About Us

Who We Are
Our Goals
Our History

Who Are We?

We are an independent Christian church serving the English-speaking community in Hong Kong. Our emphasis is on biblical teaching, worship, and helping people to follow Christ. We are a growing and lively group of around 150, representing many different nationalities.

Our church is congregational in the sense that, although we have a full-time pastor, there is a team approach to leadership which encourages all our members to use their God-given gifts and abilities.

Our Goals

Our goal is to serve and worship the Lord as we spread the Good News amongst the English-speaking community in Hong Kong, with a particular focus on professional and business people and their families. We seek to do this through worship, caring, evangelism and discipleship.

Worship

Loving the Lord with all our hearts. We aim to develop individual and collective praise and worship that is filled with passion, reverence, awe and gladness.

Psalm 100:2
Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

Hebrews 12:28
Therefore since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe.

Caring

Loving our neighbours as ourselves. We aim to provide pastoral care and support for everyone in the fellowship, and to encourage spiritual growth and lasting friendships.

1 John 3: 23
And this is God's command: to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

Galatians 6: 10
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

Evangelism

Going and making disciples. We aim to provide training and encouragement for our members to reach out to our community, and to provide regular support and focus to missionary activities outside our Church.

Matthew 28: 18-20
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."

Discipleship

Teaching them...We aim to provide Biblical teaching and training that will help us in our common goal to become more effective followers of Jesus Christ. Our desire is to let the Word of God equip us for all life and godliness.

Luke 9: 23
Then He said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

2 Timothy 2: 2
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.

Our History

The Ambassador International Church can trace its roots to the work of missionaries active in Hong Kong during the years after World War II. These dedicated folk came from Brethren fellowships, independent Christian congregations descended from an evangelical movement that began in the U.K. during the early 1800s. Their outreach in postwar Hong Kong was primarily to Chinese people, and many of the Cantonese-speaking churches they planted then remain vibrant to this day.

Alongside this cross-cultural missionary activity grew a bilingual fellowship, made up largely of Chinese and European businessmen and professionals, calling itself the Hong Kong Gospel Hall Assembly. In 1967, when this Assembly had grown to about 30-50 adults, it purchased a flat on Austin Road in Kowloon as a place of worship. (Relatively few congregations in Hong Kong have their own church structures, and it's not unusual for others to buy or rent space in residential, office or industrial buildings.)

Attendance at the Austin Road worship services gradually increased, and by 1978 the space had become too small. At this point, the Cantonese- and English-speaking elements in the Assembly agreed to separate, with the former continuing to meet in the flat and the English-speaking members renting an outside space on Sunday mornings.

The space they found — a conference room in the Ambassador Hotel, located in the heart of Kowloon's Tsim Sha Tsui tourist district — became the English-speaking congregation's home for many years. And it inspired the group to adopt the name Ambassador Fellowship, drawing on the fortuitous link between the name of the hotel and a favourite verse of Scripture:

2 Corinthians 5: 20
We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

Although the English-speaking fellowship did not formally align itself with any particular denomination, it preserved for many years the Brethren worship format of two separate services on Sunday mornings: the Breaking of Bread, or communion, followed by an equally traditional Family Bible Time hour focusing on Scriptural teaching and worship. In 1996 these were combined into a single meeting, called the Family Worship Service.

It was announced in the late 1980s that the Ambassador Hotel had been purchased by a Japanese company and would be demolished. The Ambassador Fellowship took the name elsewhere, eventually finding a new home in 1990 at the Glenealy Junior School on Hong Kong Island. Amongst the new location's many advantages were that it had plenty of parking (a rarity in Hong Kong) and that the lower operational costs of meeting in a school permitted a higher level of giving to missions and other Christian ministries.

Moving to the opposite side of the harbour presented transport problems for some members living in Kowloon and the New Territories, however, so in June 1991 a second "Ambassador Fellowship" was started at the Stewards Pooi Kei Primary School in Fo Tan. Many of those who relocated were full-time Christian workers serving with various missions in Hong Kong. Though separate and independent, the two Ambassador congregations have continued to maintain friendly ties over the years.

One other demographic shift resulting from the move to Hong Kong Island proved more challenging to deal with. During its "hotel years" in one of the city's busiest districts, the Ambassador Fellowship had been blessed with a constant flow of visitors and new members. In its new location — a residential neighbourhood not particularly convenient to public transport — the church gradually found that it was no longer expanding.

Meanwhile, as Hong Kong's transfer to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997 approached, a creeping exodus of expatriates gathered pace: civil servants from British Commonwealth nations began to be replaced by local staff, for example, and the employment contracts that had brought many English-speaking people to the colony began to expire. As part of this general emigration, quite a few Ambassador members moved back to their home countries, and by the end of 1997 the church was actually smaller than it had been when it was founded in 1978. Understandably, this led to some fears about the viability of Ambassador Fellowship.

However, numbers stabilised over time, and after much prayer a new vision for the future of the church began to form. Two developments in the autumn of 1998 helped to crystallise this forward movement:

Following months of preparation, the church launched its first Alpha course, the acclaimed 10-week programme in Christian basics developed at Holy Trinity Brompton, London, to introduce Jesus Christ to those who are seeking the answers to life's questions. Although originally created as an evangelistic outreach, Alpha has proven equally effective in building up the faith of those who already believe. And at Ambassador it has brought people closer together in a new joy of fellowship and discovery.

At about the same time, the leadership invited a retired pastoral couple from Switzerland, Werner and Jacqueline Schulthess, to take up a three-month ministry in the church (later extended to six) to facilitate dialogue about where Ambassador Fellowship was going — and to help the church's members discover their strengths, their weaknesses, their gifts and their calling as ambassadors for Christ in Hong Kong. The brainstorming that followed resulted in a rebirth of spiritual vitality within the fellowship, and with this new vision has come a new name: Ambassador International Church. Since then, the church has grown slowly but steadily, and currently numbers about 65 adults and 45 children.

In the summer of 2001, the church had to find another place to hold Sunday services for a two-month period because of scheduled renovations at the Glenealy Junior School. We were fortunate to find excellent facilities at a reasonable rental in the Conrad International Hotel at Pacific Place, a major transport hub for Hong Kong Island. This new location proved so convenient — and so much easier for newcomers to find — that we began to think about remaining at the hotel. After much discussion and prayer, we felt that the Lord wanted us to remain at the Conrad, and now Ambassador's life has begun a new chapter in a new venue.

The convenience of the new venue was a further catalyst for growth, and the leaders began to sense the desirability of calling a full-time elder in a pastoral role. Towards this goal we invited a retired pastoral couple, former Ambassador members Colin and Janette Blair from Vancouver, Canada, to return in September 2002 and coordinate our search. In late 2003 the church confirmed Christiaan Hofstra, a Dutch pastor who had been working with youth at a large evangelical church in Northern Ireland, to become Ambassador’s first paid ministry worker, starting in April 2004.

Throughout its history, Ambassador has had a marvellous record for church unity despite the cultural and denominational diversity of its membership. This is reflected even in the church's leadership, with elders in recent years coming from Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Anglican, Free Church and Brethren backgrounds. Indeed, the recent sense of excitement that the Lord is preparing us for greater things has served to strengthen our recognition of being "all one in Christ Jesus".

Today, our heritage continues to be enriched by certain distinctives: consensual group leadership, the priesthood of believers, the weekly Lord's Supper, and an abiding desire to help people follow our Lord Jesus Christ