In Singapore, churches mainly worship in 2 different languages, English Language and Chinese Language. For example, in the Presbyterian denomination, it comprises the English Presbytery and Chinese Presbytery. I am now attending a Chinese congregation church. I realised some of the potential challenges that the Chinese congregation church might face in the future; hence would like to take this opportunity to discuss about it.
Figure 1 Preferred Spoken Language At Home among Chinese Ethnicity – Ratio between Christians and Non-Christians[1]
The Need
Figure 1 shows the ratio between Christians and Non-Christians among the Chinese ethnicity community with their preferred spoken language at home, in English, Mandarin and dialect in Year 2010. The blue bar represents the number of Christians and the red bar represents the number of non-Christians. In Figure 1, it is shown that the ratio between Christians and Non-Christians with English as their preferred spoken language is about 1:1.6; while there is a huge ratio between the Christians and Non-Christians with Mandarin as their preferred spoken language is about 1:9 and dialect as their preferred spoken language is about 1:7! There is a great need for Mandarin-speaking Christians to reach out to the Mandarin speaking community, with 1 Christian reaching out to 9 non-Christians. This suggests that much work can be done in the Mandarin speaking community.
After understanding the needs of the Mandarin-speaking Christians, there are some challenges that we may face.
Figure 2 Dominant Home Languages of Singaporean Chinese Primary-1 Students (1980 to 2009)[2]
Figure 2 shows the dominant home language of our young Primary 1 students from year 1980 to 2009. Initially, there is a steady increase in number of Primary 1 students who speaks Mandarin as their dominant home language in 1980. This may be due to the Speak Mandarin Campaign initiated by our late Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew in 1979[3]. However, the statistic showed us the downward trend from the late 1980s for Primary 1 students who identified themselves having Mandarin Language as their dominant home language. With this downward trend, in contrary, there is an upward trend for Primary 1 students who identified themselves having English Language as their dominant home language.
With English being the dominant home language for our younger generation, this may pose a worrying situation for the next generation of Singaporean Chinese not being able to read, speak and communicate in Mandarin. Therefore, our future Singapore society may face with possible issue of Mandarin illiteracy if this downward trend continues. How is this going to affect the Chinese congregation churches in Singapore in the future, where the congregations have their Sunday services and other church activities organized in Mandarin?
Christians worshipping in the Chinese congregation may have seen this situation where the younger generation (or second generation Christians, accompanying parents who are also worshipping in a Chinese congregation church) struggling with the worship and sermon as it is conducted in Mandarin during Sunday services. They may not understand the hymns and worship songs during worship, as well as the sermon which is also preached in Mandarin. This might not seem healthy for the spiritual growth of our youths and young children while they do not understand what is being preached. Another potential problem (hope that it will not happened though) is that the youths might choose to leave the Chinese congregation and worship in an English congregation instead as they feel more comfortable there and also providing themselves with a conducive environment for them to grow stronger spiritually and to experience healthy church life. Therefore, this might not be a totally bad thing.
Nonetheless, if the negative situation does happened, there will be an age gap in the Chinese congregation churches and issues such as raising up and developing future leaders of the church may arise. Therefore, how are our youths and young children going to lead the church in the future, and also meeting the needs of the outreach work to the non-Christian Chinese community? Considering that Singapore has many immigrants from China, who is going to administer and reach out to this group of people in the Chinese community with the lacking of young leaders in the Chinese congregation at this present moment?
The Experience
I would like to share about my Christian fellowship life and church life while I was in the UK for my further studies. I was fortunate that I found Chinese Christian Fellowship (CCF) in my university. I thank God for that. CCF started off with a group Chinese student from China with the main objective of reaching out and serving the Chinese students in my university. The fellowship was conducted in Mandarin. However, there were many Hong Kong students joined CCF when I was studying in UK.
As Hong Kong students are more comfortable speaking in Cantonese during fellowship instead of Mandarin (note that the fellowship was still conducted in Mandarin), they tend to clique together and China students find it hard to mix around with Hong Kong students in fellowship. This led to a phenomenon of CCF being dominated by Hong Kong students. When I was serving in my second and third year of university in CCF, the pastor overseeing CCF reminded the committee members to hold fast unto CCF’s tradition, which is to conduct the fellowship in Mandarin and continue to serve the Chinese students in my university, which includes Chinese students from various countries such as China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan just to name a few.
The church that I attended when I was in UK was a Chinese congregation church. The church has its members mainly citizens from Hong Kong and China, most of them now reside in UK. The church also welcomes students from CCF. The service is bilingual (primary language is Cantonese and secondary is Mandarin). The second generation of young Christians are BBC (British Born Chinese), where they start to receive UK education taught in English since young. The Sunday school is being taught in English, and I really wondered how the young ones are going to cope with the bilingual service when they make their transition into the main service. Fortunately, there is a Chinese school near the church and the headmaster of the school is one of the church members. Lessons are taught in Mandarin on Sunday mornings so that members of the church can send their children to attend the Chinese school on Sunday morning, after which they can attend church service in the afternoon.
The Suggestion
The reason why I shared my Christian fellowship life and church life while I was still studying in the UK is to highlight some potential suggestions that we can be learned from these experiences.
In CCF, I was reminded of the origins and mission that God has placed in CCF, which is to serve the Chinese students in the university. With this reminder, it enables me to serve better and have a clear understanding of CCF’s objective. Likewise, members from the Chinese-speaking congregation in Singapore should also be reminded of the origins and mission that God has placed in individual churches. I believe this will help the Chinese-speaking congregation to unite the member’s heart strongly together with the understanding of the church’s mission and working towards it.
In the church in UK, I have seen parents putting in effort to allow their children to be exposed to Mandarin language. Although they will be permanently residing in UK, they didn’t forget their roots. We can learn from them by placing the importance of learning Mandarin language and exposing our younger generation to Mandarin language so that they can understand what is being taught in church and grow spiritually stronger in the church.
Conclusion
Singapore is placing more emphasis on the education of the younger generation in English language. This may potentially cause the next generation of Singaporeans to be mostly illiterate in Mandarin language in the future. Therefore, this may influence the growth and development of the Chinese congregation churches in Singapore. Bearing in mind the huge ratio between Christians and non-Christians who speak Mandarin suggests that there is much outreach work that can be done within the Chinese community. Though language may seem to be a small issue now, it may become a big issue in the future depending on the attitude of this generation towards Mandarin language learning. Let us be reminded of our individual church mission and continue to reach out to the Chinese community. In addition, let us also place the importance of Mandarin language learning in our next generation. I pray and hope that more people will be aware and will respond positively to these needs. However, while we are facing this issue, let us not forget that God is faithful and sovereign!
Reference
[1] Figure 1 : Preferred Spoken Language At Home among Chinese Ethnicity – Ratio between Christians and Non-Christians, credit to Providence Presbyterian Church.
[2] Figure 2 : Pinyin News. 2009. Pinyin News. [ONLINE] Available at:http://pinyin.info/news/category/places/singapore/. [Accessed 30 May 2016].
[3] Promote Mandarin Council. 2015. 讲华语运动. [ONLINE] Available at: http://mandarin.org.sg/ch/about. [Accessed 30 May 2016].
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