The Journey of Faith Among Chinese Migrants

The movie "Dear You" has swept across China and Southeast Asia like a storm. Everywhere I went, almost everyone I met seemed to be talking about it.

On further reflection on the first Chinese migration to foreign lands, two things stood out as especially important to them: preserving the Chinese language and maintaining the religious traditions embraced by their families. This explains why, in nearly every place where early Chinese settlers established communities, one can find temples and ancestral worship halls. For those who had converted to Christianity, the pattern was similar. They began by gathering for Sunday worship in homes, and as their communities grew, they built church buildings to accommodate regular congregational worship.

By coincidence, I was recently invited to share the history of BCCM with a group of young lower secondary school students on 28 June 2026. It was a meaningful opportunity to reflect on how faith, migration, and heritage have shaped the church’s identity over the generations.

BCCM’s origins can be traced back to the first group of Chinese Christian migrants who arrived from Guangdong in 1882 in North Borneo, a territory later known as Sabah following the formation of Malaysia. These early migrants were brought in primarily to help open up vast tracts of land and dense jungles for agricultural development, including rubber plantations, coconut estates, and coffee farms across various parts of North Borneo.

Among these pioneers were Christian believers who had come to faith in China through the ministry of missionaries from Basel, Switzerland. Though they had left their homeland behind, they carried with them something far more enduring - their faith. In this unfamiliar new land, they sought to preserve and nurture that spiritual inheritance by establishing a worshipping community of their own.

In honor of the missionaries and the spiritual legacy through which they had received the Gospel, they named their church the “Basel Church.” What began as a small community of migrant believers would, over time, grow into a vibrant and enduring church, rooted in faith and committed to serving future generations.

Initially, the church was a Chinese Hakka-speaking congregation, serving the linguistic and cultural needs of its earliest members. Over the years, however, it evolved significantly. As Sabah’s demographic landscape changed, the church adapted to serve a broader and more diverse population. Today, BCCM has become a multilingual church community, ministering not only in Hakka and Chinese Mandarin but also to English-speaking and Bahasa Malaysia-speaking members.

Its journey reflects a broader story of migration, faith, and adaptation - how a community rooted in heritage can remain faithful to its origins while growing to embrace new generations and cultures.