OUR CHURCH
The predecessor of Chinese Christian Church of Baton Rouge (CCCBR) was a campus Bible study group. It met regularly on Friday night as early as 1979, and became more organized with elected coworkers in 1980. Beginning in 1983, monthly Sunday worship services were held in addition to the Bible Studies. In 1985, we formed a non-profit organization, Chinese Christian Fellowship of Baton Rouge, and registered with the government. The church was formally founded in March, 1986. In August of that year Rev. James Tien joined the church and became the first pastor. During his tenure, the congregation continued to grow, and a need of a larger meeting place arose. We purchased the building at the current location in September 1990. Rev. Tien retired in 1993. Afterwards, Rev. James Chen (1993–1999), Rev. K.C. Chen (2000–2014), Rev. Steve Hsia (2014–2020), and Pastor Zhaoyuan Liu (2020–present) successively served as the church pastor: all four of them were one time laymen of this church, and later became full-time ministers through God’s grace.
When the church was first founded, church members were mainly Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian countries. The main focus of church ministry was to evangelize among Chinese students and scholars in LSU and other nearby campuses. With time, both the composition and the ministry of the church became diversified. Currently, about two-thirds of the Chinese congregation of the church consists of Chinese from the mainland, with the remaining one third from Taiwan and elsewhere. Evangelizing among campus students and scholars is still an important ministry, but we also use various means to reach out to an increasingly larger Chinese population in the community. As we spread the Gospel and build up believers, many ministries, such as worship, discipleship, missions, fellowship, children and youth ministries, have all grown over the years.
As time went by children of our brothers and sisters grew up and educated here in the U.S., the need for an English-speaking ministry became increasingly important. In 1994 Brooke Mote was hired as our part-time Youth Director and started our English Ministry. Brooke served in this role until 2000. Other English Ministers to serve the church were: Minister Karen Law (1997-2000), Minister Timothy Peng (2001-2007), Pastor Johnny Tang (2007-2010), Pastor William Englehart (2011-2018), and Pastor Daniel Jackson (September 2019 - September 2021). In September of 2021, Pastor Daniel was called by God and left the church to serve as a missionary to Europe. Two months later (December 2021), Heath Hebert began his serves as our current English Pastor. Current English Mininstry congregation is consisted of children of our brothers and sisters as well as of the Chinese community, couples of ethnic Chinese and foreigners, and some American adults.