Welcome EAST’s newest Faculty: Roy Tan

 

EAST News welcomes Roy Tan (EdD Studies in Child & Family Development) as our newest Resident Faculty Member, although Roy is neither new to EAST nor Christian Ministry. He has joined EAST since September 2019 and served in Navigators for 22 years as staff, was a pastor in a local church (Neighbourhood Church) for 8 years, and even worked as a Clerk of Works in the army all prior to joining EAST. Since joining EAST, he has co-taught the Shepherd Care class with Dr Casey Lok for three cycles and given personal counselling sessions to dozens of students as part of the course assignment to enable students to work through life issues and understand their own temperaments and giftings better.

Roy and his wife Bee Lay kindly accepted a Zoom interview, shared their salvation stories, their home-schooling journey with their children, and prayer requests for their family and ministry. Roy accepted Christ at a Navteens Youth Rally held at Orchard Road Presbyterian Church in 1975 as a teenager. At that time, he had come from a broken home, and the verse 2 Cor 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” really spoke to his heart. He also recalled 12 Dec 76 as the date where he prayed the prayer of surrender unto the Lord after a message, “Lord, whatever you want me to do, I will do it.”

For Bee Lay, it was through a classmate’s 180 degree transformation of behaviour in school that had attracted her to Christ. At 15 years old, she had a classmate who was once very fierce and controlling, but there was such a transformation of behaviour after that classmate became a Christian, that Bee Lay followed her to youth meetings in church (Harvesters Baptist) and eventually accepted Christ into her life too. During her polytechnic days, Bee Lay attended a Poly Nav camp and was involved with the Navigators Ministry. That was how she first got acquainted with Roy but their friendship and relationship had deepened and matured when they attended the same church. They eventually got married in 1986, a year before Roy joined staff with Navigators in 1987.

Their elder son Ryan (32) is currently pursuing a PhD in Mass Communications at Pennsylvania State University together with his wife Eunice who is also pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature, both living in the US. Their younger daughter Gloria (27) is currently an editor of an educational magazine in Singapore. But both Roy and Bee Lay had an interesting home-schooling journey with both of their children in their younger days. For a period of five years, when Ryan was going through his secondary education from 13-17 years old and his sister was from going through Primary 1 to 5, their parents felt convicted to home-school both of them. Roy and Bee Lay took up the challenge back then and even though the journey was tough to the point when Ryan even asked, “What will my future be like?” Bee Lay wisely replied, “I actually also don’t know but I am asking you to trust God together with us.” Fast forward to nearly 20 years later, both children have turned out well. Praise God!

Prayer Requests:

1. Know Christ better and deeper in daily life.
2. Wisdom and strength to do his will in writing my papers and dissertation in EdD studies, and fulfilling my responsibilities in EAST and our church.
3. Our family members, relatives and neighbours’ salvation.