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A Home at ACCCN

作者：Richard Matthews and Hong Ke
日期: 10/19/2025
类别：主内生活

For most of our lives, the two of us would have been considered lost sheep, but we didn’t know it. Then, miraculously, we were found, and gloriously glad about it. But for a good while, we were discomforted because we just couldn’t figure out where the right pasture was.

Hong had just recently found Jesus (or should we say He had found her) through the Baptist Student Union at Georgia State University, and eventually she was led to faith in Christ and a blessed baptism. She soon got a head start on understanding the meaning of Christianity by working as an assistant to the senior pastor of a large community church.

Richard had taken a quite different path in life. As a somewhat rebelling teenager, he had deliberately walked away from his family’s church and had never looked back – that is, until Hong came into his life (or should we say Jesus put her into it) some 40 years later.

Thanks to the Lord’s mercy and grace, we became a Christian couple and started looking for the right church. And that’s when we began to feel a little lost. None that we visited seemed to be the one Christ wanted us to be in.

Then, one day, we were invited to a meeting of the Colossians Fellowship of ACCCN. We found a great group of people who seemed genuinely happy to meet us. After that, we visited Philippians Fellowship, which had a number of mixed couples like us, and found ourselves fitting in almost immediately. One Sunday morning, not long after that, we walked into ACCCN for worship service. And we have never felt like lost sheep since that day.

This church welcomed both of us like no other had seemed inclined to do. From the first days, we were treated like friends. Shortly, we were treated like old, old friends. And before we realized it, we were treated like – no, we were – brothers and sisters of the congregation at ACCCN. To put it precisely, we were enveloped in love, the kind of love that Jesus taught all of us to pursue.

Within a short time, we were asked to serve in various ways, and we did so gladly. Some people think serving in church is something that a person does. Literally, it is, but in a more fundamental and faith-related sense it’s something quite different. It is a privilege – a sacred privilege – to be invited to do it, and it is a joy to carry it out.

A little later, we were given leadership roles, in Richard’s case despite his “youth” as a Christian. We have been deacons, counselors, Sunday school teachers, and a VBS volunteer. None of this is any credit to us; it is simply one of many indications of the kind of caring, trusting church that ACCCN has proved to be, willing to offer us the opportunity to do God’s work. Thankfully, we learned firsthand the truth of the Bible message that He will provide the tools that are needed to carry out His will

Most heartwarming to both of us is the loving personal acceptance that so many people individually have shown since the very beginning. Hong has become very close to many in both congregations. In another church based in a different culture, Richard might have been made to feel like an outsider. That has never happened – not even once.

Of course, for all the love it offers, church is not a social club. More important is how much we learned about God, His Son, and the life we must live as Christians. In this respect, ACCCN has been a source of knowledge, wisdom, and judgment that has guided us in every aspect of our lives. We have learned from pastors, from elders, from fellowship members, even from youth and young adults about what it means to be Christians and how to “live out Christ.” We are far from being the believers we need to be, but we are much closer thanks to our presence in ACCCN.

Looking back on our eighteen or so years since our first introduction to ACCCN, we think we know now why we felt that we were in a church that was meant to be our home. It’s because somehow, from the beginning to today, we have heard the shepherd’s call there – and we recognized His voice.

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