One manner in which AYM stays aligned with the larger church community at Agape Methodist Church is through sermons and sermon series. While sermons at AYM have to be highly relevant and topical sermons are youth-oriented, our preaching calendar also incorporates and follows the theme and series from the English Service.
In February and March, we conducted the church-wide Lenten Studies using the same material as provided to the English congregation - Maxie Dunnam’s The Workbook of Living Prayer. Discussions were held during DG sessions, and our youths were able to learn more about prayer and their relationship with God. In April, we also kicked off our Exodus sermon series, in line with the English Service theme for the year. These sermons are expository in nature, and chapters are synced with the English Service so youths do not get confused when they attend Combined Services. This June, we’ve also completed our Outreach theme for 2018.
A pilot initiative in 2018 is to train youth leaders in basic topical and expository preaching. To date, Ms Felicia Tai has delivered a sermon on ‘The Ten Plagues’ from Exodus (expository), and Ms Sarah Ng Sai Wan has shared on ‘Who are you Subscribed to?” (topical), as well as Mr Jake Seah on “Jesus: Friend of Sinners” (expository). More are scheduled for October and November.
Each youth leader has shown tremendous dedication to this learning journey, as they’ve each had between 3-4 meetings with our Youth Staff and Local Preacher, Mr Jeremiah Singh. They were guided sequentially on how to prepare such sermons and each had to submit a script to be vetted for content before taking their place at the pulpit. Well done!