Pastor & Church Council
Mục Sư Quản Nhiệm & Ban Chấp Hành
Pastor
Rev. Charles Tran was born in Vietnam, the son of a South Vietnamese military officer. Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, he attempted several times to escape but was not successful until April of 1980, when he reached a refugee camp in Thailand. While he had attended a Roman Catholic school in his youth, he was not baptized until the late 1980s in California. He studied at California State University in Long Beach in the early 1980s, and for 14 years worked in the field of electrical engineering.
In 2008, Charles experienced a strong call to mission, notably among refugee people in that region of the world where he had grown up. “The Lord saved me and blessed me,” he says of his faith journey, “and I want to share the gospel with others. This is a vision that the Lord has given to me.” Charles was a voluntary missionary to Malaysia and commissioned by General Board of the Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church (GBGM) in 2009 with the passion of sending a message of love to migrant workers through the various ministries.
In 2013, after six years of serving as a GBGM’s missionary in Southeast Asia, this passion led Charles to return to the USA to re-plant a mission church called The Vietnamese Fellowship United Methodist Church in San Jose. Then with his three-year leadership, this fellowship congregation became a chartered church and was named the Peace United Methodist Church in 2016.
Currently, he is serving as senior pastor of the Peace United Methodist Church, and a member of the Ethnic Ministry and Outreach Conference Committee in the California-Nevada Annual Conference.
During his 19 years serving in the United Methodist Church, he also served as an Executive Board’s member of the Vietnamese National Caucus of the United Methodist Church for ten years in various positions.
