✞ OPENING WORDS
This Is Your Story
Your story in God’s big story
Janet S. Prem • Editor, Grace & Growth
It is by grace we have been saved and formed into the community of Richmond Town Methodist Church, not by works lest any one should boast. Standing at the cusp of a historic milestone, a congregation that has not merely existed but thrived for a century and a half has arrived at its Ebenezer moment — pausing to say: ‘Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.’
Hindsight is God’s gift that allows us to marvel at what goes unnoticed in the daily routine. As the church looks back, it finds its story framed in the stories of people who strolled in, stayed, grew, and reached out to the city and the community of which they were an integral part. RTMC has never been just a building that changed its architecture. It has been a living, transforming body that has experienced the grace of God in more ways than can ever be written about sufficiently. As Bangalore changed from a pensioners’ paradise to a buzzing technology hub, the demography of the church changed, the way we perceived our times and our city changed, as did our response to the challenges of changing times and our ways of doing life together as a church.
This commemorative publication is designed as a curated, offbeat, and alive anthology – bringing together stories of people, the history of church and city, and a vision for the future, all told by real people in their real voices. As you journey through these pages, you will meet men and women of purpose and calling who established congregations and institutions that would impact the city. You will also encounter the quiet transformations of ordinary people who encountered God, changed the direction of their own lives, and in doing so changed the city for sections of society that were otherwise uncared for.
This is also a ‘live’ story, filled with laughter and warmth. Alongside solemn testimonies you will find lighthearted anecdotes of people young and old, living life together — and photographs that we hope will bring you a smile.
We must say plainly what this publication is not. It is not a comprehensive history of 150 years, nor even of the last fifty. Many who gave faithfully to this church, who served, prayed, led, taught, and shaped the community across generations, do not appear in these pages. They go undocumented not because their contribution was small, but simply because they and the people who knew them best could not be reached in time. Every such absence is a gap we feel.
We hope that this volume, incomplete as it necessarily is, may itself become an invitation — perhaps even the first chapter of a second volume yet to be written, in which more voices find their place in the record.
Through it all, we do not present a perfect church. At the best of times, we have been flawed. There have been periods of shadow and difficulty. But the church has never ceased to grow in grace, by grace. For the church is made up of ordinary, broken people, shining the light of Christ through cracks in the jars of clay in which we hold that light.
For those who have contributed to this souvenir, this is a sacred celebration of God’s grace in your life. For readers travelling through our story for the first time, we hope these reminiscences draw you into the wonder of how God grows His kingdom on earth — one story at a time — until one day we will see how in grace He fits the story of a local church and its people into His great story of salvation, redemption, and restoration of all humanity
Looking ahead, Bangalore is changing more rapidly than ever, presenting complex challenges to faith and life. This milestone invites us to look afresh at the God who grew us, and to seek intentionally to be image-bearers of Christ, who is our head. It is time to look beyond routine reports and programmes, and instead be the quiet yeast that transforms the world around us. It is our prayer that the future would find RTMC being that mustard tree where the weary of the city come to rest and to revive themselves.
We leave you with our doors and arms wide open — welcoming the sinner, the stranger, the wanderer, the priest, and the prophet, to serve God together in our generation. In all of this, may the Lord find us faithful.
Janet S. Prem
Editor • Grace & Growth: Richmond Town Methodist Church at 150
