We are giving special emphases to community service ministries in Cathedral and Diocese this month. This weekend, as we celebrate Diocesan Healthcare Sunday at the 8 am Sun Service, I hope all Cathedral medical doctors and healthcare workers can pop in for a time of rededication. In our various services, Dr Edward Menon will be speaking on the special needs of the elderly and Dr Joseph Thambiah will speak on medical missions. We also got to hear Mrs Pat Aw speak on ministry to children. Revd Gilbert Wong will touch on mental health awareness on 30 Oct. As always, audio recordings are available on our website if you would like to catch up on these talks.
We are delighted this week to receive news that URA has approved the conversion of use in a section of our Welcome Centre to run a licensed Cafe. This has a lot of implications for our community life and opportunities to connect with the public. I sense that this was very much a part of the original vision for this Welcome Centre and with this, the Centre will be truly and fully a public “third place” during the opening hours. A visitor will not need a particular reason or thinks he needs permission to walk into the Centre. And best of all, you now have an added reason to invite your friends to the Cathedral, even on weekdays!
We hope to introduce a wide range of beverages, apart from the usual coffee menu, to include local coffee, wide range of teas, chocolate drinks, juices and cold drinks as well. This will serve the needs of seniors, families and children too. They will be served at reasonable prices and whatever profits we make will be ploughed back into the ministry use of the CWC. The Cafe folks will be open to feedback and improve things along the way.
The pews in the Chapel for all Peoples have been replaced with chairs to enable the Chapel to be used not just for Services but serve other ministry needs too, such as Sunday School, Youth, Alpha, CE and so on. Most of the pews were given to St Andrew’s Nursing Home. We will also make accessible again a door which already exists between the chapel and CWC and this will make possible some synergy between CWC and the Chapel if an event needs it. Even as we free up the chapel for multiple use we remind ourselves that we are already blessed with a huge Nave which is suitable for walk-in praying or just to have some silence. The Chapel has never been able to play this role as it is an air-conditioned environment and locked up when it is not booked for an event.
