Rennis Ponniah, the ninth Bishop of the Anglican Church in Singapore (2012-2020), has captured his life and ministry’s journey in a book titled All By His Grace: An Autobiographical Reflection on Pastoral Leadership.

The book launched today (August 2, 2025).

In his introduction, he writes:

“I am collecting my reflections on life and pastoral ministry, some 35 years after being ordained as an Anglican minister and almost five years after retiring as the 9th Bishop of the Diocese of Singapore in 2020.

“I did wonder if I needed to take on this demanding project during a sabbatical intended to help me transit from high-octane organisational leadership to serving as minister-at-large in the years that Spurgeon likened to ‘the warm glow of the evening sun’.

“Perhaps I can humbly say that the Lord had laid it on my heart to write this book. Now that it is completed, I can testify yet again that ‘true rest’ is to be found not in external circumstances, but in submitting to a Cross-shaped life in the will of God.

“Moreover, many other incalculable personal blessings come your way when you trust and obey the One who created you and redeemed you in His great love for you.

“And so, here I am, sharing my life and reflections with fellow pilgrims and fellow leaders.

All By His Grace chronicles Bishop Rennis’ 70 years, reflecting the grace and glory of God throughout his life and ministry.

“The title, All By His Grace, is true to the hilt as I look back on 70 years of my life. And it is upon my heart to convey this holy confidence to you. If you happen to be reading this book while not yet having come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, I pray it will give you a window to the God who is there and who is reaching out to you.”

Salt&Light reproduces, with permission, an excerpt of Bishop Rennis’ reflections on the Celebration of Hope, a unity project centred on evangelism that was held in 2019 when he was President of the National Council of Churches of Singapore.

As Bishop of the Anglican Church, I served a term (2016–2018) as the President of the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS).

The NCCS is an umbrella body of over 250 churches from all across the Protestant denominations in Singapore. It is modelled as a fellowship, with no jurisdiction over the individual workings of its member churches.

It is strongly evangelical in its Statement of Faith. It serves as a public voice for Protestant Christians in societal matters, an official body for inter-religious dialogue and cooperation, and a platform for its member churches to come together for prayer, theological discussion, to address hot issues of the day and, from time to time, for concerted action in community service and evangelism.

During my term, NCCS received a proposal that it was God’s time for the churches in the land to come together to proclaim the One Name of Jesus Christ through a national evangelistic rally.

The landmark event for such a nationwide effort was the 1978 Billy Graham rallies that hugely impacted the life and witness of the Church in Singapore.

A generation had passed. As the NCCS leaders and I prayed over and discussed the proposal, it resonated in our hearts. NCCS was not going to carry the initiative on its own shoulders but worked with other groupings of Protestant churches, namely the LoveSingapore movement and the Evangelical Fellowship of Singapore (EFOS).

The Lord gave us a remarkable unity. And so, the “Celebration of Hope” (COH) rallies were birthed with a joint Steering Committee and a Working Committee formed.

Stage scenes from Celebration of Hope 2019.

In working towards COH 2019, the team and I were conscious that we were building on the solid work done in earlier years by Rev Lawrence Khong (Founding Chairman of LoveSingapore), Rev Edmund Chan (Founder of Global Alliance of Intentional Disciplemaking Churches and Leadership Mentor, Covenant Evangelical Free Church, Singapore), Bishop Terry Kee (President of National Council of Churches Singapore over different terms), Elder Dr Lawrence Chia (Chairman of Evangelical Fellowship of Singapore) and the late Rev Dr Rick Seaward (Founder of Calvary Charismatic Centre in 1977 and a past Chairman of LoveSingapore), among others, to unite the churches in Singapore and lay the prayer-undergirding for the Church in Singapore to be spiritually vibrant in its life and witness.

Our goal was to proclaim that Jesus is the One Name that gives HOPE to every person. Our strategy was to mobilise local churches, exhort Christians to reach out to their own circle of yet-to-believe family members and friends, and to pitch the centralised rallies not as “mass evangelism” but “personal evangelism on a mass scale”.

We worked on having separate multi-lingual rallies at the 50,000-capacity National Stadium complex. Although the COH rallies were in 2019 and my term as President had passed, the NCCS Council led by Bishop Terry Kee of the Lutheran Church asked me to continue as Chairman of the COH Steering Committee.

God gifted me with Rev Tony Yeo (Senior Pastor of Covenant Evangelical Free Church) and Rev Lewis Lew (from my own diocese), the two best strategists and ground leaders anyone could ask for. They worked tirelessly in mobilising the body of Christ in Singapore and they used all their endowed skills and graces to plan and oversee the series of rallies.

Bishop Rennis (flanked by Pastor Edmund Chan and Pastor Lawrence Khong) on Day of His Power, 2020.

They recruited reliable leaders to organise the Chinese-speaking, Tamil-speaking and other language-specific group rallies. The core organising team had very good support from Rev Ngoei Foong Nghian (General Secretary of NCCS), Rev Lawrence Khong (Chairman of LoveSingapore), Elder Lawrence Chia and Rev Ezekiel Tan (EFOS), sister Lai Kheng Pousson (Co-ordinator of LoveSingapore’s Prayer Network) and Edric Sng (Thirst Collective) as well as a host of other senior Pastors and leaders.

The Lord was uniting His church in a wonderful way around His command to proclaim the Gospel to every nation. It must be said that the Jubilee Day of Prayer 2015 when 51,000 Christians gathered in the National Stadium to pray for our nation on the 50th Anniversary of its independence, the national prayer rally in 2018 and the faithful intercession groups consistently praying for our nation helped prepare the way for the mobilisation of Christ’s body. The wind of the Holy Spirit had been brewing over the Church in Singapore for some time.

A total of 227 churches and Christian organisations actively participated in COH. More than 125,000 attended the rallies which were conducted separately in three main language streams (English, Chinese and Tamil).

In addition, there were approximately 1 million unique viewers online who followed the rallies via live streaming and social media. The evangelist God used for the English rallies was Canon J John from the UK, while he used Brother Kou Shao En (寇紹恩) for the Chinese rally and Rev Mohan C Lazarus from India for the Tamil rally.

We praise God for the harvest of about 2000 first-time decisions to receive the Lord at the rallies themselves, and another 2,000 lapsed Christians who re- dedicated themselves to the Lord. We also thank God for the other blessings that flowed out of COH.

Perhaps this is best expressed by the testimony of Bishop Low Jee King who was in the core group planning the Chinese rally which was given the prime slot at the Stadium on Saturday night:

“We saw a fully-packed stadium of 50,000 persons that day. It can be said that it was the largest Chinese evangelistic rally ever held by the Chinese churches in Singapore. Many brothers and sisters from the English-speaking churches were also mobilised to serve at the rally. This rally fully reflected the unity of the Chinese and English churches in Singapore to fulfil the Great Commission. The rally also helped the participating churches establish a new friendship that has continued post-COH. We come together more regularly to pray, share ministry information and work together for the Lord, especially in evangelism and serving the community.”

More than 125,000 people attended the Celebration of Hope rallies in May 2019.

Another unanticipated but beautiful fruit of COH is that it sparked a concerted outreach effort by several churches and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to the large foreign worker population in Singapore.

Large-scale “thank you” parties were organised at the dormitories themselves with 78,000 attending and again about 2,000 persons committing their lives to Jesus Christ.

Some churches went on further to see how to care more meaningfully for the practical needs of foreign-workers. The Diocese, for example, partnered with the managing operator of a cluster of dormitories to improve the social aspect of the workers during the COVID lockdown, by providing social programmes online and the installation of LED TVs in the dormitory, as well as medical teams that would regularly visit the dormitories.

That the Celebration of Hope took place in 2019 just before COVID became a full- blown pandemic only served to increase the organising team’s sense of awe and thanksgiving to the Lord for all that He had accomplished.

One person’s testimony was that COH, by re-emphasising personal evangelism and personal discipleship, albeit with a centralised harvesting moment, helped prepare Christians to reach unbelievers on their own without the regular church-run programmes and events that COVID had shut down.

I will never forget the experience I had when an elderly retired school teacher on a wheelchair excitedly told me during the COVID shut-down: “Pastor, my married son, my own son is the one who led me to Jesus. For years I had been looking for the truth that satisfies, and finally it was my own son who showed me the truth in Jesus.”

Such instances do encourage my fellow pastors and me to continue to pray that the fruit of COH will abide (John 15:16).

All By His Grace: An Autobiographical Reflection on Pastoral Leadership by Bishop Rennis Ponniah retails for S$25 and is available here.

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