Bricks and blessings

SINGAPORE — What was supposed to be a surprise going-away party for Dave Hogan turned out to be neither. He found out about the surprise.

And he’s not going anywhere.

Hogan and his wife, Debbie, were guests of honor at a double-purpose celebration hosted by the Moulmein Church of Christ. Church members transformed the basement room they use for Sunday worship into a banquet hall, complete with candles and gold balloons. Christians from across Singapore, a prosperous city state in Southeast Asia, and foreign countries joined the church as it recognized a milestone — the payoff of its $5.6 million facility.

The rebuilt meeting place of the Moulmein Church of Christ stands between a Buddhist temple and a Hindu community center in Singapore.

Hogan, the son of missionaries Gordon and Jane Hogan, grew up in Pakistan and Singapore. He graduated from Four Seas Bible College in Singapore and Harding University in Arkansas. In 1987, he became a minister for the Moulmein Church of Christ in Singapore. Hogan’s family has worked with the church since 1968 when they moved from Pakistan to Singapore.

In its 70-year history, the congregation became known as Southeast Asia’s “giving church.” Moulmein helped to plant five Churches of Christ in Singapore and contributed funds for church buildings in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. The church sponsored mission efforts in Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines and trained new generations of Asian church leaders. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Moulmein’s attendance has rebounded to about 110 worshipers per Sunday.

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As Dave Hogan, a U.S. citizen, considered stepping back from full-time ministry, he found that Singapore’s stringent immigration laws likely would not allow him to stay. He and Debbie considered moving “home” to America, a country that Dave hadn’t considered to be home since childhood. Instead, he decided to move into full-time work as director of the Academy of Solution-Focused Training, a program he and Debbie co-founded in 2004. Debbie Hogan, who holds licenses with multiple multinational coaching organizations, is the academy’s program director.

Dave Hogan speaks to a group of fathers during a workshop sponsored by Singapore’s Centre for Fathering in 2010.

“We have opportunities to train and equip leaders in schools, universities, government, hospitals and local businesses,” Dave Hogan said. Though his new role is secular, it has “opened far more doors for kingdom service than I ever could have imagined when we first came to serve in 1987,” he said.

The Hogans follow a longstanding tradition of the Moulmein church, whose members have filled a variety of service roles in Singapore, from establishing a “DADs for Life” fathering initiative to serving as chaplains in communities of migrant workers. The church also makes prolific use of its facility, a retrofitted, pre-World War II structure that stands between a Buddhist temple and a Hindu community center. In its humble, three-story facility, the church hosted Vacation Bible Schools and gospel meetings.

Kim Kai Chan listens to a presentation during the “Bricks and Blessings” celebration.

“It was a place of learning, laughter, hospitality and love,” said Kim Kai Chan, administration minister. But by 2015, “there were times when things literally fell from the ceiling.” Unable to bring the building up to code, the congregation opted to tear it down and start over. The result: a five-story facility with nearly twice the square footage of the church’s previous building and housing for guests.

The church met in a nearby hotel during construction and moved into the new facility in 2017. In the midst of the pandemic, the church used its new building to house health care workers, shelter the homeless and provide spaces for returning students to quarantine. “It became a place of healing and hope,” Chan said.

The church raised $4.1 million from its own members for the construction and $1.5 million from other churches and donors abroad. Although Singapore has become one of the wealthiest nations on the globe since World War II, “it would be a mistake if it were thought that the people gave out of their plenty,” Chan said. “The majority of people who contributed … made a lot of sacrifices.”

Mit Vikraman plays Moulmein building trivia with guests.

During the banquet, dubbed “Bricks to Blessings,” youth minister Mit Vikraman wowed attendees with trivia questions about the facility and the church’s fundraising efforts. The church building has a combined 23 sinks, and a combined 470 members, families, friends and sister congregations contributed money to the rebuild. The church received its first donation toward the project on Oct. 13, 2013, and paid off its debt 4,190 days later. The largest contribution was a half-million Singapore dollars. The smallest: $2.

Dave and Debbie Hogan watch a video of Gordon Hogan, recorded just weeks before his death, during the “Bricks and Blessings” celebration.

The celebration was not completely without surprise for Dave Hogan. After a night of dinner, music and trivia, Vikraman played a video tribute to the longtime minister that included testimonials from Christians who were mentored or influenced by Dave and Debbie during their decades of service.

The final testimony came from Dave’s parents, whom Chan had interviewed in Arkansas just a few weeks before Gordon Hogan’s death on July 22 at age 97. Gordon talked about the difficult decision he and Jane made to return to the U.S. When he learned that his son and daughter-in-law wanted to continue the work, “I was happy as I could be,” he said.

To carry on the work, Gordon said, “I can’t think about anything that would be more wonderful than a son.”

Dave Hogan reacts to a video of his late father, Gordon.

ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected].

Filed under: Church buildings COVID-19 International Malaysia News post-pandemic Singapore Southeast Asia Thailand Top Stories