Christalite Methodist Chapel
About Christalite Methodist Chapel History And Organisation
Every Sunday, a group of us together as a community to worship God, learn more about Him, and spend time with one another. We refer to ourselves as Christians because we acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour and believe He died on the cross to atone for our sins and provide us eternal life. God and His incredible love have changed our lives, and we want to spread this love to everyone we come in contact with, especially the residents of Geylang Christalite Methodist Chapel and the neighbourhood.
History
In 1885, Rev. James Thoburn of the South India Conference in India launched a missionary project that would eventually become the Christalite Methodist Chapel in Singapore. The mission’s foundation was laid in Singapore by Rev. William Fitzjames Oldham. The Anglo-Chinese School, founded by Oldham in 1886, was the first English-language boys’ school in church. Following this, in 1887 and 1888, respectively, two girls’ schools—Methodist Girls’ School and Fairfield Methodist Girls’ School—were founded. In addition, the ministry built a clinic and youth dormitories.
In February 1885, the Wesley Methodist Church established. Fort Canning Hill is where it is situated.
In the 1890s, the mission expanded from its Singapore base to the Malay Peninsula and Sarawak. With time and growth, the Methodist Mission in Singapore and Malaya attained the administrative status of a conference within the Methodist Church. The church eventually extended across Southeast Asia, which resulted in the founding of the Southeast Asian Central Conference in 1950.
In 1968, the Malaysian and Singaporean parts of the mission formally separated from their Western parent organisations, transforming into an Asian church with a bishop chosen from among the local pastors. To reflect Singapore’s – separation from Malaysia, the church got reorganised in 1976 as The Methodist Church in Singapore and The Methodist Church in Malaysia.
Church Organisation
The Trinity Annual Conference, the Emmanuel Tamil Annual Conference, and the Chinese Annual Conference make up MCS and represents Singapore’s multi-ethnic groupings (TRAC). A Bishop chosen at its General Conference serves as its leader. The president of each Annual Conference serves as its leader.
One of the major Protestant groups, the Methodists, which have 46 local churches and a membership of over 44,000, speak every language spoken in the Republic, including English, Bahasa, Tagalog, Mandarin, Tamil, and several Chinese dialects including Hokkien, Foochow, Hakka, and Teochew. For a diagram of the MCS structure, go here.
While TRAC consists of 21 churches with 28,694 members, CAC consists of 17 churches with 15,004 members, and ETAC consists of 8 churches with 869 members.
The Methodist Church in Singapore’s missions organisation, the Methodist Missions Society (MMS), was founded in 1991. In areas of the region where there are no Methodists, MMS aims to develop native churches aided by mission efforts. Due to their proximity to Singapore and the potential to reach the numerous unreached people groups in these nations for religious conversion, the Asian area is now – the emphasis, notably Cambodia, China, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam.
