Milestones of JBBC
In 1964, God moved the hearts of His people in two Baptist churches in Singapore, Calvary Baptist Church and Queenstown Baptist Church, to start a new outreach work in Johor Bahru. In 1965, the new work began and a chapel was started and it was called Johor Bahru Baptist Chapel. And on 8 June 1975, Johor Bahru Baptist chapel was organized to become Johor Bahru Baptist Church. On 20th March 1980, Johor Bahru Baptist Church (commonly known as “JBBC:) was officially registered as a church with the Registrar of Societies. JBBC is a member of the Malaysia Baptist Convention. Presently the church is located at 111, Jalan Dato’ Sulaiman, Century Garden, 80250 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia.
Over the years we have witnessed the growth and maturity of God’s Ministries. The Lord moved the hearts of His people in JBBC to start new outreach works in and around Johor Bahru, and thus the following Baptist churches were planted and in time they became independent of JBBC:
- Senai Baptist Christian Fellowship
- Senai Tamil Christian Fellowship
- Trinity Baptist Christian Fellowship
- Raban Iban Baptist Church.
Besides planting these new churches, the Lord is also consolidating the ministries in our church to cater to the growing needs of children, the youths, the young working adults, the middle age ground and the senior citizens, not only for church members, but also for the communities around JB. Unfortunately, prior to 2005, the authorities were not supportive of our role as a place of refuge, training and building up of spiritual values in the ever expanding city of JB. On two separate occasions, the authorities issued notices for us to stop our religious activities or face heavy penalties as our premise was sited on residential land. There was uncertainty over whether we could continue to operate our ministry work within the community or whether we would require to relocate somewhere else. For sure, if we did not do anything, the authorities would persist in demanding that we stop our church activities.
Furthermore, the church was operating from a renovated single-storey residential house. There was a lack of proper and adequate space for our various ministries.
In June 2003, after much prayers, we applied to the local land authorities for our church land title to be converted from residential to religious status. We knew that the odds were stacked against us as we did not possess any political power or financial might to argue our case. Indeed, when our application was circulated to the various government technical departments for their comments, none of the main approving departments supported our application. Yet JBBC persisted in prayers.
On 25th April 2005, God’s Sovereign Hand moved the authorities and the State Government to formally approve our application, in spite of the lack of support from the government technical departments. This miracle gave us the confidence to embark on our re-development project for a purpose-build new church building to replace the old “house” building.
On 1st July 2015, the local authority finally approved our building plans, after a long arduous journey of faith. Along the way, God’s Mighty Hand was on the local authorities to allow our appeal against a Development Order to restrict our new building to only 2-stories, rather than the 3-stories that we were planning for. We have no other explanation except that we witnessed another miracle from God.
Our Journey of Faith continues. We have to raise sufficient funds before we commit to re-developing our church building. Being a small church, with about 50 to 60 congregation strength, of which 30 to 40 % are either retired or semi-retired, it would take a miracle for us to raise the funds to proceed with our dream. Over the years, we had raised slightly over RM1 million but our target is RM4.38 million. We pray that you as an individual or as an organization in the Lord will participate financially or remember us in your prayers regarding this building project.
It is meant for God’s glory, not ours.
You can find out more about the building program by visiting this link: Building Project.
