METHODIST HERITAGE DAY

Revisiting TACMC’s mission, ministry

By Winston Tay

THERE WAS AN AIR OF EXCITEMENT as the ushers, tour guides and organising committee received the bus loads of visitors between noon and 6 pm on Oct 31 – Methodist Heritage Day.

Much joyful and meaningful labour had gone into the preparations for this celebration of Methodism’s mission and ministry in Singapore over the last 125 years. The history of Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church’s (TACMC) outreach to Chinese immigrants along the early water bay of Singapore was revisited by the organising committee, communicated to the volunteer ushers and tour guides for the day, and shared with all visitors to the church.

Visitors were first welcomed with a brief introduction to TACMC’s history. Dr Benjamin West, a medical missionary sent by the South India Conference, first pioneered the mission among Chinese immigrants who were settling along the Telok Ayer Basin of early Singapore. He began by reaching out to them through medical work at a dispensary he opened in Upper Nanking Street. This is possibly the first Western medical dispensary in Singapore. Before long, he was able to begin weekly services for a congregation of about 30 converts. God blessed the gospel work and by the mid-1890s the congregation had expanded to 170 members and was made up of Chinese immigrants across various dialect groups.

This small community that was gathering in a “Tin Hut” building in the early 1900s grew steadily, and eventually, the current church building had to be erected in order to house the growing congregation. The present building, which was built by the leading architectural firm of that time, was completed in 1924, dedicated in 1925 and gazetted as a National Monument of Singapore in 1989, 100 years after the founding of the church.

The visitors who came were rounded off with a brief walking tour around the building. Highlights included a “five-foot way”, an unusually thick outer wall that was reinforced in World War Two as added protection against flying shrapnel, a sanctuary which fused East-Asian and Western architectural features, and an Oriental rooftop pavilion which was originally designed to be used as a church bell-tower.

A set of Western oil paintings of Christ’s Last Supper, His Gethsemane experience and the Resurrection, also bore testimony to how the Christian faith helped facilitate an awareness and appreciation of both the Eastern and Western cultures within the local Chinese Christian community.

Looking back at the history of TACMC, it is clear that the Methodist Mission in Singapore was not an insular mission which catered only to the spiritual needs of its own people. From the beginning, Telok Ayer Methodists reached out to the community, existed for the community and engaged the needs of the community in the name of Jesus Christ, with the love of God.

TACMC was a “Church for Others” as it was so called by some in the early days of its mission. 

Winston Tay is a member of Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church.