CHURCHES IN SINGAPORE: LOCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

For the past decade, Christianity has been the fastest growing religion in Singapore. As a result of this, there has generally been an increase in demand for church accommodation in recent years. Churches serve an important function in striving to fulfill the religious need of people. In order to serve the community effectively, it needs to be well- located. As such, the location of a church is an important consideration. This dissertation examines the factors that influence the location decision of a church. The church location chosen needs to be accessible, visible and be of a sufficiently large size to accommodate the existing congregation. In addition, there must be a well-chosen catchment or parish and costs incurred in procurement of site must not be too high. An evaluation will be made of three recent church developments according to these factors so as to determine whether the new churches are optimizing their location decision in spite of the land scarce situation in Singapore.