“What and where is MCI?” are two questions commonly posed to our members. Methodist Church of the Incarnation (MCI) is located in the north-western part of Singapore and has a congregation smaller than most of our sister churches. Yet, God never fails to magnify His glory through our 370-member church in the humble neighbourhood of Teck Whye Estate.
We praise the Lord for guiding MCI in our ministry and mission over the past 21 years. By His grace, MCI, which began as a simple house church in Bukit Batok in the 1980s, became a Local Conference in 1992 at its current premises on a 30-year lease.
MCI is serving the Teck Whye estate with outreach ministries that include a church kindergarten and ministry to the needy among the community. In recent years, we have been mobilising members to express our faith by reaching out to children and senior citizens in particular. For children, we have tuition and enrichment classes, and a Special Needs programme. Our Seniors’ Ministry sees members befriending the lonely and regularly providing meals for the poor.
In 1996, we initiated a Mandarin Service. We have grown our ministry with weekly English, Mandarin and Hokkien Services, monthly visits to Bethany Methodist Nursing Home and annual mission trips to Fujian (China) and Sibu (Sarawak, Malaysia).
Two years ago, the church embarked on an Extension Project to raise $4.5 million to expand our premises – probably the most daunting endeavour of our 21 years.
A ground-breaking ceremony on Nov 20, 2011 marked the start of a 24-month-long faith journey during which we encountered many challenges.
Throughout, we witnessed God’s power and providence.
The Lord taught us what it means to exercise exponential faith in Him. We were much inspired that all funds were raised before the building was completed; a feat which was possible only by God’s grace.
The completion of the physical building only marks the beginning of a new challenge to “enlarge God’s tent”, i.e. to share Christ’s love with the community holistically.
Through a recent Leaders’ Summit, the Lord led our pastors and leaders in developing a five-year Vision 2018: “Growing Christian disciples who renew their worship to the Almighty God and share Christ’s love with the community and world”.
Pastor-in-Charge the Rev Derrick Lau said: “MCI will continue to face great challenges ahead. We must continually seek the Lord’s direction and by His grace, develop Vision 2018 to its fullest potential.
Providentially, we mark the beginning of this new Vision Cycle by moving into our new worship hall – JPG Hall (Joy, Praise and Glory) – taken from Jeremiah 33:9, which echoes our aspiration for Joy as we Praise God, and accord Glory to Him alone.”
While all the funds have been raised for our church extension, we will be focusing on raising disciples for ministry, clearing our loans and meeting the challenge of higher ministry expenditure.
We sincerely thank our sister churches for their prayers, love and support in establishing and developing MCI to where we are today. We can embrace the future with confidence because we know that nothing is impossible with God.
Our faith-stretching journey has been nothing short of God’s blessings.
MCI warmly invites you to u join us for Sunday worship, u serve with us in reaching out to children and senior citizens in Teck Whye, and upray for us as we work towards fulfilling our Vision 2018.
Pictures by Methodist Church of the Incarnation
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, there may be opportunity to forge cross-church partnerships and collaborations
Shauna Oh is Chairman of the Committee on Communications and Media of Methodist Church of the Incarnation.