Nation / Liu Faith in the Wilderness

Words of Exhortation from the Chinese Church
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68359-605-9
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

'If we want revival in our communities, then let us learn from those being revived.' For many Western Christians, the experience of suffering and persecution is remote. For Chinese Christians, on the other hand, persecution is a regular aspect of the Christian life. If a Christian from the West was transported to a Chinese house church, the topic of suffering would be ever--present in preaching and conversation. With decades of persecution under government oppression and a rich theology of suffering, the Chinese house church movement has much to contribute theologically to the global church. In Faith in the Wilderness, editors Hannah Nation and Simon Liu pull together the insights of the Chinese church for the West. These sermonic letters from Chinese Christians pull back the curtain on the pastoral heart and the hope behind the house church's remarkable faithfulness, awakening readers to the reality of the gospel-the ground of our hope-in the midst of darkness. Readers will be convicted, encouraged, and edified by the testimony of these Chinese Christians. 'Let us learn from the witness of our Chinese brothers and sisters so that we can stand fast all the better as we face trials wherever we live.' -Tim Keller, from the foreword

Hannah Nation is communications and content director for China Partnership and co--editor of Grace to the City: Studies in the Gospel from China. Simon Liu is a pastor and mentor to pastors in China. Over the past decade, he has been involved in over 140 church plants across China.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nation, Hannah

Liu, Simon

Leseproben

Introduction

A CHURCH ACQUAINTED WITH SUFFERING

For the majority of Western Christians, the topics of persecution and pandemic might seem disparate. On the one hand, pandemics have been long removed from our lived experience, so when it is discussed, if it is discussed, we categorize it under natural evil and the suffering we experience living in a broken world. On the other hand, persecution tends to be siloed from other topics of suffering, and neatly tucked into the great theological debates of church and state. According to our common categorizations, these two topics sit in separate corners of Western Christianity’s bookshelf.

As you will discover reading this book, however, this is not the case in what is projected to soon be Christianity’s largest church numerically. Within the theology and preaching of many of China’s urban house churches, persecution and pandemic have become two sides of the same coin, two parallel points under one familiar topic—suffering. If you had the opportunity to hear a house church pastor preach today, you would likely hear them discuss Christian suffering and you would have a fifty-fifty chance of them focusing on either suffering through persecution or suffering through the pandemic. Often, to your surprise and perhaps confusion, they would interchange these two topics.

Part of the reason for this is, of course, the current situation in China. In 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to enforce new religious regulations, which led to increased political pressure and, at times, persecution against all religious practice in China, not only Christianity. This resulted in increased conflict between the authorities and China’s house churches, who refused to submit to registration with China’s officially sanctioned Protestant church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).

But the last several years of struggle do not fully account for the rich theology of suffering being developed by China’s urban house church pastors. They draw on decades of lived experiences of suffering, beginning with the birth of the house church movement, which witnessed thousands of professing Christians denounce their fellow Christians to the Communist Party for not complying with state regulations on religious worship. From the horrors of the Cultural Revolution (which embroiled all of urban Chinese society from top to bottom) to the economic reforms of the 1980s (which opened the floodgates of modernization and lifted millions of people out of poverty), the urban house church has grown against the backdrop of rampant corruption, alienation, and social decay.

And of course, these large-scale, national-level causes of suffering gloss over the more mundane, daily suffering Chinese Christians are familiar with: the struggling medical system, environmental damage and pollution, the competition to succeed in a society of more than one billion people with no social safety nets, the one- and two-child policy systems, and a skyrocketing divorce rate, to name a few. If anyone is acquainted with the words, “The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble” (Psalm 9:9), it is surely the Chinese Christian.

Though there have been many important Chinese theologians both prior to the Communist revolution and within the churches of the TSPM since, today we are beginning to see the systemization of various streams of house church theology. In the particular stream represented in this book—urban, grace-centric, theologically trained—the topic of suffering is fundamentally rooted in the doctrine of the Christian’s union with Christ. These theologians pair the traditional, rural house church’s language of ‘walking the way of the cross’ with the historic, reformed doctrine of union with Christ. The result is an eschatological reimagining of Chinese Christianity’s overwhelmingly urban reality as vital for building God’s kingdom.

The theology of suffering represented by the sermons contained in this book has three aspects. First, it states that the Christian’s union with Christ reveals the broken state of the world. Humanity fell in the first Adam; in the second Adam, we have been buried with our Savior Jesus Christ and will be raised to life again. Yet, as we await our resurrection and the renewal of the world, we are made aware of the death and failure of our natural state. The living Christ united to our decaying humanity opens our eyes to the true state of ourselves and our world.

Second, their theology states that our union with Christ reveals the way of the cross. Those who follow Jesus, those who are truly united to him, must suffer. This is made explicitly clear in Scripture: in being united to a suffering savior, you too will suffer. Though we are not told what suffering must look like, Jesus tells his followers that faith and repentance cause us to share the trials of his earthly life. We are not greater than our master; the church has no more rights than the bridegroom. We are one with him, and because his identity on earth was one of suffering, Christians, both individually and corporately, will participate in that suffering. To avoid walking the way of the cross is to avoid Christ himself.

Third, our union with Christ reveals eschatological reality. Just as becoming one with Christ reveals to us our brokenness and the way of the cross, so it also reveals to us that the kingdom is at hand. This moment in time is not the full picture; now is not all that there is. Christ is taking us somewhere; we are following him to the heavenly city. Yet Scripture describes the journey as painful, for the end times in which we find ourselves and in which the kingdom is proclaimed, include the revelation of God’s judgments in order to bring many people to himself.

Perhaps the best analogy I have seen an urban house church pastor use to summarize the impact of our union with Christ is that of a car clutch. He writes, “When we use the clutch to put our lives in gear, that is the gear our lives will operate in.” What we are united to determines who we are. Before the Christian repents and believes, she is united to the world, producing sin and death in her life. But once she is united with Christ, she participates in his life.

The one who belongs to Christ is united with Christ and is part of the heavenly kingdom of Christ. The one who does not belong to Christ, the one who has become deeply ensnared in this world because he has no share in Christ, will ultimately become deeply ensnared in hell. We do not want to face the vicissitudes of life, but we must take up our crosses and be united to the Lord. In our temporary home in this world, we must learn how to use the ‘clutch’ and separate ourselves from evil, so that we do not separate ourselves from the good we should not separate from, and are consequently cast into hell forever.1

We see suffering manifest in our lives from the old nature which is passing away, and we see suffering manifest in our lives from the world’s rejection of Christ. But our hope is in where we are going.

In these dark times, let us set aside our relentless efforts to forget death and ignore suffering, and let us hear something about walking with Jesus that we have been missing. We descendants of Christendom fear cultural marginalization, but let us remember that those on the margins often preach the gospel more boldly, fearlessly, and humbly than those at the center, for they have nothing to lose and no stakeholders to upset. Marginalized themselves, the house churches understand Christ’s care for the weak and suffering, and rejoice at preaching the good news to anyone who has ears to hear. As the Chinese house church knows, our hope is not in princes and power, but rather in the Savior who unites us to himself, his death and resurrection. Our strength is in bearing his cross, and our joy is in his suffering.

In January 2020, thousands of people from across Asia, Oceania, and North America arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a convention on the topic of gospel and culture, focusing specifically on the theme of building the heavenly kingdom on earth. Over the course of the week leading up to the start of the convention, the topic of suffering became even more poignant and important—a pandemic broke out in Wuhan, China. As the city was locked down, followed by a progression of China’s urban centers ordered to follow suit, a sober reality set in—about half of the convention’s participants from China were unable to travel.

In response, Chinese leaders at the convention made a bold decision and chose to livestream the entire convention so that those under lockdown in China could have access. To do so incurred certain risks, as many of the speakers were mainland Chinese house church pastors themselves. In the decision-making process, these Chinese house church leaders chose a motto which would be repeated often over the following days and weeks: “Let the light shine in the darkness.” And as a result, tens of thousands of Chinese Christians tuned in, far more than had registered to attend in the first place.

When the convention ended, the Chinese delegation was blown away by the numbers of people who had participated through streaming. Now they faced returning to a country entering national lockdown and a full-blown pandemic. They made a decision before returning to China: they would continue preaching online, without regard for the security risks it would involve.

Since then, a network of preachers has been holding public evangelistic meetings by livestream and anyone is welcome to...