Coming together as a church
About SKMC
In the late 1990s, God’s hand sowed the seeds of ministry that would eventually form Sengkang Methodist Church (SKMC).
He gave three independent Methodist churches the same vision of beginning ministries in the then-emerging housing estate of Sengkang.
Gloria Methodist Church, as it was then known, became like a kernel of wheat which “dies” so that it may “produce many seeds” (John 12:24), as it approved the transfer of all its active members into the new church, alongside members from Hakka Methodist Church and Paya Lebar Chinese Methodist Church.
On September 10, 2000, SKMC was constituted as a local conference of the Chinese Annual Conference (CAC). For two years, our members worshipped in the Emmanuel Hall in Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School, while the church building at 31 Anchorvale Road was under construction. The hall, situated in the basement of the school, was converted from a former air-rifle range.
During this time, we became known as “the underground church” as the office was situated in an underground bomb shelter in nearby Hougang. We might have been located underground then, but we were still hard at work sowing seeds in the harvest field that God set out for us.
Outreach work in Sengkang had already begun even while our church building was still under construction.
From 2000 to 2002, we organised more than 20 community events such as Christmas celebrations and mooncake festivals to reach out to residents in and around Sengkang. Befriending work in neighbouring schools also started, together with the setting up of the Sengkang Methodist Children Centre (SKMCC) and Oikos.Community@Sengkang (Oikos), SKMC’s community outreach arm.
From the 150 who first moved into the church in 2002, we are now blessed to have a total membership of about 900+ as of 2017. SKMC now has various ministries catering to different age groups, such as the Compass Ministry (children), D’Anchor Ministry (youths), the Young Adult Ministry, Adult Ministry, and the Evergreen Ministry (seniors).