The Escape

When the doors of China closed in 1949, Hong Kong was flooded with people. Missionaries were also forced to leave. Rev. and Mrs. E.R. Munroe, missionaries in Canton, China, with South China Holiness Mission, returned to the U.S. at this time. Rev. Munroe died in February 1953. With God’s call still on her heart and with a deep love for the Chinese people, Florence Munroe, affectionately known as “Auntie Mun” approached OMS and volunteered to start a work in Hong Kong. With God’s help to supply all needs, she returned to Hong Kong, arriving in November 1953.

The Beginning

Finding a home and a meeting place for worship and Bible study were Auntie Mun’s top priorities. God led her to a hall that was for rent on Apliu Street. With so much demand for housing, finding a place large enough to have a small chapel was a miracle.

Another big need was for workers to help share in the start of the ministry. Auntie Mun searched for former students and Christian workers who had been working with them in Canton and who also had fled China. One such person, Mr. Ho Yui Chi, was a former student who had fled to nearby Macau. Mr Ho was trained and ordained by OMS and served for many years as the pastor of what became Grace Church.

The Fire

Christmas night, December 1953, a huge fire swept through the thousands of huts on the hillsides in Shek Kip Mei, leaving more than 60,000 refugees without anything. The next morning when Mrs. Munroe went to the chapel on Apliu Street, she found people everywhere around the newly rented hall. They were on the sidewalks, in the alleyways, anywhere a spot could be found to put up some cardboard, tin or anything else they could find to construct a makeshift shelter to be protected from the elements. In this unlikely place, OMS began ministry in Hong Kong, and the first church was born in that hall on February 27, 1954.

The Rooftop Schools

Crowded living conditions are a way of life in Hong Kong. In those early years, the government built seven-story buildings to house the more than two million refugees that had fled from China. Because they were built in the shape of a huge “H,” these small apartments were called the H-buildings, with 10 x 12 living compartments located on the large ends and plumbing facilities located in the middle cross bar section. On the top of each building was an open flat space with a ledge around it. Mrs. Munroe thought the open flat space could be fenced in to serve as a great place for a school and playground. God moved in wonderful ways, and in 1955, OMS opened the first the first rooftop school in Hong Kong. Today, four churches are the results of the school.

Every Community for Christ Teams

In 1960, OMS launched its first Every Creature Crusade (now Every Community for Christ (ECC)) ministry in Hong Kong. OMS sent missionaries to work with local pastors to start new churches. These evangelism teams held street meetings and shared the Gospel door to door in several regions of Hong Kong. In 1966, the Hong Kong Evangelical Church (HKEC) was established.

Social Services in Housing Estates

In the 1980s, as the Hong Kong government continued building huge apartment complexes to provide housing for people still living in squatter areas, the need to provide social services to those residents became evident. Reading centers, elderly centers and family service centers were opened to provide needed services. OMS and the HKEC used this ministry as a platform to continue work in evangelism and church planting.