The First Cohort (2021-23)
Meet Our Congregations
Bethel Korean Presbyterian Church
Ellicott City, MD | Website
Bethel Korean Presbyterian Church was founded in 1979 in Baltimore, Maryland with a prayer group of 7 Korean immigrant families in their homes. In 1988, the church moved to its newly built church in Ellicott City, Maryland. From its humble prayer gathering of 7 Korean families in April of 1979, it has grown into a congregation of over 2,000 people. Bethel Church is currently led by the Senior Pastor Rev. Daniel Shinjong Baeq, with two strong congregations, Korean and English congregations, and thriving children’s and youth ministries under one roof.
Chinese Christian Church of New Jersey was started in 1964 when a group of 3 families came together to start a bible study in North Jersey. Through their faithful outreach to international students from Taiwan and Hong Kong, the church slowly grew and settled in their first location, Pine Brook, New Jersey. As God continued to bless and grow the church, we soon needed to expand and ended up settling in Parsippany, New Jersey in 1990, where we are still to this day. As more people from different languages joined us, we had the opportunity to plant two sister churches, one in Livingston, NJ in 1999 (Living stone Christian Church), and one in East Hanover in 2001 (Church of Living Grace). Currently, CCCNJ is made up of 3 congregations that each have their own service: Taiwanese, Mandarin and English. The Taiwanese and Mandarin make up the majority of the First Generation while the English Generation is evenly represented by first, second and now third gen congregants. Our leadership is governed by a general assembly of all members who come together to vote on important staff decisions. Beyond the general assembly is a leadership team of Deacons, Elders and Trustees that are members from the congregation and they manage the day to day of the church as well as setting the vision and planning the events.
Chinese Christian Fellowship Church
Wilmette, IL | Website
CCFC was founded by China Inland Mission in the 1960s with Chinese students from Southeast Asia coming to the United States for higher education. The church rented a three-story building in the northside of Chicago where the top floor was used as dormitories, while the ground floor served as an activity center and a place for Sunday worship. The worship services were in bilingual: Chinese and English. In 1971, the ministry was officially registered as an independent, non-denominational church in the State of Illinois. And in 1976, the church bought a house in Chicago to be used as a church office, a place for youth fellowship and prayer meetings. It also served as our church parsonage. In September 1988, CCFC moved to our newly constructed building in Wilmette, IL just north of Chicago. In 1990, our church started separate English Worship Services to reach second-generation Chinese Americans. This would later grow into the English Congregation Ministry. In November 2021, the church celebrated its 50th anniversary. Currently, the Chinese Congregation and English Congregation meet at separate times for worship services and have independent Deacon Boards and Elders. Both congregations also have separate budgets for Missions and Facilities.
Cornerstone Chinese Church
Villa Park, IL | Website
Cornerstone Chinese Church is an independent, non-denominational, family-oriented church with 115 years of history in the Chicagoland area. We are a tri-lingual church community that consists of Cantonese, Mandarin and English languages. Formerly known as Chinese Bible Church of Oak Park, we moved our ministry to Villa Park, Illinois in September 2019. We recognize the critical importance of building a biblical foundation and a nurturing ministry for our youth and adults towards the goal of spiritual growth for the whole church family. With the current space, we are able to have three concurrent language services at the same time, including a Children’s ministry downstairs. In term of our leadership structure, our one church board is made up of elders, deacons and trustees composed of members from the three congregations. We have a unique blend of cultural heritages and multigenerational membership that love ones another in the name of Jesus Christ. Over the years, our church has grown into a multi-cultural community that welcomes all.
ECWA Chicago is a church that started in 1997 and used the basement of Uptown Baptist Church in the north side of Chicago for seventeen years before acquiring its property in the Gage Park neighborhood in 2015. The church currently has about 60 members in total. The majority are African immigrants representing several nationalities including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Belize, Haiti, and the USA. Over 15 different languages are spoken by church members. We have three generations worshipping together using English, which everyone understands. The church’s current location has a majority African American community to the east and south and a majority Hispanic community to the west and north of the church. The church comprises 50%, 40% and 10% of the first, second and third generations respectively. There are challenges between the first and second generations that we are working on currently. The church is elder led with a senior pastor. We recently elected a second-generation young adult to join the elder’s board. That has helped in bridging the communication between the first and second generations.
ECWA Church Maryland is in District Heights, Maryland. It’s a Nigerian immigrant church with a medium size congregation. The church is comprised of first, second and 1.5 generation members worshipping as an Evangelical Church. Our mode of worship was mostly joint services due to the size of the church with younger 2nd generation children branching to a separate room where they have their own lessons. ECWA church Maryland is part of a much larger congregation comprised of ECWA USA and ECWA International.
Hebron Presbyterian Church
Prospect Heights, IL | Website
Hebron Presbyterian Church was established in 1985, beginning with 11 members. Presently, our congregation is located in Prospect Heights, IL 60070. Our local community is characterized by mix of residents, with a demographic breakdown of 60% White, 30% Hispanic, and 10% Asian. Within our church we have two distinct ministries. The Korean Ministry (KM) attracts approximately 500 attendees every Sunday, offering its own worship services. Meanwhile, the English Ministry (EM) gathers around 130 attendees on Sundays, also hosting its separate worship services. Currently, EM operates under the leadership of the KM, but we are working towards EM’s financial independence with a target date set for 2025.
Korean American Presbyterian Church of Queens
Flushing, NY | Website
The Korean American Presbyterian Church of Queens (KAPCQ) began in 1974 as an immigrant Korean church in Flushing, NY. Our church will be celebrating its 50th Anniversary this coming February. This current year symbolically is the year of jubilee for us. For the first four decades, our church was primarily a Korean immigrant church (KM). The English-speaking ministry (EM) began in 1994, comprising primarily of the children of the 1st generation KM members. However, in the past 10-15 years, as the Korean immigrants in Flushing improved their lives, they began to move farther away from Flushing and into communities in Long Island and New Jersey. What was once a vibrant “Korea-town” has now evolved into a vibrant “Chinatown”, as the next wave of Chinese immigrants moved into the city. Our church needed to adapt to the external changes that were happening in our city. Upon the arrival of our third Senior Pastor, our church began a Chinese-speaking ministry (CM) in 2015, hiring its first ever non-Korean Pastor to shepherd the Chinese ministry. Our church then launched a Russian-speaking ministry (RM) the very next year in 2016 to reach the Russian-speaking population in our community. Our church also began a new building project right across the street that will be the future home of the CM and EM in the coming year. We are now a multi-congregational church, worshipping in 4 languages (Korean, English, Chinese and Russian). Our church is governed by our Session of Elders which comprises of 12 Elders and 4 EM Elders. We pray that God will raise up CM and RM Elders to join the Session in the coming years ahead.
Lakeview Covenant Church gathers in Northbrook, IL, worshipping in two languages through three services - 8:00am in Korean, 10:00am in English and 11:45am again in Korean. The church was once one predominantly Korean English-speaking congregation. The church moved to its current location in Northbrook in 2004 and started renting from a Korean church that met there. In 2011, Lakeview merged with that Korean church, inheriting the building and its denomination (ECC). Our senior pastor then became the pastor of both congregations and ministered in both EC and KC (along with a few other short-term EC staff) until a long-term EC pastor joined the ministry in 2016. Lakeview has always been striving to be one ministry of two languages under one roof, united in the common vision of Transformation N.O.W. (Near to far – One life at a time – Word and Spirit leading the way). The bicultural compatibility at Lakeview is most pronounced at the leadership level. Both EC and KC have their own leadership level. Both EC and KC have their own Leadership Teams (KCLT and ECLT) that meet separately and together (together forming LVLT) in alternating intervals. In LVLT meetings, ECLT and KCLT each collectively share voting power (they both have 50% of voting power regardless of how many individuals comprise their congregation’s team). The pastoral staff also meets separately and together. The goal of these joint meetings is to share information about the whole church and mutual intercession.
Monmouth Community Christian Church is a mid-size Chinese-American immigrant church founded 40 years ago by employees of Bell Labs in Middletown, New Jersey. Today, we have three language-specific congregations: Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Like most Chinese immigrant churches, ours is deeply multi-cultural, being composed of families originally from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Cultural differences distinguish families from each of these places of origin, so we spend a significant amount of time listening to different cultural groups before we make major decisions. Our pastoral staff currently consists of myself as the English Pastor, a Cantonese Pastor, and a Mandarin Pastor. We share pastoral leadership equally in our church. Our challenges consistently revolve around communication issues and our continual need to cross vast cultural and generational differences to achieve mutual understanding. While these things are also true of most other Chinese American immigrant churches, I think that the leaders of MCCC often demonstrate a rare openness to entering into conversation about cultural and generational differences. In part, this might grow from the deep reflection that occurred after a painful church split within the English Congregation fifteen years ago.
Trinity Grace Church
Highland Park, IL | Website
Trinity Grace Church is a Chinese heritage church in Highland Park, IL. We were planted by CCUC Chinatown in 1986 as CCUC North. The goal was for the church to be an outreach to the Chinese population living in the northern suburbs of Chicago. In 2009, the church became independent from CCUC Chinatown and we eventually rebranded and became Trinity Grace Church in 2019. The church was renting facility spaces for the first few years, but in 1990 we acquired a property in Highland Park as our own. Then, in 2019 we also launched a church plant to better reach the Chinese community in the Vernon Hills, Buffalo Grove, Libertyville area. The church is made up of 4 congregations: Cantonese, Mandarin, English, and a Mandarin speaking church plant; and there are currently 2 campuses, the main campus in Highland Park, and a church plant in Long Grove. Similar to many immigrant churches, our non-English language congregations (Cantonese and Mandarin) are made up of mostly first-generation immigrants. The English congregation is mostly second generation and onward. The leadership team consists of an Elder Board (pastors and lay elders with representatives from all congregations) and a Deacon Board (also with representatives from all congregations, which reports to the Elder Board). These two boards oversee matters pertaining to the whole church. Each congregation also has its own ministry team for congregation specific care.