Chinese Church leaders in Britain face the challenge of unprecedented growth together

Meet the indomitable pastors gathering for next-level Bible training to meet the needs of their rapidly expanding congregations

Bible Society’s Ezra Project

Leaders of Chinese-speaking churches in Britain are adjusting to huge changes as they welcome new members in unprecedented numbers. As a supporter of Bible Society, you are equipping them to meet this positive challenge. The Ezra Project is bringing these leaders together for training so they can more effectively serve their growing congregations.

This sort of intervention would have been welcome even at the best of times. Chinese Christian resources have been hard to get hold of in this country. Even pastors are in short supply. Henry Wai, an Ezra Project participant, took over Southampton Chinese Christian Church with his wife Irene in 2019 when it had been without a pastor for ten years. During that time the congregation had been ministered to by various guest preachers, some of whom were English-speaking and needed their sermons translating. ‘This is common in Chinese churches,’ Henry says.

Into this situation come a hundred thousand Chinese people relocating from Hong Kong to Britain in less than two years. The Government expects that in five years more than a quarter of a million Hongkongers will have settled here. For Henry and Irene in Southampton, this has meant their congregation suddenly doubling. From fewer than a hundred members when they took over, they’re now serving more than 200. Even the weekly women’s group sees a turnout of 100.

Henry and Irene

‘We’re overloaded,’ Henry says, although he welcomes this. Fellowship is his favourite part of church leadership, and new members of the church, because they’re also new arrivals in Britain, have a particular appetite for meeting. It’s meant he can start a men’s ministry, something there was less need for among the longer-established members. ‘When you’re new somewhere,’ Henry says, ‘it can be difficult to make friends. So we group the brothers together and have fellowship.’

Henry and Irene were welcoming Hongkongers to Southampton before most of them arrived at the church. Aware of the remarkable influx, they used social media to reach out, making videos for YouTube that introduced new arrivals to the city and helped them settle in. This led to a number of Hongkongers discovering the church while researching their new home.

The challenge presented by the sudden extension of the right to live and work in Britain to potentially millions of people through British National Overseas (BNO) status is one that Chinese-speaking churches over here are meeting head on. Henry and Irene, like many of their counterparts brought together by the Ezra Project, are well aware of the problems of being overloaded (as Henry described it) but none of that is deterring them from reaching out. And there are plenty to reach. It’s not so much the number of the new arrivals, it’s the number who are Christian. In Hong Kong, Christians are ten per cent of the population, but they’re almost a quarter of those arriving in Britain.  

So our Chinese churches have tens of thousands of people to accommodate all at once. And that’s not enough for some of them. Another Ezra Project participant, Edward Kwong, whose wife Revd Rosa Chan is pastor of Cambridge Alliance Church, has his eye on those Hongkongers who arrive in Britain not looking for a church. ‘I enjoy reaching out to non-believers,’ he says. ‘Over 75 per cent of BNOs are non-believers.’

Edward and Rosa

As a student, Edward was invited to a gospel meeting by his wife, who was then an old school friend. Rosa had became a Christian at the age of five and helped the rest of her family come to faith, including her brother, who is also now a pastor. ‘I still remember that day,’ Rosa says of her commitment to God as a small child. ‘The calling to preach came gradually. God asked me to do more, so I became a Sunday school leader, and then a fellowship leader.’

Rosa worked as a nurse in the early stages of her ministry, and by the time she was called to study for ordination she and Edward were married and had a daughter. They were planning a second child when a powerful word from God confirmed the calling on Rosa’s life. ‘God said, “Why do you always ask for a second child? Why don’t you ask me for many more spiritual children?”’

Edward recognised a related calling on his own life at the age of 40 when he decided to give God more than just his Sundays. ‘My belief and my daily life were two different worlds,’ he says. ‘I wanted to serve God fully. We said, “Just let us know where to go.” And God led us to Canada.’ Calgary, the Canadian city where the couple ended up, could have been a climate shock coming from Hong Kong, where it’s
summer all year round. At the time of publication, Calgary is deep below zero and experiencing heavy snowfall. But it seems nothing deters Chinese missionaries. Edward says: ‘I like the cold weather!’

The couple supported a church plant in a new residential area of Calgary that lacked a full-time pastor. They reached out to other Chinese immigrants, ‘people who had never been in church, never heard the gospel’. Eventually they brought their ministry to Britain when they heard from a friend about Chinese scholars in Cambridge who were like ‘sheep without a shepherd’. Over the years, they brought together Chinese-speakers in Cambridge from various places – Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, as well as China itself – and became a church in 2005.

Different languages

Up to last year, Cambridge Alliance Church grew to 60 or 70 members, then suddenly gained 300 new ones with the arrival of Hongkongers. Having already been through the challenge of bringing together speakers of Standard Chinese from different countries into a single congregation, Rosa and Edward are now welcoming Hongkongers who come not only in great numbers but with a separate language. Their language, Cantonese, is different from the Mandarin spoken by most Chinese. Thankfully Rosa and Edward, like Henry and Irene, are fluent in both. (Henry is a native Cantonese-speaker from Hong Kong and Irene a Mandarin-speaker from Taiwan, so they have both languages even their own home!) But having a whole new congregation within your congregation, separated from the other by language, can’t be easy. There’s even a third language in play, because children and young people tend to speak English. 

Will you pray for Henry and Irene, and for Rosa and Edward, as they face this challenge with amazing enthusiasm? 

·      Ask God to bring unity to their churches, so that even while language is an obstacle it won’t be a barrier, and the separate congregations in each church would feel like a single church

·      Give thanks that your support for Bible mission in England and Wales has created the Ezra Project so church leaders train, network and face the challenges of unprecedented growth together

·      Pray for partnership between Chinese and English-speaking churches in Britain as they reach out together to share God’s love

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