God is so good – as the pastors and people of Central Chinese Baptist Church regularly tell each other in excitement and awe. Through His blessings the church has grown from under 30 members in 1989 to more than 900 attending per week, with around 100 committing their lives to Christ in 2024 and close to that number in 2025.
Senior Pastor Alex Lam, who started serving at the church in 1989, said the church meets in six spaces, including an online service of around 120 people from around the world, services in Cantonese, English and Mandarin, and a service shaped for young people. “It’s exciting to see the life-changing power of the love of God! We basically have two streams of newcomers: one consists of migrants and students who come from a Christian background, and the other stream consists of people from non-Christian backgrounds. We reached out to them as they were interested in coming to church. They have been touched by the gospel and the love of Jesus and the longing for peace and hope for their lives. They’ve found Jesus for various reasons – the need for love, peace and hope are the key things, as well as forgiveness and a new life.”
The church started as a Gospel Hub, seeking to share the gospel with non-Christians through intentional discipleship training and person-to-person follow up. The church developed a two-year discipleship program through small groups to teach foundational spiritual growth, but now the church focuses on lifelong discipleship training. “We see discipleship as a lifelong journey, in response to people’s needs. First, we teach basic spiritual formation, then ministry formation helping them to find a role for their gifts, talents, personality and experience, and how to work in teams. After that, there is mission and evangelism training, and then lifelong training in aspects like relationships, money and time management to help them be effective disciples in their families and the workplace, living a good testimony.”
The small groups choose one area at a time to focus on and there is a lot of reflection involved. “It’s like a community of practice. We share and learn from the Bible and from each other, as we work through a study book together. We just walk with people and help them grow in whatever stages they are in. Some favourite studies are R. Paul Stevens books, Prepare Enrich pre-marriage course, Alpha, and many others that help people to grow in Christ. Every few years our whole training will be carefully looked at and reinvented to catch up with society changes and younger generations. As people ask more questions about the Christian life, we gather materials to add in the teaching.”
The church has a long history of serving young people, especially university students. “It is very important to serve and connect with them – the Lord laid this on our hearts, that if people came to know Jesus during their uni years, their lives would change and it would have a ripple effect on their whole family. We have seen a lot of examples of this. For many overseas students, when they return to their homelands their families see the life change of the student and become interested in finding out what Jesus is all about.”
Through the missions training, the Lord has called around 80 people from the church into full-time ministry, serving in organisations such as Baptist Mission Australia. Others focus on gathering resources to support them.
“Through God’s blessing, the discipleship program has been very fruitful and exciting – and also tiring! We always keep saying to each other, ‘God is so good!’”