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THE AGAPE STORY
It all began with a vision
The seed that was planted in the 1980s by Faith Methodist Church (FMC) as a grassroots ministry bore fruit as a church 25 years later. Though the growing process, from taking roots to bearing fruits, had not been smooth and easy, God ensured that His plan for Agape Methodist Church would be fulfilled.
Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.
Psalm 127, NIV
It all began with a vision to reach out to the blue-collar Mandarin-speaking population of our society in the 1980s. A dedicated team of the Grassroots Ministry started to reach out to the paper box factory at Lengkok Bahru, Commonwealth area. By 1993, the ministry grew to become a Chinese Ministry, which later came to be known as the Jurong Preaching Point (JPP). The formation of the Lakeside Family Centre, a social arm of FMC, had joined forces with JPP to cast a wider net to reach out, serve, and share God’s love with the needy in Jurong.
JPP first met in the house of one of its members, affectionately known as Aunty Nancy. JPP’s growth led to relocating the service to a bomb shelter to accommodate everyone on Sundays – the congregation and the children for 2 years. Bomb shelter, hence, became part of the church's history.
FMC’s vision, ‘Faith Horizon 2000’ spotted Jurong as a fertile ground for congregational growth. The need for both English and Mandarin congregations was then created to integrate into the JPP. Under this direction, the Methodist seed took root in Jurong and germinated at God's perfect timing.
On 6 December 1998, the Golden Village @ Jurong Point was designated as the venue for JPP Sunday services. And almost 7 years later, JPP matured and grew to become a ‘local church’. Seven (7) represents perfection biblically. It was all in God’s perfect timing.
On 4 December 2005, Agape Methodist Church was born and formally constituted as the 20th Local Conference (Church) of the Trinity Annual Conference of The Methodist Church in Singapore. This date also marked the first footprint of a Methodist church on the Jurong soil. And in less than a year, God made another move for Agape and blessed the church with a building at Yung Ho Road. The building was renamed ‘the Agape’ – the home of the Agape Methodist Church. As a result of having a home base in place, God's work and service to the community continued unabatedly.
Church Vision
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The Church Logo
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The church logo reflects God-inspired strokes of unconditional love for the church and the community. Mrs Dolly Chia (one of the first members of Agape Methodist Church) could testify as to how God inspired her to design the logo that binds the Agape Family as one with God’s love – Love God and love others.
“ … I dreamt of a heart–shaped object resting on a floating wooden plank. From the dream, I sensed that God was revealing to us that His love would be present in the church, once it was officially constituted,” said Dolly.
The dream happened concurrent to the time the leaders sought the Lord for a name for the church. To this, Dolly further testified that ‘it was no coincidence that the leaders should finally decide on the name “Agape”, which means unconditional love … the Lord enabled me as well with the inspiration to design a logo, which was subsequently adopted.’
The meaning of the logo.
The heart-shaped image situated between and slightly above the letters “A” and “C” doubles as the letter “M” for ‘Methodist’ while the former two letters represent ‘Agape’ and ‘Church’ respectively. The heart-shaped M looking like something is dripping from its side indicates Christ’s blood, which was shed on the cross, dripping onto our Church, to make her whole.