Senior Pastor of Bethesda Bedok-Tampines Church (BBTC), Chua Seng Lee, has spent more than half of his adult life as a pastor.

In his 32-year career, he has worked with youths and young adults, championed mental health awareness in churches, written a book for young people about overcoming depression, served in the Singapore National Youth Council, and been chairman of the National Youth Mentoring Steering Committee.

Ps Seng Lee grew up reading Chinese books and listening to Chinese songs. Today, he preaches both in English and Mandarin.

But long before he was guiding young lives, he was a young person in need of guidance himself.

“I grew up in Geylang, mixing with a lot of gangsters, getting involved in a lot of vices,” he told Salt&Light.

Misguided youth

His father worked long hours as a storeman for the British army. To supplement the family income, his mother worked from home as a seamstress. Young Seng Lee was left to his own devices.

“I got a lot of time to spare. I would go downstairs, play football,” said Ps Seng Lee, now 58.

His neighbourhood, being a red light district, was a popular hangout for gangs. So most of Seng Lee’s childhood friends were gang members and school dropouts. He himself was not part of any gang.

“I knew enough to know I didn’t want their kind of life. My gangster friends also kept encouraging me to study instead of joining them because they knew I was meant for better.”

But Seng Lee was not above the dark pleasures of the world. He drank, smoked, gambled and partied — but he never took drugs.

“I was more interested in selling drugs. But the gangs didn’t allow me.

“To be honest, I was more interested in sex than drugs. They told me that if you take drugs, you have a messed-up sex life.”

In Secondary 1, Seng Lee started a “sex club” to distribute pornographic tapes and magazines to his schoolmates. He had easy access to porn: His school was situated in a red light district, and he lived in Geylang.

But Seng Lee was quick to add that he never indulged his desires.

Ps Seng Lee in his 20s. In his youth, he ran with the wild crowd. That he never got arrested or addicted to drugs is, he believes, God’s divine protection.

“I didn’t have sex till I got married. God just didn’t allow it to happen. It was divine protection,” Ps Seng Lee told Salt&Light.

What he did plenty of, aside from partying, was get into gang fights. On his first day in polytechnic, he was part of 60-strong group who went to beat up one person.

“I didn’t know what he did (to deserve it). I didn’t even know him.”

Disappointed with deities

In his mid-teens, Seng Lee spent a lot of his free time volunteering at a temple near his home. He studied the art of fortune-telling and helped visitors interpret the divination sticks they obtained from the temple.

Ps Seng Lee became a Christian at 18. But even before that, he was very interested in spiritual matters.

“I was always very curious about spirituality. I became steeped in all these things.”

Then something happened that turned him completely away from the religion. He and a group of friends had snuck into a neighbourhood school one night to ”do monkey business inside the school”. Suddenly, one of friends “went into a trance”.

“He was demon-possessed and started banging his head on the wall. No one could stop him. Then another friend came along because he knew we were there.

“He was a Catholic and he was able to restrain the guy. We were all like: ‘Wow!’”

When they consulted the temple after this, they were told that the boy had “offended some deity”.

“My heart was like: We have been very faithful to the temple and that’s what we get from the deity? I didn’t want to have anything to do with the deities anymore.”

If he had been wayward before, Seng Lee became “more ruthless” after that. He sought out the various gangs, hoping to join one, and tried to get into drug trafficking to make money for his polytechnic fees.

“I was all out to do bad things.”

One crazy decision

In polytechnic, there were more disappointments. His first real girlfriend broke up with him because she was a Christian and he was not.

“Of course, I was very upset.”

Ps Seng Lee in his 20s.

“But I felt very empty after partying. After the last party, after the last cigarette, I would feel the loneliness. My soul was so tormented.”

The Christmas of 1984, Seng Lee, then 18, decided to “do something crazy” – he accepted the invitation of a neighbour to go to a Navigator’s Christmas outreach service.

“I didn’t understand all the singing. But when the man spoke, I understood.

“He said that his son had gotten into a bad accident and was in the ICU. But he was here to tell us that Jesus loves us.

“I thought: Either you are crazy or your God is so real. When I got home, I said, ‘Jesus, if You are so real to the man, be real to me.’”

He expected something spectacular to happen after that prayer. Instead, he found “the sweet presence of Jesus”.

“No thunder, no lightning. I was hoping to see some angels appear. Nothing happened. I just felt the peace of God. And I felt a growing curiosity about Jesus.”

The friend who invited Seng Lee to the outreach gave him a Bible, which he began to read every day.

“And every day, Jesus spoke to me through the Word. The grace of God, the forgiveness of God made me realise how sinful I was.”

In his secondary school days, Seng Lee had once seen the lyrics of “Amazing Grace” written on a blackboard. The words had struck him but he had not understood their meaning then.

“When I became a Christian, I heard the song again and I realise it was no coincidence that I knew the song from before. “Amazing Grace” was the song of my life. What a wretched man I am.”

Because his neighbour was a girl his age, The Navigators would not let her do follow-up lessons on the Christian faith with Seng Lee. Instead, her mentor, a woman a few years older, discipled him.

Ps Seng Lee and his first mentor Neo Ai Ling who showed him what God’s love is.

She was the first to show him genuine Christian love. It did not matter that he was often late for their appointments or that he would show up unkempt. She faithfully journeyed with him for a few years.

“She never failed to turn up in my life. In her, I saw love personified.”

They remain in touch till today.

God in the pain

If love anchored him in the Christian faith, death shaped his understanding of God.

In 1990, his brother, older by two years, passed away from lymphoma within five months of being diagnosed. Before he succumbed to the cancer, Seng Lee shared the Gospel with him and he became a Christian.

Ps Seng Lee and his older brother Yong Lee. They were very close and Ps Seng Lee grieved deeply when his brother passed away at age 26.

“The year before in 1989, we were exposed to John Wimber (known for his healing and miracles ministry). I told the Lord, ‘Teach me how to pray for the sick.’

“My brother was the first person I prayed with all my heart for healing, and he died. After that, I wrestled a lot with God. It was painful, very painful.”

God never told Seng Lee why his prayer for healing was never answered. But the experience “laid a very strong foundation about healing” that grounds him now as a pastor.

“I always tell people, there are two types of faith: One is to believe that God can heal, the other is to believe He is God even if He doesn’t.”

But back then, to deal with the loss and remain strong for his parents, Seng Lee prayed for God to “harden my heart”. It was only a year later in 1991 that he allowed God to deal with his pain.

Seng Lee was alone in a hotel room in Hong Kong after a mission trip he had taken with his church.

“I had just finished my dinner and gone back to my room when the Lord walked into the room. I sensed the presence of God.

“God asked me, ‘What do you want?’ I knew enough to know that He wanted to deal with my hardened heart.

“I cried my heart out. All my disappointment with people, all my disappointment with God for not healing my brother. Finally, I told God, ‘God, I just want You.’”

Before the trip, his pastor had asked him to go into full-time ministry. Seng Lee had known that he needed to deal with “the baggage” from his brother’s passing before he committed himself to the calling. This was the breakthrough he had sought. The next year, he became a pastor.

In Hong Kong, Seng Lee also got to know one of his mission team members better. Before that, he and Josephine Seow “were always at logger heads” because they both had strong personalities. Josephine became his wife 19 months after the trip.

Ps Seng Lee and his wife Josephine Seow. They got to know each other better on a Hong Kong mission trip when both signed up to learn more about drug addicts there.

In 2008, Ps Seng Lee spent two years earning a Master in Christian Education before becoming a staff member at BBTC. In 2023, he became the senior pastor.

Ps Seng Lee (centre in white) with the BBTC pastoral team.

He had tried hard to be bad, but God turned his whole life for good. Said Ps Seng Lee: “When I look back at my life, I have only one thing to say to God, ‘Amazing grace!'”

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