JAMES THOBURN:
Led the mission team
to Singapore that
started the Methodist
Church. - Methodist
Church Archives picture.
WILLIAM OLDHAM:
The first pastor of the
"English Church", later
renamed Wesley
Methodist Church.
- Methodist Archives picture.
JAMES THOBURN: Led the mission team to Singapore that started the Methodist Church. - Methodist Church Archives picture. |
|
WILLIAM OLDHAM: The first pastor of the "English Church", later renamed Wesley Methodist Church. - Methodist Archives picture. |
Four major MCS
projects to remind
us of our
rich heritage
By PETER TEO
and EARNEST LAU
THE Methodist Church in Singapore
(MCS) celebrates its 120th Anniversary this year (2005), and as
part of its anniversary programme, it plans to initiate four major
projects. They are:
1. The publication of a "Faith-Sharing New Testament with
Psalms";
2. The launch of a "Methodist Heritage Tour";
3. The launch of an MCS DVD; and
4. The staging of Aldersgate Convention 2005.
The "Faith-Sharing New Testament", which incorporates
the Psalms and two documents on faith-sharing, was originally
published by the World Methodist Evangelism Institute (WMEI) of
the World Methodist Council. The MCS has been granted permission
by the WMEI to print this New Testament as a special anniversary
publication with our MCS logo. It will be published in English,
Chinese and Tamil.
The MCS is enlisting the services of a travel agency, Amity International
Travel Pte Ltd, owned by a Methodist, to conduct the "Methodist
Heritage Tours" throughout the year. Mr Tan Khey Cheow, Managing
Director of Amity Travel, is the Lay Leader and a Local Preacher
of Changi Methodist Church. He has been a Singapore Tourism Board
licensed tour guide since 1980.
For a start, the programme will be a half-day coach tour with
a drive through the old Colonial district near the Singapore River,
Victoria Theatre, Coleman Street, Stamford Road and Fort Canning
that will highlight where the earliest Methodist Church services
were held and most of the earliest churches and schools. There
will be opportunities to visit or stop by some of the institutions
associated with Methodist history. The tours will be very affordable
(See Page 12).
The MCS is also working on a DVD that will highlight its work
and mission.
The Aldersgate Convention 2005, which is scheduled from May 24
to May 28, will gather three well-known speakers from the United
States - the Rev Dr William Abraham, the Rev Dr Geoffrey Wainwright
and the Rev Dr Karen Westerfield Tucker. The theme is "Faith
and Reason: Wesleyan Perspectives".
The convention, an annual event commemorating John Wesley's heartwarming
experience, brings the Methodist family together and promotes
his vision of Christian discipleship. It will begin with the Aldersgate
Service at the joint premises of Faith Methodist Church/Queenstown
Chinese Methodist Church on May 24 at 7.45 pm.
The Rev Dr Abraham, a leading theology professor, a dynamic preacher
and an authority on Methodism, will give three evening talks at
Barker Road Methodist Church on May 25, 26 and 27 at 7.45 pm.
A two-day seminar on worship will be conducted at Sophia Blackmore
Hall, Methodist Centre on May 27 and 28 from 9 am to 5 pm for
pastors and laity who lead worship. The seminar leaders are the
Rev Dr Wainwright and the Rev Dr Tucker.
A hymn festival at the new TA2 Sanctuary in Wishart Road, off
Telok Blangah Road, will round off the convention on May 28. Starting
at 7.45 pm and to be co-ordinated by the Methodist School of Music,
it promises to close the convention on a rapturous note.
METHODISM came to
South-east Asia when the Rev Dr James Thoburn, leading the mission
team, arrived at Keppel Harbour on the S. S. Khandalla on Feb
7, 1885.
Although their arrival was unplanned and unheralded, they were
met by Mr Charles Phillips, "a godly Wesleyan" and head
of the Seamen's Institute, who had had a dream the night before.
He later believed it was a vision urging him to meet the missionaries
for whom he had prayed Thoburn did not waste much time. Preaching
from the text "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,
saith the Lord", he held public meetings at the Town Hall
(now Victoria Theatre) daily at 8 pm until Feb 22. On Monday Feb
23, he organised the first-ever Quarterly (Local) Conference held
in Singapore, with three Wesleyan Methodists, John Polglase, F.
J. Benjafield, Maurice Drummond, and Miss Salome Fox, and 22 probationers,
with the Rev William Oldham as pastor. The "English Church"
(later renamed Wesley Methodist Church) was born, and we thus
celebrate its 120th anniversary.
To commemorate its anniversary,
Wesley Methodist Church will be holding a number of events this
year, including a Missions Conference (Feb 17-19), a Thanksgiving
Service on Feb 20, and an evangelistic event called "The
Contemporary Struggle" at ACS (Barker Road) on June 17 and
18, which will be repeated at Wesley Methodist Church on July
1 and 2. Its 120th Anniversary Dinner will be held on Aug 12.
We can better appreciate something of the dynamism of the first
four years until the Mission was formed in 1889, and Oldham's
"mystique and magic", if we recount some of the major
projects that were started.
The English Church met in the Town Hall on Sunday evenings for
the best part of two years, and at Charles Phillips' Christian
Institute on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings. It was Oldham
who obtained from the Government a piece of land at Coleman Street
on which to build the first Methodist Episcopal Church which he
designed and dedicated on Dec 15, 1886. It catered mainly to the
expatriate Europeans and British service personnel.
Wesley Methodist Church
today: The "mother" church of The Methodist Church
in Singapore. - Methodist Message picture.
Tamil work
By then, Tamil work had started with the Anglo-Tamil School
as an outreach to the Tamils (to whom Oldham was ministering in
the jail), and recruited the first foreign Tamil teacher, M. Gnanamuthoo,
sent from Rangoon in September 1885 by their presiding elder.
Although the fortunes of the school were uncertain, Oldham secured
the services of C. W. Underwood, who came from Ceylon in 1887
to form the Tamil Methodist Church that year. His early demise,
and the early withdrawal of his replacement, the Rev H. L. Hoisington,
checked the growth of Tamil work, until the pastor of the English
Church, the Rev F. H. Morgan, took charge in 1896, assisted by
a Tamil preacher, Simon Peter, who also taught at the Anglo-Tamil
School.
Open-air evangelical preaching in Malay started with the recruitment
of Alexander Fox as exhorter, joined by William Shellabear, a
British army officer commanding a Malay platoon defending the
harbour. Shellebear became a distinguished Malay scholar who translated
both the Old and New Testaments until he left in 1919 to teach
Missions in a theological seminary in America.
Day schools
Oldham's other achievement was the founding of Anglo-Chinese
School on March 1, 1886 which grew rapidly, together with the
beginnings of a Boarding department. This was followed by the
two schools founded by Sophia Blackmore, the woman missionary
whom he met in India a few years back as prospective lady missionary
to Singapore. She arrived in 1887, and almost immediately started
a Tamil Girls' School for the daughters of Tamil businessmen (renamed
Methodist Girls' School in 1892 when Chinese and other girls were
accepted).
The energetic Miss Blackmore visited Baba Chinese families in
Chinatown and managed to recruit enough girls to start the Telok
Ayer Girls' School in 1888 (renamed Fairfield Girls' School in
1912).
Baba work
In addition, Miss Blackmore quickly, though awkwardly at first,
learnt the Malay language and while temporarily staying with the
Oldhams in the parsonage at Coleman Street, accepted the first
of the many girls who formed the nucleus of Nind Home. Situated
along Sophia Road, it became a house church using the Baba Malay
dialect - the girls meeting regularly for prayers, and worship
on Sundays, when several workers with the Mission Press nearby
joined in.
On Jan 23, 1894, assisted by Shellabear, they organised themselves
as the Baba Church at the Christian Institute. This was the home
church for the Rev Goh Hood Keng, the first Baba Chinese pastor.
Chinese work
Chinese work started when the Rev B. F. West, a trained physician,
opened a dispensary in 1889 in his rented house in Chinatown,
as well as being a teacher at ACS. Assisted in his work by Lim
Hoai Toh and Sng Lim Chuan, they succeeded in bringing 10 Hokkien
men and one woman for baptism that year at the Coleman Street
Church. They formed the nucleus of Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist
Church.
Elsewhere in Singapore, German Methodist missionary Rev Dr H.
L. E. Luering conducted Chinese services in jail, and added a
Cantonese service to the Chinese Church. Promoting Chinese dialects
seemed to hasten the growth of Chinese work.
Printing press
Yet another initiative was the launch of the printing press
which Bishop Thoburn was convinced indispensable to the work.
Oldham appointed Shellabear as mission printer and by December
1890, began operating at 31 Selegie Road, at the corner of Sophia
Road. It was supported by work given by the British & Foreign
Bible Society, printing scripture portions as well as the Malaysia
Message (forerunner of Methodist Message) from October 1891 and
the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals). In all this, Shellabear played
a key role, learning the trade from the bottom up - to the publication
of his translation of the Old and New Testaments many years later.
Something of the growth and success of the press can be seen in
its transformation as Methodist Publishing House when it was renamed
Malaya Publishing House (MPH) in 1928 and was, until the beginning
of World War II, a major provider of school books all over Singapore
and Malaya.
The pace of the early Mission, by any yardstick, was remarkable,
setting the stage for brisk expansion not only in Singapore, but
throughout the major towns of the Federated Malay States, Penang
and Malacca - "not by power but my Spirit, saith the Lord".
Remarkable pace of early Mission set stage
for
brisk expansion in Singapore and old Malaya
The Anglo-Tamil School, which was started as an outreach to
the Tamils in September 1885, shortly after
Thoburn and Oldham arrived in Singapore. -- Methodist Church Archives
picture: Morgan-Bassett Collection.