Keeping up with the times

One of my inspirations in my current career is the Charismatic churches of Singapore. 

As I am still very staunchly atheist, you might be wondering why I follow the movement of these evangelical movements here. I read in a book once before of a group called the Saddle-backed Church that somehow had this ability to attract non-Christians to attend their sessions and I wanted to obtain this power for my own benefit. So when I was in the Toastmasters movement, I did a few rounds of church hopping to see what drives these massive crowds. 

The truth is, after a few visits, I wasn't impressed. Beyond just references to one holy book, there is really nothing for free-thinkers and non-believers.

I remain unimpressed until I stumbled upon a video on Rev Kong Hee of City Harvest talking about Postmodernism. This impressed me because his deep understanding of it was really unexpected for a religious person. Kong Hee is a really smart guy! Kong Hee was able to communicate with folks who are unlikely to be Christians because philosophers take a lot of pride over their secular values. At that point in time, I knew that Kong Hee's power would grow and, if left uncontrolled, tragedy would follow.  

The rest was history.

When I designed my training preview, my primary purpose was to generate sales. Once we stabilised the numbers, the question was what we can learn from Evangelical pastors to make the preview as valuable and entertaining as possible even for most non-paying customers. 

I realised that the best pastors keep a lookout for what's happening in pop culture and try to be relevant to young people. 

And, more importantly, I can adopt this without causing religious people any offence. 

Pastors and trainers all rely on a little bit of faith. For pastors, it is the faith in a religious being. For secular trainers like me, it is faith that a market bear can turn around to bring profits to the investor. A lot of work I do is provide assurance in the face of the Unknown. 

Right now, my students want to know whether Sasseur REIT is a sell call given political events in China. 

Here are two amendments I made to my slides for tonight where I will be talking about current events :

Of course, we won't have a proper preview without this new slide :

Over time, I have made a few friends who occasionally drop in to attend my previews for fun without ever signing as a customer. After all, when I attend these evangelical sessions, I do not donate any money.

I intend to grow this non-paying audience, who do add value and make Q&A livelier. 

If you are free later at 730pm, why not just drop in and ask me a few questions during Q&A, follow this link :

https://www.drwealth.com/ermintro/

While it is not this blog's position to say this, I think all religions in Singapore can afford to be more plugged into pop culture to remain relevant to young audiences.