First impression: Well, there’s no
mistaking the purpose of this building.
Across the top of the looming structure
were huge, bright red letters that proudly spelled “Christian Church” in both English and Chinese. There
was no denomination attached, or a vague “unchurchy” name to act as a hook. It
was just "Christian Church". China doesn’t deal with the plethora of
denominations that the western world does. Apparently, it has only two kinds of
churches; the option we attended was an official church, and the other option
(which was not an option for us) is the underground church. As far as I
understand it, the pastors of the official churches are assigned by the government,
which means that sometimes they can be rather… patriotic, rather than
Christian. But I didn’t get the sense that such was the case with this
particular church.
We filed in, found our seats on some
cushioned pews, and put our purses on a neat little ledge thing extending from
the back of the pew in front of us. It made a lot of sense. Why do North
American seating arrangements not feature this?
About this time, Dave, who tends to use a
lot of sarcasm, got a panicked look on his face. “Wait,” he asked our young
Chinese hosts, Jessie and Levi, “Is this an English service?”
“Yes,” they replied.
“Is it actually?” Dave questioned again.
“Yes,” we all replied.
“Oh,” said Dave, relaxing. “Ok.” It appears
that he uses sarcasm so often that he believes everyone else uses sarcasm all
the time, too. And if our hosts had been sarcastic when they agreed to take us
to an English service…
Chinese people don’t usually use sarcasm.
We understood the sermon.
Second
impression: No Hillsong music!!!
The music section of the service began, and
it felt very familiar. The worship team was pretty similar in composition (drums, guitar, keyboard, vocals…) and the words to the songs were projected
onto the movie-theatre sized screen at the front of the church. I would venture
to say that it could have happened in my evangelical home church in Calgary,
with one change: the songs were Chinese songs. That is to say, there was no
Hillsong influence apparent - or Chris Tomlin or Matt Redman or whoever it is
that writes most of the stuff we sing nowadays. There were a few older English
hymns, but otherwise the songs were translated Chinese lyrics and tunes. At
least, they were mostly translated. I tried to put my pinyin reading skills to
use to keep up with the Chinese portions of the lyrics when I could. I’d give
myself maybe a 7 out of 10 rating in that endeavor.
Given the tidal wave that is Hillsong and
popular Christian artists, I was pretty happy to see that Christians in China
sing praises that are a product of their own situations and imaginations and
not just ones that are exported from western culture.
Third impression: Female Chinese pastor –
wha??
I guess somewhere deep down I had been
expecting to find it a missionary church. You know the deal – a white
missionary goes to a foreign country, starts up a church, runs the church, and
ministers to the locals indefinitely. I know that’s not always what happens,
but I had expected to see a lot of white influence in the church, especially
given that it was a service being done in English. Not so. Please forgive my ignorance. The pastor was
Chinese. Not just ethnically, either. Her accent was pretty strong; it was
clear that she was born and raised in China, speaking Chinese. And neither was
most of the congregation white. Most of the congregation was as Chinese as she
was, though there were some white people sprinkled around here and there. This
was literally an English service in a Chinese church, not an English service by
the foreigners in China.
The pastor wore the traditional clerical
collar, which makes her only the second woman I’ve ever seen doing so. She
preached on suffering. The theme was “Opposition brings Opportunity” and was very
evangelism-centric. I won’t go so far as
to say that I’ve never heard a North American pastor speaking on Christian suffering, but it’s rare. And usually when it happens, it comes out sounding kind of like
this:
“We’re
Christians, so people persecute us. It’s hard, I know, but that’s what happens
when you follow Jesus. People don’t like us and discriminate against us because
they don’t like the truth. The very culture is against us, so it’s time to rise up and
take back the culture!”
In this service, it sounded more like this:
“We’re
Christians, so people persecute us. But, hah ha! The joke’s on them. Because
when we’re persecuted, we scatter and spread the gospel to even more people!
Hah ha! Chin up! Yeah, it’s hard, but be encouraged – it means God has found
you worthy to suffer for him. So go and spread the gospel!”
Ok, I added the hah-ha bits. In truth, the
pastor seemed quite emotional and nearly broke into tears when she spoke about wanting
to encourage the church – and herself – to stay strong and bold in the face of
suffering. I might add that the persecution in China is ramped up a few notches
up from what North Americans usually mean when they talk about being
discriminated against. The underground church still exists in China.
I was left with the impression that North
American Christians (including myself) are kind of wimps sometimes. We may
suffer, but one of those things we suffer from is a victim complex. We bewail
our situation and think of ways to turn the tables. In this service, there was
no woe-is-me aspect to the sermon. No sense that it was anything Christians
shouldn’t have to put up with – after all, we are disciples of Jesus, and look
at how much he had to suffer!
The pastor broke it down like this:
-It costs nothing to
believe Jesus
-It costs something to
follow Jesus
-It costs everything to be
a witness of Jesus.
Fourth impression: Wow, it appears that the
church building isn’t the only thing that’s huge!
This was obviously not a rare theme or a rogue pastor at
this church. The congregation must have been pretty keen on evangelism, because
the pastor announced that we should celebrate as this afternoon, there were
going to be 180 new baptisms in the church! We did cheer. And we all sort of
squirmed in our seats and eyed each other sheepishly when, during the sermon,
she remarked on how some years ago, when this church had first been rebuilt
(yes – “re”built; it appears persecution is a highly personal thing) , it was
just a "very small" church of 400 or 500 people. But now it had over 8000
attendees, 15 pastors, and 5 services weekly! It had also recently sent a
missionary to the Middle East, which we got to hear a bit about.
That being said, the pastor also announced
that next week they would be starting a sermon series on love, relationships
and family, which sounds a little more North American standard.
There were some other interesting things
that I noticed. There was no offering collection plate passed around, for
example. If you desired to give, you discreetly slid your offering into a box
on the wall. They had evangelistic tracts to hand out with the sinner’s prayer
on them – but the sinner’s prayer was actually the Lord’s Prayer taken straight
from the Bible. Announcements came at the end of the service, rather than the
beginning (and those were only in Chinese).
Oh, and we were welcomed as first-time
visitors by being asked to stand up while the entire congregation and worship
team sang “The Welcome Song”, which was a bouncy little song in a vaguely
Happy Birthday-ish style. The lyrics were something like “Grace and peace – God
bless you!” x10. Then they gave us info slips and church DVDs.
Oh, and Jaynette was preached to by an interesting local she met. He gave her a list of websites to visit so she could be sure of her salvation. Jessie apologized to Jaynette, saying that their church "attracts some strange people".
After church, we went for lunch with Jessie
and Levi, who excitedly shared with us a dessert of shaved ice with red bean
paste and gelatin. We politely picked at it. Then we went by taxi back to our
hotel. That taxi ride was probably the single most nerve-wracking experience of
the entire month abroad. When Rachel, Stephanie, Einar and I came out alive on
the other end, eyes wide and fists still subconsciously looking for something
solid to grip, we could do nothing but giggle.
For me, our visit to Chinese church drove
home the fact that North America really isn’t the Christian capitol of the
world anymore, if it ever was. There’s a lot we can learn from our brothers and
sisters across the globe.
“You
cannot just have a comfortable life.
You cannot just have a Christian
small group. You must go! May God
bless all of us!” –the closing line of
the sermon
