Church Planting Lessons from Jackie Pulinger (Part 1)

Perhaps the most impactful book I’ve read outside of the Bible is Chasing the Dragon, by Jackie Pullinger. Originally from England, 22-year old Pullinger boarded a ship from France to Japan and prayed about where to get off. God had called her to be a missionary. But, equipped only with a degree in oboe, she was rejected from every missionary society. So, she went alone.

Aboard the ship, the Holy Spirit led her to Hong Kong. Now, she’s been there for the past 50 years, saving souls out of drug addiction, sex slavery, poverty, and homelessness. Her organization, St. Stephen’s Society, has expanded to other countries in Asia, especially in the 10/40 window. But how did this happen? How did an ordinary young woman with no funding end up kick-starting a revival in Asia?

At the beginning, one new convert—whose home was an opium den—came to live with Pullinger. Before long, she was renting larger and larger properties to accommodate men and women of all ages who were leaving behind lives of addiction and crime and starting new lives in Jesus. In the past 50 years, she has had homes at over 270 addresses. Her work was so applauded that the government donated land to her. She used it to build an impressive home that includes a gym and swimming pool.

Over this three part series, I will share 7 things I learned from Jackie Pullinger about church planting.

1. When Jackie Pullinger started the church, she wasn’t thinking about “church planting.”

This is perhaps the most striking thing about her book. Nowhere does Ms. Pullinger say that she went to Hong Kong to start a church. Instead, she describes great feelings of compassion for the suffering and the poor. This is how she describes her call to missions:

I went to pray in a tiny, peaceful village…There, I saw a vision of a woman—holding out her arms beseechingly as on a refugee poster…Then words moved past like a television credit. “What can you give us?”

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