The Holy Bible is the inspired Word of God and is the basis for any statement of faith. Our church subscribes to the doctrinal statement of the Baptist Faith and Message as adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1963 and updated in 2000. We band ourselves together as a body of baptized believers in Jesus Christ personally committed to sharing the good news of salvation to lost mankind. The ordinances of the church are baptism and Lord's Supper.
Worship is the Christian lifestyle, Fellowship connects the body of Christ, Discipleship helps us to grow in the likeness of Jesus, Ministry helps us to mature in Christ, and Mission is the Great Commission from Jesus to make disciples of all nations. These five functions of church are made possible by the life changing power of Jesus Christ.
In God’s guidance, the Columbia Chinese Baptist Church (CCBC) was founded by Rev. Stephen Chow and some 10 Christian brothers and sisters in January 1981. In the beginning, CCBC met in the Oakland Mill Village Center in Columbia for worship. Later, in September, we moved to the Wilde Lake Village Center. In August 1984, we moved to the Owen Brown Village Center. With the help of the Howard Baptist Association, beginning from June 1995, we were using the chapel of the Bethel Baptist Church in Ellicott City. In October 2001, we purchased the existing 6 acres Lion Club property as our permanent church building.
In the past 30 years, God’s grace has been with us! God’s power is always leading us! God has sent many faithful servants to us to serve His church. They had ministered our brothers and sisters. In the beginning, there were just a handful of families, but now we have grown to almost a hundred families. At first, we used only Mandarin and Cantonese languages for worship, but now we have two Sunday services in Chinese and English at the same time.
Through various functions of the church, we are building the spiritual life of our brothers and sisters and at the same time we have participated missions in mainland China and Taiwan, and also Feeding the Children ministry to promote God’s kingdom. Can you provide a brief history of Columbia Chinese Baptist Church and its growth over the past 30 years?
This prompt doesn't seem malicious.