New Life Fellowship Cambodia was planted by missionary Eric Dooley in 1994 and handed over to Pastor Chuck McCaul in 1997. Until 1999, when the war in Cambodia ended, no evangelistic activities were encouraged outside Phnom Penh. New Life in Phnom Penh initially grew through students and younger Cambodians. Many of the current leaders at the church are from this original movement. Pastor Jesse McCaul succeeded his father as Senior Pastor for the Phnom Penh church in 2004. Since 2018 New Life Fellowship has been on a very exciting journey with Ps Samdy Leang as Lead Pastor. Today, New Life Fellowship is a thriving life-giving church in Phnom Penh with over 150 church plants throughout Cambodia. We have the vision to change the nation in our generation. The vision of New Life Fellowship Cambodia is to plant New Testament Churches that will have a positive influence on every sector of Cambodian society. Each church will be a model and resource center for planting churches with the same philosophy and foundation throughout Cambodia and in other nations. Our strategies:

• Plant resource hub churches in provincial capitals.
• Empower and support regional and local New Life churches and leaders.
• Equip and train leaders, church planters, and pastors.
• Hold regular outreaches and evangelism in the provinces.
• Conduct Regular Field Visits.

In addition, New Life Fellowship of Churches’ focus will be a continual push to plant new churches among the 150 existing churches and provide leadership, pastoral, and life-skills training through the School of Leaders, a monthly intensive Bible training school for provincial pastors and leaders. The Phnom Penh-based leaders have also been commissioned to equip and empower regional coordinators.

City Churches

Most village churches will be limited in the number of people they reach and the ministries they provide.  Most village churches’ vision is limited to their location and is limited by the leadership level of their pastor.  A City Church is larger and has the potential to have more influence.  The strategy for the City Churches is to be a “hub” and resource for the village churches in its area.

New Life Fellowship of Churches is a fellowship of more than 150 churches currently in Cambodia.  We are a family of churches and relate to one another as a family.  We have Apostolic Leaders and Teams who work among our self-governing local churches.  We have been in Cambodia since 1994.  Our focus is evangelism, discipleship, leadership training, releasing into ministry, and church planting.

Village churches are pastored by bi-vocational pastors.  The pastor has land, usually a farm or rice field, and family nearby.  However, a city church is like starting up a business.  The pastor and his family usually move to the city and have no land, house, or farm.  We expect our city church pastors to eventually be supported by the church or to have a second job to provide income for their families.  However, in city churches, our target is youth and young adults who have very limited finances.

Like any business, the city church will take a few years to be self-supporting.  One of the biggest needs for self-support will be land and a building.  If a city church must continue to rent facilities it remains unsustainable.  Because the congregations of city churches are initially a long way off from being able to purchase their own land and building,  funds will be needed to launch each city church– primarily be used to cover rent & salaries for staff.

 Although the local church receives offerings from their church members, in the beginning, the offering is not enough to support the church ministries and staff.  It’s been our experience that all of our city churches grow, and as we do the work of the ministry the Lord adds.  Finances are initially needed for staff and ministry materials and activities.

The annual supplemental need of each existing City Church is $ 15,000.00 USD/year.   

Outreaches and Crusades

For Crusades, we bring great New Life Fellowship evangelists and volunteers to conduct evangelistic events in villages outside the capital city, Phnom Penh.   Crusades allow us to share the gospel with thousands of non-believing Cambodians in multiple locations across the country.

About 10 million Cambodians are rural residents and seldom travel to the capital city. Therefore, traveling artists performing secular concerts in rural areas are very popular. They attract hundreds, if not thousands, of villagers excited to see famous Cambodians perform.  New Life Fellowship has a great opportunity to conduct mass evangelistic concerts where we can attract local villagers with Christian dramas, the gospel message, games for kids, snacks, and food.   Our Crusades are fun and powerful events. They include praise and worship songs, and the presence of God is obvious. Many lives are transformed. Crusades also help empower local churches to increase their influence, add more converts to their congregations, and help them build relationships with the local villagers.

During our evangelism, we see many demon-possessed people set free, people receive the healing power of Jesus Christ, and love, hope, and salvation are offered to the lost. We are honored to travel as teams to bring the eternal gifts Cambodians need. We expect that there will be at least three hundred villagers coming to listen each night of the Crusade.  We project that at least 10% – 20% will give their lives to the Lord.

Each Crusade costs an average of $ 2,500 USD. 

School of Church Planters

School of Church Planters helps every pastor and leader develop their capacity to manage the church, reach their top potential, and increase the pastor/leader’s living standard by increasing their daily income. The project provides training about church leadership, good relationship with God, as well as Church and family management. Besides the training, we also provide some financial resources to start or improve their business. Our schools are conducted every two months as part of a 2-year program.

Project Goal:

1. Provide pastors and leaders with the capacity to lead, manage, and grow the church.

2. Provide them with the experience of church organization.

3. Provide them with life skills, knowledge, and experience to start a family business and to get experience for the future needs of the church

4. Provide pastors’ or leaders’ families with financial resources to improve or start a small business.

The project will accomplish three things:

First – Provide knowledge through training

Second – Provide financial support for small businesses.

Third – Evaluate and counsel through the process in order to grow.

Total Annual cost of the project is $15,000.00 USD/ a year 

School of Leaders

School of Leaders is a monthly Bible training school for provincial and village pastors and leaders.

We gather together once a month to learn, discuss and apply a chosen subject. The subjects that we teach are in three different categories: Bible, Practical Christian Living and Leadership Skills. The format that we use is a combination of teaching, discussion and application.

The goal of the School of Leaders is to help each leader to grow in their understanding of God and His ways and to give them the tools they need to lead their churches.  A secondary goal is to establish a ‘community’ of leaders. Our desire is that each of these leaders will have strong relationships with the other leaders and they can be a source of help and strength to each other.

Provincial Children Teachers

We are committed to training and empowering provincial children ministers to be more effective with their ministries in their own communities.

Due to the increasing number of children in provincial churches, and their open hearts to the gospel of Jesus, we want to help children ministers to be well-equipped and able to design meaningful but fun programs to reach out to children for the Kingdom of God.

Research tells us that 85% of children accept salvation from age 4-14 years old.  Children are more likely to respond to the message of salvation than other age ranges. We have about four thousand children in the provincial children’s ministry of New Life Fellowship. Many of them are saved,  disciples, and trained to be leaders.  God is opening a big door for children’s ministry in Cambodia. The field of children is a big harvest.

Fifteen provinces in Cambodia have a New Life Fellowship church in them.  We want to conduct regular training for children’s teachers and some teacher training camps.

Total Annual cost of the project is $ 10,000.00 USD/ a year

Provincial Church Worship Development

Worship is one way that people come closer to God. We thank God we have a great worship team in Phnom Penh. However, we want to train others in worship and provide necessary resources (such as musical instruments and equipment that are old and less functional) to other youth leaders in our village churches.

We want to teach youth worship leaders how to enhance the worship environment in their church service so that their church members can be touched by God through their worship. 

Most of our project costs will be for conducting worship leader training, purchasing musical equipment, and transportation to far-away villages. In addition, we also plan to meet with worship leaders regularly to train them and teach them how to disciple other potential youth in their churches and communities.

The total annual cost of the project is $ 10,000.00 USD/ year