of the Evangelize China Fellowship established the Southeast Bible Seminary in Malang, East Java in 1952, and Tong graduated from it in 1961, establishing the church in 1989 following many years of preaching and evangelism.
Later in 1984 turned to Jakarta to uphold the Spirit of Reformed and Evangelical theology. Two years later in 1986 he was the co-founder of Reformed Evangelical School of Theology in Jakarta and Surabaya, and library and printing station that provides Christian Books.
In 1989 Tong founded the Institute of Reformed Evangelical Indonesia the LRII, which become Gereja Reformed Injili Indonesia.
1991 - 2007 Tong serves as Rector in the Reformed Evangelical Divinity School in indonesia
In 1996 Stephen Tong become the chairman of the church Synod and in 1998 heserved as a Rector in The Reformed Institute in Indonesia
Stephen Tong founded the Reformed Evangelical Church of Indonesia in 1989 to establish a Reformed theology-based church and congregations who are committed to evangelism. The GRII is headquartered in the Reformed Millennium Center, in Sawah Besar, Jakarta, where it has its largest church, the Messiah Cathedral. It has congregations in other major cities in Indonesia, as well as in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Australia, China, Taiwan, Germany and the USA.
Stephen Tong is currently the Head of Synod of the Reformed Evangelical Church of Indonesia. The Reformed Evangelical Church of Indonesia and its affiliated institutions have female evangelists, lecturers, and church council members. They are allowed to preach and assume authoritative roles, although they are not ordained.
STEMI lead by Preacher Stephen Tong as movement to reach international community in Christ.
Recent issues
Stephen Tong has preached the Gospel to 1,5 million Indonesians in 2012. According to the International Evangelism Fellowship's adaptation of the press release by the Indonesian Evangelical Reformed Church till November 2012 the Reformed Evangelical Church's sermons have reached 1,5 millions. 700 preaching assemblies that was led by Stephen Tong were held. In October 200,000 people were able to hear the Gospel. The church reaped great evangelisation work in 2012. Indonesia is populated by about 250 million people, in which the majority are muslims. Thus, evangelisation there is a long process. As Pastor Tong noted, if the GRII preaches to 1 million people per year it would take 218 years for all Indonesians to hear the Gospel. Therefore, he urged the church to not be proud of its accomplishments, because there is great distance towards the evangelisation of the entire country. In a four-days evangelistic outreach in December 2012 Tong preached in the Messiah Cathedral in Jakarta to 30,000 attenders. On December 28, 2019 at the National Reformed Evangelical Convention, an annually held convention in Indonesia, Pastor Tong brought up an issue that the church was currently experiencing: a crisis of male servants to serve as sunday school teachers and a vacant of fatherly authority in children's life because Sunday school teachers are predominantly women. He called for the young generation, especially men, to surrender themselves as servants of God to serve as sunday school teachers in their respective churches.
Worship center
In 2008, a new building for the Reformed Evangelical Church in Jakarta called Reformed Millennium Center of Indonesia, which includes The Messiah Cathedral, was finished. It took 16 years to persuade the Indonesian government to issue a permit to build the church. The church building was personally designed by Tong himself. It is one of the largest Chinese Christian evangelical church facilities in the world, with of space. In the Calvin auditorium, concerts were held in the opening of the Cathedral in 2008. The building also includes a theological seminary, STT Reformed Injili Internasional, founded by the Synod of Reformed Evangelical Church of Indonesia in cooperation with Reformed Institute for Christianity and the 21st Century. The seminary has a strong relation with Westminster Theological Seminary.
