Introducing the HIC Restaurant Fellowship

There are more than 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the USA. Each restaurant may have an average of 5 workers, plus the family members; this is a huge potential harvest field. But, harvesters for this field are very few. There seems to be two difficulties in reaching out to this target group:

(1). Internal difficulties within the church - The majority of the Chinese Christian churches in America were founded by the professional people, so they also focus more on the professional and middle class people. Therefore it is hard for them to minister effectively to the Chinese restaurant workers who are low-income, less educated and speak mostly native Chinese dialects. Because there is a cultural gap between people groups, conflicts are inevitable. Pastor Fred Hsu at the HIC suggests that a church take the initiative to visit them, care for their needs, help them experience the love and power of God, for this is what the great commission is all about. We should bring the church to the people. The church must go out to meet them.

(2). The difficulty for the restaurant workers - ”Lack of time and lack of transportation” is the common reality of the restaurant workers. Many workers get off from work after 11:00 PM. They cannot come to the church; the church must adapt to meet their needs. Anyone who wants to do restaurant worker ministry must bear this in mind.



Peter Zheng, who was a restaurant worker, believes that even though it is difficult to share gospel with this group, one should still have burden for this group of people. They live a hard life and they need God. They are right here. Churches must learn to understand this group, provide for their needs, accept them, help them and then influence them with the gospel of Christ.

With many prayers and by the mercy of God, HIC has begun a Chinese Restaurant Fellowship group in September 2006 via an evangelical outreach. Eight were baptized in December. We will reap a great harvest! If you want to join us, please contact HIC for details.