29

Rebuked by God

About ten percent of those attending the house-church conference were women. I was intrigued by them. I realized that any church-house leader was taking a huge risk—but I wondered about the women who were willing to take that risk. And, even further, how had they become leaders of groups? I was looking forward to the opportunity to hear some of their stories. How had they come to know Jesus? How had they come to take on leadership roles?

My large-group interviews had continued. Amazing stories were being heard by the entire gathering. Between our large-group gatherings, however, I made a point of spending time with smaller groups that huddled together during meal times and breaks. It didn’t take me long to discover that all of these leaders were strong individuals. I found them to be spiritually mature and exceptionally articulate about their faith. The women, in particular, were passionate evangelists. They had spiritual fire in their bones. I sensed that they could have witnessed about Jesus for three hours straight without stopping to take a breath. Their passion and their enthusiasm were astonishing.

I learned that the women at this conference had planted churches all over that province and neighboring provinces. When I asked them about the biggest challenges facing house-church leaders and pastors, they explained to me that they did not have those titles. “All the women here at this conference,” they explained, “are evangelists and church planters.” I was beginning to learn a lot more about what those titles meant. To this point, I had assumed that being a leader or a pastor of a house church was the most dangerous position. After listening to these women, however, I began to wonder.

Based on their stories, being an evangelist or a church planter was perhaps an even more dangerous responsibility in a house-church movement than leading a local congregation. Fulfilling the role of an evangelist or church planter required witnessing to non-believers. It was a constant danger to interact with people and to decide whether or not those people could be trusted. These evangelists relied on the leadership of God’s Spirit when it came to the matter of trusting people. They were passionate about sharing their faith, but they knew how much risk was involved.

I asked them how they had become evangelists and church planters.

They told me, “Oh, it is just common sense!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Once churches are planted, the leaders are often imprisoned,” they explained. “When those leaders are away, other people begin to lead. Sometimes, those leaders are taken to prison too. Every time, though, others rise up to take their place. We simply do what we have been trained to do; we take God’s Word and we share it. When people receive the message, new churches are started. That seems to be the way that God grows His church.”

I was astounded by the clarity and simplicity of the strategy—and by their commitment to it. These women seemed completely uninterested in titles, positions, and formal structure. They were committed to sharing the story of Jesus; nothing else seemed to matter to them.

In that moment, I thought of so many American denominations that are engaged in conflict over matters of authority and leadership. These believers seemed to understand that the only thing that mattered was sharing Jesus. I was certain that if there was ever disagreement about leadership roles in the house churches in China, the argument would be over who would most quickly and most passionately venture out into a hostile world to share the gospel with the lost and win people for Jesus. These women, in particular, didn’t seem to have the time or the inclination to debate responsibilities or titles within the church.

At the end of that week, as I finished my last session of interviews and storytelling in front of the conference crowd, I felt a surge of gratitude for all that I had heard and learned from these house-church leaders. As different as our cultures and our faith journeys may have been, I had developed a deep sense of spiritual unity and oneness with these brothers and sisters. I wanted to open my heart to them in a way that would demonstrate my respect and appreciation for them.

What I wanted to say to the house-church leaders gathered there was something like, “How can we partner together? How might we continue to learn from each other? How can I, and others in the western church, come alongside you and maybe even do ministry and mission together?”

That’s what I wanted to ask. That’s what I should have asked. That’s what I meant to ask. However . . .

Sick and sleep-deprived, I was by this time exhausted. What I ended up saying was this: “How can I help you?”

I knew the moment those words crossed my lips how they would be heard. I knew what kind of response those words would elicit. My listeners heard my question as an offer of financial support. And, naturally, one of the house-church leaders had a suggestion for how they could use the money that they thought I was offering.

“Dr. Ripken,” this man said. “Right now four hundred of our leaders are in prison. Their families are suffering. Many of them have no financial resources for school fees, rent, food, or clothing. They have nothing. Now that you have heard our stories, perhaps you can go back to your country and tell people about us. When you do that, maybe you can gather an offering to help us take care of those poor families who are suffering while their husbands and fathers are in prison.”

It was a sobering request. After all that I had heard and seen, I felt inspired to tell them that I was ready to make this my life’s work. I would vow to tell the stories of these committed house-church leaders wherever I went. Surely there were no more needy and deserving people in the world. Surely there was no nobler cause than to rally the western church to support these churches in persecution. Of course, I would commit to help them care for the struggling families of these Chinese believers who have sacrificed so much for the Lord.

I looked out over the gathering of courageous believers, fully prepared to promise them that, when I returned to America, I would indeed tell their stories.

But when I opened my mouth, no words came out.

A second time, I started to speak, intending to assure them that I would do everything in my power to make their cause my cause.

But when I opened my mouth to say that, nothing came out.

A third time I attempted to speak. Again, I had no words.

For some reason, I was suddenly unable to speak. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I had been rendered speechless by the Holy Spirit.

In that moment, I prayed a silent prayer: Lord, speak. Your servant wants to hear.

And God gave me a message to share with these house-church leaders.

I recognized God’s voice because this wasn’t the first time that I had heard it. Sensing the message that I should share, I silently argued with God. I tried to tell God why this particular message would be wrong. At the same time, I felt commanded to speak this word.

Looking at these leaders who had, by now, become dear friends, I asked, “How many believers do you have in this house-church movement?” It was an odd thing to ask. We had gone over that figure time and time again. Patiently, one of the leaders answered, “As we have told you, there are ten million of us.”

“We have only been together a short time here,” I said slowly. “You don’t really know me! And I realize that I don’t have any authority over your lives or your churches! I am not your pastor. I am not one of your leaders . . .”

“. . . I know I have no right . . . no real authority to say this,” I continued. “But I feel that God has spoken to my heart just now . . . to keep me from saying what I was planning to say to you. I feel now that God would have me say something different. If I am correct in what I am feeling—and if this is, in fact, a word from God—then we should be careful to hear it.”

I paused, took a deep breath for resolve, and I plowed ahead: “If ten million believers in your movement cannot take care of four hundred families, do you have the right to call yourselves the Body of Christ, the Church, or even followers of Jesus?”

The words brought no reaction. I looked and I saw one hundred and seventy faces staring at me with an icy silence.

I had nothing more to say. And I was hoping that God would put no further word on my heart.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I retreated to the back of the little platform. I feared that I had offended people who I had already grown to love.

I plopped down on the bench and sat there all alone. A few minutes passed. My sympathetic friend David offered his moral support by coming over and sitting down beside me.

I have no idea how many minutes passed. It felt like an eternity to me. Then I noticed that a woman had started crying. Then several people were crying. Eventually, the entire group seemed to be crying. This went on for maybe thirty minutes. Finally, one of the leaders rose to his feet. He wiped tears from his face.

Walking up to me and standing right in front of me on the platform, this leader addressed me. “Dr. Ripken, you are right. When you go home, you and your wife should continue doing what God has called you to do. And, here, we will continue doing what God has called us to do. You were right when you said, ‘If ten million of us cannot take care of four hundred families, then we have no right to call ourselves followers of Jesus or His church.’ You were right. And we take that word as a word from God. Now, you go home and do your job, and we will stay here and do ours. We will take care of these four hundred families!”

It was a gracious conclusion. The house-church leaders rejected neither the messenger nor his message. They took my hard words as a message from God. Responding to the challenge, they recommitted themselves to care for those among their number who were suffering so greatly.

My time in China, like my time in Eastern Europe, had provided little opportunity for reflection on what was happening day by day. I had little time to think about what I was learning or experiencing. Most days, it was enough simply to survive. I wondered how I would make sense of what I was seeing—or if that would ever happen.

Anticipating that struggle to a small degree, we had reserved a few extra hours in our planning for a short layover in a city boasting one of China’s most popular tourist attractions and something that I had always wanted to see. By the time I actually arrived there, though, I was too exhausted to explore. I simply wanted to rest.

That down-time allowed me to sit still long enough to begin fleshing out all the cryptic notes that I had taken since my time in Hong Kong. It was a gift to have a brief time to process my experiences, to look for underlying patterns, to re-examine my initial observations, and then to begin to see and connect the dots between different people and places that I had come across on my journey.

I had noticed a number of significant cultural differences—some small and others huge—between believers and churches in Eastern Europe and those I had visited in China. I had actually expected that. Beyond the obvious differences, though, I sensed an intangible difference in attitude that I couldn’t quite identify or articulate. Something was there that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I had been inspired by the steadfast faithfulness of the believers who had endured decades of oppression in the former USSR. The suffering under communist rule still weighed heavily on many of the survivors. Even many years later, they remained wary, wearied and deeply wounded. The pain of suffering was still very real even ten years after the fall of communism. In contrast, the Chinese believers who I had met later that same year of 1998 had a surprisingly relaxed, upbeat, and almost buoyant air about them.

These Chinese believers still lived under the very real threat of arrest and imprisonment for the practice of their faith. That threat required constant vigilance and painstaking attention to security precautions. Every time the believers gathered for worship or met with a foreign fellow-believer like me, they were in a situation of great danger. Even so, the believers in China exhibited a constant joyfulness in the midst of harsh circumstances. I never heard them deny or down-play the danger. They never made light of it. They were painfully aware of the reality of their lives. Still, they exhibited an undeniable, irrepressible joy.

I had seen it on the face of old Pastor Chang crouched in the corner, humming and smiling as he listened to me interview the young men who he had mentored. I had sensed it in the spirit of enthusiasm and vitality of the young university students who I had met in Beijing. Those students didn’t merely accept the potential cost of their commitment to Christ, they embraced what they considered the adventure of following Jesus. I heard it in the voices of the women evangelists who expressed gratitude to God for their call and ministry. I watched it acted out by the three pastor friends who could laugh and make me laugh over the torture that they had endured.

I remembered how my very first Chinese contacts back in southern China had explained the government’s primary motivation for persecuting believers. It was not that the communists opposed or even cared about what Jesus taught His followers. The communists were not concerned with what Christians believed. Their concern was something quite different. Any commitment to something or Someone other than the State was considered a serious threat to government authority and control. What they cared most about was political allegiance. And they understood clearly the threat from those who declared the Lordship of Christ, a Lordship that would not be shared with the State or with any other power.

By the end of my time in China, my understanding had grown. And my understanding would grow even more after I met and interviewed yet another group of leaders (representing another major house-church movement) at my very last stop in China.

I asked whether, when and how the oppressed could truly threaten a totalitarian oppressor. They offered this scenario in response:

The security police regularly harass a believer who owns the property where a house-church meets. The police say, “You have got to stop these meetings! If you do not stop these meetings, we will confiscate your house, and we will throw you out into the street.”

Then the property owner will probably respond, “Do you want my house? Do you want my farm? Well, if you do, then you need to talk to Jesus because I gave this property to Him.”

The security police will not know what to make of that answer. So they will say, “We don’t have any way to get to Jesus, but we can certainly get to you! When we take your property, you and your family will have nowhere to live!”

And the house-church believers will declare, “Then we will be free to trust God for shelter as well as for our daily bread.”

“If you keep this up, we will beat you!” the persecutors will tell them.

“Then we will be free to trust Jesus for healing,” the believers will respond.

“And then we will put you in prison!” the police will threaten.

By now, the believers’ response is almost predictable: “Then we will be free to preach the good news of Jesus to the captives, to set them free. We will be free to plant churches in prison.”

“If you try to do that, we will kill you!” the frustrated authorities will vow.

And, with utter consistency, the house-church believers will reply, “Then we will be free to go to heaven and be with Jesus forever.”

I had flown home from my Eastern Europe trip asking myself: Is the resurrection power that the New Testament describes still real and available to believers in our world today?

I left China convinced that it was! I had learned of millions of Chinese believers who had found it and were living it. I had heard resurrection power in their words, I had sensed it in their spirits, and I had seen overwhelming evidence of it in the lives and ministries of so many people still enduring persecution all over that country.

Professionally, I wanted to better understand that resurrection power. Personally, I wanted to experience it for myself.