HingHwa Methodist Church (HMC) is 104 years old this year. HMC was founded by the Rev Dr Brewster and the Rev Lee Tiong Swee in 1911 with 13 members, and worship services were held in a rented room at Middle Road. It was only in 1950 that we constructed our new church building at 93 Kitchener Road. After an extension and some refurbishment, we have our present church building which was completed in 1986.
Initially we had only one worship service, which was in the Hinghwa dialect. Through the grace of God we have now four worship services – one in Hinghwa, one in Mandarin and two English services.
In order to further share the light of Christ, in 1994 we planted a preaching point in Yishun – the Methodist North Mission Point – with 10 members who pioneered the work of reaching out to the Mandarin-speaking and dialect-speaking groups there. In 1997, about 40 English-speaking members from HMC started an English preaching point in the same area, known as Yishun Methodist Mission (YMM).
By 2000, the two mission points integrated as one, and eventually became a local conference in 2012. We praise the Lord for His faithfulness in our journey, and for the birth of our daughter church, YMM.
HMC’s vision is to be a Lighthouse – to guide people to Christ. Our church is strategically located in Lavender where there are many residents who are not from well-to-do households. Our location gives us ample opportunity to reach out to the community.
Since 1976, we have run a Neighbourhood Tuition Centre to help primary and secondary school students in their studies. This ministry is still well-attended today. To augment our outreach to children, HMC partnered with the Methodist Welfare Services in 1999 to establish the D’Joy Children’s Centre to offer quality kindergarten and before-and-after-school care services.
Over the years since 1998, HMC has constantly carried out various activities to do ‘Acts Of Kindness’ to residents – distributing gifts and food aid, and offering practical tips. We have also worked with our neighbour, the People’s Association (PA)
as well as the Residents’ Committees (RC), to organise fund-raising activities and social events for residents.
HMC continues our missions focus to reach out to the nations and we have endeavoured to be a lighthouse through our overseas partnerships in church planting.
This year, HMC celebrated SG50 by embarking on a campaign called ‘Jubilee 2015: Celebrating Success, Building Significance’. The campaign kicked off at the Singapore Expo on 8 March 2015, featuring artistes Benny Prasad (a well-travelled musician from India) and Moses Lim (well-known local actor). This was attended by 1,175 people and many were saved or re-dedicated their lives to Jesus at the event.
In the 40 days that followed the event, we explored the true meaning of success and significance in various aspects of our lives by doing the following: meeting in 47 small groups, listening to six weekend messages and reading our 40-day inspirational journal developed by our pastoral team.
May the Lord continue to bless the work of HMC as we continue to let His light shine where He leads us.
We continue our series of profiling local churches from our three Annual Conferences of The Methodist Church in Singapore. As we come to have a better understanding of each other’s history and ministry, we may discover more opportunities to forge cross-church partnerships and collaborations.
Photos courtesy of HingHwa Methodist Church
Daniel Wong is Chairperson of the Local Church Executive Committee of HingHwa Methodist Church.