Please pray for Shouwang House Church, Beijing
Faith McDonnell
February 04, 2010
Return to Ten Thursdays of Prayer for China’s Church.
Last week, I asked you to pray for Mr. Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese Christian human rights attorney who was seized by the police and has not been seen since. Today, February 4, 2010, marks Gao’s 365th day of captivity, torture, and isolation from his family and friends. Our friends at China Aid have launched a “Free Gao” 24 hour ad campaign on the Drudge Report. Please visit it and urge all your friends and email contacts to do the same. And please continue to pray for Gao.
Beijing’s Shouwang House Church is part of the new house church movement in China that has reached intellectuals, artists, and democracy activists. Many of Shouwang House Church’s 1,000+ members are intellectuals from Beijing’s top universities. The church is a testimony to the fusion of faith and democracy that is taking place in China today.
In August 2009, Shouwang was one of six house churches in China’s capital targeted by the Communist government. Human rights group China Aid discovered that a secret directive calling for the dismantling of the churches before the end of August had been issued by the government. Bob Fu, founder and president of China Aid suspected that the action was taken as part of the preparation for the 60th anniversary of the CPC’s rule in China.
For over three years, Shouwang House Church had been renting two floors in Beijing’s Huajie Plaza for worship and Sunday School. But according to China Aid, the plaza managers had received an order from the government Public Security Bureau to terminate its rental contract with the church. So on October 29, 2009, the managers informed the leaders of Shouwang House Church that they would not renew their contract. China Aid reported that the leaders of the church understood the pressure on the plaza managers and willingly signed the termination. Shouwang pastor Jin Tianming and the other leaders told the congregation that they would be worshipping outside until they could find a new building.
After an outdoor service at the East Gate of Beijing’s Haidian Park on November 1, 2009, at which over 500 church members gathered in the midst of a snowstorm to worship, Pastor Jin Tianming released a letter to the members of Shouwang House Church:
For this reason, the church has to worship in the open air. Although we know we were not ready to worship outside, the peace from the Lord was with us till the last moment of the worship. And we firmly believe that we are in His hands. His ways are higher than our ways; His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. To worship outside seems to be a helpless choice; but the Lord turned it into a blessing to our church. We build a church to build up each other. But the Lord comforts us by combining us as one. Therefore, we joined together for Sunday worship at Haidian Park on November 1st.
A video of hundreds of members of the Shouwang House Church worshipping the Lord, singing in the snow, testifies to the pastor’s comment, “the Lord turned it into a blessing to our church.” And who knows how God might have used that worship service in the snow to touch the hearts of those who were passing by. At the end of the video, the church members can be heard singing an American gospel song:
Follow, follow, I would follow Jesus
Anywhere, everywhere, I would follow on!
Follow! follow! I would follow Jesus!
Everywhere He leads me I would follow on!
Many Christians have sung that song with great sincerity, but they have not been called upon to testify to the extent to which they are willing to follow Jesus. China’s house church Christians are called to do that every day.
Prayer Points for this week incorporate the actual prayer requests of Pastor Jin Tianming to the people of Shouwang House Church:
February 4:
Since the Lord led us into the wilderness, we pray that He himself will guide us through during this period with “the pillar of the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night”. We could not anticipate how many more times we will worship outside. We have to pray for strength to stand the harsh weather in Beijing. We pray that the Lord will lead each one of us to walk with Him with a grateful heart, until our spiritual life and the church become stronger after the trial. We believe, though we don’t deserve, that the Lord will use us and edify the church through these trials.
February 5:
We pray for spiritual awaking that we will stand against the wiles of the devil. We ought to be aware of being categorized as a “political campaign” when all we do is worshipping outside. We worship outside because temporarily we do not have a church building. We do not want to be disobedient to forsake the assembling of ourselves. Therefore, we humbly choose to worship outside; it by no means is a protest or a “political campaign”. We pray for wisdom to proclaim the truth with conscience in front of God.
February 6:
We pray the Lord has mercy on Shouwang church and brings us into His promising land very soon. We pray for the process of the church construction that we will worship at the new church building very soon. Currently, we are deficient in 10,000,000 RMB because the building price goes higher in Beijing. In this process, we need to continuously set our hope in God and pray for His providing through church donations. We trust the Lord that He will lead us to a better place. For this matter, we wait and look onto Him with a patient and grateful heart.
February 7:
Pray for Pastor Jin Tianming and the rest of the leadership of Shouwang House Church. Pray for God’s protection of them and their families, as well as for them to continue to be faithful to the Lord in leading His people.
February 8:
Pray for all of the members of Shouwang House Church. Pray that wherever they are, in their jobs, at the universities, with family members and friends who are not believers, that their lives would be full of the sweet fragrance of Christ and would draw others to Him. Thank the Lord for their faithfulness to Him, and for His faithfulness to them. And thank the Lord for how He is growing Shouwang House Church.
February 9:
Pray for the guards outside Haidian Park, and for the managers of Huajie Plaza, that the Holy Spirit would convict them of their need for the Lord and that the loving, forgiving witness of the leaders and members of Shouwang House Church would woo them to Christ.
February 10:
Pray for a change of heart and repentance on the part of the Chinese government. Pray that God would open the eyes that are blind and make tender the hearts of stone.