Q&A with Paul Wong | Ex-SMUCF Campus Pastor
About Paul
Paul is married to Angela and they have two small daughters Elizabeth and Abigail. Paul is currently a Bible College student at Oak Hill Theological College, London. Before that he was the campus pastor at Singapore Management University Christian Fellowship (an independent Christian fellowship comprised of Christians at SMU).
He was previously a ministry trainee at St Helen’s Bishopsgate, London, where he spent two years in full-time ministry training, having worked as a corporate lawyer in the City of London. In his free time he enjoys golf, reading and spending time with his family.
What are some things you enjoy doing as a bible college student?
God’s Word brings life to a dying world - and so being in Bible college is a wonderful privilege and joy.
It is just an amazing gift to be sent for a season solely to be equipped to teach the Bible better. The fact that I have an opportunity to take time out from regular ministry to be a full-time student of the Bible is something that I am very grateful for.
I do enjoy the lectures at College and the thinking that they provoke. The quality of teaching at Oak Hill is genuinely excellent and I am appreciative of the clarity of the lecturers which has enabled me to engage properly with important theological issues which classes have raised.
I also love the environment I'm in - surrounded by like-minded and godly Christians who love the Lord. Being able to talk things through (both theological and non) is a gift.
How has being a bible college student been different from being a full time campus pastor?
I guess in some ways it's very similar: There’s lots of writing and it’s massively busy with many deadlines to be met!
In other ways it’s very different. I very much miss the day-to-day ministry of meeting people and opening up the Bible with them (I do have a small group to take care of in Church). I also miss working on and preaching through whole Bible books very much. You’d be surprised but there’s much less “Bible time” in a Bible college!
It’s a real discipline to carve that out for yourself given the amount of other stuff we have to read and write. The type of reading I do now is also different - it’s much wider and I’m engaging with subject that I wouldn’t ordinarily interact with as a Campus Pastor (but which are nonetheless helpful).
What are you working on now?
At college I'm taking classes in OT Biblical Studies, Ministry, Homiletics, Doctrine and History, as well as Greek and Hebrew. This term I’ll be writing essays dealing with the apparent difficulties of the Canaanite “Genocide” in Joshua, a doctrine essay on an aspect of one of the early church creeds, an essay on evangelism, and a sermon for my homiletics class which I will preach at a local church in February.
I’ve also been doing some thinking in the area of hermeneutics and something called the Theological Interpretation of Scripture. There are some (small but significant) differences in the way the OT is read and taught by some faculty at college, and the clarity with which I have been taught has been helpful in helping me think through (and strengthening) my convictions on the way we read and teach the Bible.
In church I’m working on teaching John’s Gospel to a group of international student boys. If only we all had more time!