His father, who drove a Morris Minor, came home one day in 1964 with a German-made Opel.

Little did Tay Wei Lien, then in Secondary Four, realise that this new car would kickstart his passion for singing for Christ, a passion that has lasted well into his 70s (and counting).

One day, Wei Lien accompanied his father to the car showroom to service the Opel, and got to talking to the car salesman.

The car salesman recruited Wei Lien (pictured) into the 7.30am Dawnbreakers choir in 1964.

The salesman turned out to be the lead tenor at Dawnbreakers. (Fun fact: Dawnbreakers was the choir heard singing the National Anthem that played at the start and end of television transmission when television was introduced to Singapore in the early 1960s.)

Wei Lien’s father was Dr Tay Teck Eng, a pioneer in dental education. Dr Tay was 92 when he passed away in 2006.

Shortly after that conversation, the young Wei Lien found himself waking up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to make it for choir practice half an hour before the 7.30am service at Wesley Methodist Church.

Now, more than 60 years later, he continues to do the same.

Said Wei Lien: “I don’t know why he invited me to join the choir. Maybe from talking to me, he heard the resonance in my voice and thought, ‘This fellow probably can sing’.

“But I suspect it was because the choir was short of men, especially tenors,” he quipped. Wei Lien’s whose only musical experience prior to that was playing the piano as a “horrible student – lazy to practise”.

“But at Dawnbreakers, I discovered my knack and love for singing,” he said, thanking God for gifted conductors who developed his talent and skill. 

Nearly sidetracked

When Wei Lien was in Pre-University, his vocals were noticed by another group, a religious order.

“They discovered, ‘Eh, this fellow can sing. He will be a good temple chanter.’”

The brother of his then-girlfriend (subsequently wife) Tan Poh Imm, had introduced him to the group.

Wei Lien and Poh Imm, with their grandchildren, daughters and son-in-law. Poh Imm and Wei Lien were neighbours and pre-university schoolmates; he gave her a ride to Anglo-Chinese School every day.

“The chanter needs to hold the right tone for the right amount of time, at the right volume – and then transcend to the next tone – in order to ‘get the right connection with the spirit you are trying to connect with.’

“It was quite a complicated series of ‘ooms’ and ‘ahhs’,” Wei Lien related.

Then, he did not see the spiritual danger.

“I thought it was just a religious practice. It didn’t occur to me that I was calling down some spirit.

“I also did not see the danger in the out-of-body experiences.”

While Wei Lien was most grateful that Christ had died on the cross for him, he was drawn to a key tenet of that religious order: That all paths led to God – and each way had its particular spiritual beliefs.

“It was all very fascinating stuff to me,” said Wei Lien, who would have probably have pursued it further had God not intervened to sever his connection with the religious order, physically and spiritually.

Touched by God in Australia

Wei Lien was a cadet quantity surveyor, when his employer posted him to their Australian office in the early 1970s to gain working experience while concurrently studying at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

It changed the course of his life.

In Melbourne, Wei Lien accompanied a colleague to an evangelistic meeting at the CrossCulture Church of Christ on Swanston Street. There, his “heart was strangely moved” in a sweep of the Holy Spirit that Singapore also experienced around the same time in 1972.

“When the preacher made the call to come forward, I remained seated as I was too shy. Then the preacher said something strange: That shyness is just pride turned upside down.”

It struck a chord within Wei Lien, who had earlier been “profoundly moved by the scene of Jesus hanging on the cross” in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

“I found myself getting up and going forward, weeping buckets in gratitude for what the Lord had done for me on the Cross.

“Later back in my apartment room, I felt such a sense of peace flowing over me. It was literally the peace that passes all understanding.

“It was so meaningful to be touched by God, especially with the song ‘Amazing Grace’ that happened to be playing on a neighbour’s radio.

“That night was the first time I could truly say ‘I am a Christian’,” he said.

Hungry to learn more about the faith, Wei Lien dug deeper into the Bible and listened to teachings by preachers such as Derek Prince. But he was still troubled by his personal view that all paths lead to God.

Then early one morning during his quiet time with the Lord, Wei Lien asked Him about this.

“I opened my Bible and it landed on Acts 4:12: ‘Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.’

“I know people say you shouldn’t just open the Bible to get a verse like a lottery. But this was too much of a coincidence for me. God had answered my prayer immediately.”

The road to Spirit-led worship

Wei Lien started looking to worship with groups that moved in the Spirit.

On his return to Singapore in 1974, he returned to Wesley where he met other like-minded members. 

“It was the time of the movement of the Holy Spirit among Singapore churches, especially among the lay people.”

The fire of God had started in his alma mater, Anglo-Chinese School in 1972, in what was known as the ACS Clock Tower Revival.

One of those filled with the Spirit – Melvin Huang, not yet a Reverend – became a close friend and co-worker after Wei Lien joined the church as a staff member.

“As interest in the Charismatic Movement increased, Melvin and I felt that there needed to be an expression of prayer and praise at Wesley, in addition to the traditional service. 

“Decisions like introducing a new service needed the pastor’s permission. If the pastor was not for it, we quietly went underground and prayed for him,” said Wei Lien.

At that time, Pastor-in-Charge Rev Dr Tony Chi was handing over the reins to Rev Dr Isaac Lim, who later launched the Prayer & Praise Service at Wesley in 1985. 

The Prayer and Praise service at Wesley Hall circa 1980s.

Subsequently, the pastors “had their own discovery of the power of the reality of the Spirit of God”.

“It was more God’s movement on the pastors’ hearts than anything that we did. But we hope that our prayers also moved God to move them,” said Wei Lien, who was the first Prayer and Praise (P&P) worship leader at Wesley, and built up a team of such leaders.

Unlike the traditional service that followed a more prescribed order of songs and service, P&P was contemporary in approach and choice of music, with opportunities to worship in tongues as and when led by the Spirit.

“However, with P&P, there is the danger that the physical (the lights, drama or excitable worship leader) rather than the spiritual (the presence of the Lord) becomes the focus.

“My constant prayer was that I would be hidden behind the Cross. So that people will not see me as the worship leader, but they would see Christ on the Cross instead.”

From Dawnbreaker to doorkeeper

Wei Lien joined Wesley full-time in 1986 as Church Project Coordinator to look after all the back-end logistics and free up the pastor for the work of shepherding and nurturing.

He preferred the term “doorkeeper”.

“I was convinced that God had called me to be His doorkeeper,” he said, referencing Psalm 82:10.

Wei Lien’s responsibilities were diverse. He applied his professional expertise as a qualified quantity surveyor (QS) to supervise renovations to the sanctuary.

The ceilings at Wesley were painted red (“to remind us of the covering of the blood of Christ”) when Wei Lien was the in-house quantity surveyor during works to expand the original sanctuary in the late 1970s,

“I was also the consultant-on-loan to other churches and Christian organisations, providing QS services pro-bono.

“Church facilities and maintenance were also included in my portfolio, as well as being the church bus driver.”

Working full-time at church meant that Wei Lien had to leave Dawnbreakers as he could no longer attend choir practices.

Working at the Wesley church office.

“I was the first person in church and the last one out every day. The first duty of each day was to get the different areas in church ready for each activity, ensuring the chairs, the sound, the OHP (overhead projector) screen, the water flasks and cups were in place.

“Every Sunday, I manned the soundboard. And with my knowledge of music and choir anthems, hopefully I made our choirs sound good,” said Wei Lien.

Not only was he involved in the day-to-day logistics of the church, he also orchestrated the development of musical talent at Wesley.

“God probably saw that I was a reasonably skilled coordinator. I can persuade people to do things, such as get the ‘real’ guitar players like Gordon Wong and Leslie Quahe to teach members to play the instrument, raising a generation of worship leaders who could play at cell level,” said Wei Lien.

He also organised the evangelistic musical Victory Meetings with the help of an army of “enthusiastic volunteers who were on fire for God”.

Wei Lien’s younger daughter Evangelin painted her father worshipping God on his guitar in the mornings on the hotel room balcony whenever the family went to Malaysia.

To train worship leaders and the music team to enhance worship at the Prayer and Praise service, Wesley worked with Youth with a Mission (YWAM) to conduct the inaugural School of Music Ministries workshops in Singapore.

Wei Lien coordinated all that was necessary to bring in Grammy-nominated American song-writing and writer team, Jimmy and Carol Owens and their band of musicians (including a soundman) whom they believed could train up Asian teams. The workshop was held at Wesley, but was open to members of all churches.

After serving a decade with Wesley, Wei Lien left in 1993 to work full-time at another church for a year before returning to the private sector as a quantity surveyor. 

Coming full circle

After being a church worker, Wei Lien returned as a “pew sitter, a Sunday worshipper”.

He served as a soloist singer, where he was rostered to sing during collection at Prayer and Praise only once in two months.

Wei Lien also once played the taiko drums for the Rhythm and Praise ministry which features percussion and stringed instruments. “These days, I only use my voice and play a shaker,” he said.

“At that time, I saw no pressing need to rejoin Dawnbreakers, especially since we now attended a later service. I didn’t think we would be able to make it on time for the 7.30am service,” he said.

But God had His way with Wei Lien when COVID struck.

“COVID was one of God’s ways of making you change,” he said.

“Stuck at home, I saw that the choir was singing on Zoom. I found out that we could record our parts at home at any hour of the day. We would submit it, and someone would piece it together. They would technically improve the sound to make us sound good,” he said. 

These days, Wei Lien finds comfort in talking to God as he puts in his 10,000 steps a day.

And so Wei Lien rejoined Dawnbreakers – 10 years after he had left the choir. 

Since then, Dawnbreakers – including Wei Lien – have been back to singing in-person. (His wife Poh Imm, who joined the choir as a soprano after they got married also came back to Dawnbreakers during this time.)

“Now I have to wake up at 5.30am on Sundays or we will be late for service,” Wei Lien revealed.

“You could say I have come full circle back to my ‘first love’: Singing in the choir where I started when I first came to Wesley.”

Extracted and adapted with permission from Our Stories, His Glory 2, by Wesley Methodist Church. Read the full-story here.

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