We have won the recognition, sympathy and respect of the broad masses of people as an autonomous Chinese church. Thus new and greater opportunities have opened to us to witness our faith and for the light of the Gospel to shine forth in this country.
Now, let me relate to you some features of the present-day Chinese Protestant Church.
First, there has been a remarkable church growth since the last five years. There is no exact statistics. A conservative estimate of church members and enquirers is over three million. It means an increase of about four times over the total before 1949. In September 1979 two churches were re-opened in Ningpo (宁波) and Shanghai, the first to break the ice, about three years after the downfall of the “gang of four.” Since then according to the latest report there are more than eighteen hundred churches reopened or set up anew. This amounts to an average rate of one church a day over the whole period. By a “church” here I mean a permanent church building set apart for worship services and other religious activities, with a fairly consistent congregation administered by one or more pastors or preachers. These churches are located mostly in cities and towns. There are sixteen churches in Shanghai including the suburban counties, and three in Guangzhou. The size of the congregation varies from a couple of hundred to several thousands, about one quarter to one third being young people. In larger churches it is often necessary to hold two or more sessions of Sunday services to avoid overcrowding. If we take the average size of a congregation as one thousand, it leaves more than two million Christians to handle. So there are thousands or maybe tens of thousands of what we call “assembly points” (聚会点), i.e., meetings held in homes or other places than a conventional church building. These “points” are mostly scattered in the rural areas, but you will often find some in cities also, distributed according to geographic accessibility. The size of a “point” varies from some twenty or thirty to several hundreds. They are usually administered by lay leaders, most of them depend upon the city or county churches for guidance and assistance, such as supply of Bibles, hymnals, Christian literature, and the administering of baptism and communion services, etc. In remote places they are left to their own discretion and devices. This explains the uneven development in the level of Christian nurture, and, as in some places, susceptibility to deviations, heretical contamination and anti-China infiltrations from abroad. These we lump up as “abnormalities.” This is an understandable phenomenon when the rate of increase of believers outstrips the process of reopening churches, which involves much more than taking back and repairing church buildings.
How to account for this rapid growth? Many explanations have been advanced. I think, however, most basic of all it is due to: (1) the Three-Self Patriotic Movement with the three main accomplishments mentioned above; (2) the overall implementation of religious policy on the part of the Party and the government, though not without obstacles and problems. As to the latent and perennial spiritual yearnings and need beyond the material and mundane in man, I shall for the present leave to theologians and sociologists and psychologists of religion. The Holy Spirit is always at work and we can but offer our prayers and thanks to God for His blessings and guidance.
Secondly, we have entered into a post-denominational stage. This has come about gradually as a result of the Three-Self Movement and dissociation with foreign ecclesiastical organizations. We realize and respect the characteristics and particular contributions of various denominations that have evolved in the historical development since the Reformation. We have also learned the lesson of harmful dissensions and disruptive effects of denominationalism. We try to conserve the valuable heritage without being tied to the denominational structural network. So remaining true to the Apostolic faith and biblical tradition, we adopt a latitudinarian attitude and the principle of mutual respect concerning theological and liturgical variations. We take Ephesians 4 as our motto and believe that unity with variety, not uniformity, will more manifest the abundant grace of God. For instance, alternative co-existence of two ways of baptism by immersion or by sprinkling, and various forms of administering the Lord’s Supper, proves helpful in maintaining a harmonious unity and enhancing mutual understanding. This modern adiaphorism seems to be conductive to building a united church instead of arousing unnecessary controversies.
This brings us to a third characteristic. At present we are not yet a United Church of China in the ecclesiastical sense. The China Christian Council set up in 1980 is more like your N.C.C., and functions as an associating and coordinating organization of a transitionary nature, concentrating in the work of pastoral care and ecclesiastical affairs. It works together with the Three-Self Patriotic Committee like two hands serving the body whose head is Christ, and musters all Protestant believers and communities to build a well-run United Church of China. There are similar twin-organizations on various levels, national, provincial and local. We have not adopted any particular ecclesiastical polity. Ordinations are often decided upon and carried out on the local level, assisted by provincial councils. The China Christian Council, in collaboration with provincial councils, has printed one million and three hundred thousand Bibles, of the “Union Version.” In addition, there are versions in three minority nationality languages, Korean, Miao and Lisu. The printing of another edition of Chinese Bible using simplified characters arranged horizontally is in preparation. There were several hymnals published by provincial councils. Last year the C. C. C. edited and published a new hymnbook including four hundred hymns, one hundred of which written and composed by Chinese Christians.
The rapid church growth brings with it many problems. Pastoral care and Christian nurturing have lagged behind. This accounts for the poor quality and low level of religious life, especially in the rural areas. There is a gap of a whole generation between the aged ministers and the young. To meet the urgent need of providing leaders a program of pastoral and theological training is being carried out. On the bottom over a hundred short-term courses ranging from two weeks to four months are being conducted by local and provincial councils, mostly for lay leaders of the “assembly points” in rural areas. A “syllabus” published quarterly by the seminary in Nanjing is used widely for this purpose, with a total circulation of forty thousand. Then there are four centers of theological training offering two-year programs for senior middle school graduates. In addition, three or four more of this kind are being planned, to be located strategically to meet the needs of various regions. In Nanjing the Union Theological Seminary, with a four-year collegiate program and a graduate course, is open to the whole country, for training ministers, theological teachers, writers, church musicians and artists. There is an enrollment of one hundred and eighty students this year.
Before I conclude I may add that one characteristic of the theological climate in China today is that we have transcended the sharp fundamentalist-modernist contradiction through mutual respect and willingness to learn from each other. The picture drawn by Bishop Ting in “Theological Mass Movement” referred above portrays the general trends of Protestant thought endorsed or tolerated by most evangelicals and liberals, allowing some differences in emphases and exegetical treatment. In trying to sum up the theological situation in China, I think of Dr. YoshinobuKumazawa’s description of the Protestant theological construction in Japan as “biblical, missional, national and free in emphasis and orientation,”4 and I see another parallelism between the churches in our two counties. My description of the Chinese theological picture is: biblical, evangelical (in the classical sense of the word), national, but not nationalistic, keenly concerned with the church’s relation to the construction of a modern socialist China, and latitudinarian. Once I was asked by a British theological educator as to what is the theological theme that we think most important. My answer was the doctrine of Incarnation: the God who forever creates, reveals, redeems, sanctifies and leads us all into His final glory has become flesh and dwells among us in the world, “full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” (Jn. 1:14) Allow me to quote Kumazawa once more: “Indigenization does not mean establishing a colony of Christians in the secular or pagan world. It means identifying what God is doing in the secular world and finding out what we can do to participate in his work.”5
We are a very small and young church. We
