Vietnamese Church Makes New England Baptist History While Struggling to Reach Second Generation With the Gospel
A monumental slice of New England Baptist history happened on June 2 when the first Vietnamese church in the Baptist Churches of New England network ordained their first pastor.
“I chose the Boston area to live and serve God because God answered our prayers and our hearts’ desire to serve God in America,” said Hồng Đức Phạm, the newly ordained pastor of Vietnamese Baptist Church of Quincy.
When growing up during the final decade of the Vietnam War, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths on all sides of the epic conflict, he never dreamed that one day he would leave Vietnam, relocate to the United States, and become a Baptist minister.
Phạm was born in 1967 in Kế Sách village, Sóc Trăng, in southern Vietnam. His parents embraced Christian faith in 1956 and, as a child, he accompanied them to church. When he was thirteen, he wrote in an email, “My life took a transformative turn. One evening after a Bible study with my church community, I prayed and experienced a profound spiritual awakening. The Holy Spirit touched my life, instilling in me a deep love for studying the Bible and following God’s word.”
In 1987, the future New England Baptist pastor married Nguyet Nguyen, who also was raised in a Christian family. They made a living through farming and growing fruit trees, and they actively participated in worship at a rural church in Kế Sách. A dozen years later, he “faced a health crisis” that required gallbladder surgery “During this challenging time, I prayed for a swift recovery and vowed to dedicate my life to God.”
Twenty years ago, he added, “God presented a significant opportunity when a Christian friend invited me to join a Bachelor of Theology program in Vietnam.” The program was offered by Viện Thần Học Tin Lành Việt Nam (Vietnamese Theological School), part of Union University of California, Westminster, a non-denominational, gospel-centered school. “After much prayer, I felt a divine calling to pursue this education. Encouraged by my wife, I accepted the invitation and began theological studies.” He attended the school five days a month.
They sold the farm and he transitioned to a career in photography. Concurrently, Phạm visited other believers, shared the gospel, taught adult Bible classes, and served as the Kế Sách church’s treasurer and later as its executive secretary. In 2009, he graduated from UUC with a Bachelor of Theology and continued involvement in local church work. In 2015, Phạm and his family immigrated to Boston.
“What I have loved since God called me in his grace when I was still in Vietnam is to testify about the gospel to people who do not know God,” he wrote in an email. “I also love to preach God’s Word in the Bible to believers in the church and to build the faith of God’s flock to be strong.”
Phạm preaches in Vietnamese. He has not learned English well enough to preach in English, the language most used by younger Vietnamese including his daughters, who were born in Kế Sách. The couple’s elder daughter, Nhi Pham, lives with her husband and their two sons in Stoughton, MA. Their younger daughter, Tram Pham, lives with her husband in Dallas, TX.
The Quincy church was born as a home-based group in September 2016 in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood where he led seven families in Bible study and worship every Sunday morning. A year later, he initiated a Sunday evening Bible class, which continues to draw more than a dozen attendees, and, since 2023, he has taught a small-group Bible study that meets monthly on Friday nights in Randolph with an average of eight participants. Randolph is just a few miles from where the pastor and his wife live in Stoughton.
Since 2018 the congregation has been gathering Sunday mornings for prayer, worship, and fellowship at First Baptist Church of Wollaston, a neighborhood of Quincy. Vietnamese Baptist Church of Quincy counts forty-nine members and more than twenty people for worship. Their average age is over 50 years, which is a problem for a church that wants to reach second-generation Vietnamese in Greater Boston.
At least 53,700 Vietnamese live in Massachusetts, primarily in Boston, Quincy, Randolph, Lowell, and Worcester. Boston Vietnamese predominantly live in Dorchester, according to a report by the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
How does a church that lacks an English-speaking pastor present the gospel to their second generation, those born in the United States, and to the so-called 1.5 generation, those who arrived here as children or teens—to “third-culture” children or adults?
“Third-culture kids” are defined as people who “move between cultures before they have had the opportunity to fully develop their personal and cultural identity.” The first culture refers to the culture of the country from which their parents originated. The second refers to the culture in which the family currently resides. The third refers to the distinct cultural ties among all such individuals who share no connection to the first two cultures.
“Our challenge now in New England,” wrote Lierte Soares Jr., the Baptist Churches of New England (BCNE.net) president in an online article published earlier this year, “will be to make churches work together in a missiology and ecclesiology that cultures will be confronted with the biblical truth of inclusion and contextualization. Both ethnic churches and Anglo churches need to evaluate their practices and begin a process of mutual cooperation so that third-culture children [and adults] can be God’s answer to the revitalization of our churches here in New England.”
Churches learning together across cultures for the common cause of gospel advancement is a major source of encouragement for both the church leaders who lack English proficiency and those who lack foreign-language capacity.
Ideas to consider:
Learn: Participate in the BCNE’s Multiplication Center’s English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) workshops and other training options for developing and sustaining a healthy church of any culture. Consider a gift to the Baptist Foundation of New England’s Church Health Fund.
Read: Choose books on cross-cultural and multicultural ministry that will broaden your perspective and challenge you in unexpected ways. A good place to start reading are three related titles: Cross-Cultural Conflict, Cross-Cultural Connections, and Cross-Cultural Servanthood by Duane H. Elmer. Interaction International offers Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds and a selection of books focused on the missionary-kid (MK) experience (but the lessons can be applied interculturally by churches in the US).
Network: Connect for mutual benefit with other churches in Boston and elsewhere and with community resources that share the same culture.
Attend: Join a conference of like-minded church leaders that can offer a fresh perspective. The Vietnamese Baptist Union of North America, for instance, holds an annual conference. Contact Christian Phan, a North American Mission Board affiliate, for details about Vietnamese Baptist ministry.
Phạm reports that, for the 1.5 generation, the challenge is that they choose other Vietnamese or American churches with more young people, while children attend church with their grandparents. “Last year, our church lacked young people participating in worshiping God [and] we have not been able to reach out to migrants and Vietnamese students because the church lacks young Christians. We hope and pray to God for this work so that the church can have more new and young people join,” he wrote.
BCNE leaders join Phạm in that prayer. “We are thankful for Pastor Hồng Đức Phạm’s deep commitment to preaching the word of God and sharing the gospel with others. He is an inspiration to all of us in the BCNE,” said BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett. “We are excited about partnering with this church to reach the Vietnamese community in the Boston area. We understand the challenges of reaching the second generation and look forward to helping his congregation tackle this challenge.”
A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.