History

Introduction: A Most Unusual Sight

It was the morning of April 9, 2000 and a light blanket of snow was visible in the parking lot of Community Baptist Church in Somerset, New Jersey. In a few hours, the parking lot would be filled with cars and people who would meet their new church members for the first time. This was the not the first worship service they had ever been to – just the first worship service like this.

Snow had fallen that morning on a spring day decorating the green pine trees that scattered the lawn sitting on the corner of New Brunswick Avenue and Demott Lane with a coat of white. But it was not the weather that made this particular Sunday so unusual. It had to do with what was about to happen inside the church.

Inside the small cozy sanctuary, one could see an elevated stage with steps leading up to it that wrapped around the front of the room, facing three sections of pews leading to the back some 15 rows deep. In the back was a small sound room where the sound engineer could see the pulpit in almost a linear view behind a glass window.

If we were in the sound room with the engineer at 2:15pm on April 9th we would have seen something not one of the 300-400 people had ever seen before. Something was about to happen that was so unusual and curious that people around the world would talk about it and say that no one had ever done this before.

HGC and HCC: Roots

Fred Hsu almost literally stepped off a plane from Singapore and started Harvesters Gospel Center, a new church that took a radical path no Chinese church had attempted to do in Middlesex County.

He had just resigned from his position as the Senior Pastor of the largest Chinese church in New Jersey with a congregation of 1,500 people. God was teaching Fred about a new concept – the cell church – and his conviction caused him to take a huge risk: leave retirement, a comfortable pension and the comfort of leaving ministry at the height of success – or start something new and risk failure.

But, as a charismatic pastor in a traditional church, he felt that God wanted him to move and start a new church. That church, Harvesters Gospel Center laid down its roots on March 8, 1998 in the American Legion Hall in Spotswood. The first year at HGC was difficult. Fred took no salary; but he depended on God for everything – even food.

Meanwhile, Pastor Hsu’s eldest son, Kevin, was going to a small church in Somerset attended by mostly college students from nearby Rutgers University, a short 10-15 minute car ride from the New Brunswick campus. Somerset Baptist Church was being rented by the small campus church; on one Sunday, it held two distinctly different congregations – in the morning it was an African-American church led by an African-American pastor; in the afternoon it was a small campus church led by a Korean-American pastor who had just come back from Africa with a vision to start a church that would help fulfill the Great Commission.

Sam Lee grew up in a traditional Korean Church in Chicago, Illinois, his hometown. After seminary he went to Africa to be a missionary where he expected to spend most of his life. While serving in a local church in Kenya, God challenged him with a strong conviction: that to fulfill Great Commission, he needed to raise up people with the same desire. Sam felt that God was calling him to come back to America to start a church for that purpose. And while he didn’t have any experience starting a church and with no support and no funding for his vision, he came back to America excited for this new vision.

When he came to the East Coast in late 1995, he had no money, no members, no place to meet and no place to live. Everything he owned could fit into half of the trunk in his Isuzu Stylus.

Looking for a place to live, he eventually stayed in the basement of some friends and started Harvest Community Church with John Kim. During this time, Sam experienced the “wonderful provision of God”, even despite the fact that the church didn’t have members after many months of fruitless evangelism on Rutgers campus. But the difficult beginning began to take its toll and Sam started to feel discouraged; as doubt crept in, he wanted to give up. It was at the lowest points, however, that God showed his provision: one day, Sam received an anonymous cashier’s check in the mail for $5,000.

As time went on, the church grew to seven people, but still didn’t have a place to worship, and for Sam, a permanent place to live. God again provided by opening up a house on Bayard Street in New Brunswick across from a church. Sam finally found a place to stay – but on the condition that he clean the church. Those were trying times and a place for humble beginnings, but the trying times were about to give way to an enormous blessing.

One Saturday night, God gave Sam a vision of a small white church. He took it as a clear sign as to what to look for: a building that looked like the one in his vision. He started going around to different churches to see where they could meet. Eventually, he passed by a small white church – exactly like the one in his dream – and he knew that this was the place where God wanted him to go.

The morning that Sam came to visit Somerset Baptist Church, a small African American church, Pastor Robinson was praying to open up the church to other groups. Pastor Robinson had a vision to work together – but with who? His congregation was not open to the idea at the time, but they had no idea that that was all about to change.

In Pastor Robinson’s sermon that Sunday, he had prepared a message on Joshua 6. Incidentally, Sam also had his morning devotion on Joshua 6. That Sunday, instead of Pastor Robinson giving the message, he said to Sam, “God has called you to preach.” Sam spoke on breaking down the walls and his message did exactly that – the congregation was crying and holding hands together, visibly touched and moved. The walls came down. Two weeks later, Pastor Robinson told Sam that he could use the church.

Growing Pains

When Kevin Hsu first set foot on a Sunday afternoon in Somerset Baptist Church for a Harvest Community Church service, he would have seen a hundred college students crammed into a small church with hard wooden pews, no air conditioning or heat, and speakers turned so loud the sound waves shook the walls and foundations of the church. But just a few years ago, it was a completely different scene.

The first service for Harvest Community Church was held in September 1996. 25 people showed up, and of those, most of the original members stayed on for four years. Of the 25, there was a small group of nine that met weekly for fellowship, prayer and discussion. Seemingly out of nowhere, the “provision of the Lord” was about to become a visible reality to this small group.

In its first year, HCC exploded to 100 members. “We don’t know how”, Sam said looking back. There was no advertising, no rides to campus, no way for anyone to know that there was a service going on some 10-15 minutes from campus. But students came through word of mouth. And when they came, they came in droves. The church grew so fast it was hard personally for Sam. He felt like the relationships between the members weren’t strong enough outside the “core.” On top of that, discipleship wasn’t strong. The church was growing quickly, but at what cost?

The Proposal

In the dining room of Pastor Fred’s house in Somerset, Sam and Fred talked about something that would change the course of their lives and churches forever. This wasn’t just a movement that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere. The Cell Vision and its adherents had gotten a hold of Pastor Fred when he traveled to Bethany World Prayer Center in 1998, and it too would take hold of Sam.

Pastor Sam and Pastor Fred had met before September 1997, talking about the vision of the cell church during an hour and half conversation. A year later, Fred went to Singapore. In the meantime, in his excitement, Sam tried to implement cells at HCC, but was not successful. When Fred came back, they started meeting on a weekly basis to talk about the cell vision and networking together.

As they started talking, they realized that they shared many of the same values and vision. It was Pastor Fred who brought it up: “Do you think we can merge together?” he asked. “It sounded scary, but at the same time, exciting”, Sam later recalled.

They decided to pray about it, continued to meet and started partnering together. A significant event was the Ellel weekend retreat, where the eye-opening experiences of prophecy, inner healing and deliverance, and speaking in tongues introduced themselves to HCC. Sam started speaking at HGC and Fred started speaking at HCC. Over time, they realized that this was what God wanted them to do. There were other more obvious reasons too. HGC wanted to reach out beyond the Chinese group; HCC wanted to go beyond college students. And by merging, there was an agreement that there would be synergy to accomplish those goals.

Fred and Sam both settled on a date: April 9, 2000 and set in motion the preparation for the wedding day.

The Wedding Day

Just days before the merge, at a prayer meeting, Pastor Fred had received a picture of the Israelites crossing the Jordan river setting up 12 memorial stones. Molica, Fred’s wife, also recalled that on March 8, 1998, the day they had started HGC, Fred and Molica had received Relevations 8 as a passage from God. Now, since they were merging on April 9, was the picture he received also in Joshua 4:9, Fred wondered.

4/9/00 indeed proved to be an unusual day at Community Baptist Church. Green pines were white, decorated with snow. A wedding cake and vows were prepared for the day. Fitting for the occasion, instead of preaching there was sharing about the relationship between the two pastors. There was a sense that something not only unique was happening in the physical – that a Chinese congregation was merging with a college congregation and that two distinctly different generations and races were coming together – but a sense that there was a spiritual coming together as well.

In that small sanctuary, there were people from all walks of life – not all of them members, but some reporters from Chinese newspapers and some just curious to see what was happening on this strange occasion.

Mergers in the corporate world are often the result of a hostile takeover or a show of dominance in an industry, but this merger was different. There was no posturing between the two pastors to become the head pastor. Instead, one deferred to the other. Pastor Fred asked Sam to be the Senior Pastor, and Sam reciprocated the offer.

Mergers in the corporate world often follow the pattern of one organization consuming and eliminating many functions and roles of the other organization. Here, people wanted to meet their new church members. After the cake was cut and served, people gathered to talk and begin their new lives as married churches. There was no more HGC and HCC; now, there was only HIC: Harvest International Center.

The Honeymoon

The way the two churches unified, people thought they were together for many years. Many people were heard to have said during the first three or four months, “I already forgot what HGC was like”. It seemed like to many, that they were together for a long time.

HIC enjoyed immediate fruits of the marriage: members went deeper into healing and deliverance receiving training from Ellel (now Singing Waters); teaching on spiritual gifts and the prophetic exploded; cell groups merged together and new relationships were forged; children’s relationships with parents improved. “Ever since my son and daughter went to HIC, our relationship has improved”, parents would say to Pastor Fred.

There was an incredible amount of synergy. HGC brought stability to HCC, and by merging, both churches had to get out of their comfort zones. There were challenges too. Chinese parents felt insecure to pray in English, but over time their confidence improved.

HIC took its name by combining the best of both churches. “Harvest” comes from Harvest Community Church and its emphasis on fulfilling the Great Commission; “Center” from Harvesters Gospel Center and its desire to become a central place to train and equip; and “International” was added because both churches became international churches from then on and desired to reach the nations.

HIC was a radically different church, not just because of the merge – it had a radically new culture: the vision of cell, the use of spiritual gifts, the attitude and desire to learn how to work together through different cultures and age groups, the desire and knowledge to deal with past hurts, missions, raising up leaders through cell, and its propensity to network with different people from around the world.

Early Reflections

HIC’s story is a story of convergence. HCC and HGC were headed in different directions, but changed once they merged. Sam left the traditional Korean Church to start something new, as did Fred when he left the traditional Chinese Church. They both went through tremendous challenges and in the process had to sacrifice and forgo other seemingly more prosperous positions. Looking back, they have said that “all the things that happened were for a necessary foundation to be able to build now; if lives are not being transformed and growing, it’s not worth it because transformed kingdom people are the heart of the church. We’re going to reap now; the harvest has been prepared and God has made the worker (us) ready; and now we’re going to reap the harvest.”