Text and photos by Rachel Pritchett Z
heng Zihao, raised in China and on his own in Washington for just a month, came to be baptized. Physical therapist May Tee, another new arrival to the U.S., came because she didn’t know a soul. Ruth Liu sought prayer support for her son battling depression. Welcoming them were Mike and
Rowena Wang, an energetic and charismatic clergy couple who have started two Chinese Lutheran wor- shiping communities in the 32-mile stretch between Seattle and Tacoma where there was none. “God’s dream, not my dream,”
Rowena Wang said following Sun- day afternoon worship at Federal Way Chinese Fellowship, where she is pastor and her husband assists. Since 2010, the Tacoma-area fellow- ship has been a “synodically autho- rized worshiping community” of the Southwestern Washington Synod, serving a dozen worshipers of Chi- nese heritage. They meet at Calvary Lutheran Church.
Hours before, the couple had led worship for two dozen in Renton, Wash., near Seattle, at Grace Chi- nese Lutheran Church of South King County. There, he is pastor and she assists. The congregation meets at St. Matthew Lutheran Church and has been a synodically authorized worshiping community of the North- west Washington Synod since 2007. Both services are conducted in a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese and English.
On a summer Sunday, the Grace congregation was especially excited. Zihao, 17, was to be bap- tized by immersion in nearby Lake
Pritchett is the communicator for the Southwestern Washington Synod and a newspaper reporter in Bremerton, Wash.
Ready for new Lutherans
In Washington, pastors urge believers out of homes and into two new churches
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The tight-knit Chinese commu- nity has wrapped a protective wing around Zihao, who came from the Fujian Province of southeast China to study English as a second lan- guage at Green River Community College. His landlord is a support- ive Christian. And Zihao’s English instructor suggested he contact the people of Grace and the Wangs. This Sunday, the smell of cook- ing rice permeates the church. Mid- service, worshipers head to their cars and drive under columns of gray Northwest clouds to the lake, where they walk across a footbridge to a tiny island next to Boeing Co.’s monolithic plant in Renton. Mike Wang and Zihao wade waist-deep through the frigid waves. The pastor takes a clam shell from his pocket and pours water three times over Zihao’s head in the name
32 The Lutheran •
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of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and asks in Mandarin, “Will you fol- low the way of Jesus?” “Yes, I will,” Zihao says. Later, back at church, worship- ers enjoy the rice, now paired with many Chinese dishes families have brought.
Zihao has been a believer all his
life. When asked why he wanted to be baptized by immersion, he said through an interpreter: “Because it is told through the Bible that we wash away our sin.”
Right time, right place The roots of these two Chinese Lutheran groups are house churches, where families have met for wor- ship, Bible study and fellowship, in some cases for decades. But the house churches could go only so far. There were no formal education programs for children and adults, for
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