HISTORY OF TRUE LIGHT PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Founded in 1876 as Chinese Presbyterian Church by the Rev. Ira M.
Condit, a former missionary to China, True Light's history is
synonymous with the history of the Chinese in Los Angeles.

Condit began the ministry with children whose parents worked in
Chinatown's laundries, produce markets and restaurants. The parents
were delighted to send their youngsters to Condit for free tutoring
and baby-sitting.

"Little did they realize that God was at work to use those
opportunities as a way to grow a Chinese Presbyterian Church," Pastor
Lai said. "When those children grew up and became Christians, they
became the leaders of the church, and through their witness and
influence, many of their parents were led to Christ," he wrote in a
booklet on the history of the church.



http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
religchinese2nov02,0,5468417.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia
Sale of Church Upsets Congregants
The Presbytery of San Gabriel's pending sale of Eastside building to
a Korean congregation embitters current Chinese worshipers.

By K. Connie Kang, Times Staff Writer

The pending $1.1-million sale of a historic Chinese church on Los
Angeles' Eastside has sparked an emotional dispute between a group of
Cantonese-speaking Presbyterians and the denomination's regional
governing body.

The Presbytery of San Gabriel wants to sell the church on Griffin
Avenue in Lincoln Heights to a 300-member Korean immigrant
Presbyterian congregation currently in South Los Angeles.

But leaders of the Chinese congregation, which has roots going back
126 years, say the sale would destroy a religious mission that
remains important for the area's Chinese population.

In a clash of divergent world perspectives, both sides are, in
effect, accusing the other of being out of touch.

"They have no compassion for what we are doing," said Irvin Lai, a
leader of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Ministry, which is made up
mostly of low-income immigrants who worship at the old True Light
Chinese Presbyterian Church building.

Lai, an elder and member of the church since 1958, said the
presbytery's decision puts financial considerations above "saving
souls for the Lord."

Those opposing the sale consider the Lincoln Heights site "holy
ground" because in many cases their loved ones were baptized and
married there and remembered at the church when they died.

Leaders of the presbytery, by contrast, say they intend to continue
the mission, but at a more affordable location.

The current church is "too much building for what's going on," said
the Rev. Thomas G. Rennard, top regional administrator for the body,
which governs 45 congregations of the Presbyterian Church USA in
northeastern Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Valley and surrounding
areas. The presbytery, composed of 180 ministers and 180 elders,
decided after a "rigorous debate" to sell the property, said Rennard.

The ministry is a gathering place for children who have nowhere to go
after school, students needing help with their homework, Americanized
Chinese teenagers alienated from their immigrant parents, men and
women looking for jobs, families in need of a translator for a
medical appointment, recent immigrants learning English as a second
language, and seniors who do aerobics.

One day this week, for example, Christina Marfoe, the ministry's full-
time volunteer, made three trips to the County-USC Medical Center on
behalf of a woman with glaucoma, helped a Cantonese-speaking man deal
with the county bureaucracy over a jury summons, delivered medication
to a family in Lincoln Heights, then counseled and prayed with a
depressed teenager until after midnight.

"That's how we show Jesus' love," Marfoe said. "We are his
instruments."

Steve Lee, the neighborhood ministry's only paid staff member, spent
the week tutoring students -- an average of 20 a day.

"If I can make a difference in one kid's life and turn him on to
learning, and if I can help him discover the joy of learning, then
I've done what God has called me to do here," said Lee, 25, who has
undergraduate degrees in political science and philosophy from UC
Berkeley and a master's degree in philosophy from Talbot Theological
Seminary.

He also coordinates the ministry's classes in Chinese, English as a
second language, and aerobics for seniors.

But Rennard and the Rev. Peter Lai (no relation to Elder Lai) said
the Lincoln Heights group hasn't been successful. Peter Lai is the
pastor of Alhambra True Light Presbyterian Church, which was
established in 1996 by the merger of True Light with another,
predominately white, congregation in Alhambra.

"The ministry is not growing," he said.

At least some outside observers agree that the mission work should be
broadened to be successful in a neighborhood whose population is now
far more Latino than Chinese. According to the 2000 Census, 6,760
Chinese and 26,435 Latinos live in the area where the church is
located.

"There is certainly a need to work for the poor, those on the margins
of society, but it would mean that the Cantonese congregation in
Lincoln Heights would have to reach out to the Hispanics in that
community," said the Rev. Michael Mata, professor of urban ministries
at Claremont School of Theology, who is familiar with the church and
the controversy.

The situation is complicated because of the historic and emotional
ties that the larger Cantonese community has to the Lincoln Heights
building, Mata said. The Cantonese dominated Los Angeles' Chinatown
until the influx of ethnic Chinese immigrants from other parts of
Asia since the 1980s diversified the population.

"Losing the facility conjures up all kinds of feelings," Mata said.

Founded in 1876 as Chinese Presbyterian Church by the Rev. Ira M.
Condit, a former missionary to China, True Light's history is
synonymous with the history of the Chinese in Los Angeles.

Condit began the ministry with children whose parents worked in
Chinatown's laundries, produce markets and restaurants. The parents
were delighted to send their youngsters to Condit for free tutoring
and baby-sitting.

"Little did they realize that God was at work to use those
opportunities as a way to grow a Chinese Presbyterian Church," Pastor
Lai said. "When those children grew up and became Christians, they
became the leaders of the church, and through their witness and
influence, many of their parents were led to Christ," he wrote in a
booklet on the history of the church.

Ian Evison, project director at the Alban Institute, a
nondenominational think tank in Bethesda, Md., said transfers of
ethnic churches from older immigrant communities to newer arrivals
from different ethnic groups are common.

"The trend of congregations moving between ethnic groups is
particularly strong in the Presbyterian church," he said.

Church mergers also are prevalent in the denomination, which numbered
2.5 million nationwide in 2001 and is losing an average of 30,000
members a year.

The rapid decline of membership among mainline Protestant
denominations has forced churches to "rationalize" their properties
and expenses, said Edmund Gibbs, professor of practical theology at
Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Missions and an
authority on church growth and renewal.

He said urban ministry is "particularly tough" for such mainline
denominations as Presbyterian churches, because "they are bookish in
their culture" and often fit better in suburban areas.

By contrast, "we are not a church where people drive Mercedes," Elder
Lai said. "We are operating a church fellowship group where people
come with sandals on their feet."

Well-prepared and well-delivered sermons, prized by middle-class
Presbyterian congregations, don't work in his ministry, he said.

"They don't understand theology. We are missionaries. We make it
simple: 'Jesus loves you and he gives you salvation. I am your
friend, just like Jesus Christ is.' "

In most churches, refreshments follow an 11 a.m. worship. But with
Elder Lai's group, a snack of Chinese noodles and Winchell's
doughnuts preceded a recent Sunday service. When Lai announced the
sale, adults and youngsters alike cried.

The presbytery "didn't have the perspective of what we think," said a
tearful Carmen Ng, 14, a ninth-grader at nearby Bravo High
school. "This is my second home," she said. "I've been coming here
since I was in preschool."

But Florence Shao, an elderly congregant who has been coming to the
church for three years, was more resigned.

"I don't think we have any say," she said. "I'm sad about it, but I
don't think we have any choice."




http://www.pcusa.org/pcusa/today/features/feat9707.htm

Way to Grow!
Alhambra True Light Presbyterian Church lights the way in "planting"
new churches
By Sue Mote
When Sam and Pearl Choy, Tom and Marilyn Yee, and other members of
True Light Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, California, went out
from that congregation to plant a new church, they took on tasks they
had never tried before.

They learned how to run a one-room Sunday school, and how to walk
right up to people and talk with them about church. With a core of
only five families, says Marilyn Yee, "we couldn't wait for someone
else to do the work."

Now, 16 years later, the Choys and the Yees can look around at a
congregation of 250 in Westminster, California, and know that, like
Abraham's, their "trek into the wilderness" has born fruit. The Choys
and Yees and their children were among a group of members
commissioned by True Light Presbyterian in 1980 to reach unchurched
people, particularly American-born Chinese ("ABCs") in nearby Orange
County. The Chinese Presbyterian Church of Orange County that
resulted was the first of four successful Presbyterian church
plantings or re-plantings that True Light (now named Alhambra True
Light Presbyterian Church) has undertaken. Stan Wood of the General
Assembly staff calls this record "exemplary in our denomination."

Other Presbyterian churches, like True Light, send people, leaders
and money to start new churches. One of the denomination's largest
churches, Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, with a
membership of more than 11,000, has started "about 25 churches,"
according to its pastor, Frank Harrington. Yet at a tiny fraction of
Peachtree's size, True Light with its 300-400 members can claim the
record as the most productive church-planting congregation in the
denomination.

This 120-year-old Chinese-American church took up the challenge of
systematic church planting when it turned 100, although it had
already started one congregation that chose not to become
Presbyterian. True Light began on faith to plant one new church every
five years. With each mission it gave away members and leaders, along
with their skills and dollars. But each time new members appeared to
refill True Light'spews. And all its planted churches are
flourishing.


Alhambra True Light is "the most productive church-planting
congregation in the denomination

"With all of the churches we have planted taken together," Larry Lam
says, "we're ministering to over 1,000 people. If we had stayed at
True Light, we would have stayed at a membership of 350 or 400."
That' heady stuff. Mission is a familiar theme in True Light's
history. After returning from service as a missionary to China, the
church's organizer, Ira Condit, served from 1853 to 1876 under the
Presbyterian mission board in this country, working among Chinese who
came to California looking for gold. Some of these were Christians
before coming to America who wanted to reach other Chinese with the
gospel.

When the gold dream dimmed, the Chinese scattered. Condit and several
Chinese laymen visited settlements around the state and formed a
gospel mission wherever they found a core of Chinese Christians. In
this way Condit organized churches all over California, including
True Light's ancestor in Los Angeles.
A pueblo of about 10,000 during the Gold Rush, Los Angeles mushroomed
after a railroad to the area was completed. At first the Chinese were
welcomed as cheap labor for the infant orange- and grape-growing
industries. Later the competition presented by successful Chinese
laundries, restaurants and shops led to severe discrimination.

Into this setting, in 1875, came Condit. He met with a few Chinese
Christians, and the following year the First Chinese Presbyterian
Church of Los Angeles (later renamed True Light Presbyterian Church)
organized with 17 members. The group soon moved into a building in
Chinatown, and the church remained a Presbyterian mission church for
a number of years. In the 1960s it undertook its own role in mission
work, sending out both people and money.

The more recent round of church plantings began 20 years ago when a
second man with the missionary spirit came from China to serve the
True Light Presbyterian Church. This missionary was Chinese--Peter
Lai. Born in Hong Kong, he had received his theological education in
the United States, and he came to True Light bent on church growth.

But there was a problem: True Light's parking and nursery were
already crowded. Relocate? That would be too expensive.

Planting a church was an answer, and it would solve another problem
as well. Some members who had moved a long commute from the church
started drifting away.

Lai and True Light leaders identified five families living in Orange
County and asked them if they would start a church in that area. True
Light offered financial and moral support and help in requesting
money from presbytery, synod and General Assembly. They even had an
idea for someone to be the founding pastor: Wayland Wong, an American-
born Chinese who had been sent by True Light on a mission to Hong
Kong 16 years earlier, but who wanted to return home.

The Yees, the Choys, the Loos, the Lams and others said yes, they
would go.

Their departure would mean a significant leadership drain. Several
were trustees or elders at True Light; others managed the office and
led church school and music program. But they had all absorbed Lai's
preaching and teaching about mission. They had heard his challenge to
stretch their faith byThey had caught his vision to start new
churches. And perhaps most important, they belonged to a congregation
that lived and breathed mission. Church meant mission. There was no
distinction between the two. As Wong, who is still pastor of the
Chinese Presbyterian Church of Orange County, says, "Planting
churches is a home mission." reaching out.

Has their Chinese heritage given True Light an edge in church
planting? Possibly. Worldwide, Chinese Christians feel a strong
mandate to evangelize other Chinese.

Bryce Little, executive of San Gabriel Presbytery, says this zeal can
be traced in part to a Christian faith that was forged in the non-
Christian environment of China. Believers with roots in Asia have "a
clear picture of what Christian faith means in their life, and they
are eager to share," he says. "Cultural Christianity," such as that
found in the West, "does not generate great momentum."

Another spur to the success of church growth among Chinese people
lies in their devotion to the multi-generational, extended family.
Members of True Light "keep looking for a way to provide a new church
home to each successive generation," says Mark Carlson, chairperson
of San Gabriel Presbytery's Racial-Ethnic Committee. (True Light
holds services in Cantonese and English. All of the churches it has
planted, however, use only English, the language of the younger
generations.)

The broad concept of family provides ongoing support for the new
churches. Brothers, cousins, aunts and grandparents support their
relatives with encouraging phone calls, prayers, help in running
vacation Bible school and other special projects, and checks for the
new church budget. The help continues to flow as long as necessary.

Still, it is tough to reach ABCs. Like other Americans, Wong says,
they are busy pursuing the American dream. And their heritages of
Buddhism and atheism leave little room for an interest in
Christianity.

But the members of Chinese Presbyterian Church of Orange County have
taught themselves to talk to people about church and to invite them
to Bible study. They publicized their church by selling Chinese tea
cakes at Disneyland and reaching out to acquaintances at "mommy"
classes, school reunions and bowling alleys. Personal contact has
been their primary tool. And it worked.

Then a few years ago the membership of the Chinese Presbyterian
Church of Orange County stopped increasing, and the congregation
wondered what to do.

Retrenching had no appeal, nor did they want to hold a membership
drive. They decided--what else?--to give away 50 members to start a
new church (the independent Harvest Community Church in Irvine,
Calif.).

When they did, as had happened at True Light, new members and new
leaders appeared take their place. Despite the overall remarkable
success, the road from True Light to Orange County has held numerous
emotional potholes.

"My kids, in the 4th and 5th grade, were asking, 'Why are we leaving
True Light?'" one parent recalls. "It was an adjustment because it
was not their decision."

Larry Lam winces when he recalls the young people's feelings about
the first tiny high school gathering in Orange County. "They
said, 'We don't want to be here!'" They missed friends and relatives
in the big, busy youth group at True Light.

For two years the five families and others joining them met in
groups. Leaders studied and planned: What would the church be like?
What group of people would they serve? How would they finance it? Who
should be their pastor? Where should they start!

In time they set a date to begin worship services, but all efforts to
find a meeting place had failed. At the last moment they found a
school with a playing field, a basketball court and a helpful
administration.
Sam Choy recalls: "My feelings were like a roller coaster. We take
off, and where are we going?" So much responsibility was exhausting.

"God gave us a challenge we never had before," says Shu Loo, Missions
Committee chairperson. But sitting now in their handsome sanctuary,
the founders can tick off some of the blessings: One shy woman,
trained in their own evangelism workshops, now can invite friends to
church.

Members who felt nearly overwhelmed by the responsibility received
unsolicited help from other Presbyterian churches.

They found that when they stepped out in faith, God worked things
out. "It really challenged us to grow spiritually," Lam says, "and we
wouldn't have otherwise." After the Chinese Presbyterian Church of
Orange County in 1980 came the Chinese Presbyterian Church of South
Bay in 1988 (now South Bay Presbyterian Church). Another daughter
church, San Gabriel Presbyterian Church, was chartered in 1992.

Last year True Light gave a new future to a dwindling Anglo
congregation in Alhambra, also more than a century old, by leaving
Los Angeles to merge with it. They are anticipating a new
congregation eventually in the old building in Los Angeles.

The four congregations are now at work jointly on the next church
planting. This one is about 20 miles east of Alhambra True Light, in
San Gabriel Valley. Randy Lee was ordained in April to become
director of a two-year new church development probe officially
launched in January. So the Chinese churches continue to multiply.
Eric Hoey, pastor of South Bay Presbyterian Church, says, "It becomes
easier with practice."

Sue Mote, a free-lance writer, is a member of Westminster
Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Calif. Photos by Lynn Miller and Sue
Mote.



http://hometown.aol.com/sdpresby/ethnicgroups.htm
Managing an NCD is challenging but rewarding, said the Rev. Darwin Ng
(pronounced -ing), pastor of Los Angeles True Light Presbyterian, an
NCD in Lincoln Heights, where immigrants from Vietnam and China have
settled over the past two decades.

The building now occupied by True Light Church once was the home of
an Asian congregation that merged with a similar church elsewhere in
the Presbytery of San Gabriel. The now-True Light building was kept
open as a community center to maintain a strong Christian presence in
the neighborhood through worship, evangelism and social services. It
became a NCD in 1998, and is recognized by local residents "as a
place to send their kids to learn, to study Chinese, English, math,
computer and music lessons," Ng said.

He said True Light's language school serves as many as 60 children,
and about 70 youngsters attend an after-school program. Senior
activities also are well attended. The congregation's Sunday bi-
lingual Cantonese-English worship averages 30 adults and 10 children.

"Through the senior activities, through the after-school program,
through the computer classes, we hope at some point ... we are
helping them with their physical needs (and) spiritual needs, (and)
that they have a glimpse of the love of Jesus Christ through us and
in us," Ng said. "We hope they will come to appreciate what we are
doing here, and why we are here - that they come to join us in this
spiritual journey."



http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/1vol3/329/student.html
Student Volunteers take a turn as language teachers
by
Monika Guttman
Kim Hirabayashi thought only a few of the 50 students in the Lincoln
Heights Tutorial Program might show up last Friday. It was, after
all, a public school holiday, and the first through fifth graders
were attending the USC Neighborhood Outreach program after-school
tutoring classes five days a week.

To her surprise, every single student arrived. "They said they'd
rather be here than at home," said the graduate student at the USC
School of Education who is coordinating the tutorial program. "The
response in such a short time has been very, very positive."

Indeed, only three weeks into the new USC Neighborhood Outreach
effort adjacent to the Health Sciences Campus, there is already a
waiting list of students who'd like the tutoring being offered by USC
work-study students. "There is an incredible need for this kind of
program," noted Moses Kwok, director of the Lincoln Heights
Neighborhood Community Outreach Center (LHNCO), USC's community
partner in the Lincoln Heights Tutorial Program. "We'd like to be
able to offer this tutoring to even more children."

The Lincoln Heights Tutorial Program is just one in a slate of
outreach efforts the LHNCO hopes to offer. Originally the home of the
True Light Presbyterian Church, the LHNCO came into being when the
church relocated from Lincoln Heights to Alhambra in the San Gabriel
Valley. The church did not want to pull completely out of the
community around the Health Sciences Campus where its congregation
had been based for more than 100 years. Instead, it converted its
facility to the LHNCO, and church elders began to plan for a center
that could serve a variety of community functions.

The goal, according to Jeff Murakami, director of the USC Asian
Pacific American Student Services office, was to find ways to
continue to serve a neighborhood that is home to a large Asian
Pacific community, including an increasing immigrant population from
Southeast Asia. Despite limited funds, the LHNCO had a broad plan: to
offer English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, senior citizen
classes, create an information/referral center and develop youth
programs such as creative and applied arts, after-school tutoring and
a Chinese language school.

"It's an incredible facility, but there hasn't been the people power
to properly staff many of the proposed outreach programs," said
Murakami. So when USC was approached to help provide some of the
human resources, "it was a perfect match. It gave us a chance to
expand the USC Neighborhood Outreach programs into the Asian Pacific
community, which in the past has been less involved simply because of
the geographic restrictions on the program."

The USC students, mostly from the University Park Campus, travel to
LHNCO five days a week to offer tutorial classes from 2:30 to 4:30
p.m. There is one class for each grade level, and classes concentrate
on literary and language skill enhancement.

The tutorial program provides USC's Asian Pacific American students -
some 3,300 undergraduates and more than 2,000 graduate and
professional students - an opportunity to participate in their own
community, noted Murakami. "We want to provide tutoring that is
culturally sensitive as well as effective," he said.
Indeed, more than half of the 15 USC students who work in the
tutorial program are bilingual, noted Hirabayashi. "The tutorials are
conducted in English, but being bilingual can help, particularly when
you're explaining to newly-arrived individuals what the homework is
and what they are expected to do."
USC students - and other volunteers who work in the program - are
given training in instruction as well as courses in how to prepare
lesson plans, how to communicate with a diverse audience, how to
discipline their work habits and how to navigate through the
subculture of Asian Pacific Americans. "Most of the USC students did
the 'America Reads' program training, and then we continue to do
training on an as-needed basis," she said. "We've added elements
(such as) how you do supplemental programs like reading aloud and
writing activities."

Hirabayashi is seeking volunteers from the Health Sciences Campus to
participate in the tutorial program and speak to the group about
their chosen profession and what it took to reach their goal. "We'd
like to have presentations on different aspects of the Health
Sciences Campus, or have people talk about their areas of specialty,"
she said.

Murakami said he hopes the Lincoln Heights Tutorial Program will be
the beginning of an extended relationship between USC and the LHNCO.