Our class on Chinese house church history is moving into the eighth session. Last time we covered the period between 2000 and 2010. Could someone help us recall the theme of those ten years? What did we talk about? I know it’s been a few weeks since the last session. In the last session we talked about the rise of the urban churches over the course of those ten years as the center of the Chinese church moved from rural areas into urban centers. The rise of urban churches was one characteristic of those ten years. One further distinction of that period was that urban churches appeared that had moved out of residential homes and established independent congregations in the heart of the cities.
Now let’s look at the eight years from 2010 until now. We will see that the same two things have continued, what we call the rise and decline of the gospel movement. Many traditional churches in rural areas have actually continued to decline with continued urbanization, waves of secularization, materialistic advances in society, and changes in the social environment. All of the regions where traditional house churches were located generally began to decline.
In the twelve years from 2006 until now, with the rise and decline of the gospel movement, another movement arose—the Christian education movement. In 2006 the first Christian school was founded within the Chinese house church.
If we trace things back further, in the 1980s, house churches in Wenzhou established children’s Sunday schools while under pressure. This move was a tremendous victory for Christian education at that time. In the new wave of persecutions that began last September, one important measure was the forbidding of minors under the age of eighteen to enter a church and attend worship. Parents are not allowed to bring their children to the church. This rule has been executed in many places. Yet in the 1980s, churches in Wenzhou established their Sunday schools while under pressure.
However, children’s Sunday schools were not established within churches in Henan, Anhui, or other traditional house churches regions, or at least not with the same maturity and strength as in Wenzhou. Therefore, children’s Sunday schools were not well established except in the Wenzhou churches. One factor was that churches in Wenzhou had a very good foundation, as Wenzhou was called the “Chinese Jerusalem”. At that time in the 1980s, the whole city and its suburbs were already economically developed. During the Reform and Opening in China, products made in Wenzhou were famous. With its economic development, Wenzhou had virtually achieved urban-rural integration throughout the region and a very high level of urbanization as well. Therefore, its urban churches were well connected with churches in rural areas. And one important strategy was the outstanding children’s Sunday school that they established.
Therefore, by the 1990s and even into the 21st century, we witnessed the coming of a generation of young preachers from Wenzhou. There is a whole generation of young preachers from Wenzhou. Around 2000, I visited Wenzhou and saw that churches there were sending their children abroad for theological education. Therefore, as more of their children came back from overseas seminaries and even more from domestic seminaries, there were more and more young preachers in Wenzhou who grew up in Sunday schools. In contrast with other regions of rural church revivals, churches in Wenzhou did well in this aspect. Therefore, while there are also signs of decline in churches, in general, we can conclude that Wenzhou churches have not lost the next generation. There are a generation of young preachers in their thirties and even in their twenties. Through the forty years of revival, churches in Wenzhou have successfully handed the burden of the gospel movement to a well-established next generation.
Later, this Sunday school system was developed into theological education in the form of theological seminaries and training sessions throughout the Wenzhou region. No one knows the exact number of them, but some were short term and were discontinued. In 2012 or 2013, a seminary in Wenzhou invited me to teach, but the local government would not allow me to teach there and they shut down the seminary. Many seminaries there were founded and then closed down, but Wenzhou still hosts the most seminaries in China. This is very important because it raises up young preachers.
However, churches in Henan and Anhui have basically lost their next generation. Of course, we do not mean that they have lost all of them, nor did we mean that churches in Wenzhou have not lost any of them. But the general trend is that without the establishment of a mature Sunday school system, the churches could not keep the next generation in Christ through the storms of the time.
By 2006, many churches began to see the inadequacy of Sunday schools. A child studies for two hours at church on Sunday and then is brainwashed at public schools for five days. That is not enough for the church to sustain the next generation from being lost. Therefore, in 2006, the first Christian school founded by a house church began in Harbin. We now have a Chinese Christian Education Alliance (ACE) with over one-hundred member schools. I am not sure about the number of our Covenant Reformed Academy, but the number for the school in Harbin was 001, the first one in China. This is how Christian schools have developed in the past decade since 2006. By 2010, there still were not many of them. While there were some that followed the ACE pattern, Christian schools mostly appeared after 2010. Furthermore, the Christian education movement is still developing and today has still not reached a significant scale. Over the past couple of years, churches in Wenzhou saw the necessity to turn Sunday schools into daily schools. Therefore, they just started their Christian education movement.
Following that, there was one other important movement in Chinese house church education, which I will leave for the next session as a special topic. That is the Reformed and Presbyterian church movement. This has been a monumental movement over the past ten years. From a theological perspective, it involves the spread of the Reformed faith in the Chinese church.
Of course, the Reformed faith was spread among the Chinese house churches prior to 2010. However, it is safe to say that before 2010, the spread of the Reformed faith only involved a theological thought movement throughout mainland China, overseas Chinese churches, and the global Chinese world. This movement was led mainly by the aspirations and ministry of Dr. Stephen Tong alongside other overseas pastors and teachers of Reformed churches for the purpose of building a thought movement involving theological education and theological circulation. Yet, the Reformed faith has only become a church movement in mainland China. In other parts of the Chinese world, from Taiwan, to Hong Kong, to North America, it remains more of a circulation of Reformed theology than a church movement.
We can take the year 2010 as a rough benchmark, or we can say that in the past ten years, the Reformed faith has developed from a theological movement to a church movement. This change is a very important thing that has happened over the past ten years. It is also a prominent phenomenon that emerged during the turn to the cities of the house church center and the transition and establishment of rising urban churches. While not all churches are Reformed churches, the influence of Reformed theology has gradually surpassed the influence of the Pentecostal Movement over the past ten years.
It is safe to say that beginning with the Henan churches in the 1980s to the 1990s and then to the beginning of the 2000s, the Pentecostal Movement had tremendous influence on the Chinese house churches. Even today, its influence is still significant. However, since 2000 and especially in the past ten years, I have witnessed God do an amazing thing. He used the propagation of Reformed churches and Reformed theology to stop the spread of the Pentecostal Movement in China so that the Pentecostal Movement never swept over the whole of the Chinese house church. Additionally, during the past ten years, many churches that had initially been influenced by Pentecostalism have begun to be influenced by Reformed theology. This has been a very critical change.
One other change involves the rise of urban congregations. The rise of these congregations came about as believers who had come into contact with each other and shared a similar faith gathered together and had to leave their residences. A large residential home could host seventy to eighty people, a small one twenty to thirty people. There is no way a living room could host two hundred people. I do know one of the teachers here who has a living room that could host one hundred people, which is probably the limit for a residential home. Therefore urban churches began to leave residential homes and began to rent office spaces or purchase buildings. This was one of the most important changes in the past ten years.
Last session, we discussed the great earthquake in 2008, the suppression of the rising urban churches in 2009, and the Lausanne Incident in 2010. These three events were fastened together as one big turning point. In 2009, three churches were pressured: Shouwang Church in Beijing, Wanbang Church in Shanghai, and our Early Rain Church in Chengdu. Among the traditional rural churches, Golden Lampstand Church in Linfen, Shanxi Province, was suppressed. From these incidents, Golden Lampstand Church was under the most severe pressure, as some members of the congregation were imprisoned. Wanbang Church was broken into smaller congregations. Since April 2011, pastor Jin Tianming of Shouwang Church has been under house arrest, now for seven years and four months. Shouwang Church and the house arrest of pastor Jin Tianming essentially represent house church history over the past eight years from 2010 to 2018. However, at the same time, from one perspective, this suppression of Shouwang Church as the representative of (the video card runs out of memory at this point and there is a gap)
We previously mentioned that between 2000 and 2010, there was also a significant change in theology, namely, the transition of the house churches as a whole from fundamentalism to evangelicalism. Afterwards, we can see that after 2010, among the evangelical churches the Reformed and Presbyterian church movement has played an increasingly important role in the transition to evangelicalism.
Over the past ten years, pastor Jin Tianming of Shouwang Church has become a symbol of the Chinese house churches. On the one hand, he was persecuted and has spent seven years under house arrest along with other pastors and elders of his church, some of whom have been let out in the past few years and can leave their homes. On the other hand, even with the seven and a half years of house arrest, the government still has not been able to completely strike down this church. From another point of view, this was a great win for the church. The government had no way to close it down. Shouldn’t the government be able to do whatever it wants?
From 2008 until now, there has been a great social transition. Charter 08 of 2008 represented a gathering of domestic liberal intellectuals and non-government forces from the past twenty years. They signed Charter 08 as a proposal to Chinese society and the Chinese government for a future free and democratic China. Afterwards, Liu Xiaobo, the leader of Charter 08, was arrested and then awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. This represented a reversal back to authoritarianism. The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Liu Xiaobo marks a huge turning point for China.
Then Xi came into office. Right before that, one of the most critical turning points in the past decade took place in our city, Chengdu. Do you know what that was? You should remember this. It was the Wang Lijun Incident, which broke the veil of the oligarchy in China. The oligarchy set up by the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP had been formed since the end of the 20th century. In fact, both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao (b. 1942) were weak as CCP General Secretaries and could not qualify as dictators. Basically each member of the Standing Committee was extremely powerful, influential, came from a wealthy Family, and was a shareholder in the country. No matter whether there were seven or nine members of the Standing Committee, all of them were major shareholders and none of them could get rid of another. Therefore, they formed an oligarchy.
However, since the Wang Lijun Incident, we have seen a new trend. Bo Xilai wanted to assume more power and was eventually taken down. Afterwards, Xi Jinping started a great purge, which for all intents and purposes led to the end of the oligarchy formed by the members of the Standing Committee and resulted in the attribution of all of the powers of the party, government, and military forces to one person. This change also includes the amending of the Constitution this year which included the removal of term limits for the president. The “Chairman of China” can be translated in English as the President. I am not sure when the title was changed, as the person in this position used to be called Chairman. I have no idea when it changed to President. In the Chinese Constitution, the Chairman of China was a figurehead, a symbolic position with no real political power, whereas the premier was the real head of government. However, since Xi came into office, the Chairman has become the real head of government. The Chairman is now a super-president that has collected all powers to himself.
Therefore, in 2010, Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2011 pastor Jin Tianming was placed under house arrest, and then in the few years following, Xi purged several high-ranking officials. He laid the foundation for authoritarianism and centralized national power. Then, it took him seven or eight more years to purge the fledgling non-government forces which had been fostered during the twenty years of economic reform, along with all of the liberal intellectuals. On July 7th, 2015, the government arrested a large number of human rights lawyers. Therefore, as of today, there are no independent non-government organizations except the church, no independent community of intellectuals, and no semblance of an independent media that can speak freely. First, the Southern Media Corporation was completely suppressed. Then, the NGOs were completely suppressed. Then, the community of human rights lawyers was completely suppressed. Then, Xu Zhiyong (b. 1973) and the New Citizen’s Movement was completely suppressed. That whole generation of liberal intellectuals were completely suppressed. Basically every symbolic person or organization has been annihilated over the last ten years with the lone exception of the church.
In reality, another change in the past ten years is the stall of economic growth. Since 2000, there has been much discussion about “the advance of state enterprises and the retreat of private sectors”, meaning that the market will be monopolized by state capital. Of course, you still can make money, but you cannot make too much money if you are not among the privileged. If you want to make more money, you must become one of the privileged. Economically, the whole country follows the pattern of the Self-Strengthening Movement by the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century, which was characterized by state enterprises under government control. Therefore, since 2000 we have been basically reversing the pathway of the previous economic reform and building up national capitalism with government-controlled state enterprises.
I knew a business owner, and I am not sure whether I have shared his story before. This Christian business owner told me, “In China, I have to hold to the principle that I can not earn an annual profit that surpasses fifty million yuan and I will not take any civil service position higher than a division-head level. Why? Because my company’s annual profit is close to fifty million. If I wanted to earn more, or if we wanted to sign bigger contracts, I have to get close to certain officials and to the government system.”
That is to say, after China’s forty years of economic reform, the current situation is that you could rent a booth at the wholesale market or open an online shop as a business owner and make up to ten to twenty million yuan a year. It is still possible for you to achieve this without dealing with the CCP, without associating with the system, or without becoming one of the privileged. As long as you work hard, you are capable, and you have opportunities, you can earn that much. However, in the Chinese market, if you are not one of the privileged, you should not dream of deals in the billions, tens of billions, or hundreds of billions, because these must all be divided among the members of the Standing Committee, by the party’s crown princes, and by anyone else seeking their protection. This is the situation of the Chinese economy. Therefore, politically, the country has highly re-centralized.
So, we should observe the church in this process, the church’s decline on one side and the church’s growth on the other side.
Over the past ten years, especially in the past five years, a significant change has come about in Chinese society: the movement to flee China. This movement was trendy, but now it has become more conspicuous. As people say, the People’s Congress is filled with foreigners. Before, government officials sent all of their children abroad. Now, it is not only officials, but anyone who is wealthy and feels unsafe in China who moves abroad. Even the intellectuals have begun to move abroad. There is an outflow of elites and a movement to flee from China as an increasing number of people lose hope in the country and in the future of society apart from their personal future. On the other hand, this movement prepares willing hearts for the gospel. Therefore, since China’s Reform and Opening, human hearts have never been as prepared by God for the gospel as they have over the past seven years. This is the best time, this is also the worst time.
So what is this? First, the previous gospel movement is in fact coming to an end. The previous generation of house churches took the way of the cross. Under those circumstances, where the church was completely separated from society, they could not, nor were they allowed or able to care about society. As they held to fundamentalist theology, they were not concerned about society, but would rather focus on sharing the gospel. Then, to this day, as we face the waves of societal change, they have discovered that while they did not care about society, their children have been lost to society because this world has more influence on their children than the gospel does.
So what is the Threefold Vision about? The Christianization of Chinese culture and the kingdomization of the Chinese church are related to the evangelization of the Chinese people. If you cannot understand contemporary society from a gospel perspective and withstand the waves of the world, of course you yourself can still be strong and hold on to the faith. But in this unpredictable modern or postmodern society, your fundamentalist faith will not help you keep a whole congregation, especially the younger generations of the church, holding to a complete and firm faith. Therefore, with the development of Reformed theology and a church planting and preaching movement, the year 2010 witnessed the beginning of the transition of the persecuted Chinese urban churches from reactive church planting to proactive church planting.
In June 2010, seventeen Chinese house church pastors and preachers, myself included, visited the U.S. and studied at Pastor Timothy Keller’s Redeemer Church in New York. The group included Pastor Jin Tianming of Shouwang Church, Pastor Chen, the leader of the Fuyang team of Anhui province, Pastor Zhang Heng, leader of the China Gospel Fellowship from the Fangcheng team of Henan province, a preacher from Xunsiding Church in Xiamen, a traditional house church, Pastor Gao Zhen of Beijing Disciples Church, and other pastors and preachers. We studied church planting in an urban setting. At that time, pastor Gao Zhen said: “We have always been planting churches. Whenever the government persecutes us, we plant churches. Whenever our congregation grows to over fifty people, we plant another church. Whenever the government or the police visits us, we immediately plant another church.” This was the model of an evangelical church: once we are attacked by the government, as long as our size exceeds forty or fifty, we immediately split into groups and open another home for gathering. Therefore, at that time, Gao Zhen’s church had over thirty gathering places, each anywhere between twenty to fifty people. So, this is reactive church planting, where churches are separated by persecution. Furthermore, the external environment would not allow for a larger size gathering, and the extent of the pressure grew with the size of the congregation.
Over the past eight years, many churches followed this model of reactive church planting. Yet, to a large extent, especially for churches in first and second tier cities, this model was discarded and churches there began to actively go through a full procedure to plant churches: establish the church, elect elders, ordain pastors, establish a membership system, set up public worship, establish a discipleship system in the local congregation, and then actively plant another church from the mature one. We can say that in cities of China today, for a single congregation, apart from the many churches that gather at multiple sites, for a single congregation to break the limit on the venue size, it has to break the limit set by government policy, and thus break the limits set on the relationship between the church and society. Otherwise, the church has to separate into multiple sites.
Therefore, my guess, which may not be accurate, is that there are about one hundred churches in the whole country that worship at one site with two hundred to one thousand people in attendance. There may be more churches like this, but the number certainly does not exceed two hundred.
Since they were announced last September, the execution of the new Regulations on Religious Affairs starting this past February seems to have made a splash all over the country. It seems that every week you hear bad news: some churches were attacked, some churches were visited by the police, some churches’ Spring Festival Couplets were torn down, some churches’ crosses were replaced by an image of Xi Jinping, some churches were forced to hang the national flag, and so on and so forth. You hear such news every week, right? Basically this is a rising, nationwide movement, the social background for another persecution movement, and a trend of the re-centralization of the Chinese society that I just mentioned.
The persecution movement against the church started in 2014. What was one of the important incidents of that year? The destruction of the crosses. On April 28th, 2014, Sanjiang Church in Wenzhou was demolished, which is now called the Wenzhou Incident. In fact, since the Reform and Opening, there had not been such large scale movement of persecution against the church. Then from 2014 to 2015, crosses in one thousand seven hundred churches in Zhejiang province were destroyed. Afterwards, this sort of destruction of crosses also took place in Henan. This movement of destroying the crosses was the predecessor to the new Regulations on Religious Affairs and served as a test case for its release.
As I just mentioned in my sermon, to whom is Xia Baolong (b. 1952) loyal? Xia Baolong belongs to Xi’s circle and therefore he can do things like the Wenzhou Incident. Therefore, he did this in Zhejiang as a test case for two years. During those two years people kept releasing messages that “the central government will change religious policy but this does not mean the persecution of the church. Xi Jinping will give us religious freedom as the policy changes. It’s great news that China will have an open policy toward religion”. I suppose we have seen this “good news” over the past few years. Usually this kind of news would come from a certain few people who will remain nameless. In the future, you will keep hearing more “good news”.
So what is this about? From 2010 to 2018 and particularly over the past few years with the centralization that has occurred since Xi came into office, there has been a new TSPM movement against the church. The destruction of the crosses by the new TSPM and local governments punished the churches in Zhejiang province where churches are the best-developed in China and served as a warning to churches all over China. And Xia Baolong, provincial party secretary of Zhejiang, happened to be Xi’s attendant when Xi was provincial party secretary of Zhejiang. Therefore, it was natural for the government to punish churches in Zhejiang as a test for the full-scale execution of the new TSPM with the release of the new Regulations of Religious Affairs.
In this process there is also the United Front Works. When the TSPM came out in the 1950s, there were only eight hundred thousand to one million Christians. Today there are seventy to eighty million Christians. The government has to draw some of them to its side before it can strike down others. This has been the model for the CCP when carrying out any movement: it draws some to its side, threaten some others, and arrests the remainder, and thus solves its problems.
Therefore, one year after the destruction of the crosses, in 2015 there came the so-called “good news” that the CCP had begun to actively communicate with house churches through a few churches in Beijing. We discussed that the disaster relief efforts in 2008 caused the churches to emerge from the underground and enabled most house church leaders to connect with each other. Then, in 2010, in the attempt for Chinese house church leaders from both urban and rural churches to be able attend the Lausanne Congress, a community of a few hundred people gradually formed. After the persecution of those leaders, if the government wanted to connect with house churches, it had to deal with this system.
In fact, in its pursuit of what it desires to control, the government always looks for the head. In 1989, when the students were demonstrating on Tiananmen Square, the most formidable thing for the government to do would be to directly face a million people and try to persuade each of them. It would be a nightmare trying to persuade people from different groups. Therefore, under those circumstances, the transaction cost would be very high, and it would literally be impossible to negotiate. Therefore, the government would only talk to the ten leaders from the Beijing Students’ Autonomous Federation who were connected to all the other students.
Therefore, the government needed to find church leaders. Without finding the leaders, it could not find and talk to all the Chinese house churches. Therefore, the government found the groups of leaders formed by the attempt to attend the Lausanne Congress in 2010. The government found some of them in Beijing and offered an olive branch. In 2015 the CCP established the National Security Commission with Xi Jinping as its chairman. Then, the National Security Commission invited around twenty representatives of the Chinese house churches for a banquet and discussion at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.
From Chengdu, pastor Peng Qiang and I were also invited. We had a discussion and felt that churches in the north seemed to be more enthusiastic about the event while we pastors in the south were not really concerned about it. Also, it is a long way to travel from Sichuan to Beijing. So, we decided not to go to the event.
Therefore, in the end, seventeen of the twenty invited house church representatives attended the meeting with the National Security Commission at Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Representing the National Security Commission was the head of its religious function, the son of Gao Gang (1905–1954), one of the party’s early leaders and the so-called King of Northeast China. Gao Gang’s son grew up with Xi and was the leader of the National Security Commission at the meeting and served as host of the banquet. He claimed that the destruction of the crosses in Zhejiang was purely the doing of the local government rather than the will of the central government, and specifically asked the church leaders to be patient, as his father’s case had not been reversed yet. Consequently, the pastors present were very excited, and once they left the meeting they passed on the good news to the house churches. Also, Gao Gang’s son said that the government’s Belt and Road Initiative might integrate with the church’s Back to Jerusalem Initiative. As the church evangelizes all the way toward the west, it could also help with the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Consequently, some of the pastors at the meeting began to earnestly promote the Belt and Road Initiative. However, one year later, all of these pastors came to see the reality that house church pastors should not engage in politics.
Can you see it? People say we are engaged in politics, yet we did not even go to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. We are the Lord’s church, and have nothing to do with politics. Those who get too close to the government will end up being fooled. You must know that we are merely believers of Jesus, our political wisdom is insignificant compared to the government’s, and we should not think highly of ourselves. You know how the CCP came up and therefore you should not engage in its politics. All we can and should do is to believe Jesus, to preach, to plant churches, to be imprisoned, but not to be treated at the State Guesthouse. Therefore, after a year or two, Chinese house churches saw both the reality and the situation. Once the Regulations of Religious Affairs was released, all of the previous promises disappeared, followed by the full-scale persecution which took place in February. However, we still do not know when we might be attacked.
Last year, when there was conflict within the church and we had to split the church, we were really anxious because we did not know when the government strike would come. Therefore, we had to complete the church split and establish the new church before June 4th of last year. If not, a government attack might defeat the entire church. By God’s mercy, he led us to complete the split and to re-establish our church last year. Then the Regulations of Religious Affairs was released at the end of last year and began their effectiveness this year. What you saw between the May 12th Incident and June 4th was not us, or the strength of our faith, or our prayers moving God’s hands, but rather God’s grace and his amazing protection of his church. Had that persecution come last year, we would have been doomed. Had the incident happened one year ago, Early Rain Church would have crashed, along with all of God’s preparation through the past ten years. Therefore, what we saw was God’s work.
At the end of last year, after the Regulations of Religious Affairs was released in September, I shared with our staff and they all supported me. My opinion was simple: we should openly oppose the Regulations of Religious Affairs and draw government attention to our church. If the government wants to fully execute the Regulations of Religious Affairs, it has to take down this church, it has to destroy this church, otherwise it cannot achieve its goal. We must put ourselves in such a position. The staff supported me. In the first half of this year, if we could not get past the May 12th Incident or June 4th, we would do what we were supposed to do from in prison. If we made it through the May 12th Incident and June 4th, we would do more in the second half of the year. We would be more courageous and preach on the street. We passed through the May 12th Incident and June 4th by God’s grace. Many thought we were done. My wife Jiang Rong shared that she thought about the song that Wang Mingdao sang in prison, “All Hope is Lost”. But our hope was not lost. God strengthened us once again.
Therefore, I now share with our co-workers that if by the end of the year we are still around, then we should do even more next year. We should be bolder next year and preach the gospel at Tianfu Square and on the campus of Sichuan University, even if we might be arrested ten times, because our time is limited. Will God grant us a new wave of gospel movement? Will there be a new wave of gospel movement? Could the number of Chinese Christians exceed the upper limit of eighty million? As a matter of fact, it is possible that the number of Chinese Christians has actually fallen since last year. I shared at the conference that it was very likely that the number of believers within the Chinese house churches has dropped by five million people and may decrease by millions each year rather than increase before we are able to see the decline. May the Lord lead us into a new wave of gospel movement.
Therefore, judging from the current situation, my estimate is that this persecution has not yet reached the scale of the 2009 persecution. Actually, it has reached the scale of the 2009 persecution because 2009 was a test strike on a few churches and the persecution this year is a full-scale strike.
However, the truth is that in the past ten years, the most critical change within the Chinese church has been the rise of Chinese urban churches and the transition of the center of the church into first and second tier cities where congregations with hundreds of members have been formed.
Therefore, as long as these one hundred urban congregations among the Chinese house churches, each with hundreds of members, are not taken down as a whole, this government movement will end with little consequence. Do you understand the key here? I estimate that in Beijing there are ten congregations with more than five hundred members, there may be fewer in Shanghai, and more in other cities. In Chengdu there are seven or eight churches with more than two hundred members. Besides our church, there are one or two other churches with more than five hundred members. But as far as I know, one of them has registered with the RAB. These bigger churches serve as the core of strength in the current Chinese house church.
If thirty to seventy of these one hundred churches with more than five hundred members are struck down (not only a single congregation), then the government will have victory and the gospel movement will decline for a period. However, if during this persecution only five churches are substantially attacked, destroyed, or dissolved, and most of them keep gathering at their current size, then the government movement is doomed to failure.
Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, let us hold onto our faith together and see whether our Early Rain Covenant Church will hold on through the end of this year, whether it might hold on until next year, and whether the other big churches, Shouwang Church in Beijing, Zion Church in Beijing, other big churches in Beijing, big churches in Wuhan, big churches in Shanghai, and other big churches in Xiamen and Guangzhou, can hold on to the end of this year or next year. As long as we hold on, I challenge you to consider full-time service for the Lord. If you do not offer yourself now, when else will you do it?
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Therefore, I pray before God that there will either be a big persecution or that the Lord might bring a movement among believers within the Chinese house churches of the Spirit leading many to offer themselves for full-time service. I told one brother who did not want to participate in a marriage renewal ceremony that if by this time next year I have not been arrested, he has to participate. He complained that I was pressing him to participate. I told him that he should pray I would be arrested if he did not want to participate. He complained said I was pressuring him too much.
Therefore, I want to press you as well. If by June 4th of next year we are still here, if I as your pastor am still not imprisoned, I challenge you and pray that the Lord would raise up a new group of seminary students, a new group of believers who are willing to enter into full-time service to the Lord, willing to offer themselves and their families and their marriages to God for the revival of the Chinese church in the next ten, twenty, or thirty years. Amen! You can now pray to God for this. Or, if you are unwilling to offer yourself, you can pray that we would not be here next year. Either way, may the Spirit of the Lord move you and stir you up.
The year 2018 was a turning point. The new Regulations of Religious Affairs and the new TSPM was a turning point. The new persecution is a turning point. Even the amendments to the Constitution are a turning point. Anything, whether secular or ecclesiastical, will keep moving forward. I do not know what’s ahead. I cannot say it will be smooth. It will probably be harder, worse, more authoritarian, but whatever the situation might be, God will give us new opportunities and God will lead the church to revival.
Therefore, I have hope in this church. I will first challenge every member,
Didn’t I ask each of you to serve at the church?” If you have not served at this church, I hope you will soon register to serve on Sundays, okay? Because we do not have many weeks ahead. What if we are attacked next week? You would have no further chance to wash the feet of your brothers and sisters. Our Love Feast needs co-workers. All of our services need co-workers. Our Sunday reception team needs more co-workers now, since we are currently opening both floors. We are in desperate need for co-workers and I hope every brother and sister will participate in the Sunday reception. It is better for each member to rotate and be on duty only once a month, because on the day of service the person on duty can’t easily listen to the sermon because he needs to serve the congregation. We now have fewer than eighty people serving on the Sunday reception team. We hope to have one hundred and twenty brothers and sisters participate in the Sunday reception on both floors.
That way, your service for brothers and sisters and seekers is also service for the brothers and sisters who are already serving in the Sunday reception team. As you allow them to have time off and rotate the duty, you demonstrate your love and your service. Furthermore, our choir will have to serve both floors as well. How wonderful would it be if we could have another choir on the second floor? We also have many chapels and some of them do not have pianists. Could we offer a few pianists for the chapels? Could we offer a few tenors? Could we offer a few sopranos? Can we?
Let’s pray together:
We thank you and we praise you, Lord. We did not mention before we came to you in prayer that in 2016 there was one more iconic incident: the martyrdom of Li Xinheng and Meng Lisi, a young brother and sister born in the 1990s. Lord, the passing gospel movement you brought for us is coming to its end as the whole society is under a violent transition. You have given us a vision of future revival, and even among the young believers born in the 1990s you have granted the Chinese church our own Stephen, martyrs for this generation of young believers.
O Lord, we thank you and we praise you. Lord, come and lead this church. Lead today’s Chinese house churches in every city and every village so that we would be swift to follow you. Like the hymn we just sang, may you grant us faith. We will be stronger as the Lord will protect us. Many have asked: “Why does your church still survive? How did you survive the May 12th Incident? How did you survive June 4th?” We replied: “Because we have the Lord over us, because we have the greatest umbrella that covers the heavens and the earth.” Apart from you, not one hair will fall to the ground, not one sparrow will fall to the ground.
Lord, in the past ten years we have also witnessed the imprisonment of many of your servants i. Lord, we even witnessed such incidents in the TSPM during the movement to destroy crosses. Pastor Joseph Gu, senior pastor of Chongyi Church in Hangzhou, was imprisoned, released, and then he announced he was leaving the TSPM. We also witnessed pastor Yang Hua of Living Stone Church imprisoned for your sake. We witnessed the Gold Lampstand Church and other pastors and missionaries all over the map imprisoned. Pastor Cao Sanqiang is still in prison. Lord, we pray that you would remember these servants, that you would make us imitators of them, that we could be imitators of not only the saints throughout history but also of so many faithful servants of the Lord in our own age. What an amazing grace this is! We thank you and praise you for listening to our prayers and requests. We pray in the precious and holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen!
Please greet each other.
