The Christian Church in China
Category: Faith... The Persecuted Church...
Posted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 at 08:29 PM [GMT-6]

I attended a remarkable event last night, joining hundreds of people from all denominations in our church's worship center to hear a first-hand report on the status of Christianity in mainland China.

The speaker was Peter Xu, an evangelist and activist who spent twelve years in a Chinese prison because of his faith in Jesus. Pastor Xu helped start the house church movement in China in the 60s, a movement that's becoming a tidal wave.

1949 marked the beginning of Marxism and Communism in China, as Chairman Mao came to power, and with it the denunciation of all religion, and especially Christianity. In that year, it was estimated that there were only 800,000 Christians remaining China. Today, the estimate is 80 million, a 100-fold increase. That sort of growth has placed the Church squarely in the government's crosshairs, and persecution of Christians is once again commonplace.

Pastor Xu's interpreter for the evening was Bob Fu. He is the founder and president of China Aid, a non-profit organization dedicated to the investigation of human rights abuse in China, and to advocacy of its victims. Bob has the distinction of being one of the few who have succeeded in winning a case against the government in front of the Chinese equivalent of the Supreme Court.

Pastor Xu was everything you might expect from a man who is sold out in every way to the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- humble, joyful, energized and unapologetic in his desire to achieve a very unusual goal: to take the Gospel from China to Jerusalem.

He began by thanking those present for our heritage. He gave credit to American missionaries for planting the seeds of the Gospel in China. "We are all your spiritual descendents," he stated. He then took us on a quick historical tour of Christianity in China, bringing us to the present day, where Chinese Christians, despite being persecuted by their own government, are focused on nothing less than the achievement of the Great Commission. They believe that the Lord has given the mission to the Chinese church to spread the Gospel outside the borders of China. Despite the government's efforts to stamp it out, the Chinese church is now approaching the point of being self-supporting, self-propagating and self-administering. Many university students are joining the house churches and the goal is to have Christian cells on every campus within five years.

Pastor Xu said that the vision of the Chinese church is to accomplish the Great Commission and to unite with the Western church in spreading the Gospel all over the world, and then back to Jerusalem.

He spoke about the ancient Silk Road, the collective term for the routes used more than 2,000 years ago to open up trade between China and the western world. Pastor Xu says that the Chinese Church intends to use the "Silk Road" to take the Gospel outside the Chinese borders and, ultimately, back to Jerusalem.

The Silk Road has three "fronts," and the Church is already making progress in each of them. Three years ago, China sent missionaries to Russia and Mongolia, at the northern front. The southern front goes to Thailand and Malaysia and the central front goes to Afghanistan and over to Iran and Iraq. Chinese Christians are now establishing "training stations" on these fronts, for support of the evangelistic efforts. Eventually, a prayer team will walk from China to Jerusalem.

He then brought this vision and these plans home to us. Chinese Christians need training, comfort and fellowship from the Western church. He then challenged Midland, Texas, to establish a station for the Jerusalem prayer walk. Texas can be a spiritual revival base and a "missionary sending center." He also asked us to pray for suffering brothers and sisters. (Peter's sister, Deborah, was recently released from prison, although she remains under house arrest.)

At the conclusion of Pastor Xu's remarks, he sang two Chinese hymns that expressed the desire of Chinese Christians to be "servants of the Word, servants of the Lord." The melodies were haunting and the words were simple but powerful, the worshipful cries of a people who have a faith and a hope that sustains them even when there is nothing else to grasp.

We then watched a ten-minute video of interviews with three sisters who were arrested and tortured in an attempt to make them discredit their pastor (Gong Shengliang), so he could be arrested on trumped-up rape charges. The sisters described their ordeals in graphic detail; one of them could not hold back the tears as she confessed that she could not hold up under the physical abuse and thus signed a prepared statement against her pastor.

Peter Xu and Bob Fu left today for Geneva, Switzerland, where they will show this video during the 60th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in an attempt to secure the release of the pastor, specifically, and to highlight the increasing persecution of Chinese Christians in general. The sisters are aware of the personal danger and risk they run in releasing this video, but say they are prepared for any consequences in order to make the truth known.

And this, indeed, is an accurate summary of the status of the Church in China: it will risk any consequences to make the Truth known. What will the Western Church's response be, in the face of such faith and endurance?