A Short History of Indigenous Mission in Singapore: With a special Emphasis on Dr. Tan Kok Beng by John S.H. Tay (2010)

During a recent exploratory visit to Singapore, my family and I visited a number of schools and seminaries to explore potential partnerships for our future. Not having any books about Singapore on hand when I left home, I wanted to pick up whatever literature I could to learn more about the country and—even better—about ministries in the country.

I was glad to find several schools with give-away shelves in their libraries, and I grabbed this Short History of Indigenous Mission in Singapore, an introduction to home-grown missions from the small city-state. While it’s written from a unique mix of Charismatic-Mennonite Anglicanism (and thus not my own denominational vein), this uniqueness itself was an education in the veritable stew that is “the Singaporean church.”

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Brief Summary of Indigenous Mission in Singapore

Author John S.H. Tay offers this book as a missions-focused companion to an earlier history of the church in Singapore, In His Good Time by Dr. Bobby E.K. Sng (2003). While that first book was thorough in its treatment of Christian growth in the young nation, it reserved only about 7 pages to missions.

Thus, this book focuses on the missions side of ministry—not the foreign missionaries who came to the country, but the Singaporeans who themselves became burdened for missions and who began the important work of reaching the nations through their own small churches. Leading that charge (and then, in some form or another, every organization mention throughout the book) was Dr. Tan Kok Beng (discussed below).

Tay breaks his book down into chapters covering the five decades between 1960-2009, with a sixth chapter on the history of the church in Singapore and a seventh on Singapore as the Antioch of Asia.

A Little about Dr. Tan Kok Beng

Since I’d never heard of this pioneer pastor before, and since we certainly swim in different theological streams, I don’t have much to report about Dr. Tan. He does share his testimony—saved in 1957 at the age of 17, and committed soon after to serving the Lord with his life (3-6)—and the whole book is about how he’s spent that life steeped in church planting and missions. That’s something worth celebrating, and it makes me think of Paul’s words in Philippians 1:15-18,

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

Although Tan remained somewhat reserved during the Third Wave Movement of the 1970s, he eventually turned charismatic in the 1980s—what he considered the freeing of the church into missions—and he began speaking in tongues in the 1990s (7-9). As of the writing of this book, he had just planted a charismatic-Mennonite church (93-99), something I personally never knew was a thing!

A Few Things I Learned from This Book

Despite my reservations about charismatic history, I did appreciate this broad overview of Christian growth in Singapore and its emphasis on missionary sending. This line from the beginning particularly caught my eye:

The history of Missions is not so much about ‘who did what and when and how’ but it has everything to do with the acts of the Holy Spirit in and through the lives of godly and dedicated individuals who dared to take a step of faith crossing frontiers and thereby take the pride of place as missionary trailblazers. (vii)

I also learned about organizations that I otherwise would never have researched. Some standout organizations include Asia Pacific Mission (APM), Church in Missions Association (CIMA), and Bethany International University (BIU). I appreciated (though can’t completely agree with) the openness of CIMA’s purpose in Singapore, stated thusly:

• To unite the churches in missions endeavor
• To send out Spirit-filled missionaries through the local churches of CIMA
• To encourage even evangelical (traditional) churches to be open to the ministry of the Holy Spirit (through the “Third Wave” Movement) (39)

While it’s great for the global church to pursue unity in missions (and at least on the surface, Singapore appears to do that well), it’s rather uncouth of an organization to seek to change the doctrines of traditional churches who hold to Cessationism (or even soft Cessationism) and to encourage them to accept as divine what we genuinely recognize as pure hokum. I’m not about to go off on the charismatic movement, but if this “Third Wave” were truly of God, then its proponents need only let Him do the convincing. Take Gamaliel’s advice in Acts 5:33-39 and let it all play out.

I also liked this assignment idea APM in the 1990s. It focuses on training locals to train others to reach the unreached peoples of the 10-40 Window:

Asia Pacific Mission (APM)…[brought] Christian leaders from different nations to Singapore for specialized training to train them as international trainers. This entailed that every trainer write a thesis detailing how they would set up a missionary training school upon their graduation in their home country to train fellow nationals. (43-44)

Conclusion

All in all, this was a very informative book about home-grown missions in Singapore and its church history. While it didn’t focus enough on Evangelical, Baptist, or non-denominational mission works that are indigenously Singaporean, I still learned a lot and count myself smarter for having worked through it.

It’s definitely a niche book, but if you’re looking for something in the lines of Asian missions, this might be a helpful read.

©2026 E.T.