Wǒmen dōu shì yì jiā rén (我們都是一家人)—“We are all one family.”
It is a sentence I have heard again and again in Chinese churches in Germany. It may sound like a familiar Christian expression. For many migrants, however, it describes something very concrete.
A newly arrived student may find someone at church who explains how to register with the local authorities or where to look for an apartment. Another person needs help moving furniture. Someone who has spent the week struggling with German can finally speak freely in Chinese. After Sunday worship, people share food, exchange news, discuss work and studies, and talk about difficulties they may hesitate to mention elsewhere. For many Chinese migrants, church gradually becomes a home away from home.
From 2018 to 2025, Szu-Chin Chen and I conducted research in ten evangelical Chinese congregations connected with the Forum for Mission among Chinese in Germany (FMCD). Our research also included Bible studies, conferences, youth meetings, and other gatherings. What became increasingly clear was how many roles these churches had come to play. Worship and Christian faith remained at their center, while everyday migrant life had become deeply intertwined with congregational life.
Today, however, this model is entering a period of transition. These changes raise a larger question: What will Chinese migrant churches be for in the years ahead?
A Church Shaped by Migration
Chinese Protestant churches in Germany have a relatively recent history.
Many congregations and Bible study groups emerged began emerging in the late twentieth century, while a new phase began after 2000 as growing numbers of students and young professionals arrived from mainland China.
This history shaped the churches themselves. Ministry often developed around the immediate needs of first-generation migrants. A student arriving in Germany might know little about the language, university system, housing market, or bureaucratic procedures. Family members were thousands of kilometers away. Loneliness and uncertainty could become part of everyday life.
Chinese Christian communities responded naturally to these needs. They welcomed students at the beginning of the academic year, organized meals and activities, offered advice about housing and visas, and built networks of practical support. Relationships often became the doorway through which people first encountered Christianity.
Germany also differs from some better-known Chinese diaspora contexts. Large Chinese Christian communities of the kind found in parts of North America are rare. Chinese migrants are widely dispersed, and many congregations remain relatively small. The surrounding society is also highly secularized. These churches therefore often inhabit two minority positions at once: they are ethnic minority congregations within German society and committed Christian communities within an increasingly post-Christian environment.
That setting helps explain why the experience of “family” became so important.
More Than Sunday Worship
The life of these churches is difficult to describe through worship services alone.
They are, first, spiritual communities. People study the Bible, pray, worship, and learn to understand their lives through Christian faith; some encounter Christianity there for the first time. Faith is experienced within a wider web of relationships.
Church can also become a cultural home. People can speak Chinese freely. Congregations celebrate Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival together. Food plays an important role, as it often does in Chinese communal life. Parents may hope that their children will maintain some connection with Chinese language and culture through the church.
There is an emotional dimension as well. Migration can involve loneliness, disappointment, culture shock, discrimination, or a sense of losing control over one’s life. A congregation offers friendships with people who recognize these experiences without lengthy explanations. Some of the communities in our research even had access to professional counselors.
Practical support is woven into the same relationships. Church members help one another move, share information about jobs and housing, accompany newcomers through bureaucratic processes, and connect people who otherwise might never meet.
One observation from our fieldwork illustrates another, less obvious function. A man whom I will call Dr. Li had earned a doctorate in economics. After migrating to Germany, his professional life took a very different course from what his academic qualifications might have suggested, and he eventually ran a small guesthouse. Within the church, however, his experience and long-standing commitment were recognized. People continued to address him respectfully as “Dr. Li,” and he occupied a valued place in the community.
Migration can unsettle a person’s social position as well as their sense of belonging. Within the church, migrants may regain something they have lost: recognition, responsibility, and the feeling that their lives still matter to others.
This helps explain why migrant churches can become remarkably resilient communities. Religion, friendship, culture, practical care, and social recognition reinforce one another.
When the Diaspora Changes
The social setting that shaped this form of church is now changing.
During much of our earlier fieldwork, students and young professionals were highly visible. Many churches consequently organized their outreach around campus ministry. Around the turn of the 2020s, before the COVID-19 pandemic, I increasingly observed another development: some of those who had originally arrived as students were staying in Germany. They had married, entered professional life, and begun raising children.
The questions facing these churches therefore change as well. A student newly arrived from China may ask how to find friends, navigate university life, or understand German society. Parents who have lived in Germany for ten or fifteen years face other questions. Which language should their children use in church? What does it mean to pass on Christian faith when the children feel more at home in German than in Chinese? How much of the parents’ cultural world can or should the next generation inherit?
A ministry model built around newly arrived students may no longer fit a congregation increasingly made up of couples, children, teenagers, and established professionals. This transition will affect preaching, leadership, language, children’s ministry, and the church’s relationship with German society. It also pushes congregations to think beyond the immediate needs that shaped them during their early years.
When Others Can Provide the Same Services
A second change is taking place outside the churches.
Practical help once gave Chinese Christian communities a natural point of contact with newly arrived students. Today, information and support are available through many other channels. Social media groups can answer questions within minutes. Chinese student networks organize activities and connect newcomers. Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSAs) across Germany also organize activities, connect newcomers, and provide practical support. These associations maintain links with Chinese diplomatic institutions; for example, in 2023 the Chinese Embassy in Berlin hosted an annual meeting attended by representatives from 80 student and scholar associations across Germany.
From the perspective of a newly arrived student, the functions can overlap. Where can I find housing? How do I deal with paperwork? Where can I meet other Chinese people? How can I build a social network?
A church is no longer the obvious place to find answers to all these questions.
This development can be uncomfortable, yet it may ultimately be healthy for the church. When practical services are available elsewhere, congregations gain an opportunity to ask what lies at the heart of their calling.
Their distinctive contribution may emerge precisely from the kind of community they are capable of forming.
Chinese churches in Germany often bring together people whose paths might otherwise remain separate: migrants from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia; students and businesspeople; recent arrivals and long-term residents; people carrying very different political memories and assumptions. These differences can generate tension. They can also create an unusual Christian space in which people learn to live with disagreement, extend forgiveness, and discover a belonging that reaches beyond national and political identities. That capacity cannot be replaced by an information service.
From Safe Haven to Shared Mission
The very strength of the Chinese migrant church also contains a challenge. A safe haven can gradually become an enclave.
Language, familiar food, trusted relationships, and shared cultural experience create a valuable environment for people negotiating migration. Yet the same environment can make it easy for congregations to turn inward. Contact with German churches, other migrant communities, and the wider society may remain limited.
The challenge is to preserve the sense of home these churches have created while asking what that belonging is meant to produce. Their ability to offer belonging is one of their greatest gifts.
Perhaps the next stage for Chinese migrant churches in Germany will require a movement from providing a home toward forming people who can cross boundaries. The experience already exists within many congregations. Christians from different Chinese backgrounds have learned, sometimes painfully, to worship together, negotiate differences, and call one another family. That experience could become a resource for relationships beyond the Chinese community as well. There are already small signs of this: in some places, Chinese congregations have invited German pastors to preach or joined prayer gatherings organized by the German Evangelical Alliance.
These changes may invite a clearer understanding of what the church can become. “We are all one family” has described the experience of many Chinese Christians in Germany remarkably well. The next question is how wide that family can become.
