During the month of May I am going to write a series of articles on the Chinese church. Today is already May 2, but since May has 31 days I still can get in a 30 day series. I plan to write something every day, as much as possible. But I don’t plan to write anything on Sunday, since that is a busy ministry day for me. Maybe if I get especially ambitious I will write two articles on Saturdays to make up for it. This is the first time that I have attempted to write such an intensive series, so it should be quite an adventure. I hope that you will join me for the ride.
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This article is part of the series “30 Days on the Chinese Church.”

I want to start this series by sharing about the history of my own church. Don’t worry, I won’t overwhelm you with lots of names and dates! But it is important to understand the typical development pattern of a Chinese church in the U.S. I will share our story with you to illustrate a common pattern.
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Many Chinese churches are content to remain in Stage 3 of the development of the English Ministry (see the previous post). But there is one more step that needs to be taken to have a mature, effective English Ministry. . .
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I’d like to start this week by sharing the concept of The Resource Pyramid. This simple concept helps us to understand what we need to do to develop a ministry to the next level. I originally shared this concept in a message in a joint worship service in June 2006. You can listen to the message and view the notes on the church web site.
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Many Chinese churches use simultaneous side-by-side translation in their services. I have spoken many times in various churches using this arrangement. But I think that in terms of building the English ministry, translated services should be used as little as possible. Today I will explain why. . .
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In Chinese churches, we often compare the church to a family. Just as a family goes through many changes as the children grow up, immigrant churches also go through predictable stages. Today I want to share a few more thoughts about the developmental stages of Chinese churches, with particular focus on the process of growing a mature English ministry.
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About 7-8 years ago someone gave me a copy of an article by Victor Lee of Toronto on “Models of Ministry in Chinese Churches.” I thought that it was quite helpful at the time, and even made copies for our church board members. His description of the stages of development in a typical Chinese church fits in very well with what I have described in the past few posts. I will summarize some of the key ideas from his article. The names of the models are his, but the the descriptions are based partly on my own experiences.
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