CHINA — While the demand for Bibles in China is undoubtedly rising (see previous article), illiteracy continues to prevent some of the country’s Christians from reading God’s Word for themselves. This is most often the case in rural areas, where older people in particular may never have had the opportunity to attend school. The following report tells of successful efforts at a remote village church in Heilongjiang Province to overcome the barriers of illiteracy.

“God loves me, God loves you, God loves us all.” These words can be heard coming from the mouths of a very special group of 100 or so believers in Song Pu village church way up north in China’s Heilongjiang Province.

Life was hard

These believers are all older people aged between 55 and 70 who have never learned to read or write. When they were younger, they lived in large families in remote villages. Life was hard and family circumstances prevented these believers from ever having an education. After coming to faith and joining the church, pastoral workers noticed that, unlike other worshippers, these believers never took notes during the Sunday sermon or carried a Bible so that they could follow the readings being used in the service. Once they realised that there were many such believers in the congregation, and that these believers were being denied access to opportunities for spiritual growth, church leaders organised a literacy class using materials published by the national China Christian Council/Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CCC/TSPM). These materials use Christian words and phrases to help illiterate believers begin their journey towards reading and writing.

Most of the students in the class have various physical ailments. However, participating in the class has renewed their zeal for life and, even in the freezing winter and throughout the blazing hot summer, nobody has ever been absent. Studying is not easy for these believers, as their eyes, hearing and memory are not as good as they used to be. Many also have heavy family commitments, so they cannot always complete their homework from the class.

Making progress

Despite these difficulties, the students are making progress. They have now grasped simple words and phrases and are progressing to constructing sentences by themselves. Most importantly, they are integrating everything they learn into their Bible reading and prayer. In this way they reinforce what they learn while receiving God’s teaching and truths at the same time.

It has now been two years since the church literacy class started. The class members can now read their Bibles in Sunday services and join in with many of the hymns. Liu Guifang, a class member in her sixties, uses words she has read in Ephesians 4:13 to express how she feels: “I am in the last part of my life, I want to devote myself to the Lord’s service … now I have come to ‘the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ’” [NIV].