Happy Birthday!
Singapore Methodist Church celebrates 120th anniversary
by Peter Teo and Earnest Lau |
| Aldersgate Day Service participants process into the joint premises of Faith Methodist Church and Queenstown Chinese Methodist Church on May 24. |
More than 1,000 Methodists from all over Southeast Asia gathered at the May 24 Aldersgate Day Service celebrating the 120th anniversary of The Methodist Church in Singapore. The service kicked off the weeklong Aldersgate Convention 2005. The annual convention commemorates John Wesley’s heartwarming experience by bringing the Methodist family together and promoting his vision of Christian discipleship.
Singapore Bishop Robert Solomon delivered a sermon based on the same scripture from which Singapore Methodism founder the Rev. James Thoburn preached his first sermon.
“Who would have believed in 1885 that the tiny work begun would grow to such significant proportions and spread to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines?” Solomon asked.
“I now have an idea how Methodists work in various countries,” said the Rev. Primasiri Fernando, a Methodist pastor in Sri Lanka. “The styles and ways of doing things differ, but it is important for the mission of the church to remain the same.”
The convention was part of a yearlong celebration for the church. Other projects include publishing a Faith-Sharing New Testament with Psalms in English, Chinese and Tamil, launching a “Methodist Heritage Tour” and producing a retrospective DVD chronicling the church’s history.
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| Eight of the pastors and retired pastors in attendance who had served 25 years or more received copies of the Bible from Bishop Robert Solomon (third from left). |
The Methodist Church in Singapore began in 1885 as a missionary initiative of the South India Conference led by Thoburn. Its early foundations were laid by the Rev. William F. Oldham, who established the mission and its first English language boys’ school in 1886.
The mission rapidly spread to the main towns of the Malaysian Peninsula and Sarawak, where churches, and schools that were paired with them, provided a base for missionary outreach in English and the vernacular languages.
Like most other missions, the Methodist Mission in Singapore and Malaysia expanded and matured — first becoming a conference, then conferences spanning Southeast Asia, and the establishment of the Southeast Asian Central Conference in 1950.
The Malaysian and Singapore components became autonomous in 1968. They comprised an Asian church with a bishop elected from among the clergy. In 1976, the process was repeated when the one church was restructured into The Methodist Church in Singapore and The Methodist Church in Malaysia.
The Singapore church is composed of the Chinese, Emmanuel Tamil and Trinity annual conferences and is headed by a bishop elected by the church’s General Conference. A president heads each annual conference.
The 41 Methodist congregations, with a membership of almost 33,000, represent one of the largest Protestant denominations in Singapore.
—Peter Teo is editor of the Singapore Methodist Message.
Earnest Lau is associate editor.
