Nine Significant Features of the Chinese House Church

Rumors of healings and other miracles spread like wildfire throughout the Chinese countryside. When people were healed, they couldn’t help but tell everyone what had happened to them. When other people were sick and had no hope, they looked to the same Jesus whom so many others had turned to, and found hope and relief, as well.

When believers prayed for simple things like Bibles, God would miraculously answer their prayers. When they prayed for safety, God protected them. When they asked for freedom from prison, God sometimes opened the iron gates of the correctional fortresses and let His servants walk out free. The early revivals in Henan and Anhui were fueled by the testimonies of many miracles like these.

 

4. Charismatic Faith and Worship

The early movements of the underground House Church were not propelled or supported by academia. Even today, the rough and crude farmers in China who are part of the underground House Church movement are not accepted by theological academics.

The prayers lifted up at an average House Church meeting are not read from a piece of paper prepared in advance, as in some formal Western denominations, but are marked by passionate, impromptu cries and bold proclamations. In addition, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are widely accepted and practiced, but certain activities, like speaking in tongues and prophesying, are not emphasized. Impromptu dancing and singing during prayer and worship times are encouraged and done with great joy, but these are quite natural to the culture and not at all distracting, as they would be in most Western church settings. There is nothing really formal or stuffy about worship in the underground House Church.

What makes the charismatic element unique in China is that it is not disorderly. One of the biggest accusations made by those opposed to charismatic worship is that it can create disorder and chaos, but that is not the case in the Chinese church. Even though such worship is entered into without planning or strategic leading, it is nonetheless done in unity. If one person is singing and dancing in a room full of people praying at an underground meeting, everyone is singing and dancing along with him or her. If one person is on his or her knees, crying and shouting out prayers, the entire room will begin to do the same. The charismatic activities are individual and unique to each person within the church, yet they are also somehow orderly and done as one body.

 

5. Female Leadership

One of the obvious characteristics of the Chinese House Church is the overwhelming percentage of women in the movement. The vast majority of evangelists and missionaries who are trained and sent to the field are young women. To overlook the dominant role that women have played and how much they have contributed to church growth would be deliberate ignorance.

Tags: chinese, church, featured, house

Category: Church History, Spring 2018