Attending a Church Service in Da Nang, Vietnam

No matter where we travel to around the world, one thing we always remember to do is to find a church and attend the service there on Sunday.

We were visiting Da Nang, Vietname and off course we did the same thing. We learned from visiting the various places in Vietnam that there used to be quite a number of catholic churches in the country. But after the fall of Saigon in 1975, the new government viewed the Catholic Church, like all organized religions, with deep suspicion. It was seen as a potentially counter-revoluntionary institution with deep ties to the fromer colonial power ( France) and the defeated South Vietnamese regime. Therefore, the government's primary goal focused on the nationalization of the church property and the repurposing of buildings which meant many of these confiscated buildings were then used for secular purposes.

When we started looking for a church, it was not difficult for us to find an English church where we could go and attend the Sunday Worship. We went to a church close to where we were for our first English church service in Vietnam. Since we were leaving Da Nang the same afternoon, we had our lugguage with us. The church lady who welcome us to the church kindly allowed us to bring our lugguage in and kept them at the back of the church.

Surprisingly, ther Sunday Service was so well attended that the church had to put out extra chairs along the aisles in order to accommodate more people. It was nice to see God's house was full!

The church service started with some nice singing, a song I knew very well, God's mercy ... Then followed by a message about God's people's standing still. It was a very good message which I still remember quite well afterwards.

While Ancestor Worship is the most wide spread belief in Vietnam followed by Buddhism - the largest organized religion in Vitename with about 10 - 12% of the population while Catholicism is the second largest organized religion, with about 5.3 to 6 million folowers, around 7% of the population and the smaller communities of Protestants, approixmately 650,000 believers. We were delighted to learn of the religious freedom exisiting in a communist country like Vietnam. This gives us hope that more people in Vietnam and beyond will be able to learn more about Jesus and God's love and His plan for eternal salvation! RT, Da Nang, Vietnam, 2026