Growing from Bible Study to Belonging

How a Mandarin Christian community became more than a church-within-a-church

Bright red cloth fluttered around the multi-purpose hall, accented with a shimmering gold. Traditional Chinese New Year lion dance performers darted in between the decorations, filling the room with a display of great joy and hope for the new year.

With more than 430 guests participating in the festivities—about a quarter of whom had never stepped foot into a church before—the Chinese New Year event at Faith Community Lutheran Church in Las Vegas, Nevada, is one of the most well-attended and anticipated events of the year. After hearing about the event from those who had been in attendance, it’s not difficult to see why.

Traditional Chinese festivities were interspersed between messages about the Gospel, and those who had never stepped foot into a church before discovered a community of people who were more lively and joyful than they had expected. Instead, many of them decided that Faith Community is a place worth visiting. Those who were new to Chinese culture gained an opportunity to learn more about a heritage hailing from outside of the United States.

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THE CHALLENGE
A blossoming Mandarin Bible study group outgrew its home and faced repeated rejection from wary churches in the area.

THE TURNING POINT
Faith Community welcomed the group without hesitation to help more people learn about Jesus.

THE FUTURE
In under two years, the partnership has become a merged mission and full ministry, complete with an ESL program, increasing baptisms and a future ordained Mandarin-speaking pastor.

Linda Shen, a member of Faith Community and Mandarin ministry founder, leads Sunday morning Mandarin Bible study in the new Chapel of the Resurrection.

Linda Shen, the founding leader of the Mandarin ministry at Faith Community, notes that the most important takeaway of the event was actually something else. She said, “It doesn’t matter what background we came from, but that we love Jesus the same.”

Faith Community congregants come from approximately 36 different countries. While the Mandarin Lutheran ministry in the congregation is strong, they host many other cultural events, such as their Christmas Around the World event. Pastor Craig Michaelson, who led the church prior to his recent retirement, recalls with joy that “it was really fun to see people literally from all over the world celebrating Christmas together.”

The church did not, however, always have this level of multiculturalism. Just two years ago, this Mandarin Christian community and Faith Community looked very different.

A gap, a coincidence and a partnership
Previously, Shen was facilitating worship at one of only five Chinese Christian churches in the Las Vegas area. While these churches are thriving, they are typically oriented toward more aged and highly traditional populations. This left younger generations in a lurch, unsure of where they belonged.

After seven years of serving one of these churches, Shen began looking for a new opportunity to reach the next generation of Chinese Christians.

She did not have to search far; after her departure from that church, the younger members of the congregation left to seek her out. They wanted just one thing: a Bible study.

Shen was able to meet that request with a weekly, cozy in-home Bible study. However, very quickly, the ambience of the study changed from cozy to crowded as attendance grew to 40+ people. Of course, that is usually too many guests to host in a home every week.

She started looking again for a solution to this good problem. Shen and a few leaders from the group began looking for a church home for their Bible study to grow into. Regrettably, they were met with varying levels of suspicion from several congregations. How would a Chinese Mandarin church initiative be a part of the church’s mission—or remain independent of it without endangering it?

Some church leaders asked even more extensive background details about the group after being asked if they would be willing to share their facilities. These included questions about immigration, leadership structures, reasons for departing prior ministry and more. Often, after weeks of waiting for a response from these churches, the request was declined without explanation—or no response was sent at all.

Then Shen and her team (involving about 10 core leadership members and 25 main fellow servants) met with Pastor Michaelson at Faith Community. For the first time, Shen and her team were met graciously and warmly by church leadership.

Pastor’s only question: “will you bring food?”

FAST FACT: In just two years, 25 baptisms have resulted directly from the Mandarin ministry and ESL program.

As it turns out, Pastor Michaelson had recently realized that his congregation needed Chinese Mandarin support.

Shortly before Shen approached him with her request, church leadership noticed a few Chinese ladies attending regular worship with their grandchildren. As the children translated the worship materials for them, they learned English and the Gospel message at the same time.

Church leadership at Faith Community saw this and began translating Scripture and sermons into Mandarin for them. Then more Chinese Mandarin congregants appeared, so the church began utilizing assisted listening tools to help them listen to live Mandarin translations of every English service.

Even more Chinese parishioners began coming to service, craving the Word alongside a chance to gain English proficiency. Since Faith Community was quickly accumulating Mandarin Chinese congregants, Shen’s request for a place for the Mandarin Bible study
to grow turned his response into an
easy “yes.”

In his answer, Pastor Michaelson was following his philosophy for ministry growth: “watch for where God’s at work, and then just join Him.”

And, together, that is exactly what Shen and Pastor Michaelson did.

Growing from “Bible study” to “ministry”
The agreement of Faith Community with the Mandarin ministry was based on this faith in God’s plan as well as mission alignment. Unlike other ethnic groups that had approached the church with a request to use facilities, the Mandarin ministry wanted to be more than a church-within-a-church. They were looking for a mission-aligned church to integrate into.

With that in mind, Pastor Michaelson and church leadership ensured that the Mandarin ministry would have what they needed to grow as part of the community—including access to their brand-new chapel.

At the beginning of the partnership with the Mandarin ministry, Faith Community was in the process of building a new chapel with congregational lending support through LCEF. Complete with stained glass windows behind the altar, the chapel was a necessary update to accommodate the already-growing needs of the congregation.

Initially, Shen was surprised that the church would allow them to use the new chapel. She said, “We couldn’t believe that they let a whole new group of people—who they didn’t know much about—use that brand new chapel for worship. After we moved into the new chapel with the equipment, the atmosphere … we just started to take off.”

From there, the group was able to become more organized and, in doing so, they gained more and more people—enough to transition from a “Bible study group” to a “fellowship.” This instant momentum, Shen notes, is all “because of the unity we have in Christ.”

Then, in the summer of 2025, the English as a Second Language (ESL) program at Faith Community was launched. Led by Pastor Brandon Larson at the church, the inaugural class enrolled about 65 students—not all
of whom had any interest in the Christian faith.

However, as Pastor Larson taught English to people from around the world, he taught the Lutheran faith at the same time. By using English instruction as a vehicle for delivering the Good News from the Bible, more souls were exposed to Christianity in the area than there had been before. To date, about 25 Mandarin-speaking people have been baptized through this ministry, including several students enrolled in the ESL program.

As a reminder: this ministry partnership is roughly just two years old.

Food continues to be a central bonding tool in the Mandarin ministry. Shen said, “We feed them first” as a general rule before any other ministry work happens. She continued, “We give them food to let them calm down. Then we start.” In other words, once a meal has been shared during a gathering, anyone who arrived with a case of nerves typically relaxes into the warm community setting. After that, even more focused ministry work can begin.

While the people at Faith Community expect no repayment for the use of church facilities, the Mandarin ministry openly shares their home-cooked food with the congregation during events—much to the delight of Pastor Michaelson, of course.

Another ministry tool used at Faith Community and the Mandarin ministry is a multi-tiered approach to ministry entry. Pastor Michaelson said, “The Mandarin ministry has done a wonderful job of creating different entry points for people, depending on how well they know English and how well they know Jesus.” That way, anyone who joins the ministry has a safe place to begin ministry involvement.

Involved—not isolated
Mutual discipleship drove the growth of the Mandarin ministry at Faith Community. Shen and her leadership team participated in service roles throughout the church: communion, ushering, kitchen service, IT teams, Bible studies and more. They set an example to the broader ministry for how to become involved and not isolated.

While initially a bit shy at the beginning of the ministry merge, Mandarin ministry members have taken leadership’s example and have moved beyond day-to-day participation in church activities. Now, they share and invite others to their own discipleship practices during Sunday worship, Bible studies and virtual prayer gatherings.

Shen noted that people in the Mandarin ministry could sense how deeply welcome they were, “not just by language, but their body language and their tones.” This unwaveringly hospitable attitude has brought the entire community closer together, regardless of their cultural heritage.

Congregational behavior towards the people in the Mandarin ministry reflected Pastor Michaelson’s affirmation that “Our mission is inviting people to know Jesus. Not inviting English-speaking European people to know Jesus, but inviting people to know Jesus.”

Go where God’s at work
The mission at Faith Community hasn’t gone unnoticed in the broader community in Las Vegas.

The church includes a preschool and elementary school—both of which have long been waitlisted, especially since COVID. From this campus, many families become familiar with Lutheran Christianity and begin attending Faith Community with their children.

After seeing the effect of Faith Community in the area, a local planned community approached the church with an offer: a significant discount on a 35-acre parcel of land in northwest Summerlin. The condition: Faith Community must build an even larger Lutheran school with a chapel that could serve the community on the weekends.

“The mission potential is just huge,” said Pastor Michaelson. This new campus would “place a Gospel-centered school and chapel in a part of Summerlin that currently has no church presence.”

In June 2026, the congregation overwhelmingly approved the purchase of the land in Summerlin. LCEF will be walking alongside this ministry, supporting them during this integral stage of growth for Faith Community.

Within the current walls of Faith Community, the mission also continues to grow. A founding member of the Mandarin ministry was recently approved to begin Concordia University Irvine’s cross-cultural ministry program to begin his journey to becoming an ordained pastor. Once he finishes seminary, he will remain at Faith Community as a Mandarin-speaking pastor for the ministry.

Faith Community will continue to grow and welcome people from all nations, finding ways to include others in the kind of intercultural fellowship that makes visitors marvel at the ministry’s warmth and kindness. And, through this ministry culture, more and more people in the Las Vegas area will have the chance to learn about Jesus.

That’s their mission, fulfilled.

A congregational loan supported the ministry at Faith Community. Connect with your LCEF representative find similar support at lcef.org/FindMyDVP.