Pastor Tan was born and raised in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, in which he was almost killed at the age of 10. After his third year of college in 1979, he and his wife, Hanh, escaped from Vietnam on a wooden boat and then spent the next 11 months in 2 refugee camps in Indonesia. They were sponsored by the Canadian government and came to Toronto in 1980. They took ESL classes during the day, and he worked at an Italian restaurant in the evenings as a busboy, while Hanh was expecting their first daughter. He was also a worm-picker in the farms, picking worms throughout the nights.
He worked as a Youth Worker for 2 years at The Toronto Vietnamese Association in Toronto. After graduation from DeVry Institute of Technology, he worked as a Service Representative for the Nuclear Medicine Service Department of Siemens Electric Canada, 1986-1990.
After a summer mission trip in 1989 serving the children in a Vietnamese refugee camp in Hong Kong, he was called into the pastoral ministry. He attended the Ontario Theological Seminary (now Tyndale Seminary) in Toronto from 1990-1995. In 1992, Pastor Tan was appointed to Downsview Vietnamese Alliance Church, a new church start in North York, Ontario. He was ordained at his second church, Windsor Vietnamese Alliance Church in 1999 in Windsor, Ontario.
Pastor Tan served 2 Vietnamese United Methodist Ministries in Detroit and Lansing, Michigan; and as the Assistant Director of the Joint Vietnamese Ministry of both Detroit Conference and West Michigan Conference from 2003-2005.
He was first appointed as the Associate Pastor at Brentwood United Methodist Church in Denver, CO in 2005 to serve the Vietnamese Ministry. He became our Senior Pastor, 2010-2019, overseeing our three language ministries: English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Pastor Tan now serves part time as our Vietnamese Pastor.
Pastor Tan is a Vietnamese native, and a duo Canadian-American citizen. He has been in nearly 40 countries; including preaching and ministering in Canada, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines, U.S.A., Germany, France, Sweden, and Norway.
Pastor Tan served as the Chairperson of the Vietnamese National Caucus of the United Methodist Church, 2017-2019. He was also the Registrar for the Metropolitan Sub-District Committee on Ministry of the Mountain Sky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, 2017-2019.
His wife, Hanh, is a Bi-lingual Paraprofessional at College View Elementary School in Denver.
Their first daughter, Hannah, lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada with her husband Sam, who is an Assistant Pastor serving the English-speaking Chinese-Canadians in a Chinese church in Ottawa City, the capital of Canada. Tan and Hanh are proud grandparents of Keziah-Lee, who attends a French-immersion school during the week, Sunday School class in English at a Chinese church on Sundays, and picks up Vietnamese at home.
Their second daughter, Debbie, graduated from University of Denver and works at Great-West Financial in Denver Tech Center.
Rev. Tan Nguyen
Vietnamese Pastor
