The Gospel in China

Another weekend wrapped up. I’m trying to learn to see every week as an important opportunity for growth and progress. Sounds obvious enough, but not as familiar as the opposite sounds: week after week unconsciously slipping by, with services and programs become more and more ritualized. Tough question for me to answer: Is my weekly […]

It’s been a long time since I’ve written – been pretty busy lately, plus my wife has been sick this week. All but one of the American students has returned home, and tons of our regular attenders have returned to their hometowns for a couple weeks before the next semester starts. So things are starting […]

One of the things that I believe with really be important for the future of the work here is how people on the outside of the church see us. I think this really started to sink in when I was talking to a guy from Taiwan last year who travels extensively here in the mainland. […]

Good weekend. Most churches go through a “summer slump” – try having a church of all students. That’s the bad thing about college students – they’re migratory creatures. Summer vacation isn’t as big deal as winter vacation, so a lot of people are still around. And most of the people that are leaving are only […]

More security concerns all around. Yesterday after class, J. tells me we’re in constant grave danger and we need to think of a solution. He’s most afraid for me, I think – he’s of the opinion that we could have lots more problems than other churches because of a foreigner’s involvement. That point I can […]

I was thinking about this yesterday after struggling through another hermeneutics lesson. This is a strange part of language learning. I know lots of words, know how to use them – in fact, if I could just write down everything I wanted to say, there’d never be a problem. Now we’re dealing more with comfort. […]

Quite a week! It’s been fantastic having our field director here – he’s flying back to Beijing this morning. He preached and taught for us four times in the couple days he was with us, and really made quite an impression on the students (Chinese and American). It’s really a joy to work with someone […]

Slower pace this week, which no one’s complaining about. I was in church services nine nights out of ten, ending last week. Which is a lot of church for people living in a closed country! The Lord really blessed, though, in all those activities – we had many first time visitors, a couple professions of […]

Great baptism service on Sunday. That is to say, all the participants survived. Besides that, a lot of stuff went wrong. But a great number showed up and sixteen were baptized. More than I originally expected for the activity, but less than were actually planning on getting baptized. Some people had tests and couldn’t come, […]

We’re kind of in runaway-train mode right now. Lots of stuff going on this week and next, so we majorly appreciate your prayers. Baptism has been scheduled for tomorrow, though the forecast is calling for rain again (as one member pointed out, though, a rainstorm doesn’t seem like such a problem for a baptismal service […]