Posted on 06/22/2008 6:56:42 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
THE NEON SIGNS at Sauna City, a nightclub-and-massage complex in northern Beijing, offered little promise of spiritual comfort. But the rent was good and the landlord sympathetic, so Jin and his partners signed a lease in May 2007 on their improbable new home, a fifth-floor office large enough for 150 chairs, a choir and a band. Then Jin took a step once inconceivable for a non-sanctioned church in China: He printed business cards.
In proclaiming his name and number and the location of the newly christened Zion Church, he spurned the label of "underground" church. He describes his group as "open and independent."
Jin, a bespectacled father of two with a shock of gray hair, has embarked on his experiment with equal cause for confidence and caution. Despite continuing arrests and crackdowns, Chinese churches have attained a more prominent role in public life than at any time since the founding of the People's Republic.
Rev. Jin did not set out to be a religious pioneer.
The son of a secular ethnic-Korean family from China's coal-choked industrial northeast, he was an earnest high school student who won a coveted place in the freshman class at elite Beijing University. Soon, like other strivers, he joined the Communist Party.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Encouraging report. Perhaps as we (to a large degree) fiddle away our hard-won gains in the US and Western Europe, our brothers in the East will thrive.
It is good to read this. I so often forget that this world is a big place, and that God is building His kingdom in places of His choosing. I take great comfort in being reminded of this and feel ashamed that my faith is often so small.
In my time there in China, the Chinese officials typically didn’t care whether you had a house church or not so long as your activities were open to the public and not so hush-hush-—and as long as you weren’t political. Secrecy breeds suspicion, so when churches (even house churches) are not secretive, the Chinese usually try to leave them alone. Granted, that’s not always true, but usually.
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