House Church

5/09/2023 12:00:27 PM | Mark and Ngoc

Ngoc and Mark share how the ministry in Vietnam is opening eyes, empowering young people with disability and sharing the Gospel in culturally relevant ways.

House church
In this culture, hospitality is incredibly important and frequently practised. People often spend time in each other’s homes to share a meal and talk about life.

Therefore, we have a strong conviction that running church at someone’s house is culturally appropriate in this community. We also find this practice biblically familiar. In Acts 2:42-47, we read an account of how the first believers gather everyday at someone’s house, for communion and to study God’s Word together.

So we have begun a weekly house church where we prepare a meal and invite the local staff to join together. Afterwards, we run ‘wordtime’, where we share Scripture and explore how it could be applicable to our own lives. Then, we invite everyone in the group to share what’s going on in their life with us - the ups and downs and how their week is going. Finally, we pray together. It’s a simple, yet rich time together.

From our experiences, it takes perseverance, disappointments, genuine relationships and time, for people in Vietnam to truly experience God’s genuine love. This is because the people of Vietnam have been oppressed and taken advantage of by so many different countries, governments and wars over the nation’s history, so it takes time to build trust.

Our hope and prayer is that through our house church ministry, our friends will have the opportunity to experience God’s love and care, and to slowly grow in relationship with Jesus.

Cong's story
There is a young man, Cong, who comes from a strong atheist background. He is one of our excellent teachers and is very well respected among his students. However, when he first came to us, he had a cold and unapproachable demeanour.

We had the impression that he strongly opposed our faith, but over the years his heart has softened and he is becoming more open to having conversations about Jesus. He’s not there yet, but we pray that through the house church he will one day choose to follow Jesus.
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