This is Our Story: THE FCC 100 Choir

The FCC 100 Choir led worship at Faith Community Church’s Willetton campus over two services on Sunday 17 August 2025.

It was a culmination of over a year of planning, including recruiting the right people to direct the choir, and over 8 weeks of training, rehearsing and memorising songs.

The excitement leading up to 17 August was palpable. But beyond experiencing the moment that Sunday, I believe that the Choir left an indelible impact beyond what I (and probably the choir members) could have ever imagined.

The Story Behind the Choir

The idea for the FCC 100 Choir was, perhaps, born out of frustration.

Every year, FCC’s Worship Ministry would have the task of anchoring one Sunday service, known as “Worship Sunday”. And every year, we would get close to the actual date without a clear plan.

So, I was determined to get ahead of the curve in 2025.

About a year ago, the thought came to me to put together a community choir for Worship Sunday 2025.

A relatively new member of our worship team, Sineng Jiang, happened to run a community choir. One day, I saw on Sineng’s instastory his conducting a choir of about 25 to 30 people singing “Dancing Queen”. And I thought: what if we did something similar for Worship Sunday, with church-appropriate songs instead?

What’s a community choir? It’s an expression of a grassroots movement all over the world in which people from the community gather to sing in an unauditioned choir to make social connections – unauditioned in the sense that anyone could join. The ability to hold a tune is not a prerequisite.

The FCC 100 Choir would be an expression of that movement – but with a gospel purpose. Beyond leading worship for Worship Sunday, the Choir would be about community building across generations both within and outside the Church.

As a Worship Director, I also had an ulterior motive.

Given that we seldom get airtime on a Sunday to teach on worship, I thought that running the Choir would mean I would have a captive audience in whom I could indoctrinate the theology of worship so that when we finally release the members back into the congregation, we would have a 100 people who understood the aims of the worship ministry and were therefore “on our side”.

So, when our Worship Leadership Team finally met and I pitched the idea, much to my chagrin, I was told that there was no Worship Sunday scheduled for 2025.

Not to be deterred, I wrote to Ps Benny Ho and Pastor Dan Yan in July 2024 asking whether they would allow me to have a community choir lead worship on an “ordinary” Sunday. They immediately said “yes”.

Now that I had clearance, I had to get Sineng to agree to conduct the Choir since I certainly did not have the skill to do it. Thankfully, he also said “yes’.

Next, I had to recruit two other conductors so that we could have one conductor train and lead each harmony part – allowing the Choir to sing in three-part harmony.

Lester Sim, with whom I had gone on a Japan Mission Trip in December 2024, happened to be part of proper choirs growing up, so he was happy to do it. As was our ministry Vocal Leader, Jane Lee. Our Music Director, Addie Choon, also relished the opportunity to put together some special musical arrangements for the day. So, I had my team.

At this stage, we hadn’t got to recruiting 100 people for the Choir yet. In fact, saying “100” was intimidating – “what if we couldn’t get 100 people?” “What if there were only 20 people?” “What if they really couldn’t sing?” “Maybe we should audition them….” Ultimately, to ask for 100 people was an act of faith.

For three weeks after announcements were made at church, I waited in excruciating anticipation.

To my relief and surprise (but not to God’s), when we finally closed registrations, we had 117 on paper (although ultimately, some did drop out during the preparation time for one reason or another).

We had our first Choir gathering on Tuesday night, 24 June 2024. And then we spent 7 sessions over the next 8 weeks preparing, rehearsing and memorising. The rest was, as they say, history.

Watch

Listen

Here are the recordings of the two services in which the Choir performed.

Sunday 17 August 2025 – Willetton 8.30 am service

Sunday 17 August 2025 – Willetton 11.00 am service

Impact

So many stories came out from various choir members during and after the Choir Sunday.

I remember the buzz even during our first meeting. It felt like all of us were on the verge of doing something great and significant.

Very early on, I met Richard because he travelled from up North each week and so, to avoid traffic, ended up at Church very early. I found a companion who could help me set up the various rehearsal spaces. We got to chat about our journeys and church backgrounds.

One Tuesday night, a few of us had arrived early to each our takeaway dinners. Glory and her daughter, Winnie, had arrived early too so they sat with us. We found out that their family had joined FCC a few months earlier, having moved from the North to South of the River and feeling called to join the Church.

One mother told me how she never taught her young daughter how to lift her hands in worship, but then, as we rehearsed, her daughter spontaneously shot her hands up as the mother watched in tears and realised that the Choir was modelling worship for her daughter.

One choir member remarked that she and her husband could now confidently bring a baby into this world, knowing that the child would become part of a community of faith like she had experienced during the Choir.

Even the timing of Ps Dan’s sermon that Sunday was providential. Normally, FCC goes through a pre-set sermon series. As it happened, we were in the middle of a series on The Psalms of Ascent and it just so happened that Ps Dan was scheduled to preach on Psalm 132 – which was essentially about “worship”. As it turned out, 17 August 2025 became a Worship Sunday of sorts – and the Choir became a living, breathing illustration of Ps Dan’s message.

I’m sure there were many more stories, but here are some testimonies submitted by the Choir members.