page_title: Kampong Kapor Methodist Church
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Kampong Kapor Methodist Church / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Sophia Blackmore
context_page_description: Kampong Kapor Methodist Church is a Methodist church located on Kampong Kapor Road in Singapore's Little India district. The church is approximately 300 metres from Jalan Besar MRT station.
  Founded in 1894, KKMC is one of the first Peranakan churches and the fourth Methodist church to be established in Singapore. During its early years, the church catered to the Peranakan or Straits-born Chinese, with services conducted in Baba Malay in a building located on 155 Middle Road. In 1930, the church moved to its current site on 1 Kampong Kapor Road, where it now offers a variety of services to different ethnic groups.
  The church building on Kampong Kapor Road was given conservation status by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority in 1989; its earlier building on 155 Middle Road was awarded historic site status in 2000. The church celebrated its hundredth anniversary in January 1994.
context_section_description: Founded as a church in 1894, Kampong Kapor Methodist Church began its activities in November 1890, in the lower room of the Deaconess Home. Upon request, Miss Sophia Blackmore,  a missionary to Singapore (and also the founder of the Fairfield Methodist Schools and the Methodist Girls' School)  started a Sunday Malay language worship service. The group comprised 25 “native” girls from the mission hostel, boys from Epworth Home (precursor of the Methodist Youth Fellowship), Malay-speaking Christian workers from the nearby Mission Press  and two missionaries. 
  On 25 January 1894, this group moved to “The Christian Institute” located on 155 Middle Road to function as a church. At 7.30pm that evening, six full and 16 preparatory members were organised as the first Malay Quarterly Conference chaired by the presiding elder, Rev. R.W. Munson. The “Malay Church” was formed with Cpt. Rev. William Shellabear undertaking pastoral charge. Three days later, the Sunday school was officially organised with about 40 students. “Sunday” school was also carried out on weekdays as well.
  Rev. Shellabear and about a dozen young men held street and kampong meetings in Malay. Meanwhile, Miss Blackmore and her team of women as well as the women missionaries made a deep impression on Nyonya women and their children as they distributed tracts, sang hymns, visited several hundred “native” Straits-born Chinese women in their homes and held Sunday School for “native” children in their homes and along five-foot ways. 
  The church soon outgrew its Middle Road premises and a new building was constructed on Kampong Kapor Road. It was completed in 1930  and the church became known as The Straits Chinese Methodist Church (Bishop Bickley Memorial). This reflected the largely Chinese membership and the vast donations which the family and friends of Bishop George Harvey Bickley made for the construction of the building. 
  In 1957, the Board of Stewards decided that since the church not only catered to the spiritual needs of the Straits-born Chinese but also to the other ethnic groups as well, the church should be known as Kampong Kapor Methodist Church (Bishop Bickley Memorial). It has retained this name ever since.
caption: Miss Sophia Blackmore
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