Holy Trinity Asia

  In Malaysia, there is an overuse of a certain word: "relevant." Christians here are so saturated with "relevant" teaching that they've forgotten how to be relevant to God. That's the irony nobody wants to name. Most Malaysian built entire ministries around being relatable, relevant, accessible — and somewhere in the process, we stopped asking whether any of it is relevant to Him - the Holy Almighty God. Part of the problem is entitlement. Not the loud kind, but the quiet kind that seeps into how people expect to be taught. Pastors are expected to speak and teach at the level people are already at, rather than the other way around. People don't work towards the level of the saints. And this isn't only happening in churches. It's happening in educational institutions too. Standards, doctrines, curriculum — all lowered, again and again, so that people don't have to stretch to catch up. Here's the problem with lowering the bar: it never ...

  After so many years of doing ministry, I have learned something that never stops surprising me: people are most responsive when they finally get to learn how to actually read the Bible. Not read about it. Not read around it. Read it — as it is, for what the living word of God wants to say to them. But here is one of the more frustrating moments in teaching the Bible: when those who have been heavily indoctrinated by bad theology. All of us read any texts through lenses. That's simply how reading works — nobody comes to a page neutral. Therefore, if you are wearing the wrong lenses, just like any texts, you will be confused; unable to understand them. When someone has already been shaped by bad theology, they struggle to read the Bible as it is. The broken lens gets in the way of the light. So before anything else, before real growth can happen, real nourishment from the Bible, those who join me have to go through a process of sanctification. Only then can they begin to read t...

Why Must We Follow English Tradition? Why Not Follow Asian Traditions? We Are Asians! This is a question I have heard before, and I understand why. We are Asians. Why, then, do we call ourselves Anglo-Catholic? Why do we hold on to a tradition that came from England, when our faces, our languages, and our ancestors belong to Asia? There is a common but mistaken understanding that Christianity must be tied to local culture — that it must be "flavored" according to where it is planted. Since we are Asians, the thinking goes, we need an Asian Church. It is true that we refuse to be work with local culture? Far from it. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself incarnated into the world, taking on the culture and language of his time, so that he could speak to the people, serve mankind, and lead them into salvation. However, if we read enough history — not only Church history — we will see that we, as human beings, are not immune to error. We hunger for divine revelation, for connection t...

  Malaysia Needs a Western Orthodox Church We are the only Orthodox Christian community actively gathering and praying in Malaysia today toward a Western Orthodox expression of the faith. That sentence alone tends to raise eyebrows. Western Orthodox? Isn't Orthodox supposed to mean Russian, Greek, or some other Eastern European tradition? This is one of the most common confusions we run into, so let's clear it up first. Western Orthodox is not Eastern Orthodox. Eastern Orthodoxy : the Christian tradition that developed primarily through the Greek-speaking world — Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Russia, Greece — with its own liturgy, calendar, and theological vocabulary. Western Orthodoxy : the Christian tradition that developed primarily through the Latin-speaking world — Rome, Gaul, Britain, North Africa — before it was fractured first by schism with the East, and later by the Reformation within the West itself. Both trace themselves to the same source: the Apostl...

St. Aidan of Lindisfarne We are catholics, but not Roman Catholic. Malaysian Christians are mostly disconnected with the historic global Christianity. In a country where Christianity is largely understood through the lens of Roman Catholicism on one side and a broad spectrum of Protestant and Evangelical churches on the other, many are seeking a worship that is rooted in the Bible and in the apostolic roots of the historic Church.  Instead of following a root and tradition that is from the sixteenth century Western Protestant Reformation, there are many seeking something more ancient and original; closer to the early Church. Such reformation Church exists here in Malaysia. It is known as Anglo-Catholicism.  The term comes from:  Anglo : Derived from the word  Angle , the name of a Germanic tribe in the 1st and 2nd century that settled in Britain.  Catholic : Originates from the Greek word katholikos , meaning "universal" or "whole" (from kata "according to...