A typical church in a mountainous Miao area of Yunnan Province [WR410/20 PRC06DJ-774]

From meeting place to church

How Christianity is growing in China Pastor Chen Tian Yuan, General Secretary of the Anhui Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee, and Director of Anhui Theological Seminary (see story on page 20, The harvest is large but the workers are few), recalls how Christians started to meet in the early days of religious freedom after the Cultural Revolution ended. He was a young boy and had become interested in Christianity after his friend’s grandmother asked him if he believed in a loving and forgiving God. He wanted to find out more and so began attending meetings where people would come together to talk about the Christian God.

“At that time there were no permanent places or times of worship,” he remembers. “News would spread that a meeting was due to take place – at the Li family home or at the Wengs’ on Thursday at 7 p.m., for example. People would turn up and there would be a meeting. Eventually, there were more regular places and times for the meetings.” And that, he says, is how Christianity began to grow in China. Today, the same thing is happening.

Place of worship

“It might start with small meetings in people’s homes,” he explains. “First they fill the living room. The next time they will fill the living room and the bedroom, and the next, there will be so many people they will fill the living room, the bedroom and the kitchen, and so on. And so that home becomes a place of worship and they may continue to meet there if there is enough space. If the group starts getting too big they will usually start talking about building a church.

Pay tax

“Most of these groups register as places of worship with the government. They are then allowed to buy land and they receive support from the government. Previously, all registered groups had to pay a tax and so some decided not to register. In 2005, however, that tax was abolished. Some still choose not to register, though – they may be small, informal, not well organised, or maybe they prefer to be independent. Some simply don’t trust the government after the bad experience of the Cultural Revolution. But there is religious freedom in China now.”

(WR410/20-04.07) [1 photo]