Kampong Kapor Methodist Church, Singapore (10 July 2006)
Kampong Kapor Methodist Church (GPS: 1.30724, 103.854) is a church at the corner of Cuff Road and
Kampong Kapor Road in the
Little India neighbourhood of
Rochor, Singapore. The church has a history going back to November 1890 when a Sunday Malay language worship service was started by
Sophia Blackmore, the first female Methodist missionary in Singapore. The attendees were Peranakan Chinese - twenty Babas and Nyonyas.
In the beginning, the congregation comprised 25 girls from the mission hostel, boys from Epworth Home and Malay-speaking Christian workers from Mission Press as well as 2 missionaries. A few years later, on 25 January 1894, the group shifted to the Christian Institute at 155
Middle Road, sharing the premises with the Methodist Girls' School. That year is taken as the start date of the church.
By the late 1920s, the church had outgrown the space at Middle Road, necessitating a shift to a new building. A plot of land was bought at Kampong Kapor Road and the new church building constructed there. It was completed in 1930 in the Art Deco style which was all the rage at that time, and was called the
Straits Chinese Methodist Chuch (Bickley Memorial), to reflect the largely Chinese membership of the church as well as its Peranakan characteristic, and the fact that funds for its construction amounting to $50,000 came from the family and friends of Bishop Bickley. In 1957, the church was renamed Kampong Kapor Methodist Church. It celebrated its hundredth anniversary in January 1994.
Today Kampong Kapor Methodist Church has a membership of a thousand in its congregation, split into six services, three in English, one in Peranakan, one in Mandarin and one in Tamil. The church also has a Prayer Ministry and an outreach work including a Boys' Brigade, a Girls' Brigade, a family service centre, a kindergarten, evangelising work as well as mission work, sending about 20 missionaries to seven countries.
Contact
Kampong Kapor Methodist Church
3 Kampong Kapor Road,
Singapore 208676
Tel: +65 6293 7997
Fax: +65 6291 0501
Email: mailbox@kkmc.org.sg
Website: https://www.kkmc.org.sg/
Getting there
Take the
East-West Line to the
Bugis MRT Station or the
North East Line to the
Little India MRT Station and walk from there.
Kampong Kapor Methodist Church (10 July 2006)
(Mar 2022)