Firsthand accounts of faith lived out in the context of Chinese Christianity.
The destruction of churches and widespread pulling down of crosses in Zhejiang province during the past year have served to highlight the dilemma facing China’s Christians, whose numerical growth has, for the past several decades, outstripped the availability of suitable venues for worship.
Due to the so-called “Church and Cross Demolition” campaign, the churches of Zhejiang Province have been in the news a lot over the past year. Whether on TV, online, or in our local newspapers, we have probably all seen heart-breaking pictures of demolished churches and crosses.
Waldorf Schools are popping up in first, second, and third tier cities of China.
In March of 2014, over a thousand Christians from all over China attended the Grace to the City Convention held at Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Hong Kong. For two and a half days they listened to teaching by Tim Keller, as well as from urban house church leaders from various cities around China.
This year Qingming Festival–Chinese Tomb Sweeping Day–and Easter fell on the same weekend. While Christians around the world were celebrating an empty tomb many in China were remembering their dead and caring for tombs still filled with bones.
This year April 5 was an interesting day for Christians in China as Easter coincided with Qingming Festival (grave sweeping). On the day they celebrated the empty tomb they were also expected to tend to the tombs of their ancestors. In some cases, the ancestors were themselves Christians, so ceremonies and services are conducted at Christian cemeteries.
Two years ago I had the privilege of leading a workshop on the church in China at The Gospel Coalition National Conference in Orlando.
Last November the Institute of International Education published a report on international students in the United States and American students going abroad. According to the report, there were more than 880,000 international students enrolled in American institutes of higher education during the 2013-2014 academic year.
Last month, we ran a series of blog posts by Joab Meyer about social media in China. He gave a helpful overview of the various platforms and tried to show how they (particularly WeChat) are useful for engaging with Chinese friends and building online communities.
Later in the month, the mainland site Christian Times published an article about how to use WeChat for the purposes of evangelism. The article is a report of a talk given by a pastor in Beijing. It is translated in full below. Please note that the terms Weixin and WeChat are interchangeable. Weixin is the official Chinese name of the app. WeChat is the English name.
It was just about one year ago that, while scrolling through my Twitter feed late one night, I spotted something about Christians in Zhejiang trying to prevent the demolition of their church building.
Last week as the Internet in the US was melting, thanks to a dress and a couple of llamas, Chinese netizens were gripped by an online documentary that was going viral. The video, titled Under the Dome, is a hard-hitting look at the effects of pollution in China. It was posted on February 28, and within 48 hours had been viewed by 100 million people. Yes, you read that right, ONE HUNDRED MILLION!
Since 2002, I have had the privilege of compiling the ZGBriefs Newsletter each week. I travel a lot, which means that I have to pull it together wherever I happen to be on a Wednesday or Thursday. As I was putting it together last week, I got to thinking about all the different places that I have worked on ZGBriefs.