Whatever happened to Ralph Neighbour?

Monday, 10 January 2005 @ 08:10 am SGT

There are many of you who might remember the actual architect who brought about the successful Cell Church Movement in Singapore. Many of you would have studied his books including The Shepherds Guidebook, Where do we go from here?, The Arrival Kit, Journey Guide, Beginning the Journey: Entering the Kingdom of God and many more.

Well, Uncle Ralph as he is fondly remembered as, is visiting Singapore later in the year and he has sent us an update of what he has been up to over the last 10 years. If you wish to find out more, or wish to re-connect up with him, please read on..

Uncle Ralph writes....

Dear Co-Workers,

Many of you “old timers” will recall the link God created between Ruth and Me with Singapore. We first came to your nation in 1973 and established The Baptist Centre for Urban Studies, and pioneered in planting 11 House Churches. Later, we returned in 1990 to serve for five years as consultant to Faith Community Baptist Church, assisting them in setting up their Cell Church system. I established the TOUCH EQUIPPING STATIONS SYSTEM to prepare pastors to plant and maintain cells in their churches. This was finally registered with the Singapore government as a legal entity so pastors from other nations might receive visas to enter the training school.

When South Africa broke from Apartheid in 1995, the Lord led us to train over 1,000 pastors to transition to a cell church base. From the years spent working with them, there are now hundreds of cell churches in that nation.

At the time I moved to Singapore in 1990, I wrote Where Do We Go From Here?, a manual on cell church life that is still in print and has passed the 200,000 mark in distribution.

In 1999, I planted a cell church in my home town of Houston, Texas to reach out to the 88% of the city that never darkens the doors of any church. This fifth largest city in America has 123 languages spoken among its population and is larger than Singapore.

The Father has also assigned us to develop the TOUCH GLOCAL TRAINING CENTER to provide both online distance learning and local church classroom courses. You can visit us at www.touchglocal.com.

I would like to visit Singapore in November and wonder if you would be interested in spending a day with me, sharing about the various versions of the cell church movement. I would like to share about the trend in cell churches to establish internal training centers. I have a newsletter as well and send it only to opt-in pastors. If you would like to be put on the mailing list, contact me at ralph@touchglocal.com .

I would be open to conducting a brief seminar for one or more Singapore churches during my visit.

Looking forward to eating char kway teow again at my favorite hawker stall!

In His bonds,

Dr. Ralph W. Neighbour

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