"My grace is sufficient for you"

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2004 by Gao Ying

When the Chinese church tries to review and summarize what Chinese Christians have gone through during more than thirty years, God's grace comes up as the theological category most descriptive of our experiences. We have had some experience of dying and rising up again in our individual life, in our national life and in the life of our church. Conditions made many of us see more surely and more intimately that God's grace is actually sustaining grace.

China is a secular nation where people do not have access to the Christian faith through mass media. Protestant Christians in China are the small minority; Protestantism comprises only a little more than 1 percent of the total population. It seems that the mission of evangelism is beyond the churches' ability. However, God has God's own plan for the church in China.

After the Cultural Revolution, in 1980 when churches began to reopen, we found there were many more Christians than before. Since 1980, churches have been reopened and newly built at the rate of three every two days. The number of Protestant Christians has grown from seven hundred thousand to more than fifteen million in the last twenty-four years.

Upon seeing the vitality and growth of the Chinese church, many Western Christians, especially former missionaries and their children, are amazed at the resurgence and growth of the church in China. They find it hard to understand how a Chinese church, which was without missionaries or support from mission abroad for so many years, and had even been forced to close its doors during the Cultural Revolution, could actually revive and grow like this when it reopened. They have concluded that there is only one explanation: It is a miracle.

Indeed, this is a miracle; it is God's grace demonstrated in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We believe "that all things work together for good for those who love God" (Rom. 8:28). God frequently works through the transformation of people or events, the interruption of various social factors, to guide human history towards the realization of reconciliation between God and people within the great plan of salvation. If we look at the situation in China in recent years from this perspective, we can see how God makes God's great power manifest.

The Cultural Revolution was a period that taught Christians to understand that "when we are weak and dying, life is in the offering", and to learn that "strength is found in weakness, and life in dying" (cf. 2 Cor. 12:8-10). God's grace gives us the assurance that the meek are to inherit the earth. And it is indeed because of this that Chinese Christians' hearts are filled with gratefulness. We thank God for God's special grace towards us; God has led us through the valley of death. Because of the increasing number of ordinary Christians, thousands and thousands of people in China have heard the good news and turned to God.

The church in China is part of the ecumenical family. Which part of it? The part of it that is composed of the younger churches, and that part of the younger churches which is situated in a country with a civilization of thousands of years and which now has entered the period of revival and reconstruction. Joshua's words, "you have not passed this way before" (Joshua 3:4), are an apt description of our situation. We are poorly qualified to be explorers of a new path in evangelistic work. But God has not asked what in our eyes would be a better-qualified church to do this. Therefore, the church in China gladly explores the way ahead in our rather quiet ways (Matt. 5:5). In bearing witness to Christ in this new situation, we feel we are carrying on our work with the prayer and the blessing of the ecumenical churches.

Gao Ying represents the China Christian Council on the WCC central committee.