18 May 2009, Shenyang, China…Bill Knott/ANN Staff
Two Seventh-day Adventist congregations in the Northeast Chinese city of Shenyang illustrate the dynamics of the church in China, where local churches often serve as both ministry and administrative hubs for smaller congregations.
The Beiguan Church, with nearly 3,000 members, worships in a building situated in a modern neighborhood and is often visited by government-sponsored tour groups. Four miles away, the Beishi congregation shares an aging, overcrowded structure with another Protestant church amid a densely-packed tangle of shops and homes. Church leadership at both locations is responsible for dozens of area church plants.
On the fourth day of a weeklong trip to the People’s Republic of China, world church president Jan Paulsen and a team from the church’s world headquarters and Northern Asia-Pacific region worshipped with both congregations in the city of 7 million.
Overflow crowds of 2,500 at the Beiguan Church and 1,200 at the Beishi congregation greeted Paulsen as he made his first visit to China since becoming world church president 10 years ago and the first by any Adventist world church president to mainland China in more than 60 years.
During an afternoon service on May 16, 500 church members crowded the sanctuary at Beishi as Paulsen spoke on the final counsel Jesus gave his disciples on the night they celebrated Passover together in the Upper Room.
In a literal upper room two stories above, another 500 Adventists jammed an overflow chapel, watching the service below on a single 26-inch TV screen. Two hundred more worshippers lined every hallway and stairway, listening to the music and words that drifted down the corridors from bullhorn-style speakers.
“Half of us are here, half are two stories up and 10 percent are sitting in the stairs,” Paulsen told the audience. “And maybe there are some out there who say, ‘I wish I were there, but there’s no room today.’ … I want to honor you for your faithfulness, for your trust in God and for your devotion.”
Both the Beiguan and the Beishi congregations are historic churches in China, responsible for planting and nurturing dozens of smaller Adventist congregations across this industrial city about 100 miles from the North Korean border. More than 100 congregations serving a total of 7,000 Adventists are coordinated by the Beiguan church, which acts much like a local conference does in typical church administrative structure. Likewise, the Beishi church oversees the ministry for 70 smaller churches and “meeting points.”
Church planter Zu Xiu Hua, who started 380 congregations in the northeastern province of Jilin, spoke with Paulsen through an interpreter during his visit. Her congregations, now attended by more than 20,000 members in the province’s mostly rural region, are served by dozens of volunteer women whom she trains to conduct Bible studies, preach, and offer spiritual care.
More than half of Adventist pastors in China are women, and a majority of the members are also female.
Other local church leaders, some from as far as a three-hour train ride away, gathered at the two main churches to meet their world church president. At the Beiguan Church, Pastor Hao Ya Jie described for the church leaders the ministries and outreach services she and her fellow leaders coordinate, including literacy classes, ministerial training, lay preacher training and wedding services. Up to five Shenyang couples are married in the church per week, which is often their first exposure to Adventism.
“You have managed to make this church what we hope Seventh-day Adventist churches everywhere would be,” said Paulsen after he learned of the church’s community-based ministries. “It is a center for worship, a center for ministerial training, a center open to the community.”
Pastor Shi Wei of the Beishi Church doesn’t have the opportunity to run such a full-fledged ministry program because the congregation doesn’t own the building it meets in for Sabbath services. Training events and prayer meetings are usually scattered among dozens of smaller congregations and meeting points that have sprung up around the ministry of the Beishi Church when Christian churches began to reopen in China in the 1980s. During the Cultural Revolution, a dozen turbulent years that marked the greatest difficulties for religion in modern China, all Christian churches were closed, pastors forced to take up other work, and Bibles burned.
While some Chinese pastors have earned formal degrees through seminaries sponsored by the China Christian Council, the umbrella organization that coordinates the affairs of the nation’s estimated 20 million Christians, an increasing number are emerging from training centers established by local congregations.
In meetings with both the national and regional branches of the Christian Council, Paulsen expressed the Adventist Church’s interest in assisting both established seminaries and training centers in preparing larger numbers of pastors equipped to serve the distinctive needs of Adventists in the country.
Nearly 400,000 Adventists are believed to worship at thousands of locations across the nation.
