Vietnamese Christian Missionary Alliance
Nebraska Wesleyan University
Jeff Clinger, Researcher
A Brief History of the Vietnamese Christian Missionary Alliance
In 1975, a large number of refugees from Vietnam arrived in Lincoln, NE. Wanting to organize as a church, the group began meeting in the fellowship hall of Rosemont Alliance Church. According to Anh Nguyen, the Vietnamese Christian Missionary Alliance in Lincoln was the first Vietnamese church in the United States. Nguyen’s father Phan was the first pastor of the church and served there from the time it was started in 1975 until he retired. At the age of 83, he is still a member of the congregation, though Lieu v. Huynh currently serves as the pastor.
The community continued to meet in the fellowship hall at Rosemont Alliance Church for the next 20 years. In January of 1995, the community purchased the land in west Lincoln and began building an addition on to an already existing house. The addition served as the place of worship for the congregation starting on September 3, 1995. In May of 1999, the church decided that they needed a larger place to worship and began construction on a new sanctuary in July of that same year.
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| Vietnamese Christian Missionary Alliance Pastor
Lieu V. Huynh (Spring 2002) |
In order to save on costs, the members of the community decided that they would do all of the labor themselves. They hired a contractor to supervise and then worked for the next 8 months to build the 5,000 square foot sanctuary. Nguyen said that working together to build the physical structure brought the community much closer together and ended up saving them mush of the originally estimated cost. In April of 2000, the community worshiped together for the first time in their newly built sanctuary.
In addition to working together as a community on the construction, the congregation
also worked together to pay the mortgage with the bank. When the debt was paid
down to about $55,000, members of the congregation loaned money to the church
at no interest to pay the debt. Currently, the church owes nothing to the bank.
Demographics
The membership population of the church is Vietnamese and the services are conducted in Vietnamese. There have been Loatian members of the congregation from time to time, but there are none currently. There is a wide variety of ages represented within the congregation, but a majority of the community is comprised of families.
Description of the Center
The main portion of the building is the 5,000 square foot sanctuary that was built in 1999. Off of the north side, there are two small rooms that are used for Sunday school classes. West of this structure is the room that was used for worship prior to the building of the sanctuary. This room is still used as the fellowship hall now and also has toys and play equipment for a nursery. There are no offices as the pastor chooses to do his work out of his home.Center Activities
Sunday mornings the church is a very busy place. Families begin to gather at 9:00 a.m. for the prayer meeting that starts at 9:15. After the prayer meeting Sunday school is held from 9:45-10:30 a.m. and then worship starts at 10:30 a.m.
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VCMA choir rehersing |
Cooperative Relationships
Though they are not currently involved with in any joint projects the community, has good relations with the other Christian Missionary Alliance churches in Lincoln. As a religious minority, what kind of obstacles or problems has the community encountered in Lincoln? Overall the community has not had to overcome a great deal of obstacles during the time they have been in Lincoln. While they were building they had some problems with ordinances that they had not been notified about, but the problems that existed in communication were more due to the language barrier than to religious differences.profile | history | links | back