Dear Friends and Family,

It is Palm Sunday and Bei Shi Church in Shenyang, China, my church home for the last four years, looks different this morning. White curtains cover the dark maroon curtains that usually hang behind the cross, and the choir has donned white robes instead of red ones. On the communion table, tall stacks of wooden communion trays rise to the left and right of the paper plates full of communion bread.

This Sunday, as every Sunday, we sing hymns for an hour before the service. Although the words are Chinese, I recognized such familiar tunes as "The Old Rugged Cross," "Christ Arose," and "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" interspersed with hymns written by Chinese Christians. The worship service itself begins shortly before nine o’clock with a hymn and a prayer, which is frequently punctuated by "amens" rising in unison from the congregation.

Directly after the anthem, the preacher of the day is introduced, often a professor from Northeast Theological Seminary in Shenyang. Bei Shi does have a pastor of its own, but often she, like the ordained pastors at other large churches, is out preaching at one of the approximately fifty meeting points scattered throughout the city. These meeting points are small congregations, usually without ordained clergy. They rely on trained lay leaders for the week to week operation of the church, but it is the responsibility of the ordained pastors to visit these congregations whenever possible and oversee their ministry.

Each Sunday the sermon at Bei Shi runs fifty to sixty minutes. As my ninety-year-old Chinese friend explained, Chinese people do not feel they have been to church unless they hear a long sermon. They will complain if the sermon is too short! He takes issue with this approach because he believes that worship should involve more than listening to a sermon, but he is apparently in the minority. Even though he is not satisfied with the emphasis on the sermon, he still attends church regularly, undeterred by crowded buses, the flights of stairs in the church building, the cold in winter and the heat in summer.

After the sermon, we prayed and sang "Break Thou the Bread of Life" in preparation for communion. The eighteen communion servers, fifteen women and three men, came forward and distributed the elements while the choir sang. The distribution is quite a process. The sanctuary is on the third floor of the church building, but there is overflow seating with closed circuit television on the first, second, and fourth floors as well as in the courtyard and on the first floor of an adjoining building. Despite the challenge of serving 1000 to 1500 people in several different places, communion always goes very smoothly.

The service closed with a hymn, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and a benediction by the recently retired pastor who served Bei Shi for many years. He is now over eighty and very frail. Although he no longer preaches, he still worships with the congregation and is called on every week to give the benediction.

One week later, on Easter morning, the sanctuary was abloom with flowers. The maroon curtains flanking the cross were emblazoned with the Chinese characters, "Lord Jesus Christ is Risen." The sermon text was Matthew 28:1-10. Since I, with my limited Chinese, could actually understand parts of the sermon, I knew that the pastor’s approach was very straightforward. It seemed to be a sermon designed for the many in the congregation who have little grounding in the scriptures or the basic tenets of the faith. The lack of Christian education programs outside of the Sunday service is a problem throughout China because of the large numbers of churchgoers and the very small number of trained church workers, both lay and ordained.

After the service, the pulpit was quickly pushed aside and all was made ready for the celebration. At Bei Shi Church, it is usual to have a program of singing and dancing on Easter and Christmas, but this Easter was very special for it was the first time I have seen children performing in this church. They were delightful, so poised and unselfconscious and radiant. The children in the first group were perhaps twelve years old. Dressed in white robes with tinsel wreaths on their heads, they sang Bible-based songs with hand motions—just as our children do. A younger group sang "Jesus Loves Me" in Chinese and a song with the words (in Chinese) "If I pray, my faith grows big. If I do not pray, my faith stays small." At the end of the program, a group of women performed a Chinese-style dance to the tune of "Fairest Lord Jesus."

I must admit that some of the performances struck me as strange in a church setting on Easter morning, but in that strangeness I find a truth that I need to be reminded of: there are many different ways to worship and glorify God. Each culture and each congregation finds its own special way to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

I would ask your prayers for Bei Shi Church and for Christian congregations throughout China that they might have the resources to reach out to the many Chinese who are hungering for the Gospel.

In Christ’s love,

Barbara Maynard Penney

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 180