A New Home for St James' Church

Anglican congregation rebuilding premises to make it bigger and more elderly-friendly

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009 Posted: 1:16:41AM HKT

A shot of the ground-breaking service held October 10 at St James' Church for the rebuilding of the premises. (Photo: SJC)

If you were an elderly person attending a service at the old St James’ Church building, you would have to climb a hill and inch your way up the stairs to get to the sanctuary on the second floor.

With a steadily-growing congregation of 800 people and a main hall with a capacity to hold only 300, it could tend to get overcrowded at times.

But all this will change with the rebuilding of the 32 year-old facility at 1 Leedon Road, a work which began October 10 with a groundbreaking ceremony and is slated for completion in mid 2011.

When that is done, the elderly will be able to access the sanctuary and any other part of the building easily with the help of ramps and lifts.

Crowdiness will be a thing of the past, with units double or triple their previous sizes, including 400-seater and 700-seater sanctuaries, a 200-seater auditorium, offices, ancillary rooms and community areas.

This is not to mention that the new facility will solve the chronic parking problem with its 120 basement car-park lots - triple the figure previously - and accommodate an ‘exploding’ kindergarten with classrooms and a playground, in the words of SJC vicar Terry Wong.

The St James’ Church Kindergarten, with its current enrollment of over 800 pre-school children, may hit 1,000 next year, noted Canon Wong, 46, adding that the new church building will host part of the popular kindergarten.

He sees the $14 million project – with three-quarters of the funding already raised from church members – as an effort to keep up with the times.

There is a need for the meeting place to better cater to the specific needs of people of the day, an edge which the previous structure has long since lost.

Society today is grappling with a graying population and people expect much more of churches than previously, Canon Wong said.

“In the past, we just walked [to the sanctuary], worship, and walked away. Now it’s more like community, helping people with all kinds of things, from the kindergarten to community service.”

The church has housed the office of community outreach ministry Alpha Singapore; the vicar himself served as its National Director until three years ago. It has also served as a centre for crisis relief work in Bam, Iran.

Furthermore, St James’ Church has housed Bethany Church, a fast-growing Indonesian congregation, in its earlier days.

For the church leader, the new building is an opportunity to do what the congregation has never done before. This includes pioneering outreach among Indonesians and Burmese.

Canon Wong expects the new church to be more accessible to the heartlanders in the neighbourhood, hosting more Alpha Singapore community dinner, creative arts and music events.

“Our church is in a very public location,” he said, urging believers to pray along with him for St James’ Church to continue to be a blessing to the body of Christ, the nation and the nations beyond.

St James’ Church is currently meeting at the premises of its kindergarten at 29 Harding Road.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com