A handful of students, a long way from home

In December 1993, an evangelist known as Brother Tuan traveled to Baylor with a group of students from a fellowship in Austin, and together they started a monthly evangelistic gathering on campus. This was the Baylor University Chinese Students and Scholars Fellowship.

There was no building, no staff and no budget. There was a room, a handful of people, and a willingness to keep showing up.

By late 1994 the new Chinese Christians at Baylor had begun meeting for Sunday worship in an apartment near campus.

In the early spring of 1995, Emmanuel Baptist Church offered the group a home at 1801 Gurley Avenue.

They have worshipped in this building ever since. It’s why a church founded by Chinese students meets in a Baptist church’s sanctuary: hospitality, offered early and never withdrawn.

In 2018 Emmanuel Baptist Church and Waco Chinese Church formally signed an agreement to become partner churches, pooling resources to serve Waco and to support mission work beyond it.

By its twenty-fifth year the church had grown from around ten regular attenders to more than a hundred.

Over the years this church has welcomed and sent off wave after wave of students, scholars and friends. Many have come to faith here and call this place their spiritual birthplace, a home away from home. Some have gone on to serve in churches and mission fields around the world.

Most Sundays it’s simpler than that. It’s a room with worship in it, and somebody noticing you’re new.