The Humanitarian Disaster Institute and Christ at the Core department hosted a panel on April 1 in Barrows Auditorium on the state of the Chinese Christian church and persecution against it. Panelists included President Philip Ryken; Open Doors U.S. President Ryan Brown; Chinese pastor Sean Long; Hannah Nation, managing director of the Center for House Church Theology; Michael Bumann, associate director for career education in Wheaton’s Center for Vocation and Career; and Yousaf Sadiq, HDI fellow (focusing on the persecuted church) and adjunct assistant professor of Christ at the Core Studies.
Jason Liu, a Wheaton graduate school student in Biblical and theological studies, began the night with a prayer: “ We also ask you might open the heart of those in power so that they might recognize the inherent dignity of all people and the fundamental rights of the freedom to breathe,” he said.
The prayer was presented in both English and Mandarin before the audience watched a video on the rising “Mission China 2030” with the history of house churches.
According to Nation, a “house church” in China refers to any group of practicing Christians that do not submit to the oversight of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Calling these gatherings house churches does not mean that congregations only meet in houses; they also use rented ballrooms, parks, coffee shops, office buildings and even karaoke spaces. Keeping the name “house church” recalls and honors “the heritage and the history of what Chinese churches have endured since the 1950s,” Nation said.
House churches within the country have taken up “the 2030 Mission,” which, since its inception in 2013 at the Asian Church Leaders Forum, aims to evangelize westward to those beyond China’s borders who have not heard the gospel. This expression of the Great Commission in Matthew 28 is also inspired by the ministry and writing of Chinese Christians as far back as the 1920s.
According to the Lausanne Movement, the end goal for the mission today is to send out 20,000 missionaries from China overseas by 2030, plant “thousands of churches in cities” and “reach China’s unreached minority groups.”
In China, persecution takes many forms and has evolved considerably over the past several decades as technology and security infrastructure advance. Long described Government crackdowns, legal restrictions and societal pressures that aim to control religious expression. In 2018, new regulations that officially targeted house churches led to a major increase in raids and the detention of Christians for their faith.
High-profile churches like Zion Church in Beijing, where Long served since 2010 and was ordained as a minister in 2017, were forcibly shut down. Hundreds of congregants were threatened and intimidated by the government in an attempt to keep the Christians from attending church.
Despite this pressure, Long’s home church in Beijing, called Zion Church, continues to grow. The congregation has been forced to buy a smaller building, but Long joyfully told the crowd in Barrows auditorium that this only means that Zion Church has “more money for church planting!”
Not all churches in China experienced this persecution, however. Long distinguished between the Chinese house church movement and the state-sponsored “Three-Self Church,” which is separate because it adheres to the CCP.
“For the house church movement, the head of the church is Christ only, full stop,” Long said. “For the Three-Self Church, the head is the CCP and also Christ, and that’s at best.”
Compliance with the CCP may influence the ability of leaders of the Church to maintain biblical theology without government management. Brown added that there is a need for Bibles to reach those who have never heard or been able to comprehend the gospel as a result of the influence of the state.“Submission influences doctrinal errors,” he said.
When Sadiq asked Long what three things American Christianity could learn from the Chinese Church, he said, “The way of the cross, the power of prayer and the cost of discipleship.” Long said the persecution felt by Chinese Christians led them to constant prayer, which made discipleship of Jesus apart from the support of the government costly.
“Walking the way of the cross” is one of the central theological concepts in the Chinese house church movement, emphasizing an intimate personal union with Christ as “God with us” in both suffering and death as well as blessing and resurrection.
This biblically rooted teaching is echoed in many writings of Chinese house church fathers. “Walking the way of the cross” is a statement that encourages followers of Jesus with the knowledge that Christ has gone before them — which Long and Nation described as modeling a life that embraced hardship, persecution, and sacrifice for the sake of sharing hope with the world.
Long spoke to the challenges that the Chinese Church faces right now. He is pursuing a degree in systematic theology in the Wheaton College Graduate School, and he also noted that some Chinese theologians and scholars are searching for ways to address their cultural perspective of the Bible.
When asked about the major challenges that the church faces, Long said that “We lack high-quality indigenous education.” Access to theological materials and education is essential to the “pastoral care” of the younger generation. Long compared the Chinese Christian church to a teenager—experiencing “rapid growth” but in need of “spiritual growth” too.
Ryken, Long and Nation emphasized the need to recognize persecution as causing pain along with ways it might be weaponized in different contexts.
“We don’t romanticize, let alone idolize persecution. It’s real hurt, and it causes pain to churches,” Long said. “Persecution can lead to more humility and relying more on God, but it can also lead to spiritual pride, so that’s the temptation that we should avoid.”
As the panel came to a close, Long accentuated why studying and learning about the globally persecuted church is important. “Persecution cannot destroy the church; compromise will,” he said before the audience was called by Bumann to pray for those suffering and their deliverance.
