The Full Gospel Tabernacle Story (30th Anniversary)

In 1981, FGT was birthed in Petaling Jaya. It did not happen under the most ideal circumstances.

At that time, there was only one charismatic church in town and due to rapid growth, it decided to re-locate from Petaling Jaya to Kuala Lumpur. A group of young people from within this church, many of whom were still schooling, found it difficult to commute to Kuala Lumpur every week as most did not have their own vehicles.

With limited public transportation available, travelling down to the capital city then was much like going out of town. These young people were left with only one solution – start a church right where they were, and continue to be a witness for Christ in suburban Petaling Jaya – never mind the fact that they were young and inexperienced.

But starting a new church was almost unheard of, let alone a Spirit-filled independent charismatic church.

After much prayer, the first members, armed with mahjong paper, a guitar, and a strong  desire to obey God, held the first FGT service in the home of Ps. Eu Hong Seng, and his wife, Yapp Gaik Sim. Everyone sat on the floor of the living room, sang worship songs off the hand-written mahjong paper and listened to the preaching of their young leaders. Nevertheless, it was wonderful in many ways because God was there. After a week, the church moved to a shop-lot in the SS2 commercial centre.

In the midst of humble beginnings, one could see that a spiritual identity was already gradually forming in the group – a pioneering spirit. It took courage and sacrifice to make the first leap, and that could only have been birthed through a strong relationship with God. That same pioneering spirit has, in many ways, remained with FGT to this very day. A week after the initial house meetings, the church moved into a shop-lot in SS2. One of the early miracles that the church experienced was that they were able to come up with the rent and deposit even though a majority of the members at the time were students with just a handful of young working adults. It was in this premises where the now-legendary story of church members sitting on newspapers on the floor is frequently recounted!

Ask any of the church pioneers, and they would likely tell you that there were two keys that sustained FGT – prayer and sacrifice. It was that combination of trusting in God and a willingness to sacrifice which saw the church through its early years. Although the church could not boast of having much to attract visitors, it nevertheless saw steady growth over the months and years as members faithfully did the simple act of inviting their friends, classmates and colleagues to join the meetings.

After five years, FGT outgrew her premises and moved again – this time to three combined shop-lots in Damansara Jaya. It was also around this time when Ps. Hong Seng answered the call to come out full-time to tend to the growing needs of the church. He was set into the office of Senior Pastor in 1986 by Arden Burrel, the then-Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in New South Wales. This marked  the beginning of exponential growth in the church as Ps. Hong Seng was able to fully devote his time to organizing and developing new programs that would nurture the church spiritually. The set up of Tung Ling Seminary and Evangelism Explosion (EE) in Malaysia, helped to train lay people to be effective in their gospel outreach. The result of increased training led by a full-time senior pastor was evident – church membership doubled within two years.

In 1988 during a visit to churches in the US, Ps Hong Seng and Gaik Sim caught the vision on church-planting. It was a vision that fitted in well with FGT’s own mission statement, “Go, therefore and make disciples.”

The senior pastor’s vision for church-planting began to take off when Ps. Goh Hock Huat and his wife, Cheng Yoke Poh started a church in Kuala Lumpur. A Kepong branch soon ensued. By 1990, both Ps. Hock Huat and Ps Voon Yuen Woh left the security of their relatively good – paying jobs to serve God as full-time pastors.

Ps. Yuen Woh relocated with his family to Seremban to start a church there. It was not easy, but it was a leap of faith and sacrifice both men and their families were willing to make to obey God’s call in their lives.

Over the next few years in the 1990s, churches were planted in Subang Jaya, Kota Kinabalu, Melaka, and Sri Damansara. On the home front, the Mandarin, Tamil, and Bahasa Malaysia language works soon emerged. The main church by then had moved its Sunday worship service to the main auditorium of Kolej Damansara Utama – the largest hall in PJ at the time in 1995.

Like its namesake, FGT has indeed been a tabernacle for God’s dwelling and dealing, and wherever the church was led to go, God was there.

After much prayer, God confirmed within the hearts of the leaders that it was time to build a church building of their own (below: FGT’s last Sunday service at KDU Hall)

They found a suitable plot of industrial land that was about to be developed in Taman Perindustrian UEP, Subang Jaya, and made the necessary plans to purchase. Naturally, the idea sounded a little ‘wild’ to the members. Relying on 300 people to raise RM1.3 million for the land and a further RM7 million for the building in the thick of the Asian financial crisis seemed like a monumental task. Up till then, it was quite simply the largest mountain ever the church had to scale.

Nonetheless, many caught the vision and sacrificed greatly – selling their homes, giving from their hard-earned savings and some even maxed out their credit cards to see the project through. Others did not see the need, and subsequently left the church. It is no secret that it was a trying season for FGT.

As prayer meetings continued to pick up steam, testimonies abound of how God had blessed those who had sacrificed. This helped strengthened the faith of all around, and the church pressed ahead with the project. After 7 years, in 2002, Wisma Eagles was completed debt-free in the face of an economic downturn.

Meanwhile, God also enabled FGT to acquire more land – to the right of the main church building as well as the three plots across of it, respectively nicknamed “Jericho” and project “Mission Possible”. Wisma Eagles (2) was completed in 2012 and houses the Eagles Dialysis Center and the Youth Center. It also has a restaurant, a badminton court and a physiotherapy centre (to be operational soon)

Today, we stand at the edge of yet another chapter of FGT history – adopting a missions-oriented and missional mindset for the future.

In church-planting, we have more than 100 daughter churches located in different countries – India, Philippines, the UK, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Nigeria, and there are plans to go into more nations. Meanwhile, our  outreach efforts in Malaysia continue as we seek to establish more branches in other parts of our beloved nation.

On the community front, the Eagles Dialysis Centre started operating in 2013. Its aim is to provide quality yet affordable dialysis treatment to needy patients.  At the same time, we rejoice that Caremart, our community provisional shop which subsidizes the price of basic necessities for those in need, has been operating since 2009.

There are more workers in FGT today than any point in our history. There are over 100 workers in more than 100 churches employed within the FGT group of churches. The labourers, however, are still too few for there remains much work to be done.

As FGT steps into her third decade flourishing in God’s amazing grace and faithfulness, we cannot just dwell on the glory of the past, but must look forward to the challenges of the future. In time, every daughter church will have her own story to tell. Many already have compelling testimonies of God working in their midst. Every church in the FGT family would experience a different journey, a unique history, but the same Father, and a common vision to go out to the ends of the earth to make more disciples.

As God continues to move, we can only pray and ask, “Lord, what’s next?”