Ministry in China
So this month we worked with a couple from America named Jake and Steph. They’ve been in Harbin for four years now, planting a church. Many missionaries who go to China live inn fear of the government; China is technically a closed country. They speak in code, often: “m” means missionaries, “c” means church, “b” means believers, “father” means God, etc. Gospel activities are incredibly subdued under such fear. For many years Jake and Steph also chose to live carefully, often evanglizing on a personal basis through relationships built at english corners, not doing many things publicly or openly. There are many missionaries living in China. “China doesn’t need more missionaries, ” China needs missionaries to step into boldness and out of the fear of man. Having been convicted of this after seeing anemic church growth for four years, they’ve decided to not just step out of the fear of man, but to stomp all over fear and trust God with the results.
Our world race team was the first team ever to work with Jake and Steph, and it was our privilege and blessing to join them in many leaps of faith and boldness unheard of in the Chinese missionary world. We joked the whole time that it was our goal to get kicked out of China because of the gospel. So, by choice we all just refused to talk in code. We talked openly amongst ourselves about church planting, God, Jesus, the Spirit, the church, the gospel, missionaries in China.. and you know what? no one cared. We distributed printed invitations to church, complete with address and phone number, on the streets, on people’s doors… and you know what? no one really cared. Of course people refused to accept an invitation, one guy took it and threw up in the air and went back to his business.. no different than an open country. We also held a kids festival and at each game we handed out carry-bags for candy, complete with invitation to kids church the next sunday. We also distributed invitation to kids church right outside of a school, giving them to parents and kids alike. Now, in the states people would care about a bunch of strangers handing out invitations to some church kids festival right outside of the school. But here… no one cared. And you know what? The kids festival was a hit, with maybe two hundred kids attending! We announced invitations to church every ten minutes, had a church banner posted nearby, and even did a skit using a bible story, all in a public neighborhood park. At one point a cop walked by to see what was going on, observed for a while, then walked off. Jake and Steph’s only prayer was that just 10 kids would come to kids’ service that Sunday; God brought over 20. As far as Jake can tell, the government doesn’t really care what Christians do, so long as we don’t upset our neighbors (loud church meetings, clogging elevators, etc..) or preach against the government, which should never be done anyways according to the bible. In fact, we should pray for the government leaders that there would be peace so that we can spread the gospel effectively.
One thing that is super awesome about our month: English corners. I mean, we went to English corners four times a week at about 2 hours each. It doesn’t sound like much, but they do begin to wear on you, getting asked the same questions over and over, trying to figure out what students are trying to say through their broken English, trying to figure out how to say what you want in a way they can understand, standing around awkwardly when no one knows what to say next, or how to say it. Nevertheless, they were the most rewarding, because in that environment everyone is looking to make a friend, and since we’re native English speakers, everyone wanted to be our friend! So it provided an easy way to meet many people and kind of “feel around” for those who might be “good soil” to receive the gospel. So from English corners, we invited a few people to come over to our flat for a house party later in the week, where we played games and ate food and were able to have some more in-depth discussion with people. From the house parties, we made contacts with whom we met personally over lunch or something to further develop that relationship and share the gospel. In this way, at least 6 people accepted Christ during the 3 weeks we were there. The guy whom the Lord brought to himself through me and Sarah was named Oscar. Pictures later.
Overall, I really enjoyed our few weeks in China with Jake and Steph. They are a solid couple who really invested in us and challenged us to live ever more sold out for Christ. Thanks, Jake and Steph!
