EAST: A community you can count on
All students and alumni at EAST have a community they can count on to pray for them and walk together through challenging seasons of life and ministry. The peers, faculty and staff within each Mentoring Group are your friends, intercessors, encouragers and pillars of strong support through your learning journey.
The warmth of the community is present even in classes and the school library! There is always someone looking out for you, as long as you are a part of EAST.
You may not remember all your lessons in the classroom, but you’ll remember your mentors and friends who shared their lives with you at EAST. Your EAST family walks with you for the long run.
Shalom, and the Lord lead you to a community you can count on.
Photograph courtesy of Saw Ta Eh Gay.
Book Review: Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes
Honor and Shame in Paul’s Message and Mission
Review: Wu, Jackson. 2019. Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes: Honor and Shame in Paul’s Message and Mission. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic Press.
Eastern culture is a high context culture. What this usually means is that Eastern culture is very relational and communal, often described by the honor-shame framework. Within this framework, people in the East interacts with one another through the context of ‘face’ which is reciprocal and debt relationships within a power structure of hierarchy, loyalty, sacrifice, ascribed and achieved honor, and shame. This is often contrasted to the Western guilt-innocence framework. Jackson Wu (not his real name), a Westerner who have lived two decades in East Asia, examined Paul’s message and mission in Romans through the Eastern honor-shame framework. Jackson seek to find “[h]ow did Paul’s theology serve the purpose of his mission within an honor-shame context?” (p.3).
Missionary Mei-Mei in Macau
Alumna Mei-Mei Lee, who grew up in San Francisco and served for eight years as a missionary in Macau with Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), came to EAST to obtain her Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies over a decade ago. Back in 2009, Mei-Mei applied to a Baptist college in Singapore for a full-time program but was unsuccessful as the college lacked the resources to offer her a full-time program. At the time, CEF had given her only two years of study leave to complete her degree. By God’s divine appointment and her mentors’ recommendation, she applied to EAST instead and though EAST may not have been her first choice for theological studies, it was God’s choice for her. According to Mei-Mei, “God’s choice is the best choice!”
Am I Willing To Be a Servant?
Philippians 2:14-15 (ESV) “Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world”
Be it chores, homework, or other responsibilities, it can be incredibly difficult to do the things we are told to do. Yet here, Paul says to not just do these things, but to also do so without complaining or arguing.
Cheering Chin Leng on!
Lim Chin Leng, EAST Alumnus from Class of 2008, with daughter Jayna.
EAST Alumnus Chin Leng has recently been diagnosed with Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer and this has been a shocking news to his family and our community at EAST. However, Chin Leng has remained positive and is taking the Straits Times Virtual Run Challenge of 17.5KM, setting a goal to complete it within these two weeks as a #chemowarrior.
His daughter Jayna has written a heartfelt poem regards to her dad’s condition titled, “I Hate Cancer.” Below is the poem she has penned.
EAST Library Catalogue
EAST Populi
National Library Board eResources
The Digital Theological Library
