Planting Reproducing Churches by Elmer Towns

Author:Elmer Towns [Towns, Elmer L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Destiny Image, Inc.

CHAPTER 8

PLANTING HOUSE CHURCHES

There are many places in the world today where Christianity is growing because house churches are being planted.

But as previously noted, perhaps the greatest house church movement in the world today is the underground church movement in Communist China. It is estimated to have more than 100 million believers. It represents the resurrected power of the Gospel because like the phoenix, it has arisen from the ashes of destruction.

In the late 1940s, Communist forces defeated the Nationalist forces of General Chiang Kai-shek and began a systematic purge of “Western” Christianity. The government seized all the property and buildings of the Christians, including churches, schools, denominational headquarters, dormitories, etc. Church leaders were either martyred or sent into camps or prisons. The outward evidence of Christianity and its ages of ministry vanished almost overnight.

In September 1950, my missions teacher at Columbia Bible College was Arthur Glasser, who represented China Inland Missions. The devastating stories he told left me bewildered. I wanted to cry out, “Why, God?”

Sixty years later, I was huddled in the back of a restaurant in Shanghai, China, listening to 22 leaders from house churches telling me one thrilling testimony after another of the explosion of the underground church in China. Each of the 22 leaders supervised a system of house churches, some a dozen churches, others as many as 200 house churches. They told how the number of churches grew with each wave of persecution. One leader testified, “God allowed the Communists to wipe out the influence of Western Christianity so we could have a pure Chinese church. We do not have buildings, headquarters, schools, classrooms, dormitories, or offices. All we have is people and church and the power of the Gospel.”1

The growth and strength of the Chinese house church movement is not measured by outward things that define Western Christianity but by the power of God and the church’s inner purpose and nature. Western Christianity draws strength from its cathedrals, sanctuaries, and unique structures built throughout cities. Many times these are built in prominent places to attract people to its faith. Historic Western church landmarks tell of Christianity’s glorious past, but the Chinese house church movement is not focused on buildings or structures.

Western Christianity has an abundance of programs to instruct, evangelize, and serve humanitarian needs. Its programs rally its members to a cause, then educate them, equip them and direct them to great crusades. But Chinese Christianity operates out of simplistic New Testament purposes, not programs.

Western Christianity is led by its educated, equipped, and dedicated leaders. Attached to most denominations are schools of higher education or seminaries. To be a Western leader, a young man or woman must obtain college and seminary training, embrace ordination standards, and measure up to some of the highest academic standards in the world. Their schools are academic based and accredited by secular and governmental agencies. But have educational standards alone made Western Christianity strong? The Chinese house church is driven by lay leaders who are equipped through ministry-based and church-based programs that have no accreditation recognition.

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