Chinese fellowship plans 800 new churches

Pastors and deacons from Chinese churches across the United States and Canada discussed a goal of planting 800 Chinese churches by 2020 during a June 14 meeting in Phoenix.

The Chinese Baptist Fellowship, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, has 260 member churches, said Peter Leong, president and interim executive director of the fellowship.

"If every state planted one church a year, then we can do it," said Leong, who has served 23 years as pastor of Southwest Chinese Baptist Church in Houston.

"I know this is a very big and difficult challenge, but we are relying on prayer," Leong told two dozen leaders in attendance, including several state convention and North American and International mission board staff members.

"God has all the personnel and resources. And the best part is that we have a very good friend in the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board," Leong said.

Leong noted that the effort coincides with NAMB's new strategy, Send North America, which focuses on mobilizing missionaries and churches to plant churches across the United States and Canada.

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The Chinese Baptist Fellowship is a good example of an affinity network, a group of churches that share an affinity with each other, in this case being Chinese and Baptist, and have banded together to spread the gospel and to plant new churches. The effectiveness of affinity networks in reaching ethnic minorities is one of the reasons that the Anglican Church in North America should not be in such a hurry to organize itself into territory-based judicatories but should retain a more flexible organization shaped for mission.