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Meet Our Pastor

Pastor Mitchell Herring

Mitchell Robert Herring was born into a Jewish family and grew up one block from the Atlantic Ocean in a small coastal town just south of Atlantic City, NJ. Although his family was not religious, he did go to Hebrew School and was a Bar Mitzvah at age 13.

He remembers that when as a small child, his father would take him and his younger brother to visit their grandparents every Sunday morning, they would pass a church with a huge sign reading, "Christ died for our sins." Even then he often wondered what that meant. Later while a student at Rutgers University he read the Gospels for himself, and was deeply moved by the purity and holiness of Christ and by His promise, "…and lo, I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world." Believing the Bible’s declaration that it was his sin that separated him from the holy and eternal God, and that it was Christ who paid the price for his sin by His death on the cross, he came to Christ as his Savior and Lord in 1974.

Pastor Herring came to know many Chinese friends at Rutgers, and took his first Chinese course as an elective in fall of 1972. His great interest led him to continue in Chinese studies, and after coming to Christ he was introduced to and became involved with the Chinese Student Bible Study Group on the Rutgers Campus.

Upon the conviction of the Lord’s call into full-time ministry, in 1982 he entered China Evangelical Seminary in Taipei, Taiwan as the only American student in a school of over 100 Chinese students. After receiving a Master of Divinity degree in 1985, he served for over a year in a church in Hong Kong, and then returned to the United States where he served in Chinese churches in Los Angeles, Chicago, and here in Rochester. In Chicago he earned a Master of Theology Degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. During the past few years Pastor Herring served as a 9th grade Earth Science teacher in a Christian School as well as in full-time Christian radio ministry in the New York City area. During the summer of 2006 Pastor Herring returned to Rochester with his family to rejoin the ministry of Rochester Chinese Christian Church. He is married to Lily Hsu from Taipei, Taiwan, and they have one son, Daniel.


Pastor Tang's resignation announcement and letter of encouragement (Oct. 22, 2006):
English translation | Chinese translation