Whenever we caught up over the years, Joe Chean was always interested to know how an English major was serving God. I never quite knew how to answer.

My purpose in the Kingdom never felt as clear-cut as it did for others. But, in the end, Joe inadvertently showed me the person I wanted to be when I volunteered to be an editor for YWAM’s annual magazine (Faces) during his last few years as National Director.

Giving voice to Joe

One of my tasks was to turn Joe’s pointers into an article for the opening address. As a young writer, it was an honour to be trusted with this responsibility. (Nineteen-year-old Nicole would have been beside herself if she knew that she’d one day be Joseph Chean’s ghost writer!)

Joe’s intimacy with God made him sharp: Both in knowing God’s heart for His people and in what the church needed to do to grow into the bride of Christ. His pointers felt more than a summary of YWAM’s work that year: They were prophetic words for the Singapore church. I believed we needed to hear them.

But I was inexperienced in being a ghost writer. I was so focussed on making sure his ideas came across clearly that I forgot I needed to be invisible. One of his friends said it best: “(Your 2018 article) sounded nothing like you.”

I was mortified and apologised profusely. But Joe just laughed and joked that I’d probably helped him sound more concise. Even so, I didn’t expect to be asked to help again the following year.

But he did. 

As I worked at being his ghost writer in the grace of that second chance, I realised I was learning the very skill that I’d long admired in Joe. He knew when it wasn’t time for his voice and when it was time to listen.

Regardless of the big things that he was accomplishing for God, he wasn’t a “man on a mission” who treated people behind the scenes as unimportant. Joe never lost sight of the real mission: People.

When he listened to people, he was both fully present to us and to what God might be thinking about our situation. He’d then try to be as clear a conduit of God’s heart as he could, conveying exhortations, reality checks, truth or comfort to us as God led him – even if it ran counter to what he thought was best.

More often than not, this God-consciousness meant that his words were exactly what we needed to hear. And this is how I want to use mine for the Kingdom, too.

We ended up working together on a couple more articles for projects apart from Faces. After one meeting, Joe admitted that there was a lie he had to overcome: A belief that he couldn’t write.

I was taken aback, naively thinking (the way we tend to do with the heroes of our youth): “What. There’s something Joe thinks he can’t do? This larger-than-life man through whom God has done so many impossible things in the nations?”

I told him that I was sure he could do it – it just took practice. He just grinned and shrugged a little sheepishly. We never spoke about it again. But last year, Joe completed a thesis as part of his Master’s programme with the University of the Nations. I couldn’t help but feel proud of him, and now wish I’d made the time to ask him how he felt about his experience.   

It took humility to admit that he felt inadequate, and then courage to work on something that didn’t come naturally to him. But he wasn’t interested in stagnating just to save face; he wanted to keep growing.

I grew up a little that day, too. I’d been short changing Joe by thinking of him as a two-dimensional hero. The best leaders never lose sight of their humanness and their need for grace. And Joe was all the better for it.

Moses is dead; be strong and courageous

Many of my contemporaries have a Joe story, too.

For the last 20 years, he poured his time, effort and love into millennials. Moving between his roles as preacher, worship leader, mobiliser, intercessor, mission team leader and mentor, he’d “raised” us from wide-eyed teenagers into adults who are now finding our stride in God’s kingdom.

“For the last 20 years, he poured his time, effort and love into millennials,” recalls the author. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Cho, taken at a recent thanksgiving event at YWAM to celebrate Joe and his official stepping down as National Director.

Today, I cannot help but read Joshua 1 in the context of my own loss: “After the death of Joseph the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Nicole, his ghost writer, “Joseph my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan […].”

And here, perhaps, is where my grief is most palpable.

I feel keenly the loss of a leader who will not be coming with me the rest of the way, to a promised land that he was so excited to enter. In the newly launched Decade of Missions, he was ready to assist a new generation of young people in fulfilling the Great Commission. I know that God has His higher plans, but humanly I grieve for what could have been an illustrious end to Joe’s story.

I feel the loss as someone who is becoming proficient enough in her skills to have been Joe’s ministry partner in certain spheres. In our last conversation, we’d talked briefly about offering trauma-informed training to missionaries, so that they’d be more equipped to handle certain conflicts in the field.

I feel the loss of carrying on without the wise counsel of one who was such a constant in ministry. I’d speak to Joe whenever I had a new book idea, and could tell how wild he thought it was based on how much bigger his big eyes would widen.

“This book is going to upset a lot of people,” he said once, “because it is addressing the elephant in the room that the church has always wanted to ignore. But that is why you must do it.”

That was his way: Cutting straight to the heart of the matter, never sugarcoating the challenges, yet never giving less than his full support for what he felt was a God-inspired mission. I will miss how fortified his affirmation made me feel and being able to check in with him that I’m on the right track.

“Just as I was with Joe, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous …”

Disciples of the right kind 

Yet, even as I grieve, I remember the most important lesson that I’ve learnt from him. It is not disciples of Joseph that he set out to make, but disciples of Jesus.

And God longs for all of us, not just a select few like Joe, to have an intimate relationship with him.

“The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He makes known to them His covenant (Psalm 25:14, ESV),” Joe always said. “God wants to reveal His plans to those who are willing to listen and obey Him. Are you?”

Perhaps there is a time in every young adult’s life where we have to learn to draw directly from the Source of life, to trust the Holy Spirit as our first anchor and guide, so that we can truly know that He is the one in whom we can put all our hope. He is the One who will never leave.

Perhaps this is one of Joe’s legacies.

Having left us with the knowledge that it is possible to relate to God so personally, he will find that, in his absence, we all became deeper friends with God.

At the end of our lives, perhaps it will also be said of us that – like Moses, like Joe – we, too, were ones “whom the Lord knew face to face”. (Deuteronomy 34:10, NIV)

Until we meet again, Joe.

We hope to make you proud.

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