January 2000 – April 2010
After four months of praying and waiting upon Jesus Christ, a small group of Christians and the present pastoral team, Rev. C. P. Lee and Pastor Viola Lee, gathered together in a retreat at a Niagara Falls hotel during Christmas of the year 1999. Through attending different local churches at that point of time, they came to affirm the same Spirit-led conviction that they were called to start a new Christian church of their own in Toronto.
Why did the group want a new church? They were inspired towards a church vision that the body of Christ was to live under the lordship and heart of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. This new church of God was aimed to follow, model after, and preach Christ Jesus until His return. The chosen name, Good Shepherd’s Chinese Christian Church, reflected very much their Spirit-led core values. The vision of the GSCCC directed her pilgrimage journey towards a specific Christian spirituality: that the church should love the Lord Jesus with all her mind, heart, and spirit in wholeness.
The blessing of Christ Jesus enabled quick government approval of the initial church registration on February 21, 2000, and of charitable status with Revenue Canada on July 1 of the same year. Captain Owen Budden of Markham Salvation Army, whom the church met for the first time and who later became a very good friend, graciously accommodated the newly formed GSCCC. Thus, GSCCC started their church office and Sunday worships in the facilities of the Markham Salvation Army Church at 9329 McCowan Road, Markham. On January 16, 2000, the GSCCC started their first pre-inauguration Sunday worship with little human and financial resources.
As an important part of the church vision on wholistic Christian spirituality, right at the beginning of journey, the GSCCC practically articulated disciplines of abstinence(1) in the life of the church. These included solitude, silence, Centering prayers, group retreats, group Lectio Divina, church Taize prayer meetings, Bible contemplation, and so forth. They were blended with the GSCCC’s Word ministry of conventional Bible-oriented lay trainings, small group Bible studies, pulpit teachings, topical workshops, and other cognitive formations of the Bible. Utilizing such a holistic formative approach, the church helped to shape passion for loving God and neighbour.
The early stages of the GSCCC, as common with church growth, were enthusiastic but also bumpy. By the grace of Jesus, the church had ridden through numerous hills and valleys in the journey. Various real-life phenomena re-confirmed the church to continue the pursuit of renewing the wholeness of spiritual formation in the life of the church. Significantly, in late 2005, the GSCCC had shifted into a new paradigm of holistic spiritual formation. In all church trainings, the GSCCC integrated the unique components of spiritual direction and pastoral counseling to blend with cognitive Word formation. Heading towards the vision of a refined holistic Christian spirituality, the GSCCC started to grow in number, finance, and fruits of life in Christ. The church made progress to move upward and outward. The GSCCC initiated support to full-time missionaries, sponsored needy groups and individuals in basic living and education, served various community services, connected to a wider church circle, and became affiliated with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
During the global economic tsunami of late 2008, GSCCC, like others in the Greater Toronto Area community, faced economic meltdowns, unemployment, business close downs, and various other financial impacts. In the midst of the global and local economic turmoil, God made what was humanly impossible possible in the eyes of the whole church. By Christ’s graceful providence, the GSCCC amazingly was guided to miraculously purchase the present church premise at 7 Gretna Avenue, North York. For the sacrificial love to Christ Jesus and commitment with one another, GSCCC was blessed by God with a nice permanent church premise that would allow further growth and expansion in the years to come.
During the dedication service of the new church premise on March 22, 2009, the now late Dr. Donald Leggett, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament, Tyndale Seminary, a long-time best friend of the church, exhorted the church according to Haggai 1 and Acts 2. In the presence of many church friends, Christian leaders, and pastors of other churches and ministry organizations, he encouraged the GSCCC to grow in faithfulness with God, who had nourished and cherished the church since it was a little child in the wilderness.
May the Lord Jesus always help us to remember His almightiness and loving kindness shown in our past journey! The Good Shepherd will surely continue to grant His loving presence, raise new challenges, and plot grateful surprises in our future journey. Shall we continue to grow in faith and love to our beloved God who had redeemed us and called us to the unfinished task of the Gospel in the pilgrimage with Him. Amen in the name of our Good Shepherd, Christ Jesus.
(Written April 2010)
(1) Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 158.
May 2010 – December 2020
The church holds on to the vision of holistic Christian spirituality. From 2010 to the present, there has been an ongoing effort in the renewal of holistic spiritual formation with the pastoral team of Rev. C. P. Lee and Pastor Viola Lee structurally reforming all ongoing in-house Christian formation trainings. Attention was given to the needs of layman leaders who were actively engaged in different day to day church ministries. Regular periodical silent and directed retreats, led by the pastoral team for the core lay leaders, had been diligently kept.
A professional feasibility study completed in 2012 confirmed that the footprint of the church land premises was entitled to construct additional building space. A new vision of a possible church building extension, which offered enhanced facilities for praying, silence, and core church ministries was beginning to emerge. It drew good ponderings and discussions among us in the church.
From early 2013, the church began fully utilizing the premises for directed day silent retreats for church small groups and training teams. It also started to facilitate other Christian churches and Gospel organizations for directed day retreats, and conferences on Christian formative spirituality. The Pastoral team had been invited to be involved in several of those events.
In 2015, a group of young working adults, along with some pastoral staff, had the first church organized overseas short-term mission trip to Chrestos Bible School, an orphanage and Bible school in northern Thailand headed by Dr. Geoffrey and Pat Atkinson. Their missionary experiences gave affirmation to the church to actively support mission works and missionaries in the fields.
Around the same time, the Lord Jesus started to bring in quite a number of students to our Children’s Sunday Schools and children’s ministries. They were able to join despite many of their parents rarely being able to attend church due to their needs to make ends meet. The church viewed these opportunities as “local urban Gospel missions” inspired by the Lord Jesus and enthusiastically took hold of them. It is always in the heart of the church that hopefully through the care of our church, the seed of the Gospel can be planted into their hearts during their young ages, and would one day flourish abundantly in their lives.
Near the end of 2016, the church, by God’s grace and by faith, managed to gather enough internal financial pledges and cash offerings and thus decided to materialize the new vision of a church building extension. Based on an estimated building budget, the church was excited to plan for and proceed with the new extension.
The City of Toronto declined our first official Site Plan Application of the building extension made on November 15, 2018. Despite the fact that the land ratio and zoning of the church did legally allow us to construct additional building space on our land, newly integrated government regulations and City of Toronto bylaws bore numerous unexpected do’s and don’ts in our Site Plan Application. On September 6, 2019, the church had internally raised 9% of the new funds needed to cushion the initial estimated budget made in 2016. The church entered into a long process to liaise with the government for the church building extension application.
By end of 2019, the church decided to elaborately celebrate our 20th anniversary. It was to thankfully remember the wonderful blessings of Christ Jesus during our faith journey up until then. Almost right after the special 20th church anniversary celebration dinner at a Chinese restaurant on February 16, 2020, the city of Toronto and most parts of the world started to get hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Immediately, the church and all other places of worship in Toronto were regulated by the government to lock down public worships and gatherings to help eliminate the spreading of the virus. Livestreams and Zoom meetings became the new norm for church worship services and gatherings. All of our ongoing church in-house formation trainings and weekly Bible study classes had also been suspended.
In June 2020, our Sunday worship services partially resumed as the government eased some of its restrictions on worship and gatherings in the city. The church began the vigilant setup of sanitizing protocols, marking seats in the pews for six feet of social distancing, and so forth. Regretfully, since March 2020, children and infants were advised not to return to the church premises as a precaution to protect them against the pandemic. All church in-house formation trainings and weekly Bible study classes remained suspended as well.
Given the dire pandemic situation, for the first time in twenty years, the church had no choice but to cancel the annual Church Summer Conference. This painful decision was made despite most of the preparatory works being already completed which included having a ministry-proven speaker from California, United States be the guest speaker for it. Despite the suspension of the 2020 conference, the 2019 Church Summer Conference theme of “Building the House on the Rock” (Matthew 7:24 – 27) became a genuine reality check for the church amid the “flood” that was the pandemic.
Economic contractions, unemployment, pandemic anxieties, lockdown fatigue, stay-home government orders, and the lack of vaccines carried the City of Toronto and the world into uncharted waters. The church learned to be united in spending corporate efforts and resources to care for several local long-term care homes, Christian organizations, and people in financial despair. A special GSCCC Pandemic Emergency Fund was set up for these purposes and a new church Online Care Ministry Team was immediately established to help people who needed spiritual and mental support. Working closely with the new ministry team, the Children’s Sunday School teachers initiated tutoring for their Sunday School students in their public school homework and assistance for their online public schooling.
In November 2020, a second city lockdown was enforced by the government due to COVID-19 cases fiercely surging in Ontario. The church as a place of worship was required to not gather more than ten persons at any time in the church facility. The church Sunday worship services then returned to livestreaming with a limit of 10 in-person Sunday worshippers including pastors, the worship team, and technical staff who were on duty.
Some short 20-minute church video recordings of Bible reading, songs presentations and life testimonies were produced in house by church members for the first time. The video recordings were offered to several long-term care homes who prohibited visitations and who unfortunately experienced high casualties due to the pandemic. To our amazement, these Gospel oriented videos were highly appreciated. These long-term care homes, along with various local outreach ministries and church workers that the videos were sent to requested more to be produced. Seemingly, Christ Jesus accepted our humble “two small coins.” (Mark 12:42)
On December 18, 2020, our fourth revised Site Plan Application for the new building extension was submitted to the City of Toronto and was awaiting approval.
In the unknown near-future of the COVID-19 world, shall we not move forward as Jesus Christ’s people who are called to be the salt and the light of the world amid darkness and difficulties (c.f. Matthew 5: 13-14) – walking the walk of our Christian faith, taking up our cross high, and caring humbly, spiritually and practically for our neighbors inside and outside our faith community in their hour of suffering that is the global pandemic crisis?
(Written December 2020)
January 2021 – June 2022
In early 2021, the local economy further deteriorated as a result of the continuous global COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences. The local cost of living had reached a historic high. In view of the endless escalation of construction material and labor costs, during the month of May, the church cautiously reviewed her internal budget for the church building extension. An 80% dollar increase had to be added to the initial budget made in 2016 but the Lord Jesus provided for this increase accordingly.
Besides the ongoing livestream, the church resumed regular in-person Sunday adult worship services in early summer. However, worshippers were required to put on face masks and to maintain social distance within the church premises. The children’s worships and programs regretfully remained on hold due to various unsettled pandemic concerns. The Lord Jesus motivated church members to form various caring teams to care for the elderly and young generations in many practical and thoughtful ways. In particular, a tutoring class was started to help young people keep up their schoolwork.
In November, four selected construction contractors presented the church their construction plans and cost estimations for our building extension project. The church selected the plan and cost estimation presented by the most experienced church premises builder. The new total cost estimate for construction ballooned to almost double our initial budget made in 2016.
As the city’s COVID-19 crisis waned by the end of 2021, a church-subsidized Christmas dinner was organized as part of the church’s Christmas celebration. Amid the disturbance of the pandemic, it was meant to be a step of faith forward, demonstrating our Christian celebration for the birth of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel. The city-wide pandemic cases unfortunately peaked again just before our Christmas dinner arrived. However, trusting in the providence of the King Jesus and acting within the government’s pandemic guidelines, church members and friends celebrated wholeheartedly during the Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant with few last-minute withdrawals.
On January 22, 2022, the city office notified us of the final approval of our Site Approval Application for our church premises additions at 7 Gretna Avenue. To secure the optimum pricing of the volatile construction and labor costs, the church signed the construction contract in February with the previously chosen contractor. It was subject to the release of the Building Permits from the city.
The cost of living and the price of construction materials escalated quickly to another new high as a horrible major military conflict was in full blast in Ukraine. New global political divisions, multiple economic sanctions, destruction from war, and an uncertainty of the unknown future traumatized the world. As a result, human hearts were majorly distraught. Meanwhile, the Canadian government was advising vaccinated residents to take a 4th booster shot for COVID-19 and was loosening various pandemic restrictions for a much-needed economic recovery.
Thus, the church ventured forth to restore our various church services and return to a state of normalcy. The ongoing young people’s tutoring classes doubled their tutoring sessions in order to help school students who needed emotional and academic support during the summer. The week-long Vacation Bible School for the younger generation was again slated to be held in July of 2022. After a two year hiatus, the church decided to resume its annual Church Summer Conference, this time taking place at Jackson’s Point Ramada Resort in August. The Lord Jesus provided the church an exceptionally good deal with Ramada. Hopefully, participants will be able to be re-strengthened spiritually by the conference after dealing with lengthy pandemic-related adversities. Furthermore, Friday night Bible Study meetings are scheduled to methodically recommence after the Church Summer Conference.
Keeping in line with the aforementioned efforts, the church resumed its long overdue monthly Saturday morning Church Prayer Meeting in April. In oneness of Christ’s body, over thirty people in the church prayed fervently and particularly for the timeliness of Building Permits from the City for our construction plans. In amazement again, on April 14, the Maundy Thursday of the Holy Easter Week, the church finally received all of the required electronic Building Permits from the City of Toronto. As James 1:17-18 states, our good King Jesus bestowed His graceful gift to His beloved ones during the Holy Easter Week of 2022. In our excitement, bulldozers and the construction crew arrived immediately at the church premises right after our Easter Sunday church celebration.
The Kingdom of Jesus Christ has seemingly never failed to move onwards in our church life and ministries. The church proceeded to step by step work out her long-term development of future full-time pastoral staff. During the May 22 Sunday worship, our long-time church member Sophia Chan-Szeto was confirmed to be our part-time Assistant Pastor on a voluntary basis. Having recently graduated with her first Divinity degree, Sophia continued to immediately pursue seminary training in the ministry of Spiritual Direction, an area which will see greater growth and need in the months and years to come after the completion of our new church premises additions.
(Written June 2022)
July 2022 – January 2024
The church had gone through another remarkable patient wait, as in Psalm 27:13, during the new extension construction. By end of July 2023, the construction of the new church extension was duly completed. During the eighteen-month construction period, which was prolonged six additional months, the project was disrupted by global materials supply chain stoppages, shortage of labour deepened by the Pandemic, endless sky-high hikes of construction material costs, and the burden of extra labour costs. The church altogether prayed fervently to the Almighty and laboured intensively throughout the ride, navigating over multiple bumps and turns.
Unexpected additional charges and new expenditures were imposed onto our construction budget. In particular, the church had to lay down a gravel base to extend the longevity of the new asphalt parking lot as advised by the construction contractor, clean up a newly found localized spot of contaminated soil at the site and forebear the demanding cost increases of works and materials. Besides the financial challenge, multiple small teams in the congregation were mobilized on a weekly basis to painstakingly clean up the dirt and thickened dust which disrupted essential church services held on the existing premises which were next to the construction zones. Physical space in the existing church premises was continuously squeezed for various legitimate reasons throughout the progress of the extension construction work and renovations. Regretfully, all of these obstacles disrupted our Children & Youth ministries as well as the adult bible studies; both intended to resume in the existing church premises after the official end of the pandemic lockdown. Amid these challenging disruptions and labours, church members encouraged one another to remain focused on our faith in Christ Jesus, on-going life transformation, making peace with one another in His holiness, as well as caring and outreaching to neighbours. We learned to live out 2 Corinthians 5:7: “We live by faith, not by sight”. Especially important, we were watchful towards the enemies of Christ Jesus in the spiritual realm who would not let us to have an easy sail through during the construction and pandemic period.
While construction of the new extension was completed in early July, many post-occupancy tasks in terms of finance and voluntary labour works put an enormous demand on the church. It included the re-allocation of church offices and departments, deep cleaning of all the existing dust-covered church fixtures, as well as the setting up of ministries and regular church functions in the new spaces. These tasks physically and spiritually stretched everyone in the church. Amid the annual Summer Church Conference of 2023, the week-long Vacation Bible School for the younger generation, and various regular functions during the summer, the church learned to depend on the extraordinary tenacity that the Holy Spirit empowered into our hearts, minds and bodies. We could all testify that Spirit of Glory and of God rested on the church (I Peter 4:14).
Spontaneously and not by original design, the new corridor that connects the new church offices, the Sanctuary, and new prayer rooms sections in the new wing was turned into a lane of our biblical art works. In the stretch of over half a year since December 2022, over a dozen works of biblical art, icons, lamps, and lampstands were primarily made in-house with the fifty plus year old solid wood materials torn down from the demolished old main foyer of the church. With few other contributions, they are now displayed along the new corridor. Amazingly, the unique motif of each display turned the congregation and other users of the premises to recollect on the biblical core values that the church was inspired and founded upon. These include: shalom of the Good Shepherd, waiting and U-turn invitation of the Heavenly Father, faithfulness of disciples, oneness of a diversified body of Christ, disciple’s cross, self-perpetuating prayers, power of prayers, blessings of the Holy Word, light of life of God, the Trinity of God, pillar and foundation of the Divine truth, presence and enlightenment of Christ, as well as the hope of future Heavenly life. The new biblical-art-work corridor unexpectedly fosters a contemplative quietness to the church premises. It fits well as the backdrop of silence and prayerful retreat that the church always values and is precious in heart towards our church building.
During the same time, Tyndale Seminary in North York invited the church to participate in their government funded research project on “Flourishing Congregations in Canada”. It turned out to be a humbling experience to us as individuals and as a church to be interviewed and investigated in-depth by outsiders. The pastoral staff, lay leaders, church board members, and church members were selectively interviewed. Their research staff in-person visited and observed all our church services, major functions and events. They put forth research enquires, surveys, and individual and group interactive studies over the course of a whole year. In the end, the church also invited their main field researcher to preach and worship in one of in our Sunday worship services.
All these became fresh inspirations that prompted precious self-reflections on the faith journey of the church. As an outside observer, Tyndale researchers concluded that our church of different generations, dominant languages, and diverse subcultures — has been found persistently committing to the same theological page of biblical “contemplative practices of spirituality” in teachings and ministries. In humbleness, we gratefully accepted their concluding motif finding on our church in their research with us. In fact, it echoes with what the church had always envisioned and been journeying throughout since her inauguration.
All church ministries and functions officially resumed early January of 2024. After three and a half years of disruptions due to the pandemic and church construction, the church entered a new era of Friday Night Adult Bible Studies, Junior and Senior Sunday School ministries, young people outreach functions, various weekend in-house need-oriented functions, and new ministry explorations.
The church affirms the multifold challenges of the rapidly changing world as well as the blessings of Jesus Christ during the same period of time. What the Lord Jesus Christ empowered and imparted onto the church are perceived humbly as a greater entrusted vision of His kingdom, which Jesus Christ intends to show and bring us with Him into for a new spiritual horizon of the Divine kingdom. Shall we altogether “at His back” (Exodus 33:23), be inspired, fix our eyes on the uncharted Divine glory, and follow Jesus Christ in His presence.
(Written January 2024)
