History
The NYSC is a 5-day East-coast Christian Conference that is held
during the 4th of July weekend every year. It is a family conference,
which began in 1970 as the result of the need to deepen the spiritual
lives of Chinese Christian immigrants. The English Ministry
eventually grew out of the need for ministry to the teens of
parents attending the conference.
The NY Summer Retreat (as it was called then) began in 1970 by a
group of 20+ Chinese immigrant Christians who were meeting in homes.
About 110 attended this first retreat. It was open to any Christian
who wanted to join this July 4th long weekend getaway and the focus
was to help Chinese brothers and sisters in North America to grow
deeper in their spiritual walk with the Lord.
The year following the first retreat, a group of about 40 Chinese
Christians began to meet as “Christian Testimony” in the
basement of a three family house on Case Street in Elmhurst, Queens.
Dr. Robert Hsu was the lay preacher. Many of the children of this new
church family were only toddlers at the time
In 1971, Christian Testimony invited Brother Bellman Lin to shepherd
the church. He brought his wife and 9 out of 10 children ranging in age
from 6 to 18 years old. As other immigrants with older kids joined the
church, a youth group quickly became a necessity.
In 1972, during the energy crisis, gasoline prices skyrocketed and
provided the motivation to start a “sister” church in New Jersey.
Since then, Christian Testimony has expanded to seven in total: 5 in New
Jersey, one in Queens, and one in Long Island.
In 1974 the decision was made for the Summer Retreat to begin its first
parallel English retreat to minister to the kids of participants. About
25 English-speaking youths joined the first English retreat. By 1978,
over 250 people were attending the English retreat, mainly children of
participants in the Chinese-speaking retreat.
Although many of the main coworkers come from Christian
Testimony churches, the conference’s desire is to extend the
invitation to all and any Christian who shares the same vision to serve
in the conference.
In 1993, the name was changed from New York Summer Retreat
to the New York Summer Conference to better communicate its mission.
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Board of Directors
Bellman Lin (Chairman)
David Lee (Vice Chairman, Mandarin Ministry)
Ellen Hwang (Vice Chairman, English Ministry)
Kebin Huang(Secretary)
Peter Liu (Treasurer)
Pin Lo Chen
Chang-Wen Cheng
Wei-Tih Cheng
Jimmy Ding
Chun-Cheng Hwang
W. Khanh Lam
Elissa Lin Rathe
Bao-Chuan Liu
I-Ping Liu
Paul Lu
Chris Pu
David Rong
Wei Yann Tsai
Joseph Wang
Jack Wu
Member Emeritus:
Philip Teng
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HISTORY | BOARD
OF DIRECTORS
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