CNY @ Windsor & Holy Trinity Brompton

Windsor castle. One of residences of the Queen of England. It's a real shame that I can't post any photos of the inside of the castle, as photography was not allowed. It is really quite an eye opener to the life of royalty. You should go visit if you get a chance.

The highlight of the weekend though is the Reunion Dinner that we had at St Georges University in south London. It was a real pleasure to have been hosted by Jayden, a Singaporean studying medicine there & his friends. The feast included *deep breath* roast pork, delicious duck from Four Seasons, dumplings, fried rice, chow mien, chicken drumsticks, chop suey, tang yuan, salmon pastry, fish balls, topped off with banana ice cream crepe :) It was a lovely evening spent with HKers, Canadians, an Englishman, a Korean and my fellow Singaporeans. We rounded the night with a game of HK vs Canada vs S'pore mahjong.

With the 11 of us from Bath cramming into Jayden's apartment for the night, it really was a squeeze but amazingly we did it. I had a chance to catch up with Daniel (who happened to be in London) & his friend Charles on Sun morning. We visited Holy Trinity Brompton, the church which started the Alpha Course, pastored by Nicky Gumbel. The morning worship was led by Tim Hughes :)

I must say that save for the worship (which was good) & the church building, I was surprised by how different the service turned out. I'll try to sound as neutral as possible here. It was the first service ever that I attended that did not have a sermon. No lesson from the Word of God at all.

Perhaps today might be an exception, being Valentine's Day, Ps Gumbel did a "talk show interview" with Nicky & Sila Lee, authors of the bestselling "Marriage Book". Much of the questions centred on what made a relationship work, and how Christians could keep their marriage pure in a world of broken relationships & sexual pressures. Topics like communication, patience, intentionally making time for each other etc. wer brought up. The session was rounded off with a prayer invitation for couples.

Honestly, today's 'sermon' did feel like a Focus on the Family workshop more than anything else. Granted, it was very insightful & the congregation probably does need sth like that at this point of time. I do question the extent to which a church should go to being "relevant to the world" & perhaps omitting the Word of God might be pushing it a bit too far. Then again, today could have been the exception rather than the norm, so forgive me if i'm mistaken. I'm not in any position to make a fair judgement. Just that, yes I did leave HTB feeling a tad disappointed.

Back to CNY...Dan, Charles & I had the most marvelous Chinese char siew roast pork rice ever for lunch. I haven't found anything close to this in Singapore. A real morale booster for the week ahead!