A new trend in China: from church planting to church building
In China the majority of the Christians meet in their homes, but they are not cell groups as in the West. They are regular churches and may have several dozen to several hundred people. This is simply due to government policy in which unregistered churches are persecuted. Also a lot of smaller groups don’t have the money to build church buildings, or it is not allowed. But they are in many ways like a regular church with leaders, worship, Bible study meetings, prayer meetings, children ministry, Sunday meetings, baptism, etc. It is just they meet in their homes.
It is very practical and a good way to grow the church as you cannot become too big, and you are always multiplying other churches and thus you are always training new leaders. Thus the church can spread very fast without a huge overhead expense. But there are problems. You must have a strong leader over the network and people who agree on certain principles and doctrines. There must be teaching, standards and discipline. Otherwise it is possible that false doctrine will come in and false prophets will rise up and split the group. There is also problem in accountability in finances. But all churches face these challenges, and you will find ways to solve them.
But in China we have recently faced new problems which have caused us to rethink the whole strategy. First the government is much more tolerant of Christian religion than before, but they are not of cults and evil religions like Falun Gong, etc. Unfortunately there are many cults in the Christian religion that have done great damage, like Eastern Lightning. Thus now they want even these house churches to somehow register (or at least have a relationship with the religious authorities) so they will know they are not cults. Secondly as the church grows in numbers, and they become more charismatic (due to the world-wide work of the Holy Spirit), they are sometimes too noisy and the people complain to the authorities and the house church gets closed down. You cannot blame the police, for many are meeting in residential areas or villages where many live, and the non-Christians don’t like the crowds and noise.
So now the trend is to actually build church buildings. But unlike the West, in China these buildings are extremely practical as they are used every day all the time. Also a church in a heathen nation really stands out and will attract many people weekly. The church in China that meets in a church building reaches many times the amount of people weekly than a house church will reach in many months.
There is a lot to learn about the house church principle and how to balance this with meeting in traditional churches. Be careful you do not go to any extreme, and be humble to admit when your method is not working to get teaching and find another method.
