“Wake up! Millions are waiting for you to tell them the Good News!”: SP Tan Kay Kiong and SP Tony Yeo of CEFC

“God crashed into our church planning one day and said ‘Stop planning. I want you to focus on this.'”

Pastor Tan Kay Kiong, Senior Pastor of Covenant Evangelical Free Church (CEFC) was sharing a compelling encounter with more than 1,000 pastors, leaders and ministry workers at the LoveSingapore Summit 2025.

A lady – distraught with grief – had walked into their church building. She was broken and weeping: Her teenage son had suddenly passed away. Although she had never been to the church, she felt that day that this was a place she could find help.

“There are thousands, millions looking at the church, who may not run in,” Ps Kay Kiong told the gathering. “They are desperate. They need you. You are the life. Wake up! Millions are waiting for you to tell them the Good News!”

At their session during the Summit, Ps Kay Kiong, with Pastor Tony Yeo, who also serves as Senior Pastor of CEFC, shared the burden God laid on their hearts for Pastors and leaders of CEFC.

This is an edited excerpt of their address.

Hearing God’s Heart

Ps Tony: Every year, Ps KK and I go on a mountain for a listening retreat. We don’t listen to people, we listen to God. 

After two days, we come together and we share what God has deposited in our hearts.

Three days after, the senior staff join us, and we share with the team and some of our ministry directors what the Lord has laid upon our hearts for our church for the coming year.  

Last year, the spiritual burden the Lord laid upon our heart was to go all in (Philippians 1:5-6), not for CEFC, not for Singapore, but for Jesus and His Kingdom.

“To go all in for Jesus and His Kingdom, the Church must be fully alive, fully aligned and fully ablaze,” CEFC Senior Pastor Tony Yeo, told attendees at the LoveSingapore Summit 2025.

Out of our time with the Lord, there was a God moment when the Lord revealed that to go all in for Jesus and His Kingdom, three spiritual awakenings are needed: The Church must be fully alive, fully aligned and fully ablaze. 

Some Christians are half alive so they cannot go all in. Some are dead like the dry bones (Ezekiel 37). We need the Spirit of the Living God to bring life.

Secondly, we must be aligned to God’s purpose (Philippians 2) for the church and for the nation, not to our personal agenda and selfish ambitions. Finally, we must be a Church that is fully ablaze, on fire for Jesus (Genesis 35).

Transformation and multiplication

Ps Kay Kiong: That God moment was very significant for us.

On the mountain, we looked (at the data) and found that although many in the church were not doing badly with reading the Bible and building relationships among one another, the number of Christians who regularly serve, intentionally do outreach and pray for pre-believers was not encouraging. 

We paused from all our planning that afternoon and entered into a time of prayer.

This is the state of the church and we take responsibility. 

In that time of prayer and worship, someone started weeping, and others followed. It became a sacred time when we knew God was among us and we had to respond to Him.

The next morning, I asked the Lord for a Word to confirm what He had done the day before.

And this was the Word: “God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.’ So he named him Israel. And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number.'” (Genesis 35:10-11)

God was saying to Jacob that he would experience a transformation like never before.  

And then the second emphasis, is that ‘I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply.’

I thanked the Lord for this promise of transformation, because if we do multiplication without transformation, we’re in trouble.

We opened up the time for all our Pastors and leaders who were there to share what God had said to them.

After the listening retreat on the mountain, we went back to our church and downloaded to our staff and our board over a planning meeting what God had said. We brought back all the burdens and concerns. We said God wanted to begin with us. 

“Seek transformation. From that transformation God will bring multiplication,” said Ps Kay Kiong.

The staff team came together and we prayed, repented, and asked God to start with us.

At the end of that planning meeting, a middle-aged lady walked into our church, desperately crying. She was really broken because her teenage son has suddenly passed away. 

She had never attended church, but desperation drove her in that day. 

One of the staff members ministered to her and invited her back to church for Sunday service. 

After the Sunday service, she came back with her other children. We shared the Gospel with her and she received Christ.

We are so grateful for the way God crashed into our church planning like the way He crashed into our mountain time. 

But just because she received Christ did not mean her battle was over. There was so much grief, so much pain. They are still journeying through this – we help them to grow to trust God for the rest of their lives through this difficult time. That’s discipleship. 

It starts with us 

Ps Kay Kiong: I’m an introvert. I don’t like talking to strangers.

I like to build a relationship and share the Gospel.

So God has to start with me.

One day, a church member stopped me as I was walking out of the sanctuary after preaching. He asked if I could talk to somebody.

After preaching two services, all my energy was gone and all I wanted to do was grab lunch and head home.

But I said “Sure” and I met this gentleman in my office. He attended our church in his teens but left when he turned 18. For the next 15 to 18 years, he did his own stuff and never came back to church.

But in recent weeks, he had been mentally distressed with a psychological disorder called disassociation that was diagnosed by a psychiatrist.

I said to him, “While you professed Christ when you were 18 years old, today is time once again to commit your life to Jesus Christ.”

We prayed.

The following Saturday, he brought his father to the Hokkien service, which happened to be the monthly evangelistic meeting. Pastor Don Wong, the founder and Executive Director of halfway house The New Charis Mission, was speaking that day.

God met the father at that service and he gave his life to Jesus.

The next morning, this gentleman texted me again to ask if I could meet him and his mother. 

The mother came into my office and told me everything about her life. I didn’t ask a single question. I let her talk about her life, her challenges, her problems. And she complained about pain here and there in her body and asked for prayer.

At the end of the conversation and prayer, I asked Auntie in my broken Chinese: 你要接受耶稣吗？(Would you like to accept Jesus)?

She said “要啊，我要啊! (Yes, yes I do!)”

When we finished praying, she was beaming with great joy.

I told this brother to bring his mother back to church for the Mandarin service to hear the proper Gospel. I wanted to make sure she received Jesus for the right reason.

When I told this story in a youth service, one of the youths who had sat next to that lady on a bus told me she had tried to share the Gospel with him.

The lady did not go for any evangelism training; she was simply telling all that God had done for her.

Personal evangelism through relationship building has to start with you and I, then the fire will spread and our congregation will get encouraged. 

I believe God will move us so that everyone will hold the responsibility of sharing the Good News of Jesus. 

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