Megachurch pastor in Singapore

Lawrence Khong Kin Hoong (born 17 July 1952) is a Singaporean Christian religious leader and magician. He is the leader of Faith Community Baptist Church in Singapore and the chairman of LoveSingapore, a network of about 100 socially conservative Singaporean churches. Khong is also the founder and chairman of TOUCH Community Services, a non-profit, non-religious welfare organisation.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career
  • 2.1 Faith Community Baptist Church
  • 2.2 TOUCH Community Services
  • 2.3 Media and entertainment
• 3 Controversies
  • 3.1 Apostleship
  • 3.2 Magic shows
  • 3.3 Suspension from the Singapore Polo Club and subsequent lawsuit
  • 3.4 Views on *sexuality
  • 3.5 Views on creationism
• 4 Personal life
• 5 Notes and references
• 6 External links

Early life

Khong is the son of a businessman and a housewife. His father, a general commodities wholesaler who came from Guangdong province in China, had another family in Hong Kong with four children, but remarried when he came to Singapore before World War II broke out.

Khong was rebellious and did poorly in primary school, he claimed that his grades improved dramatically when he entered secondary school at St Joseph's Ins*ution. Following this, he went on to National Junior College, where he met his future wife, Nina, and were cl*mates with future prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. Despite becoming a Christian at the age of 13, Lawrence said that he had "backslid" during his army days, even though he said he went for a church camp at Port Dickson. Khong claims that a drowning incident at the church camp made him reflect deeply on life and on himself. He returned to church and joined the Varsity Christian Fellowship and began preaching on the pulpit while he was still an undergraduate. Khong also started performing publicly as a magician, and was a member of the Singapore Charter of the Society of American Magicians. After graduating with a B.A Business Administration from the National University of Singapore, he worked as an intern pastor. A year and a half later, he married his fiancé, Nina (who was by then a houseman) and the two set off for Dallas where he attended the Dallas Theological Seminary. While studying there, Khong was asked to pastor a Dallas church with a Chinese congregation because he could speak some Chinese, which he found challenging. Khong returned to Singapore and joined Grace Baptist Church in 1981. The church's congregation grew from 300 to 1600 between 1981 and 1985.

Career

Faith Community Baptist Church

Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC), was founded by Khong as a cell church in 1986. Khong delivered his first message to the new congregation on 17 August 1986. Besides serving as the pastor of the megachurch, Khong also stages entertainment shows that combine magic, music, drama and dance to engage his congregation. The church is reported to have a congregation of around 10000 members as of 2014.

FCBC is a charismatic church that is socially conservative.In 2012, the Faith Community Baptist Church fired a member of the church staff on "moral grounds" because of her adulterous relationship with a married church worker. As the Employment Act of Singapore states that an expectant mother from her fourth month of pregnancy must be paid benefits if she is sacked without sufficient cause, the church was made to pay the sacked employee $7,000 in salary and benefits.

In 2017, the church opened an arts hub at Bukit Merah Central. The nine-storey building includes a performance venue Gateway Theatre, which is rented out to arts groups on weekdays and used for church services on weekends. It is operated by Gateway Entertainment which is run by Khong and his daughter. The new building, costing more than $50 million, is mostly funded by the congregation.

Khong is one of the International Twelve of Cesar Castellanos. Following the pattern in G12 churches, FCBC is formerly led by Lawrence Khong and his wife, Rev (Dr) Nina Khong.

TOUCH Community Services

Khong is the founder and chairman of TOUCH Community Services (TCS), a non-profit, non-religious welfare organisation that has 18 services, 19 centres, and 24 youth clubs in Singapore helping the under-privileged. The organisation has served over 100,000 individuals since its establishment. In 1998, Khong was conferred the public service medal in recognition of his contributions to the community. In 2002, Khong conceptualised Project SMILE or Sharing Magic in Love Everywhere. For his achievements, he was selected as a finalist for the SIP-Schwab Social Entrepreneur of 2007.

In 2007, TCS won the Outstanding Non-profit Organisation Award in the National Volunteerism & Philanthropy Awards, which recognises best practices in the management of volunteers and donors, including fundraising practices, in non-profit organisations.

Media and entertainment

Khong has been performing magic since his late teens. He started producing movies in 2010 and performing magic shows such as "Magic of Love" and "Magic Box".

Khong shared his experiences of "Magic of Love" in his book Give me the Mul*udes! Obeying God's Call into the Media World, TOUCH Ministries International: Singapore but has received some criticism from fellow Christians for his use of magic and involvement in "marketplace ministries."

Khong is the founder of Gateway Entertainment (formerly TOUCH Media), the entertainment ministry of FCBC, which provides Christian stage and movie productions and magic shows. Khong stated that he uses his magic shows as a platform to introduce certain religious beliefs and "good Christian values" a secular audience. Khong has performed magic shows, with his daughter Priscilla. Khong's magic shows have attracted controversy in 2015. As Khong is known for his strong views against *sexuals, pro-LGBT groups questioned IKEA Singapore for its member discounts for Khong's magic shows. Ikea Singapore continued offering its member promotion for the shows after a review.

Lawrence Khong has also been vocal against the spreading "anti-Christian and immoral values promoted by the secular world" by entertainers in Singapore, a non-religious state. He has spoken out against performance of Madonna in the country.

Controversies

Apostleship

Khong began *uming the *le of "apostle" after a church service in 2000 in which he was given the *le by theologian C. Peter Wagner. Wagner was a key leader of the Church Growth Movement and the controversial New Apostolic Reformation, a movement of Pentecostal and charismatic churches advocating for the "lost offices" of church governance, namely the offices of prophet and apostle. According to National Public Radio and The Daily Beast, the New Apostolic Reformation is a conservative Christian movement that engages in spiritual warfares and seeks to take dominion over government, business, media, education, arts and entertainment, family, and religion "in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus". Khong's use of the *le is not recognised by churches in mainline Christian denominations.

Magic shows

Khong has been criticised for using magic as early as the 1970s when he was a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary. Following the church's embrace of dominion theology, which supports a Christian takeover in seven areas of society, namely religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business, Khong launched Gateway Entertainment to "reclaim the media industry for Jesus Christ", performing in "totally commercial, non-religious" magic shows and other theatrical productions alongside his daughter Priscilla Khong.

Gateway Entertainment touts Lawrence Khong as having been the 'first in Asia to receive the Elite Diamond Merlin Award for Magician of the Year" in 2010. Conferred by the controversial International Magicians Society, the Merlin Award has at times been described as the Academy Awards of magic but lacks the oversight necessary to enhance the credibility of the award in other industries.

Suspension from the Singapore Polo Club and subsequent lawsuit

In August 2013, Lawrence Khong filed a suit against the Singapore Polo Club when the club suspended his rights and privileges for two months for allegedly misusing the club's e-mail system and his position as honorary secretary. Khong had sent a m* email to the club members and Registrar of Societies, questioning the conduct of the club committee when it amended results of a vote of no confidence against the previous committee.

According to a suspension notice filed in his affidavit, Khong was allowed to keep his horses stabled at the club, but would not have the right of access to the club nor the right to the services of a personal professional polo player. At the time of the suspension, Khong was the honorary secretary of the club.

The High Court ruled in Khong's favor and set aside his suspension from the club.

Views on *sexuality

Khong has been criticized for his views regarding equal rights for *sexuals in Singapore. In January 2013, Khong issued a statement to ex-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong against repealing Singapore's laws that criminalises gay sex. He sees the repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code as "a looming threat to this basic (nation) building block by *sexual activists." and regards the "*sexual act" as "the greatest blasphemy against the name of God".

In 2014, LoveSingapore,a network of 100 local churches that Khong, chairs, created a guide to how to support Section 377A of the Penal Code, criminalising sex between men. He also wrote an open letter to the Health Promotion Board, criticising that their webpage on sexual health "condones same-sex relationships and promotes *sexual practice as something normal". He has also actively protested against the annual Singapore gay pride event Pink Dot SG, and has supported the counter-campaign and encouraged his followers to speak out against the normalisation of *sexual relationships in Singapore.

"Every ex-*sexual is proof that people are not born this way. There are no ex-blacks, no ex-Chinese, but there are ex-*sexuals."

"The reason I stand firm on asking that this law not be repealed is that Section 377A is a standard that is written down. The history of many countries tells us that if you remove it, the *sexual community is not going to stop there. They first ask for tolerance. Tolerance means: Don't bully me, don't make me a criminal. The minute you take that away, they will ask for acceptance, in the form of gay marriage. And then, before long, they will go for celebration of the lifestyle. I'm talking about the gay pride days all around the world. Then the next thing you know, they will persecute those who disagree with them, by labeling those disagreements as hate speech. We have seen that path."

"This *sexual agenda is being pushed with great aggression. For example, inasmuch as they ask for tolerance, they are some of the most intolerant people that I have ever met. Anytime you disagree with them, you are said to be *phobic, you are said to have made hate speech."

- Lawrence Khong in an interview with Elgin Toh of Singapolitics in September 2013

Views on creationism

In 2016, Khong was noted to have delivered a series of sermons at Faith Community Baptist Church, saying Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution was "a real deception from the Devil". The church's support for creationism in its pulpit and on its social media channels prompted a discussion on the spread of the idea by certain groups of Christian evangelicals in secular Singapore. The Ministry of Education has since clarified that creationism is not taught in local schools.

Personal life

Khong and his wife, Nina Khong, have four children – Priscilla (Magician alongside him), Michelle, Anthony and Daniel Khong Bao Liang (Senior Pastor of FCBC), a grandson, Isaac, and a granddaughter, Hannah. Nina Khong has given up her medical practice to serve full time in FCBC. In 2003, Khong publicly disclosed Priscilla's incident of having a child out of wedlock. The family has since reconciled with the church and stands strong on their biblical belief of 'sex after marriage'. He is also a national polo player who won a silver medal with the Singapore team at the 2007 South-east Asia Games.

Notes and references

External links

• Faith Community Baptist Church
• TOUCH Community Services
• International G12 Conference 2009 – Give me the Mul*udes!