Lighthouse Evangelism

A night view of Lighthouse Evangelism Woodlands

Lighthouse Evangelism (Chinese: 灯塔教会) is a megachurch in Singapore. It is a non-denominational Church, which means it is often identified as being an Evangelical-Protestant church and its doctrines resemble Charismatic and Pentecostal teachings.

Lighthouse Evangelism was founded on April 16, 1978. Pastor Rony Tan, with 8 other members commissioned by Jubilee Presbyterian Church conducted their first service at Chip Bee Centre. 24 people were present, most of them came as a result of the nine pioneers' door-to-door evangelism.

The church is headed by Senior Pastor Rony Tan, also the founder of the church. It has two church buildings, also known as healing centres. One is in Tampines and the other is in Woodlands. Lighthouse Evangelism Tampines (LET) was completed in 1992 and the first Sunday Service was conducted on August 9, 1992. At that time, the strength of the church was 700. LET could accommodate approximately 2,000 people in total.

On August 9, 2003, Lighthouse Evangelism Woodlands (LEW) was opened and its inaugural service held. LEW was constructed to accommodate the church's growing congregation as by then, some people had to be turned away from the Sunday morning services in LET despite the fact that additional chairs were laid. The new LEW healing centre cost US$21 million (SGD 35 million) and it could accommodate approximately 4,000 people in total.

In 2005, Lighthouse Evangelism's combined weekly attendance hit the 10,000 mark and as of August 2007, the church had a combined weekly attendance of 12,000. As of 2011, Lighthouse has an average service attendance of 15,000.


Controversies

Pastor Tan's Videos

On February 8, 2010, Senior Pastor Rony Tan was called up by the Internal Security Department over video clips posted on the church's website. The video clips showed interviews with two church members who were ex-Buddhists and Pastor Rony Tan's comments in the video clips (including suggestions that Buddhism and Taoism were satanic) were deemed 'highly inappropriate and unacceptable' by the Ministry of Home Affairs as they "trivialised and insulted the beliefs of Buddhists and Taoists". The video clips have been taken down from the church's website and an apology has been issued by Pastor Rony Tan. [1]

References

  1. ↑ ""ISD calls up pastor for insensitive comments ", Straits Times". Retrieved 30 January 2012. line feed character in |title= at position 46 (help)

External links

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