Planting Our First Chinese Speaking Church - Charleston, USA

An update from Perry Wang…

I was born in China. Growing up, I was completely atheist. The first time I heard the gospel I refused to listen and laughed at the brother who told me, but by God’s mercy and grace, in a moment He opened my eyes and made me alive. He showed me that I had lived in lies all the days of my life and He led me to the truth. He showed me my sins and led me to the cross. I knew in that moment that Jesus was alive and from that moment, I was His. That was March 11, 2006. Since then, God has given me a passion for the truth and love of Jesus Christ.

After graduating in 2007, I trained for one year and was sent to Nanning City, China to plant an underground church. After 7 years in ministry, I found I knew very little about church and ministry and so I resigned and pursued further study in seminary. By His grace, God opened a door for us and in January 2017, we arrived at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

While I was in Louisville, our friends Huadong (Brian) Yang and Fengyu (Jeff) Ji were members of Sovereign Grace Church Louisville, both of whom had studied at Pastor’s College. At that time, my wife and I had known these brothers for two years and we witnessed change in their lives. Some negative aspects of Chinese culture were fading away and the aroma of Christ was growing. We were attracted by the fragrance of their lives, so my wife and I decided to visit SGC Louisville.

We loved the vibrant worship and powerful message. There were many times we were moved to tears by CJ's preaching and by the songs we sang. My wife was shepherded well and her spirit was renewed. It was faithfulness to the Word and the grace, love and humbleness flowing from the pastors that drew us to Sovereign Grace. After Gary Ricucci gave us the membership interview, I had an impulse to give him a hug, and I did! By the way, hugging is not part of Chinese culture!

For the first three years in seminary, I was determined to go back to China to plant churches. However, God changed my stubborn mind and showed me a new vision - to plant healthy churches here in the States and use them as a base to reach unreached people groups. When I was nearing the end of my seminary studies, Pastor Gary Ricucci and I were discussing the possibility of Pastors College and other ministry opportunities. When he heard of my heart for church planting, he told me about the church planting class that was running the following week at the Pastors College and invited me to join. There I met Mike Seaver, pastor of Risen Hope Church, Charleston. That’s how I ended up in Charleston after graduating from Southern Baptist in Louisville.

I’m now a church planting resident at Risen Hope Church and I’m grateful for the last year. I am learning from the pastoral team, their humility in teamwork, the way they hold each other accountable, how they deal with different opinions and conflicts, their love and care for each member through prayer, their laughter and their tears, how they exercise church discipline and so on. This has been so helpful in preparing me to build and lead a team as a church planter. We started a bible study at the Medical University of Southern Carolina where more than a hundred Chinese students work and study. We are planning to launch a new Chinese-speaking church next summer. The plan for the following year is to build a core team, with the help of the Church Planting Cohort.

If you’d like to get involved, or have Chinese speaking members in your church that would like to get involved, then please let me know.