Our very first worship service started on 17 Feb 1991 with 5 people in a Telok Kurau apartment. A month later, Youth with A Mission (YWAM) allowed us to use their headquarters at that time in Balestier Road.

In Oct, we outgrew the place and moved again to Boulevard Hotel.

We were so thankful to Glad Tidings Church, an independent church that helped in many ways when we just started. In our first year, we planted our first daughter church in Kuching, Malaysia. God graciously added as we ended the year with 100 people.

We moved to Pinetree Town and Country Club with many church leaders telling us it was the first time they heard a church met in a country club. We pioneered our very first Holy Ghost festival, an outreach event during our local Hungry Ghost Festival.

We started a new church in North Eastern China and in Johor, Malaysia. By year-end, we had 200 people in the family.

Now it’s Pan Pacific Hotel for our Sunday Service. This year we started “Operations-Die-Hard”, where we hit the streets after service to share the eternity changing message of Jesus. We moved into our first church office dubbed Downtown Base located at Stanley Street. This doubled up as our worship venue for our young Mandarin congregation that started service in Sep.

We planted new churches in Perth, Australia and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Our third year ended with 300 people with us.

Moved to Golden Sultan cinema for morning service and had Sunday evening service in Downtown Base. We also started more ministry houses.

We sent a family to lead our church in Hong Kong. We planted a new church in Malacca, Malaysia. We ended 1994 with 400 people.

We started a branch church office in the Aljunied area and our first in-house full time Bible College. We sent a leader to serve in our international office. By year-end we had 500 people.

In Jan, we relocated to Kreta Ayer People’s Theatre for weekend service. We had a major re-organisation with a focus change to reaching pre-believers locally and planting churches globally. We were featured in the Straits Times newspaper for our community care ministry (NOTE: get newspaper cutting). We were blessed by having Jim Stier, wife & family who came to minister in our church service. At the time, Jim was the President of Youth with A Mission (YWAM) International.

We sent a leader to lead our new church in Malacca and planted a new church in Adelaide, Australia. We ended the year with 800 people in our family.

We started our weekly Youth service at the Bible House. Filipino ministry birthed in April and started a monthly Filipino service on 6 Jul with 32 people at World Trade centre. We purchased a property in Joo Chiat for our church office. So we oragnised events including a concert “Bits & Pieces” and a jogathon to raise funds. We were invited to host the Good Friday broadcast at the Radio Corporation of Singapore. We also wrote our first ever musical entitled “The Diary”. We were blessed by having Bishop & Mrs John Tan of the Lutheran Church in Singapore minister in our church service.

We sent a leader to help the newly planted church in Manila, Philippines. We ended the year with 1000 people.

We moved into our new church office in Dec. Youth Service held at Harbour View Hotel from Feb. Our Bible College “Institute of Leadership Development” was birthed. Then a Dec book “The Church in Asia Today” published by the Asia Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation listed our church as one of the seven fast growing churches in Singapore.

We sent 4 leaders to plant a new church in Johannesburg, South Africa. We had 1100 people by year end. On 31 May ’98, we started a double Sunday service in Kreta Ayer’s People’s Theatre.

In Feb our Youth Service moved to Marriott Hotel. We started a monthly “Gen-X” service to reach out to the 20 somethings on 31 Jul. We also held our first graduation ceremony for our first batch of 15 full-time students from Institute of Leadership Development. Pastor Lawrence is invited to serve in the Central Committee of the Evangelical Fellowship of Singapore.

Hope Resources commenced operations in Nov and our first ever stage production “Fann Moo” was performed to sold-out audiences.

We were privileged to have Richard Holland, Founding Pastor & Ementus Pastor of Waverley Christian Fellowship in Melbourne speak in our “Life in the Spirit” camp. We saw a member plant a new church in Phoenix, Arizona and a family go pioneer a church in Lima, Peru. We had 1,300 people by year end.

In August, we started a monthly Indonesian Service. Mandarin service moved from Drama centre to City Bay View Hotel in Apr. Youth ministry grew and moved to Salvation Army Headquarter in Oct.

Then we were also invited to write a chapter for the National Council of Churches in Singapore published book: “The Christian Church in 21st Century Singapore”.

In Sep, we acquired an auditorium at Cuppage Plaza costing a total of $10.32 million. Convinced that nothing is too difficult for God, we began to raise funds. In Dec, our Sun service moved to World Trade Centre as we waited to move into Cuppage.

We saw a team go pioneer a new church in Leeds, United Kingdom and sent a leader go help our new church in Jakarta, Indonesia. We had 1400 people by year end.

In Jun, a book by a free lance writer “The Call – the Challenge: The Antioch Call of Asia”, we are featured as one of the five missions minded churches in Singapore. We were in Golden Theatre for a few months and in August, we finally move into “The Nexus Auditorium”. This would be the place where people will meet God, built-up & sent out to all corners of the world. In Sep, we had our dedication service for Nexus. In Dec, we organised our first Fun Fair at Bishan Park to raise funds. The local newspapers and local television covered the event.

We sent a family to pastor our church in Auckland, New Zealand and a couple to pioneer in Langkawi, Malaysia. We ended the year with 1600 people. Our care groups are now in 35 of the 55 zones in Singapore.

2002 was the year we moved from being missions-minded to being missions mobilised. The slogan “Building the Most Global Church” best captures this paradigm shift. We saw unprecedented exploratory trips and teams landing in Peru, Johannesburg (new team) and Italy (advance team member).

Community care ministry made great advances. In community care, our partnership with Hope Centre to champion blood donation got recognised on national TV as we won The Red Challenge organised by the Singapore Red Cross and Singapore Press Holdings.

New developments included Arts Feast, Bible Conference, Worship Symposium, Tithing via Nets and sermon Cds were available on the same day. As a ministry we reached 2000 people in weekend services at the end of 2002.

SARS hit Singapore. Nurses from our Filipino group stood in the frontline to care for patients despite of risk and hardship. A member from our Adults group was featured on national TV when her family was quarantined. She got to testify on national TV how she relied on God to see her mum through the recovery, and how our care groups were instrumental to encourage us through crisis. Our camp team was fast to respond within the short lead time to pull our annual church camp back to local shore. It was the first time ever that our camp was held in a 5-star S’pore hotel. The Orchard Hotel camp was memorable; it demonstrated how a church united could pull together in a short time and still get things done amidst chaos and uncertainty.

European & Vietnamese small groups were started. And an on-line portal was launched for leaders and members.

On the missions front, the Missions Care and Support System (MCSS) programme was implemented to provide better support as we see more church planters going out. Our teams landed in Chile & Ecuador. St John-St Margaret and Victory Family Centre invited us to teach on tent-making missions in their church and conference respectively.

We ended the year with 2100 people.

This year saw us pioneering new ministries, as well as going deeper to meet the specific needs of our diverse groups. A tertiary-focused service was launched in Apr and our Business Life Ministry took off in Aug. A series of talks were conducted for our growing numbers of courting couples and a staff was recruited to develop our HopeKids ministry. We ended the year with 2387 in worship services.

Our community programmes continued to focus on the North East region. A “Family Ties” Carnival was run to promote family bonding in that area.

One of our Youth Care Leader improved in his studies so much that he topped the N-Level exams and was offered an O-Level scholarship by a private school. He was featured on national TV and several newspapers. Indeed an inspiring story of how the love of God transformed a notorious boy growing up in a dysfunctional family.

We ended the year with 2387 people.

• HopeKids moved out of Nexus to launch brand new children service HopeKids LIVE!
• Second Youth Service started in April.
• Mar marks the inception of our very first Tertiary Service which comprises Polytechnic/Diploma Institutions (DI) & University Students.
• A Healing Rally took place on 16 Nov.
• In Nov, we collaborated with Alby Music to bring in Paradise Community Church (Australia) to conduct workshops and worship night in Nexus.
• We hosted the Hope International Leadership Conference and the first ever gathering of Hope International Business Life Fellowship in Nov.
• Pastor Ben started his blog to connect with church members.
• We had a name change exercise to shorten our name to Hope Church Singapore. The fresh logo & shortened name led to greater recall.
• Breakthrough Campaign (1 Aug 2005 – 30 Apr 2007) launched on 17 Jul.
• Team Santiago (Chile) launched their first worship service in Apr & Team Quito (Ecuador) launched their first worship service in Sep.
• Team Nairobi (Kenya) had work permits approved in Oct.
• The first expedition team landed in Rome.
• Pastor Johanes, Kristine & daughter Alesha sent to lead our Johannesburg church as the family of Daniel, Rachel and son Matthias returned after serving 3 years in the field.
• We partnered with Focus on the Family in organising World of Narnia at Orchard Turn during the Christmas season.
• We ended the year with 2645 people.

• Adults had their first ever camp “Kawan Go Melaka”. An invigorating time where teachings and special programmes fleshed out the topic of Biblical friendship and many covenanted friendships forged.

• Business was not as usual at the Family Missions Night. Roused by the call for greater missions involvement, a significant amount was raised that went a long way to assist our missionaries in the field.

• Our Filipino service is possibly the single biggest service in Singapore with the largest proportion of professionals attending. They grew from 550 to 750 people in just 1 year.

• HopeKids held their annual holiday outreach Zoo Hunt in Nexus with 200 children attending. HopeTots Time service was also started for toddlers.

• Mandarin moved to a bigger worship venue in Orchard Cineleisure. We could be the only Mandarin service in a hip karaoke and the place is fast filling up!

• As for our students, Tertiary grew more sub-districts and our Youths went on 6 missions trips with the youngest participant being just 13.

• In tandem with a growing church and diversifying ministries, we invested time to groom leaders in Team Ministry. Our first ever Team Ministry Gathering was launched on 14th March 2006, and another held on 23rd Oct.

• Missions wise, Hope Johannesburg (South Africa) succeeded in transiting to local leadership. The mantle of leadership was passed onto Henry & Lerato Sebata.

• Breakthrough campaign was launched in Jul 2005. We were down to $2.72M of debt to retire at the beginning of ’06, and ended the year with $1.32M to go. Together we raised $1.4M in 2006.

• In partnership with Hope Centre for our Community Ministry, We served 6,184 beneficiaries directly and 20,684 beneficiaries indirectly. Activities included:

• We ended the year with 3055 people