I still have the email. It is dated October 2000 and we were in our first year of church planting in Perth. The writer was aware of our earlier ministry at St Matthew’s Shenton Park in Perth and had just started up a ministry in Singapore called Project Timothy. He wondered if I’d be available to give some expositions for them at some stage in the future. While I’d never had a great interest in ministry in Asia or South East Asia, my wife Heather had always been interested in ministry to Asians and particularly Chinese. However, things began to change for me as God brought a steady stream of Chinese students to our church plant intended for Aussies and they were gradually converted as Heather met with them to do ESL classes using the Bible.
The October 2000 email bore fruit in a visit to Singapore two or three years later. When I quizzed my new-found friend on the needs in Singapore, he noted that there was a significant dearth of churches that had strong expository preaching ministries. Jokingly he quipped that what was really needed was a new Bible college to train a new generation of gospel workers. At the same conference, I also renewed acquaintances with a previous AFES student president who had taken a position at St Mary’s Anglican Cathedral in Kuala Lumpur and we resolved to do whatever we could to help these gospel friends. Visits to Singapore or Malaysia became almost annual and God was at work in other ways as well. I started doctoral studies and lecturing at Ridley. Heather started working with international students at RMIT. Our son married a Singaporean and we then moved to Holy Trinity Doncaster in 2010 (a church with a significant ministry among mainland Chinese people).
The crunch came with a phone call from my Singaporean friend. He told me that the idea we joked about earlier was beginning to look feasible. In response to the growing need a group of six like-minded pastors had gathered to form a board. They had a fledgling company and potential students. They wondered if I would come and be their first principal! After interviews, we accepted the position and we began the heartbreaking preparation to move from HTD. We arrived in Singapore in mid-2016 to join our Singaporean friends with their gospel-grounded dream. They thought they could raise enough money for a principal and two or three faculty and premises and I began the process in a new country of trying to get this done. We now have two full time faculty (in Old Testament and New Testament), a theology faculty member arriving in mid-2019, Mike Raiter from the Centre for Biblical Preaching for a month a year, and some part time, adjunct and voluntary lecturers.
Although board and faculty come from diverse denominational backgrounds we share a commitment to reformed evangelical distinctives such as those found in the confessional statement of The Gospel Coalition and the Australian version of the The Gospel Coalition Theological Vision for Ministry.
Too often there is a divide between training in theology and training for ministry, including preaching and other ministries of the word. At all levels we rigorously seek to bind the two disciplines together and to practise them together, particularly theological study and expository preaching.
Although based in Singapore, the goal of ETC Asia is to serve Asia as a whole. We are committed to mission, that is, seeing the gospel go out to all the cities, villages, and tribes of Asia.
Three other important goals are, first, to become more financially stable and continue to grow our student numbers (our first year consisted of nine full time students and five part time; this year there are about five full time and about five part time). Second, to transition to like-minded and adequately educated and trained Singaporean faculty before Heather and I finish the ten year commitment we’ve given. Thirdly, to form partnerships with like-minded gospel friends in Malaysia and South East Asia and see if we can help them train the next generation of theological college leaders.