Inside an elementary school auditorium on the outskirts of Hong Kong, pastor Samuel Leung led the 200 congregants at his church in the last song of a worship service in March. About half of the worshipers are over 60, so the church offers printed bulletins with a large font to help them read.
Leung, who has pastored Ma On Shan Ling Liang Church for more than two decades, said that just a few years ago, his congregation was twice as big and much younger. But in the past five years, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens have emigrated since Beijing imposed a national security law to clamp down on the former British colony’s pro-democracy movement.
That loss has hit churches like Leung’s hard. He estimates that about 80 congregants have moved overseas to countries such as the United Kingdom and the US. Reflecting the typical demographics of Hong Kongers who have left, they include pastoral staff members, teachers, lawyers, health care professionals, and middle-class families with children. By 2024, at least 46,000 church attendees had left the city in the past five years, and more than 6,000 were preparing to emigrate, according to a recently released survey by Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement (HKCRM).
Churches are also seeing a loss of attendees for other reasons: Some have not returned to church since the COVID-19 pandemic began and continue to livestream church services. At Leung’s church, about two dozen congregants join online. Others have either started attending other churches or stopped going to church altogether, Leung said.
Beyond emptier worship venues and fewer offerings, some churches struggle to find pastoral staff and volunteers. Church leaders remaining in Hong Kong feel demoralized yet cognizant of the importance of staying and shepherding the flock in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, one church is turning toward serving both those who stay and those who have left through overseas church plants and online services.
During the March worship service at Ma On Shan, two worship team members stood on a large empty stage to lead the congregation in Cantonese worship songs like “Be Not Anxious.” In 2019, the team had 20 members, but most have since left, Leung said. The church tried to expand the worship band in 2020, but the deacon tasked with the job suddenly announced plans to emigrate, leaving the task unfinished. Leung remembers the morale among the worship team was low.
The HKCRM study, which surveyed 778 of the 1,300 local Chinese-speaking churches in Hong Kong, found that the number of Hong Kongers who attended church in person in 2024 had dropped to 198,000, a 26 percent decrease compared to 2019. In 2024, about 26,000 people watched church services online.
Amid the changes, some church plants have returned to their sending congregations, at least two small congregations have begun the process of merging, and others have continued meeting with smaller staffs, said HKCRM’s general secretary Nelson Leung (no relation to Samuel Leung).
Although the latest emigration wave crested around 2022, there’s still a lingering sense of abandonment for those remaining in Hong Kong. The guest speaker at Samuel Leung’s church that Sunday, an editor of Hong Kong’s Christian Times, shared that she felt left behind as many of her friends departed and her fellowship group disbanded. But just as God spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice, she said, God has not abandoned Hong Kong Christians facing difficulties.
For Ma On Shan Ling Liang Church, a big challenge is the shortage of people serving in ministries, Leung said. One way his church has adapted to the smaller congregation is by cutting grade-specific Sunday school classes and instead splitting elementary school children into just two classes. About 40 children regularly attend in Sunday school, down from more than 100 before. The wide age ranges make it more difficult for teachers to manage the classrooms and teach age-appropriate lessons.
Despite the overall drastic downsizing, “we’ve never really cared much about head count,” said Leung. “But we’ve lost the atmosphere in the classrooms and even in worship services.” The church has more than 20 members over the age of 90, and the average age of the congregation now hovers around 45. The lack of younger congregants makes the church feel less lively, Leung explained.
Yet he feels positive about his church going forward: “The Lord has helped us build a relatively unified congregation.” Newcomers who found out about the church by watching livestreamed services have joined the congregation. Some of them have consistently given sizable offerings, which helped buffer the church’s drop in revenue from fewer congregants contributing.
Downsizing has allowed Leung’s church to be more flexible in trying new initiatives, like changing how it approaches small groups. Groups now consist of four people at most as the smaller size means fewer constraints when choosing where and when to meet, said Leung. The groups occasionally combine for Bible studies and celebrations. And since the church has finally stabilized after the exodus, it can plan for several years ahead, Leung added.
The emigration wave has brought similar challenges to many other churches. One congregation faced a financial deficit after about 40 percent of its 125 attendees emigrated, according to a 2022 Christian Times report. Its pastor, who grew up at the church and has pastored there for more than two decades, braced for a salary reduction as he also grappled with despondency from seeing so many congregants he’d known for years leave. Despite the setback, the church continued to visit low-income residents living in subdivided apartments as a way of fulfilling its mission to serve the community around it. “The Lord doesn’t care so much if this church folds as he cares if it has followed his will before it dies,” said the pastor.
The 2022 report said another church, a multisite Baptist congregation, had to close down at least one location to adjust to losing more than 1,000 congregants, nearly a quarter of the church. An Evangelical Free Church of China congregation could not find enough sound technicians or Sunday school teachers after about 30 percent of its congregants moved overseas, the Christian Times reported. The remaining staff members and volunteers resorted to combining classes and fellowship groups and shouldered a heavier workload.
While numerous churches have scaled down, one congregation is expanding abroad.
On the second floor of a commercial building in Hong Kong’s Jordan district, pastor Poon Chi Kong observed an evening worship service in February from the back of the dark sanctuary. The lighting focused on the nine-member worship band playing on the stage. More than 300 congregants, many of them in their 20s and 30s, sang along enthusiastically. The church is only a 15-minute subway ride from the city’s central financial district.
The size of Flow Church hasn’t changed since my last visit in 2019. Although about 120 of its members have emigrated, they have since been replaced by new attendees, Poon said. Some newcomers were drawn by Flow Church’s online content, which ranges from theology classes to pop culture parodies.
“We lost a group of brothers and sisters who built up the church with us from the beginning,” said Poon, who has been pastoring Flow Church since it started in 2018. It takes more effort to lead the new members of the church, he added.
At the same time, the church hasn’t completely lost the members who moved overseas. Poon oversees Flow Church’s satellite initiative, Outflow Mission, which enables those members to gather in cities in England and Canada for corporate worship.
Outflow members rent or borrow rooms in local churches and Christian organizations, where they watch Flow Church’s worship service livestreamed from Hong Kong or listen to the preaching from onsite pastoral staff. Dozens of people gather at each site, as the Hong Kong diaspora has added to their numbers.
The initiative, which launched in 2021, started as the church realized that members who emigrated were struggling to fit in to churches in their new home countries. Flow Church wanted to help them build their own churches, Poon explained. So Poon plans the year’s schedule for the Outflow congregations and supports their leaders. If they decide to go independent, the church doesn’t mind if they forgo the name Flow Church.
Serene Chan is among those who left Flow Church in Hong Kong and have joined Outflow in Manchester. She gathers with about 40 other Hong Kongers on Saturday afternoons at St. Luke’s Church. After services, she stays for snacks and small group discussions.
Prior to joining Outflow, Chan, a former teacher at a special needs school in Hong Kong, checked out local churches. But she found herself spending more time trying to understand Bible terms in English during those services than actually participating in worship. And when she was working as a substitute teaching assistant in the United Kingdom, worshiping in Cantonese at Outflow gave her a break from English immersion throughout the week.
“I still really miss Hong Kong,” Chan said. “When I attend a church here that’s still connected with Hong Kong, I feel a greater sense of belonging.” At Outflow, she’s in charge of the PowerPoint slides for worship services and facilitates a small group.
Chan and about 20 others formed Outflow’s Manchester congregation back in 2022, meeting every other week. A year later, they began meeting weekly. “I can really feel that God is leading and building the church and we are just responding,” Chan said. “God is the one who launched it.”
