City Harvest Church
City Harvest Church (Chinese: 城市丰收教会) is a megachurch that serves as the centre for related churches based in Singapore and is reported to be among one of the larger church in Singapore. [citation needed] Its values are based on the charismatic and Pentecostal teachings in which it can be at least categorised as a charismatic church. The other megachurches in Singapore are New Creation Church and Faith Community Baptist Church, but are different in doctrine and focus.
History
City Harvest Church was founded by Kong Hee with twenty other people in August 1989. The church started out at a number of locations before settling down at the now defunct Hollywood Cinema at Tanjong Katong Road in 1995.
In November 2001, the church moved to its new premises at Jurong West Street 91 and has claimed that it is the world's deepest church with four storeys above ground and four basements. Within sixteen years it has grown to a membership of more than 20,200 in 2005, with 55% of its members below the age of 25 years.[1]
On April 29, 2004, City Harvest became the first church in the world to be awarded the ISO 9001:2000 certification for quality management and process management.
In Dec 2005, while looking for a location for a still-larger building, the church moved to its temporary worship location at Hall 8 of the Singapore Expo (which can seat 8100 people), due to the rapidly growing congregation. Its Jurong West building is still used for weekday meetings and weekend Chinese and Children's church, and serves the remaining 6,000 members.
Weekly Services
The church holds different weekly services:
- English Services
- Chinese Church
- Dialect Church
- Children's Church
- JAMs Church (Jesus for All Minds)
- Indonesian Service
Organisation
The church has twelve pastors, and five of them are ordained as Reverends. The church employs around 160 full-time staff that works at the church and its corporate office at Suntec City. It also has nine affiliate churches, offices and centres in five locations (the main office is in Suntec). The overall church membership has grown from 20 in 1989 to 22,278 in 2006. [citation needed]
City Harvest Bible Training Center
The church maintains the school, the City Harvest Bible Training Center, which trains pastors from various countries and offers 2-year diplomas and 1-year advanced certificates jointly with Oral Roberts University. In the past 9 years, more than 1,200 graduates from more than thirty countries have graduated from full-time courses. [citation needed]
iCare Community Services
The iCare Community Services was initially called the City Harvest Community Services Association. The iCare Community Services in 2006, provided 17,123 services to more than 11,421 Singapore residents of various races and religions with counselling and financial aid. On April 29, 2004, CHCSA attained the ISO 9001:2000 certification. It's Executive Director is Tan Ye Peng, who is also the Deputy Senior Pastor of the Church.
City Harvest Education Centre
City Harvest Education Centre (CHEC) has been established by City Harvest Community Services Association (CHCSA) and registered with the Ministry of Education (MOE) since 2002. The purpose of CHEC is "to provide effective and affordable education to private candidates taking the GCE 'N' and 'O' level examinations". In 2006, CHEC's students make up about 7% of all private candidates in SIngapore taking O Level Examinations.
CHEC is also the first school in Singapore to be offering Dance as an O Level subject.
O School is Social Entreprise set up by CHEC Ltd. Much of the profits from this enterprise forms the bursaries to help needy CHEC students.
Culture
Cell Groups
Cell groups is a major part of the church's ministry to its members. More than 600 cell group leaders (each leading a group in a week) are listed in their weekly church bulletin, with some running more than 2 cell groups in a week. The cell groups meeting location scan be found throughout Singapore and are where members can meet for worship, prayers and bible-study sessions. Cell group leaders are generally handpicked lay members of the church who are trained to run cell groups. As the church grew larger in numbers, cell groups serves as a place where church members can still forge closely knitted relationships with fellow Christians in a much smaller setting.
Music
Like most charismatic churches, the church uses contemporary music and settings for praise and worship, with a choir in an environment similar to a rock concert with the related music instruments.
The church has launched five praise and worship albums and one instrumental music album so far:
- Against All Odds (1994)
- Remember Us (1995)
- Moments (1997, instrumental music)
- Life (1996)
- Future (2000)
- Cross (2005)[2]
Broadcasting
In 2004, the church’s webcast of its services reached approximately 578,560 viewers from 131 countries, or 11,126 viewers per weekend. The church also has a 30-minute television broadcast program called "Harvest Time", which is broadcast on 13 Cable Television Networks and satellites, with a potential viewership of about 637 million. Harvest Time is available in its original English language or Chinese translation, depending on the broadcast station.[3]
The church publishes a magazine called Harvest Times every 3 months. [4]
Partnership
The church has hosted some established evangelists such as Ulf Ekman, John Avanzini, Benny Hinn, Richard Roberts etc. Since 2004, they also participated in Ulf Ekman's Israel Study Trip, which includes Christian holy sites and towns, except West Bank. [citation needed]
It also hosts an annual youth event, Emerge Conference, usually held in June which attracts several youth churches in Asia. City Harvest has also embarked on Emerge KL and Emerge Taiwan. This year, it has a new addition, Spelling Bee, with the reasoning that a strong foundation in the command of language would pave the way for future success. It also had a make-up competition to pave a way into the Arts Scene in Singapore. [citation needed] Kong Hee is also the chairman of the Festival of Praise, a nationwide multi-denominational event held in August annually, usually during the National Day period. [citation needed]
Church building
The church building, unveiled in 2002, is located at Jurong West Street 91. Due to land scarcity in Singapore, the building costs S$48 million (US$26.6 million) and seats up to 2,000 members, accommodating less than 10% of its 22,000 weekly membership, thus many services are held every weekend to fit all its members.
It is the first titanium-clad building in Asia and is modeled after the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Special limestone for part of the building was imported from Europe. The Riviera walkway was designed by a world-famous artist. The elevators go from B4, which is where the auditorium is located, all the way up to level 5, which is the roof top area. There are more than 200 parking lots within the building itself.
Comfortable lounge areas are scattered around the first floor area, and large plasma television monitors are built into the walls featuring video recordings of past services. There are waterfalls, gardens, coffee kiosks, a children’s playground, fountains, even a putting green for golf enthusiasts. There is a large café on the fourth floor. The rooftop has a garden, a baptism pool, a children’s wading pool, and a coffee kiosk. Cool Mist fans blast out moist air that can cool down the entire rooftop area to ward off the daytime heat. The bathroom facilities were designed by French designer Philippe Starck. Even the toilets “exemplify the very meaning of style” (Harvest Times, July-December 2002).
The auditorium covers 1,700 square meters and is possibly the largest column-free church hall in the Southeast Asia. There are two artist make-up rooms directly behind the stage. A large audio and video crew are required to create each elaborately-produced service. The sound is provided by a 60-channel Midas Heritage 3000 console. The stage was created by a designer who formerly worked with Christie’s Auction House in New York. It features a bright LED screen.
While the entire congregation was still at its Jurong West building, 280 buses were chartered weekly to ferry church members in from various parts of Singapore, making a total of 1,842 stops.
It has a S$583,000 fountain (1.2% of the building cost) and a 1,700 square-metre basement auditorium which seats 2,000. [5] While the church was using the faraway Jurong Building for its English services, the church hired 286 buses to make 1,842 stops and ferry its members to and from the church. [6]
Due to the rapidly growing congregation, [citation needed] the Church has moved its weekend English services to Singapore Expo Hall 8 (which is able to hold approximately 8,100 people) since 10 December 2005 with a Saturday service at 5pm and a Sunday one at 10.00am, while the Church building is still being used for the other language services, meetings and its Bible School (School of Theology).
Criticism
Critics allege that the church spends extravagantly in various ways, such as the titanium cladding around the building, which costs approximately 2% of the building cost. [citation needed]
Criticism of the church’s method and insensitivity of converting people has also been made. Kong Hee has stated that the "message is sacred, but the method can be different." [citation needed]
The church also teaches that financial prosperity is "God's will for His people" [citation needed], which conflicts with the doctrine of some churches which teach material poverty.
References
- ^ "Average Weekly Salvation & Rededication Decisions". City Harvest Church. Retrieved May 30.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ Taken from http://www.cross.com.sg
- ^ "Harvest Times Broadcast". City Harvest Church. Retrieved May 30.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ Taken from http://www.chc.org.sg/harvesttimes/default.asp
- ^ "Other places of worship slash out too". Electric New Paper. 29 August 2005. By Skye Tan
- ^ "Newspaper Articles". City Harvest Church. Retrieved June 1.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help)
See also
- Evangelism
- Charismatic Churches
- Pentecostal Churches
- Christianity in Singapore
- Religion in Singapore