Erdenekhuyag Vandan is the lead planter and pastor of Messenger Mongolian Christian Church in Glenview. His journey to faith and to Chicagoland started more than 30 years ago, with prayer to a God he didn’t know.
In 1994 when Eegi (as friends and family call him) was 25-years-old, his elder sister, Chimgee, put her faith in Jesus as her Lord and Savior. With that decision, Chimgee became the first Christ-follower in the countless generations of her family.
When she shared the news of her radical decision, Eegi who previously had been indifferent, now rejected Christ. He said he hated Christianity and wanted nothing to do with it. He saw Christianity as a religion of foreigners, not the religion of Mongolians. Although he was himself a nominal Buddhist, his family’s ancestral faith was Buddhism. In addition, the Christian faith was an affront to his lifelong Communist indoctrination. But God was not far from him.
About a year after his sister’s salvation, Eegi was at home when a couple of students came to visit with Chimgee. Eavesdropping, he heard them conversing about someone they called the “Lord of the Universe.”
The Lord of the Universe? Who’s that? Eegi was intrigued.
Over the next several years, whenever Eegi found himself in a jam, he would pray to this God, known only to him as “The Lord of the Universe.” When he prayed, everything seemed to work out. And so it went for the next 11 years.
The Messenger Church in Chicago is one of three congregations serving the Mongolian people. At nearly 20,000 today, the UUPG’s population has more than tripled in a decade.
By 2006, Eegi had immigrated to the United States, to Washington D.C where the Mongolian immigrant population was growing. It was there he met a Korean Christian couple who had previously served as missionaries in his native Mongolia. As Paul did when he found an altar to ‘the unknown god’ at the Areopagus in Athens, the couple explained to Eegi the identity of this God, the Lord of the Universe.
“His name is Jesus,” they told Eegi, “and he wants people to know him!” Eegi committed his life to Jesus Christ, and this missionary couple discipled him so that he matured in knowledge, affections, and faith. In 2008, Eegi began formal training for gospel ministry in Bible college.
By 2018, Chicago had North America’s largest Mongolian population of over 5,000 people. Knowing that Christ is the only hope for Mongolians, Eegi answered God’s call to make disciples and relocated from D.C. to a new city where his people had been concentrating. Eegi knew that a minuscule portion of the population believed in Jesus. Over 50% of Mongolians are Tibetan Buddhists; almost 40% identify as “nones.” Less than 1.5% report as Christians (including “Christian” cults).
In 2019, Eegi began his evangelistic efforts in Chicagoland. He gathered Mongolians in his apartment for weekly Bible studies, prayer, and worship. At the same time, after almost 13 years of God sending faithful witnesses her way, Eegi’s wife, Odnoo, surrendered her life to Jesus.
Unreached ‘opportunities’
Worship at The Messenger Church.
Today, there are approximately 18,000 to 20,000 Mongolians in Chicagoland—over 200% population increase in less than 10 years. However, there are only three Mongolian churches in the region, with combined weekly attendance of 200. Mongolians remain an unreached, unengaged people group (UUPG) with only 1% of the population engaged in a local church.
In 2024, by the grace of God and the support of their sending church, the Korean congregation in Des Plaines, Bethel SBC, Eegi led his team to plant a Southern Baptist church, the Messenger Mongolian Christian Church in Glenview.
Messenger Church became the first Mongolian SBC church in Illinois. It also became the only SBC church currently in Glenview, an ethnically diverse suburb of over 47,000 residents with the vast majority who do not know the Lord of the Universe. About 30-40 people gather for weekly worship and cell groups with more than half of these being saved there.
Eegi pleads with Illinois Baptists to join him in praying for a great spiritual awakening among Mongolians.
“I am grateful to God for the generous partnerships of Southern Baptists, for Chris Kim and Bethel SBC Church, the IBSA and Send Network teams, my wife and children, Missionaries Kwan Phil Nam and Mal Re Kim, and the Messenger Mongolian Christian Church,” Pastor Eegi shared. “All these remind me that the Lord of the Universe has not sent me out to labor alone for the sake of Jesus’ name, but with a supportive family.”
He asked for prayer that Mongolian families would experience Christ’s deliverance from idolatry, false teachers, superstitious fears, and alcohol and drug abuse. “Pray for disciples to be made,” he asked Illinois Baptists.
As a church planting catalyst serving in Chicagoland, I am blessed to call Pastor Erdenekhuyag Vandan my friend and co-laborer in the Kingdom. I’m overjoyed by the Lord’s faithfulness to build a Baptist church for Mongolians in Chicagoland.
In faith, we wait for Jesus to plant even more gospel-proclaiming churches for unreached immigrants such as the Rohingya, a refugee people fleeing persecution in Myanmar with up to 2,000 people now living in Rogers Park and West Ridge, for those from Central and South Asian countries, and for those who arrive from Muslim majority places.
John Yi is a NAMB Church Planting Catalyst serving in Illinois.