A VOICE FROM THE TRIBES

Edited by Tony Lambert, OMF China Researcher

Dear Pastors,

You work unceasingly for the Lord day and night, losing sleep. We here want to thank you! I come from a township in Luquan County near Kunming. Our church is a tribal church high up in the mountains. Because the people are uneducated and poor, God’s church needs workers to come and pastor. God elected me out of this corner and sent me to the Minorities Bible School at Baoshan to study and equip myself. This school is in difficulty and has no library. We lacked the help of reference books, so we were in great straits when trying to prepare sermons. Every time I had to preach I felt I would fail! The contents were dry, or like vegetables without salt!

More recently a fellow worker has seen how people hungering and thirsting for the Lord have been helped by your publication The Dew; I heard about it, wrote off to your editorial department and received a copy. I love to read spiritual books and magazines. But as I lack knowledge I don’t understand how I can make progress in spiritual things. Sometimes I even lose direction and get totally lost. So I am writing this letter and hope you, as God’s servants, will give me proper guidance so God’s lambs will no longer be hungry but will be satisfied by His grace.

From Mr Yang, a student, Sept.1, 2004

(A letter published in the Wuhan Central South Seminary magazine The Dew)

PRESSURE

“Some time ago the young members in our fellowship received warnings from their school not to believe in the Lord. They are very outstanding students in their classes. The school threatened that if they don’t renounce their religious belief they will not receive an A-grade and their guardians will be notified. The principal and teachers have summoned them many times and brainwashed them. They are not permitted to attend any Christian meeting. They have even been told that they can worship Buddha—but not Christ!”

A sister in Christ recently wrote this letter to FEBC in Hong Kong. Faced with this threat, their fellowship has stopped meeting. She is most concerned that the young, new believers will leave the church as a result. She urges us to lift up these children in our prayers for the Lord’s protection. Quite a few Mainland believers still face pressure and persecution of various kinds. Please pray they will stand firm and hold fast to the Lord.

WORK AMONG THE ELDERLY

China has the largest number of elderly people in the world. There are now an estimated 143 million people in the country aged over sixty—more than 10 percent of the total population of 1.3 billion. But by 2051 the number of elderly is projected to rise to a staggering 430 million, or 30 percent of the population. China is now classified by the UN as an aging society, along with many countries in Western Europe. These advanced countries struggle with the growing financial burden of maintaining health services and pension levels. But in China these services are largely available only to the growing affluent middle-classes. Hundreds of millions of peasants and poor urban workers have little or no financial security for their old age. Even in the cities, many elderly people struggle to exist on minute pensions of 200-300 RMB per month (about US$25-35). They include many godly Christians.

Traditionally, elderly parents could rely on their children and the extended family to support them in their twilight years. However, this is no longer the case. With increased mobility and employment opportunities, families are now often scattered, and even the traditional respect for parents and the elderly is rapidly breaking down.

The extent of this breakdown is vividly illustrated in the book Father and Son: A Contract written by Professor Hao. A retired sociology professor, Hao attacks the Confucian tradition head-on. In the old days parents helped their children establish themselves, and then looked to them for support. Thus a mutual supporting network was very much an integral part of China’s agricultural society. However, given the tremendous transformation of China’s economic structure, Hao strongly espoused that the time had come for a new model of family structure. Thus, ten years ago Hao presented his son with a contract. His son would pay his own way through college, find himself a job and buy his own flat when he married. In return, his parents promised to take care of their own pension and medical bills as they got older. Such revolutionary ideas strike at the heart of the Confucian ideal that “filial piety is the root of all obedience.”

Hao’s ideas have sparked vigorous debate. Hao’s own son was at first very angry, but his father believes the arrangement turned him from being introverted into being confident and independent. “Contracts can’t solve the problems of real life,” thundered the Guangzhou Southern Daily. “In our socialist country, helping others, the value put on personal relationships, education for children and care for the elderly are symbols of a prosperous, civilized society. That’s why China has so many families with several generations living together, and what the elderly in the West most envy about China.” On the other hand, Hao has parents turning up at his door asking him to draw up similar contracts for them.

What is the Christian church doing to serve the huge number of elderly people? Both TSPM and house churches are involved in various innovative ways. In big city churches, there is an annual “old people’s day” service at which seniors in the congregation are especially honored. This is a creative way of building upon the traditional Chinese custom of filial piety and respect for parents, but in a totally Christian context, shorn of idolatry. The Bible’s teaching on respect for parents and the elderly is stressed, which helps to restore their proper self-esteem.

It is usual for young people to join the choir in many Chinese churches, but now some of them have started seniors choirs. As a high proportion of the people still illiterate are over 60, some churches have started literacy classes which cater mainly for the elderly.

Some TSPM churches and house churches have gone further. They have set up homes for the elderly attached to their churches. A house church in Beijing has one such small home. An elderly Christian doctor, Mabel, had been much used of the Lord in distributing Bibles and Christian literature for many years. Her burden for evangelism took her as far as Tibet even when in her eighties! It was good this beloved servant of God was able to be cared for her in her final years in a loving Christian environment.

Another church in northeast China has a small home for the elderly catering to deaf, blind and mentally-impaired elderly people. A Christian family run it, and members of the church take it in turns to come in and help. But even so they lack a trained doctor. Such facilities are desperately needed, as government provision is insufficient to meet the needs of a growing number of needy elderly folk. However, so far perhaps a few dozen such homes have been opened by various churches in different parts of the country. Many thousands are needed.

In a good number of churches the real work of the church is largely carried on by a multitude of elders, evangelists and yigong (voluntary workers). A high proportion of them are retired people. They preach, pastor, visit the sick and do the work of the Lord in a multitude of ways. How good to know that when they themselves finally have to give up active ministry, there will be others in their church to care for them in turn.

Christian Communications Limited (Hong Kong) reports that in Guangdong, Christians are regularly visiting thirteen homes for the elderly in their county. “Please pray! We provide care and concern, and teaching for the residents, apart from pre-evangelism and evangelical work. Up to now 80 percent of the 300 residents have believed in Christ after hearing the gospel.” This shows how spiritually fruitful visiting these homes and hospitals can be in China. Many elderly have had a very hard life. Rural people have found no comfort from folk-religion, Buddhism or Daoism. Retired communist cadres often find that serving the Party all their lives has left them impoverished on small pensions, forgotten and unloved. Materialistic Marxism has no comfort to offer beyond the grave.

The good news of Jesus falls like dew on thirsty ground in the lives of many elderly patients and retirement home residents.

Copyright 2006 OMF International