsibility to go bless the nations through Good News and good works.”

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