Houston Christian Assembly (曉士頓基督徒聚會) meets in two Houston locations, the Westoffice buildings on Westoffice Drive and a meeting hall on Dumble Street. The church is known for three habits that shape everything else: a Sunday meeting broadcast live at 9:30 AM, a daily Bible reading plan published in English and Chinese down to the grade level, and a careful record of messages that stretches back to 1990. Its weeks are built around reading the Word each day, gathering on Sunday around the Lord's Table and a Bible message, and eating together afterward.
Two Halls: Westoffice Drive and Dumble Street
The Westoffice side of the church occupies two buildings: Building I at 10565 Westoffice Drive, Houston, Texas 77042, and Building II at 10500 Westoffice Drive in the same zip area. That location answers at (713) 975-0918. The other hall stands at 1725 Dumble, Houston, Texas 77023, with its own number at (713) 921-2769. In the church's own materials the Westoffice side is labeled the Southwest district (西南区) and the Dumble side the Central district (中区), and each keeps its own set of meetings and its own history.
The separation is visible in the message records. Westoffice's record of meetings reaches back to 1990, while the Dumble record opens in 2009 and runs alongside it. Westoffice's meeting types include the Gospel Meeting, the Sharing Meeting, Friday Sharing, Special Meeting and an Elderly Meeting for older readers. Dumble's list is shorter and more distinctive: Gospel Meeting, Fellowship and Friday Sharing, with the Sunday order running from the Lord's Table through a message to a noon love feast.
The two halls do not simply duplicate one another. Many gatherings belong to Dumble alone, including the brothers' own fellowship meetings and the sisters' sharing meetings, and one Sunday in the Dumble record was set aside for sharing about the history of that hall itself. Westoffice carries the older record and the larger set of special meetings. The address for each hall, the phone number for each hall, and the meeting times for each hall are set out at the Westoffice location and the Dumble hall.
Sunday Morning at 9:30 AM
The Sunday meeting broadcast begins at 9:30 AM and is livestreamed on the church's YouTube channel, and message recordings are kept for both halls. At Westoffice this Sunday gathering is recorded as the Sunday Sharing (交通聚会), and its shape is consistent week after week: brothers and sisters gather, a speaker brings a message from the Bible, and the entry is listed with the passages it covered.
The subjects move through whole books at times and through single passages at others. A run of recent Sunday messages reached from Exodus and Leviticus to Joshua and Numbers, with speakers such as Stephen Hrncir, Shailesh Parmar, Elliot Ng, Jack Lee, Haibin Wang, Kevin Wang, Kang Zhang and Samuel Chu taking turns:
- "A Life of Worship" - Stephen Hrncir - John 4:23; Romans 12:1; Genesis 22:5; Matthew 2:2 and 4:10
- "Walk in the Spirit" - Shailesh Parmar - Galatians 5:16; Genesis 5:25; 6:9; 17:1
- "Possessing our Possession" - Elliot Ng - Joshua 1:11 and 14:8-13; Numbers 13:30; 14:7-9
- "Yoked and Yielded to Yahweh" - Stephen Hrncir - Matthew 11:28-30; Exodus 6:6-8; John 14:6
- "The Faithful and Sensible Steward" - Haibin Wang - Luke 12:42-46; 16:1-13; 1 Corinthians 4:1-2; 1 Peter 4:7-11
- "Workings of the Holy Spirit" - Stephen Jong and Michael Hrncir - Zechariah 4:6-7; 1 John 2:27; Psalm 133; Ephesians 1:22-23
- "The New and Living Way" - Kevin Wang - Romans 12:1; Hebrews 10:19-25
- "Engaging the next generation in God's Word" - Phillip Jong - Joel 1:3
At Dumble, Sunday has its own order of hours. The Lord's Table (擘饼聚会) is kept from 9:45 to 10:30 AM, the message (信息聚会) runs from 10:45 AM until noon, and a love feast (爱筵) follows from noon to 1:00 PM. The love feast is a full shared meal, and it is the part of the Sunday gathering that reliably carries into the middle of the day.
Friday Nights: Love Feast, Praise, and Bible Study
Friday at Dumble begins the way Sunday ends. A love feast runs from 6:40 to 7:20 PM, praise and worship (敬拜赞美) from 7:30 to 8:10 PM, and Bible study (读经聚会) from 8:15 to 9:30 PM. Westoffice keeps a Friday Sharing as well, and the messages given there include the kind of book overview teaching that opens a Sunday meeting, such as an Exodus overview from Lawrence Chu, a Genesis overview from Stephen Jong, and an overview of 1 and 2 Peter from Phillip Jong.
The Friday Bible study is the one gathering with a prepared study track behind it. Brother Phillip Jong's Friday Bible study walks through the Bible book by book, from Genesis to Malachi, and each book is broken into segments that offer an audio recording, a video recording and a written outline. The Lamentations portion is divided into chapters 1 and 2, chapter 3, and chapters 4 and 5, and each segment carries its own downloads. The complete set of books is laid out for study in Chinese and English side by side.
A recurring question runs through the Friday and Sunday teaching, and it has been asked often enough to earn its own message: "Why do we so gather?" The answers point to Acts 2:42, Matthew 18:20 and 16:18, to the church as the body of Christ, and to the gathered assembly as the place where the Word is taught, exercised, and lived out in the company of others.
A Daily Reading Plan for Adults and for Every Grade
Every day of the year carries a set reading. The daily plan pairs a chapter of the New Testament with a chapter of the Old Testament and then a psalm: on one ordinary day the schedule called for John chapter 4 and 2 Chronicles chapter 12, with Psalm 100 waiting the next morning. Adults are given the New Testament and Old Testament in English and Chinese, and children are given their own plan for every grade:
- First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, Fourth Grade and Fifth Grade
- Middle School
- High School
- Summer memory verses for First Grade through Fifth Grade
- Adult New Testament and Old Testament readings in English and Chinese
The same schedule can be followed without a printed Bible. The church's Daily Bible Reading app places the day's reading on an Android home screen through a widget, updates by itself each morning, and opens the full chapter in a browser when a chapter is tapped. It runs in English or Chinese, follows the phone's dark or light setting, and is distributed directly as an APK file rather than through Google Play, so Android may ask permission to install from an outside source. Version 1.8 is the current release, and a reminder appears when a newer version is ready. The APK download and the full reading plan are both available from the church.
The Bible itself is also readable in full, in two versions. The King James (Authorized) Version uses the standardized text of 1769 with Strong's numbers added, and the Chinese Union Version is offered in simplified Chinese script. Each can be read chapter by chapter in the browser or taken away as an EPUB file, a PDF, an HTML archive, or a Crosswire Sword module, with the files prepared by the Crosswire Bible Society and eBible.org.
How the Message Records Are Kept
Every message entry carries five things: the date, the topic in English and Chinese, the speaker, the Scripture references, and which meeting the message belonged to. That structure makes the collection reachable from several directions at once, by year, by book of the Bible, by speaker, and by kind of meeting. Past messages are available as audio and as video, and conference and retreat messages come with downloadable outlines.
The records are kept by the congregation itself. Anyone who has listened can fill in a missing topic or a missing verse reference and submit it, and a standing invitation on the message list asks for exactly that. The headings separate the Westoffice archive, the Dumble archive, the Summer Conference, the Winter Retreat, the West Coast Christian Conference, the Taiwan Christian Conference, and a series of conference messages given by Brother Phillip, with all of it gathered in the message records.
Beyond the ordinary Sunday and Friday meetings, the church marks certain kinds of gathering with their own headings. The Gospel Meeting stands apart as a meeting for those coming to faith, with its own speakers and its own subject matter. The Special Meeting covers the conferences, the retreats, the parent workshops, and the marriage and family life sessions. The Elderly Meeting, Friday Sharing, and Fellowship headings each point to a distinct group and rhythm within the life of the church.
What the Assembly Teaches
The teaching has a recognizable center of gravity: Christ is the foundation and the head, the church is His body, the Holy Spirit does His work in believers, and God's eternal purpose is seen in people being built into that body. The titles from the Sunday and Friday messages show how concrete that becomes in practice, and the Dumble record carries its own version of the same emphasis:
- "Brother Fellowship" - Gene Fu, Jun Zhou, Hao Deng - Matthew 3:1; 4:17; 11:12
- "Seeking God's Kingdom" - Yu Lin - Luke 12:29-32 and 35-48
- "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" - Tony Yang - Job 19:25
- "Stand Firm in the Evil Days" - Robert Hsu - Ephesians 6:10-14; Psalm 90:9-17
- "The Sign of Feeding 5000" - Tony Yang - John 6:1-13 and 27
- "Christ's Perseverance" - Robert Hsu - 2 Thessalonians 3:5
The vocabulary of the church's own teaching includes the language of God's recovery, of the testimony of Jesus Christ, of being built and building one another, of watching and praying, and of possessing the inheritance God gives. One Sunday sharing opened with Hebrews 3:1 and 12:1-2, which is typical of the emphasis on gathering and holding fast. Another message, titled "The God of Bethel," worked through Genesis 28 and 31, and a later one asked "What Do You Think?" while reading Matthew 18, 16 and Exodus 31 together.
Two practices stand alongside the preaching. The Lord's Table is kept as a standing part of the Sunday meeting, and there are messages given specifically about it. Baptism by immersion is practiced in gatherings the records call baptism meetings, and these are sometimes joined to a fellowship meeting on the same day. The gospel meeting carries its own line of speakers, including John Tseng with "The Gospel of Heaven," Rafael Claudino, Jian Chang, Samuel Chu, Jack Lee, Haibin Wang, Kang Zhang, David Hrncir and Jonathan Chern.
Brothers and Sisters in Their Own Meetings
Dumble's record divides into distinct groups. Many Sundays are given to a Brother Fellowship (弟兄交通) with a speaker among the men, and the titles for those gatherings are plain: "Brother Fellowship," "Fellowship Meeting," "Sisters," and "Baptism and Fellowship Meeting." Other Sundays are given to the sisters for their own sharing, and still others are marked as fellowship meetings with brothers and sisters together. This pattern of one meeting for the brothers and one for the sisters, with a shared meeting when the church chooses it, is the shape of a good deal of the Dumble record, and it is why that location's list of messages reads differently from Westoffice's.
The same division appears in the meeting types. Westoffice records a Sharing Meeting for the congregation at large and a separate Friday Sharing for the Friday gathering, while Dumble records its Sunday gathering under Fellowship and keeps its brothers' meetings as their own entries. Both halls keep Gospel Meetings, and the summer and winter conferences add their own separate lines of messages for the whole assembly and for the youth.
Children, Youth, and Family Life
Children are taken seriously as readers. The children's class material is organized with teacher sections and archives for the teachers' own use, and the grade-by-grade reading plan gives a First Grader and a High School student different books to work through. During the summer the younger grades work on memorizing set passages. Music belongs to the same world: children from the church's school program have sung "Lily of the Valley," "Nothing But the Blood," "Jesus Loves Me," "If Any Man," "Holy Spirit" and "Corner Stone," and a choir takes part in gospel meetings.
Youth work has its own line through the church. The RCGG youth fellowship is a standing part of the congregation, the Texas Youth Winter Retreat is a regular gathering for young people, and the summer conference carries a full youth track alongside the adult meetings. That youth track has included sessions on sanctification, on God's purpose for a generation, and on being a clean hand with a pure heart, plus high school messages and workshops on choosing between two masters and on life in a connected world.
The parents' meetings run by age group, and they are not occasional. There is a workshop for parents of kindergarten and younger, one for grade school parents, one for middle school parents, and one for high school parents, each with its own date and its own teachers. Marriage and family life has been taught as its own series with two audio versions, one in English and one in Chinese, and marriage and dating has been taught from Genesis 2 and 24. The church has hosted wedding ceremonies as well, including one whose message was titled "Turn Water to Wine in Marriage."
Older Readers and Long-Serving Teachers
One Thursday meeting was set aside for older readers for many years, and Brother Wei walked through the Bible with them one book at a time. Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther were covered week after week, with each message listed and recorded in the Westoffice history. That gathering belongs to the older part of the church's record, and it sits alongside a set of teachers who have served these meetings for a very long time.
Names that recur across decades of messages include Phillip Jong, Godwin Sun, Jack Lee, Tony Yang, Yuan Hu, Kang Zhang, Samuel Chu, Haibin Wang, Stephen Hrncir, Michael Hrncir, Elliot Ng, Jian Chang, James Weng, Robert Hsu, Lawrence Basa, Dale King, Eric Wu, Gene Fu, Jun Zhou and Yu Lin. The breadth of the record comes from the way each of them has carried a different part of the Bible and a different part of the church: some on the inner life and the Holy Spirit, some on recovery and the church's calling, some on family and children, some on the Word itself and how to read it.
The conferences bring teachers from elsewhere, and their sessions are recorded the same way. Mac Graham, Ted Peng, Lucio Aguirre, Jim Bogdanowicz, Kenny Pittman, Geoffrey Pittman, Daniel Chen, Jeremy Eklund, Dana Congdon, DeVern Fromke and Christian Chen have all preached at HCA conferences. Brother Phillip Jong's own message collection also carries sermons given away from Houston, from Vancouver, Neuss, Portland, Orlando, the Twin Cities and East Coast meetings, with audio, video and outlines for each.
A Record That Runs Back to 1990
The earliest entries in the Westoffice record are from September 1990, when Sunday School classes worked through the book of Joshua in a long sequence of lessons, running alongside a three-part series titled "Raising Children for Christ" given by Dale King. By the middle of the 1990s the meetings had settled into the rhythm of Sunday Sharing messages on subjects such as "The Vine and the Branches," "The Good Shepherd," and "The Lord's House," with the same emphasis on the Word that carries through today.
Through the 2000s the record thickens, and certain titles begin to repeat as signature themes: "Recovering the Testimony of Jesus Christ," "The Cross and the Church's Testimony," "The Recovery Work of God," "The Recovery of the Spiritual Reality," and "The Living Word." Alongside them run messages on the inner life such as "The Vision of the Burning Bush," "Drawing Near to God," and "The Spirit of Deep Sleep." From 2010 onward the same shape continues with a wider group of teachers, English and Chinese topic titles side by side, and a regular line of conference messages folded into the record.
Dumble's record opens in 2009 with the first years of meetings there carrying titles such as "Faithful in the Chaotic World," "The Kingdom of God," and "He that Doeth the Will of His Father," and it has run alongside the Westoffice record ever since. Together the two archives give a long, unbroken picture of a congregation that has spent decades teaching the same text to the same city.
Summer Conference and Winter Retreat
The summer conference is the church's largest gathering of the year. It runs several days with morning and evening messages for the whole assembly, a youth track, and a set of workshops. Recent workshop subjects have included hymnology, prayer and revival, how to read the Bible for spiritual meaning, gathering and eating the daily manna, choosing between two masters, and navigating the digital age with wisdom. The youth track has carried its own series on sanctification and on God's purpose, and the main meetings have hosted messages on the challenge of living in the blessing of the Lord, on preparing to meet God, and on the surpassing life of Christ in His people.
The winter retreat follows a similar shape with a different rhythm: a morning message, an evening message, and workshop sessions in between. Titles carried by recent retreats include "Follow Him fully," "Teach us to number our days," and a three-part study of Song of Songs, with workshops on priestly practice and on exercising priesthood. The Texas youth winter retreat and conferences held in other states and overseas extend the same pattern of Word-centered gatherings for different groups, and the West Coast Christian Conference and the Taiwan Christian Conference have their own lines of messages in the record.
What the Assembly Holds
Stated in the words the church uses for its own gatherings, its convictions center on the Bible as the Word of God, on Christ as the foundation and the head of the church, on the work of the Holy Spirit in those who believe, on the gospel and the salvation it brings, and on God's eternal purpose being carried out in the church as the body of Christ. The teaching returns often to prayer and watchfulness, to the recovery of the testimony of Jesus Christ, to being built together as a house of God, and to the return of the Lord. Around those convictions sit the concrete practices of the church: the reading of the Word every day, the keeping of the Lord's Table, baptism by immersion, shared meals, and the gathering of brothers and sisters in and around the Word.
A First Sunday in Houston
The simplest way into Houston Christian Assembly is the 9:30 AM Sunday meeting, broadcast on YouTube, with message recordings kept afterward for those who cannot be in the room. The Dumble hall runs its own Sunday order from 9:45 AM to 1:00 PM, moving from the Lord's Table to a message and then to a love feast, and its Friday evening from 6:40 PM with praise, Bible study, and a meal to share. Two addresses serve the city: 10565 and 10500 Westoffice Drive, Houston, Texas 77042, and 1725 Dumble, Houston, Texas 77023. A child who comes with their parents can be put onto the reading plan for their grade the same week they arrive.
Underneath all of it is a plain pattern: the Word read every day in two languages, a Sunday gathering around the Lord's Table and a message, a Friday of praise and study, and a table set for the family of God. That is the shape of Houston Christian Assembly, at Westoffice Drive and on Dumble Street.