RCMI e-newsletter Apr 2017
We established - Revival Chinese Pastor’s Fellowship
Revival Chinese Pastor’s Fellowship (formerly Revival Chinese Mission) was established near the end of 2011. Its membership mainly comprises the different branches of Revival Christian Church and some mainland Chinese urban churches. Revival Christian Church and Revival Chinese Ministries have faithfully served the mainland Chinese church for many years under the leadership of Pastor Dennis Balcombe, delivering Bibles and spiritual books, operating a Bible school, and conducting spiritual training seminars and conferences. We have continued to witness the wonderful work of God throughout China, and we are very thankful that during all these years, the church has continued to grow!
As its economy and infrastructure have expanded enormously, China has also changed dramatically. One main mark of the transformation over the past twenty years is urbanization: students who have finished high school and younger adults have flocked to the cities. Many Chinese overseas students have believed in Jesus abroad and returned to work in China’s cities, and also countryside churches have been reaching out in urban areas with the gospel . Due to these and other important factors, urban churches have sprung up and grown in every city, large or small, right across the country. The good side of this is that the gospel has been preached widely and churches are growing rapidly in the grace of God. But urban churches are facing great challenges. Their structure, and city life in general, are both much more complex than in the countryside. Most city churchleaders are young and inexperienced. They also usually have to work at a secular job—bothtake care of their families and also lead their churches—no easy task!! In addition, all kinds ofteachings (including those of many cults) are circulating today on the internet. However,relationships among churches are weak and few. If these unfavorable factors are not dealt withsoon, in time China’s churches will have major problems that cannot be reversed!In
In view of these factors, the various branches of Revival Christian Church, together with some mainland churches with whom we have partnered for a long time, have agreed together to establish the “Revival Chinese Pastor’s Fellowship.”
Our Goals are that Chinese Urban Churches will be:
Successfully Urban Use the experience of Hong Kong to guide mainland Chinese churches’ transformation into successful urban churches with an “urban church atmosphere.”
Strong and Independent Assist our partner churches to build and multiply healthy members; help them to pastor, equip, govern, and do whatever else is needed for balanced, healthy growth;
Interdependent Encourage interaction among churches; help pastors find partnership, relieving their loneliness; enable churches to strengthen one another’s weak areas with their various gifting.
Unified Establish a platform for cooperative missions; help all the churches to rise up together to fulfill the great vision of “China a Blessing to All Nations”.
We Long For: To establish relationships between churches by building the lives of leader-disciples; To strengthen leader-disciples by holding regular fellowship meetings; To increase the spiritual depth of church membership by conducting seminars and training courses; To accomplish the vision of world mission by assembling the churches of China!
We Need: Prayer Support: Pray that our coworkers will be unified in heart and mind to deal wisely with the challenges of urbanization, different environments, and different cultures. Pray that God will raise up more experienced leaders who can commit to visiting different churches as mentors to coach young pastors.
Financial Support: We want to help churches that are in financial difficulty—to free pastors up to fully focus on serving the church and not have to give half their attention to a secular job. We want to support travel costs of the volunteer mentors who go around visiting churches so that their service of love is not hindered by a lack of finances.
visit our website to make an offering http://revivalchinese.wixsite.com/eng/get_involved
Great need for Bibles and Support for Leaders in mainland China – A Letter from a Graduate Student: “I Need Bibles.”
Dear Respected Pastor Dennis Balcombe and Co-workers of RCMI,
Greetings! I’m Xiao Yang, a graduate of Shiloh Bible College. My heartfelt thanks to Pastor Balcombe and the teachers of RCMI; I so much appreciate the help RCMI has given over the years! At Shiloh, we were very well trained and equipped. Now I’m married, and together with my wife I am ministering to university students in Hebei Province. By God’s grace, the churches are full of the Holy Spirit and in continual revival and many souls are being saved. We are amazed by the works of God; may He continue to do his mighty works and expand His Kingdom in this place! May he save every one of the students’ souls here; may use us to turn this place upside down for Him! Reaching university students is so strategic for many reasons: they are hungry for meaning, open to change still, flexible and mobile after graduating and can effectively plant churches on other campuses even in the Middle East!
The fellowship we belong to now mainly serves university students and has 11 churches in different provinces. All of those who pastor these churches work full-time at pastoring, including husband-wife teams with their families. Since the people we work with are mostly students, the offerings we receive are not able to sustain their families. But the co-workers in all the churches are very zealous in their love of souls, preaching the gospel every day and praying fervently, so that there are always new people coming to church each week. What every church wants most is one thing: precious Bibles to be given immediately to newcomers, so they can have the Word of God and be saved.
Our church’s name is “The Light of the City.” Our vision statement is as follows: to build a strong church that loves God and people; to be a blessing in society and to each person in it; to find a need and meet it; to find an injury and heal it. We have been working hard right from the beginning to preach the gospel and save souls. Last year we held a musical evangelistic crusade which, despite limited finances and conditions, was attended by many students.
We are also seeking regular support for the church’s finances – as I said the offerings are limited because the members are students. Despite the increasing wealth of China’s middle class, our church offerings cannot support our leaders. Many times we have the heart, but we don’t have the ability to carry out what we would like to do. Also, last May the church moved to a new location, and now everymonth we have a high rent payment and all kinds of other expenses. Most of our church members areyoung people who have just recently married, as well as some just-graduated students, singles, anddivorced people.I want to thank RCMI for the Bibles you’ve given us—after Chinese New Year we received the 600Bibles that you so lovingly sent us! It warmed our hearts to know that our brothers and sisters arewalking with us! We’ve already put some of the Bibles into the hands of our hungry and new Christianfriends, and the others we’ll distribute when we have evangelistic crusades. May God’s Kingdomincrease more and more, and may God bless your church with His overflowing blessings, with His fullgrace!
Special notice : “Small Voice Project” is closed on December 2011, The Fund balance transferred to our General Fund account to continue to support our work in China. Please feel free to contact our Hong Kong office if you have more inquiry of this issue. Blessings
