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The Time without a Pastor
When Pastor Pan
reluctantly resigned on May 1983 due to illness,
he had already laid a foundation for our church.
Before his departure, Pastor Pan trained up the
brothers and sisters of our church and obtained
good Christian literature for them to learn
from. So after he departed, everyone in church
carried out his or her duties faithfully. All
regular church activities, including Saturday
morning prayer meeting, proceeded as usual.
Pastor Warren Wang, who was not ordained then,
was contemplating full time ministry. In April
1984, he enrolled in a seminary. There he met
Christopher Sun, a friend of Pastor Pan.
Brothers Wang and Sun continued to serve in our
church while they attended seminary. Pastor
Peter Chung, the pastor of our mother church,
was very concerned for our church. He invited
Pastor David Liao to minister in our church on
an interim basis. So throughout this period,
there were plenty of help to meet the needs of
the church.
On November 1983, a Pastor Search Committee was
formed. The members include Pastor Peter Chung,
Dr. Cherry Chang, brother Peter Yao, brother
Ming-Ming Lu and deacon Paul Young.
On March 1984, the Pastor Search Committee has
voted to hire Pastor Daniel Hsu as the new
Pastor of our church.
The Pastor
Daniel Hsu Years
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After
graduated in 1981 from Yale University’s School
of Theology, Pastor Hsu served in Fresno Chinese
Baptist Church. Dr. C. C. Chang of Pasadena
Mandarin Baptist Church invited Pastor Hsu to
speak in a youth retreat in 1983. There he met
several members of our church. After that, he
spoke in several of our church’s evangelical
meetings and in our Lake Castaic picnic. After
we got to know Pastor Hsu, he became the Pastor
Search Committee’s top choice.
However, after struggling for years without a
pastor, we were ambivalent about asking Pastor
Hsu to come to our church and leave the Fresno
Church without a pastor. So Pastor Hsu, the
Fresno church and we prayed fervently to seek
God’s will on this matter. After much prayer and
contemplation, we received word from the Fresno
church. “If God wants Pastor Hsu to go to
Southern California, do let us be an obstacle.
He will provide us a pastor. Let God’s will be
done.” r />
Pastor Hsu was reluctant to leave the Fresno
church without a pastor. However a senior pastor
who served 30 years in Shanghai went to the
Fresno church. He has endured much persecution
in the Cultural Revolution and was jailed for
many years. His health was good, so he became
the pastor of the Fresno church. Then Pastor Hsu
joined our church on June 3, 1984. Both our
church and the Fresno church continue to grow.
The
Incorporation of Mandarin Baptist Church
of San Fernando Valley
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With God’s glory in mind, our mother church
always intended MBCSFV to grow into an
independent church. After Pastor Hsu’s arrival,
the time was ripe for this next stage of
development. On December 2, 1984, after five
years of germination, our church was officially
chartered, dedicated to spread the message of
Christ and for the glory of God.
Our present church is located on Nordhoff
Street. In Chinese, the name sounds like “land
of many blessings”. As we consider the history
of our church, God indeed has blessed us
abundantly.
The idea of having our own church building
started way back on August 1979 when someone
donated $10 to the Church Building Fund. Later
we had a Church Building Committee consisting of
Peter Yao, Ming-Ming Lu and Steven Yang. The
committee pursued many possibilities for our
church site, including a small church building,
a renovated warehouse, an auditorium in a closed
elementary school, etc. We could not even afford
to buy a piece of land without a building on it.
As an old Chinese proverb says, “A good wife
cannot cook without rice.”
In 1980 our church met at another church
building. When that church decided to move, we
were in a quandary. We had the option to
purchase that church, but we lack the financial
resources to do so. The committee examined
several other possible purchases, but those
failed because those are not God’s will for us.
Our faith was only the size of a mustard seed.
We learned to wait on the Lord and the trust on
His promise, “As heavens are higher then the
earth, so is My ways higher than your ways, and
My thoughts higher than your thoughts,” Isaiah
55:9.
InIn late 1986 Pastor Hsu and Peter Yao “by
chance” saw a piece of property on Nordhoff and
Zelzah. The location is excellent. The price was
$5.30 per square foot, which was about a fourth
of the usual price in that neighborhood. Brother
Yao and the Church Building Committee made a
proposal to the church to purchase the land. The
asking price was $415,000. Although our Church
Building Fund grew from $10 to $70,000, that
hardly was enough.
In the meantime there was an unexpected
surprise. A sister church made a bid for that
land. To avoid bidding up the price, our church
stop pursuing that property. Again we had to
learn to wait for God’s will. When the other
church failed to complete the deal, we resume
our interest on the property. We made an offer
to the landowner, but there were three other
offers ahead of us. The landowner would sell us
the property only if all the other deals fall
through. So humanly speaking, our chances were
not very good.r />
Again God’s hand was at work. Our offer, with a
loan of $270,000 was officially in escrow on
December 31, 1986. We paid only one fourth of
the going price. In two short months, we raised
the necessary down payment.
For ten years the people of Sherman Way Church
allowed us to meet in their building. However on
October 1989, they notified us that they have
sold their building and would be moving to a
bigger facility. We had to find another meeting
place by January of the following year. We were
thankful to the Lord and to the people of
Sherman Way Church for allowing us to meet there
for so many years without paying rent. Our
church has grown during that time. We were able
to save enough money to purchase property on the
“Land of Many Blessings”.
On January 1990, our church began to meet in the
auditorium of Valerio Street School. The
planning of the church construction was taking
place at the same time. |
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