Mission History

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong

The Lutheran Theological Seminary in Shekow, Hubei Province, moved to Hong Kong in 1948, and was relocated on Tao Fong Shan in Shatin. As class after class of students graduated, the work of spreading the Gospel expanded throughout Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. On Feb. 27, 1954, representatives from all the Lutheran congregations in Hong Kong gathered at Tao Feng Shan to formally establish the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong (ELCHK).

Hong Kong became a center of American Lutheran mission work following the collapse of Christian mission activity in China in the late 1940s. Along with approximately one million Chinese refugees, many missions moved their base of operations to Hong Kong, including American Lutherans from ELCA predecessors. In the beginning ELCHK leadership came from Mandarin-speaking Chinese pastors, lay people and missionaries who prior to 1949 were part of Lutheran "mission churches" in the Chinese provinces of Henan, Shandong, Hunan, and Guangdong. That generation of refugee leadership has now been succeeded by pastors and lay people of a generation born and raised in Hong Kong.

The Lutheran Theological Seminary, now firmly based in Hong Kong, was first established in 1913 in central China, near Wuhan. It was a central institution of cooperative Lutheranism in China. In November 1948, ten months prior to revolutionary changes in China's ruling government, the seminary relocated to Hong Kong.