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January 2003
Greetings Friends,
China Notes #7
Merry Christmas, and a Happy 2003!
Snapshots of China's Churches
In October 2002, Wei Hong joined a group arranged by the Outreach
Foundation to visit churches and training programs in China. The
following vignettes give some idea of the kaleidoscopic variety
of what "church" can mean in China.
Hallelujah Church in Harbin
was built in 2000 and may well be the largest church in China,
seating 3,000 people at a time. The congregation has approximately
5,000 members, and with a congregation of this size, the city
is divided into districts for pastoral work, with a lay volunteer
in charge of each. Church activities include Sunday school classes
for 250 children each week, vacation Bible school during summer
and winter vacations, choir, discipleship classes, and even specialized
training courses in areas such as family life and pre-marriage
counseling.
Orthodox Harbin Church is
a rather different kind of church. A small Orthodox church, its
only priest passed away two years ago, and there are now less
than 100 worshippers, mostly of partially Russian descent. However,
despite the passing of their priest, these believers continue
to meet for worship and prayer at the church each week.
Jiangsu Road Church in Qingdao
was originally mainly for the German community, and its high pulpit
still testifies to its German Lutheran origins. (There used to
be a pipe organ, but it was moved to Beijing as a "cultural
treasure.") Today the Chinese congregation numbers about
1,000, and the church has the range of activities usually found
in a Chinese church—youth meeting, choir, and so forth. Perhaps
more distinctive than the church itself is the atmosphere of the
city, where many intellectuals take a positive interest in Christianity.
Chen Qiao Township Church
in Jiangsu, originally a rural meeting point, now has a congregation
of about 1,000 worshippers under the care of a lay leader, with
occasional visits from an ordained pastor based in the county
seat. Over a period of years in the 1990s, the congregation members
built their own church, working gradually in stages as time and
money were available.
Snapshots of Lay Training Programs
Over the last 20 years, the number of seminaries and Bible schools
in China has expanded from one to eighteeen. However, even at
this rate of expansion, the growth of the Chinese church outstrips
the rate at which new pastors can be trained in seminaries. As
a result, the great majority of China's churches and meeting points
are currently shepherded by lay leaders—and will continue
to be so for the foreseeable future. Given this reality, lay training
programs play an indispensable role in strengthening the leadership
of the Chinese church.
Harbin Training Center primarily
trains lay leaders for the city of Harbin and for its surrounding
counties, although some students also come from neighboring provinces
such as Jilin or Inner Mongolia. Under the leadership of the Reverend
Lü Dezhi, the center provide a two-year course in Bible,
and also a two-year course in Christian music. (This latter program
is a specialty of the center, and one of the few such courses
in China.) While the intent is that graduates of the program will
serve as volunteer lay leaders, many actually wind up undertaking
significant church leadership responsibilities on graduation.
In addition to the two-year courses, the center also provides
shorter one-month courses for lay leaders.
The school started operation in 1997, and the students in the
first two graduating cohorts of its two-year programs were mainly
from the city of Harbin. In contrast, many of the students in
the most recent cohort are from the countryside, often from relatively
poor backgrounds, so the school needs to supply scholarships or
reduce fees for many of these students. The Bible course costs
approximately 2,000 yuan ($250 US) a year for tuition, food, and
lodging; and the Christian music course approximately 3,000 yuan
a year ($375 US).
The Harbin Bible School was started in 1999 with financial
support from the national China Christian Council, from local
sources, and also from the Hong Kong Christian Council, and trains
students from all over Heilongjiang province. Lead by the Reverend
Sun Zhaogui and the Reverend Yu Chao, the school has 134 students
in two different programs, a three-year program for future full-time
church workers, and a one-year program training lay leaders. Costs
for the program are similar to those above, approximately 2,500
yuan ($312.50 US) a year.
All over China, schools and training courses like those above
provide a vitally important part of the efforts of the China Christian
Council to provide training for China's current and future generation
of church leaders.
God's peace,
Don and Wei Hong Snow
The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, page
173
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