Chinese Church Opens Doors to Everyone

May 21, 2004

Source: The Houston Chronicle

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/religion/2584643

On May 21, 2004 The Houston Chronicle reported, "As leaders at Houston Chinese Church started a new congregation in Fort Bend County, they decided to leave ethnicity out of the title. The result was Fort Bend Community Church. The name signaled change. 'We took the `Chinese' out,' said Robert Lay-Su, a church deacon. 'We inserted the `community.' We were thinking, `Open the doors to everybody.' ' For church planners, opening the doors to everybody was an intentional stab at breaking down one of the more entrenched traditions of American church life: The 11 a.m. Sunday segregation. While continuing to serve Chinese-Americans and new immigrants in the culture and language of their homelands, Fort Bend Community Church embarked on a plan to attract some of the diversity of the neighborhoods at its doorstep -- an ambitious experiment for the largely immigrant evangelical Christian church."