Immigrant Pastor Highlight: Lian Sian Mung

Chicago Zomi Community Church began as a community meal for Zomi Burmese, a specific ethnic group and language within Burma, in the Chicagoland area in 2008. After this meal, the group collectively decided to begin meeting occasionally throughout the year for other cultural events and get-togethers. In June of 2009 the group began meeting for worship services twice a month, cramming 30 to 40 people into a small apartment at the Wheaton Square Apartments for worship and studying of the scriptures. Eventually Church of the Great Shepherd opened their doors to them where they currently now meet regularly on Sunday afternoons at 2:30pm.

Pastor Lian Sian Mung is currently finishing his Ph.D. in Old Testament at TrinityEvangelical Divinity School. He says his greatest desire for the congregation is that everyone have a transforming, personal relationship with Christ and be equipped to reach out to Burmese Buddhists in Chicagoland (currently there are more than 1000 Burmese Buddhists in the Chicagoland area] and in Myanmar. Currently the congregation now runs from 50 to 60, sometimes even up to 100 people, forcing them to look for a new space to meet in as they have outgrown the space where Church of the Great Shepherd meets.

Immigrant Pastor Highlight: Hesham Shehab

Pastor Hesham Shehab, originally from Lebanon, is the pastor of Salam Christian Fellowship which meets at Peace Lutheran Church in Lombard, IL Saturdays at noon.

Hesham tells how he began his ministry to Muslims in Chicagoland: “Just around Easter 2007, I bumped into a woman from Palestine in the streets of Wheaton who [had] lived most of her life in Lebanon. She was like the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well who connected Jesus with her whole town. She introduced me to the Arab neighborhood of Chicago.” Two months later he started an Arabic Bible study in a Wheaton apartment. That summer he witnessed seven baptisms of people from Iraq and Iran and then that fall started Salam Christian Fellowship.

Salam Arabic Church is now a broad evangelistic ministry to Middle Eastern immigrants in the greater Chicagoland area. Attendees experience a unique Arabic seeker-friendly church that preaches Christ crucified and contextualizes the Gospel of Jesus to those from an Islamic culture.

To learn more about Hesham’s own testimony see this video clip here:http://youtu.be/O225ekmvvLs

For more information on Pastor Hesham’s ministry see: http://clmma.org/