June 2025 RCMI Newsletter
- revivalchinese
- 2天前
- 讀畢需時 6 分鐘
28 Years of Preaching and Establishing
the Co-life House and Revival Christian Church in Kaohsiung
Interview with Pastor Scott Kong -Living Out the Gospel Resolutely in Difficult Times
Pastor Scott and His Wife
The person being interviewed is Pastor Kong of the “Co-life Home.” I got to know him because of Co-life Home (referred to below as the Home). Every year, Renaissance Church arranges short-term mission trips and activities at the Home. Brothers and sisters who have participated all say that they experienced a very different kind of life. They agreed that without God's love -- that is, with only human love -- to keep on serving in this way would be extremely difficult. But they saw that Pastor Kong and his group of co-workers have kept serving, persisting in loving people and helping them to build their lives in a way that reveals God's true love. Hearing this kind of news made the writer very curious about why and how Pastor Kong embarked on this path of service.
Pastor Kong's mother was born before the Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War, and the Cultural Revolution, so she experienced them. She married early. Her husband had to leave China due to the fighting. When she was 19, famine drove her to flee to Hong Kong with her child. There she tried to find her husband, only to find that he had died.
She proceeded with great difficulty to rear her child alone. Several years later, she remarried and gave birth to Pastor Kong. Later his father suffered from Alzheimer's. Faced with all these experiences, Pastor Kong as a youngster felt life was very uncertain and often wondered if there was any significant meaning to life -- was there such a thing as eternal, unchanging love?
In 1995, after Pastor Kong started working, his colleague brought him to Revival Christian Church, where he made a firm decision to believe in the Lord. Later he went on a short-term mission trip to Taiwan with the church and on it experienced a very different kind of life, reading and studying the Bible for five hours every morning, helping an elderly man who had suffered a stroke to bathe at noon, helping a drug addict, and helping with charity sales at the night market.
He shared, "Living together with a group of Christians loving each other in such a practical way, I felt very happy and fulfilled, even though the environment was quite different from Hong Kong's. I began considering the idea of doing this kind of ministry. When I was about 23 or 24, I stopped my work and spent three months traveling to Yunnan, Guizhou, Zhengzhou, Shanghai, and other places, preaching the gospel, doing short-term mission, and seeking God's will for my future."
Later Pastor Kong and his wife had the opportunity to leave Hong Kong and go to Taiwan to serve the disabled in a ministry there. But when the organization stopped its work in that area, Pastor Kong took more than thirty of those 'family members,' rented an abandoned school from the government, and officially established Co-life Home.
The Chinese name of Co-life Home ("Jiang Ai Zhi Jia," means "Home of The Craftsman's Love." The two characters "Craftsman's Love" are a near-homonym for the word "Obstacle") was chosen because we are a family of the physically or mentally handicapped where the love of Jesus -- the Craftsman -- permeates the atmosphere , bringing helpless and desperate people to know His love, to feel respected, and to gain self-respect.
“Co-life Home” is unique. We are a very big family with all kinds of people including rehabilitated persons, mental patients, single mothers and their children, alcoholics, formerly abused women, stroke patients, and disabled who are unable to care for themselves. They are not covered by social security and don't have the ability to learn to stand on their own.
Pastor Kong described his ministry experience as an extremely hard journey -- often without resources and often exhausting. Co-life Home members with whom he lived all the time each had their own unique problems and tempers, which made establishing harmony -- in this group abandoned by society -- an often arduous, seemingly impossible task. Yet he continued striving to convey the message of God's love.
Much of Pastor Kong's experience is reminiscent of Job's. He went through a painful, desperate, prolonged period that completely upended his beliefs and understanding of God. In the face of misunderstanding, unreasonable accusations, suffering, illness, and even rejection, his faith almost collapsed. But he continued to hold on to his love for God and never let go.
How can you lead the people who follow you to believe in God's love in such a difficult environment? Sometimes when all the problems seem to strip away your awareness of God's love, it is really difficult then to tell people, "Jesus loves you! You should believe in Jesus!" In such cases your feelings can contradict your experience, and it takes willpower to continue acting in faith -- this is a very difficult thing!
But thanks to God’s protection and blessing, Co-life Home has gradually transformed what was a desolate place, step by step and with the help of many enthusiastic volunteers, into a loving family environment. We used to rely on leftover food from schools for our daily food, but now we've been able to set up a small food factory to help pay our expenses. Although we still face different kinds of challenges every day, we also experience God's love and grace every day!
When the government did not continue to renew our lease at our former location, we realized that continuing to live and share our lives with each other was the most important thing -- we had to keep our family members from ending up back on the streets, hungry and without support! So the Home raised the first installment to buy a new place, and we undertook the huge project of relocation.
Now, in addition to our monthly mortgage payments, we also intend to obtain certification to operate a food factory to support the Home's services and to provide jobs and a sense of self-reliance to family members.
Another hope we have is to recover our original site and convert it into a qualified nursing home. But this involves changing the government's designation of the land's use, determining whether reconstruction is necessary, and obtaining government approval. We are still praying, seeking God's will and protection.
A missionary himself, Pastor Kong shared that being a missionary is not as impressive an undertaking as many people imagine -- as if one must give up a lot in order to achieve it. It’s not that there is no need to give things up, but that the essence of mission is simply living out the Gospel — demonstrating God's love in our daily lives in all we do. Mission means sharing the Gospel with unbelievers, no matter where we are in the world. No matter who we serve or where we serve, we are motivated by the Gospel, and our ultimate goal is to live out the Gospel. Living the Gospel is not about accomplishing any specific ministry but about becoming a person who reflects the essence of the Gospel. By our thoughts, behavior, values, character, and personality, we naturally influence the people around us. This is the true nature of mission!
Prayer Requests:
For the new food factory, we need to build employee dormitories and to carry out related hardware renovation projects. The project cost is approximately HK$2.7 million. We call on our readers to pray for this matter and provide support as you feel you can. We firmly believe this is not a short-term construction project but a long-term investment in the Kingdom of God. May the Lord prepare and protect every step; may He answer our prayers by moving His people to care, to pray, and to give!
Yours,
Pastor Scott Kong
Revival Christian Church, Kaohsiung and Co-life Home
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