God is doing something amazing in China.

With the special permission of the publisher, PneumaReview.com presents Chapter 20 from the book by Eugene Bach and Brother Zhu, The Underground Church.

“[T]he house churches of China are growing at a phenomenal rate. Never in the history of the world have so many people in such a short time left one belief system for another without a hostile revolution. Lives in China are being transformed daily by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the display of His miraculous power” (from the back cover).

The Underground Church by Eugene Bach and Brother Zhu.

In this book, we have explored the history of the underground House Church, surveyed the main networks within the movement, and identified various elements that have helped to propel its growth. We have read personal testimonies of Chinese believers and looked at some of their experiences and trials, all of which have helped to bring their history to life. Through these examples, we can better understand concepts and situations pertaining to the Chinese church that are otherwise completely foreign to outsiders.

As discussed in previous chapters, the last few decades of Chinese church history were directed largely by the great work of God flowing out of the Nanyang region in Henan—through the networks of Peter Xu, Tanghe, Fangcheng, and others. A foreign visitor to that area would most likely look around and immediately wonder why God would choose such a place to pour out His grace. In many ways, Nanyang is about ten years behind the rest of China. It does not contain any notable foreign communities, and any foreigner visiting there is stared at and sometimes pointed out by local children who shout, “Laowai!” (“old foreigner”). One House Church worker from the Five Brothers Network described Nanyang in this way: “There are four areas of unrest for the Chinese government: Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Nanyang.” It is hard to imagine that this county has had such an impact on the entire world.

When a Westerner participates in a house church service, your experience will be very different. You will likely enter into a city apartment or a village home. You will be greeted by a group of ten to twenty believers, possibly more. When the service starts, you will quickly be surrounded by the sounds of lively, earnest singing. The songs will flow from music quite different than anything that you have ever heard. The lyrics, if you were you able to understand them, would seem equally strange. They highlight themes from what appears to be another world. Utilizing largely rural imagery, the lyrics evoke a world of struggle and persecution, sacrifice and mission, courage and hope. The service will include the sharing of testimonies and prayer requests. This is a time that inevitably culminates in corporate prayer. Everyone is given an opportunity to contribute; everyone is expected to participate. The preaching that follows will center on a passage from the Bible and seek to apply this text to the life of the believers. This biblical message typically will be followed by much discussion. Various members of the church will share what they feel God is saying to them through this message. The service will often conclude with a specific call to action and always with prayer. After the service has concluded, the believers will share a meal and joyful fellowship. In short, it will all seem very different from traditional church services back home. The nature of the music, the structure of the service, the expectation of your participation, the character of the message, the discussion that follows, and the intimacy of the fellowship will all take you by surprise. You will recognize that you are in the presence of believers, but the unique (and, perhaps, if you are astute, the uniquely Chinese) character of what has taken place will be very clear.

This is the real beauty, in my opinion, of the house church movement in China: it allows for the rich diversity that characteristics the body of Christ, and it does so in an authentically Chinese way. Worship in the house churches is more diverse in nature than in the TSPM churches, and it is also much more indigenous. A “one size fits all” approach to church life simply cannot contain the wonder and beauty of the body of Christ, globally or in China. This is true of worship styles, but it is also true of theology and church structure. It is especially true when the apparent uniformity is forced and contrived.

As the sub-title of Garrison’s book suggests, this book provides both an historical narrative and analysis of how the wind of the Holy Spirit is drawing Muslims from the nine rooms of the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam). The rooms refer to the nine different geographical sectors of the globe from West Africa to the Indonesian islands where Islam is dominant.

Garrison’s work is the result of his work as a missionary pioneer with the Southern Baptist International mission Board for thirty years. Over the years he traveled a quarter-million miles in the nine different areas of the Muslim world. Well-versed in twelve different languages, he was able to interview and converse with Christians having a Muslim-background before their conversion.

A Wind in the House of Islam became part of his responsibility as global strategist for evangelical advance on behalf of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. The book, however, is of a much broader scope than that of Southern Baptist interests. He discusses the contributions of the Assemblies of God, the Brethren, Lutherans, and other Christian bodies as the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands within each of the nine geo-cultural rooms of the House of Islam.

Garrison distinguishes “2,157 distinct Muslim cultures and people groups” which are found in nine different “affinity clusters cohering around shared experiences of geography, language, and history (p.31).” Apart from the introductory and closing chapters, Garrison devotes a chapter to each of these affinity clusters. He identifies them as Indo-Malaysian, Eastern South Asian, Western South Asian, Persian/Iranian, Western South Asian, Turkestan, North African, Western African, Eastern African, and ends with the Arab “room.” He begins his narrative with the Indo-Malaysian “room” of the House of Islam and closes with the “Arab” which includes the Arabian Peninsula along with Egypt and the western coast of the Red Sea.

The author identifies eighty-two Muslim movements to Christ throughout history with two occurring in the nineteenth, eleven in the twentieth, and sixty-nine in the twenty-first centuries. Garrison distinguishes the Arab Christians from those who, under the mantle of Islam, swept across the Near East and northern Africa and toward the Pacific in the late seventh and eighth centuries. The time frame of Garrison’s work is, therefore, concentrated within that time frame and the consequent centuries leading into the 21^st century.

Garrison writes of six different Muslim cultural groups: the Alawite, the Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, Ibodite, and Ismaili. The major ones are the Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi, the last-named being a “mystical”—for lack of a better word—form of Islam. The ones making the most news are the Sunni, Shi’a, and Alawite, the last named being the smaller of the three and confined mostly to Syria. Assad, the “president” of Syria is Alawite.

Tony Richie Summarizes and Reflects on Special White House Convening: “Celebrating and Protecting America’s Tradition of Religious Pluralism”

On Thursday, December 17th from 1:00-4:30 PM the White House conducted a special convening on “Celebrating and Protecting America’s Tradition of Religious Pluralism.”[1] Participation was by White House invitation only. Two Church of God ministers, Cheryl Bridges Johns and Tony Richie, were among those involved. Johns and her husband, Jackie, pastor New Covenant in Cleveland, Tennessee while Richie and his wife, Sue, pastor New Harvest in Knoxville, Tennessee. Johns is Robert E. Fisher Professor of Spiritual Renewal and Christian Formation at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Richie is Adjunct Professor of Historical and Doctrinal Theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Steven D. Martin, Director of Communications and Development for the National Council of Churches, was instrumental in effecting this significant invitation for these two Pentecostals.

The meeting was sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. It focused on the deep American traditions of religious inclusion, freedom, and cooperation among those with different beliefs. Officials discussed steps they take to promote and protect these traditions. Attendees had the opportunity to discuss efforts to carry these traditions forward in positive modes. Devotees from the major faith traditions participated.

The day’s sessions were moderated by Melissa Rogers, Special Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She insisted that, “There are no second class faiths in the United States of America.” However, Rogers also admitted “We have not always lived up to our ideals.” Remarks setting a tone of sober discussion with serious political overtones were made by Cecilia Muñoz, Assistant to the President, Director of Domestic Policy Council; Amy Pope, Deputy Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security; and Vanita Gupta, Principle Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice.

Robby Jones, Chief Executive Officer of the Public Religion Research Institute, presented recent data describing the United States as an increasingly plural nation in terms of its religious population. He submitted that religious diversity is in line with our nation’s history. However, the US has never before experienced the high level of diversity it does now. Yet most people (including atheists) still have small friendship circles including only or almost only their own faith group. The least levels of interaction in the US appear to be in the geographical South (the Bible Belt) and Midwest (the Heartland), apparently because of lower levels of religious diversity than the overall national average. Nevertheless, white Evangelicals appear to be a prominent group expressing mistrust and suspicion of religious others. Tennessee is frequently cited as a key battleground state in the fight for freedom of religion. Accordingly, both challenges and opportunities arise. In a word, more interreligious interaction is needed at communal and individual levels.

Carolyn Osiek, Charles Fischer Catholic Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School of Texas Christian University, and Margaret Y. MacDonald, Professor of Religious Studies at St. Francis Xavier University, have created a work that examines the day-to-day life of the women in the early church. They cover a variety of topics that would have affected every woman: marriage, birth, child rearing, childhood, motherhood, wet nurses, nannies, slaves, wives, widows, and grandmothers. Chapter 1 introduces three views that are commonly used to examine women in the early church: patriarchy vs. the discipleship of equals, public vs. private, and ascetic vs. domestic life. They also discuss basic activities of the house church such as hosting the assembly, education, communication, socialization, charity, evangelization, and mission.

Chapter 2 focuses on wives noting that the Biblical ideal was not often reality. Evidence for this period regarding Christian women is fragmentary. Despite this, the authors insert this evidence into an “imaginary scene (18) based on what we know of a typical Roman family.” The chapter examines Colossians and Nympha’s role, on Prisca, Ananias and Sapphira as well as other ancient texts. Chapters 3 and 4 cover birth, childcare, and raising children in the house church. Topics include abortion, infanticide, exposure, nursing, and mortality rates for both mother and child. Besides using Roman medical texts the authors also, use the writings of Plutarch, John Chrysostom, The martyrdom of Pertpetua and Felicitas, the life of Macrina and the infancy gospel of Thomas.

Chapter 5 deals with the female slave and builds on the work of Jennifer Glancy (Slavery in Early Christianity) and J. Albert Harrill (Slaves In The New Testament: Literary, Social And Moral Dimensions) to illustrate the problems of Christian female slaves and the church’s problem with them. This chapter is loaded with Roman law, rabbinic writings and non-Christian authors. The sixth chapter examines Eph. 5:22-33 using two points of view: the first as a document against Roman ideology and the second as an apologetic ideal representing the church. Asking if the injunction to marry as an option could have been a way for women to wield influence in the house church is the topic of chapter 7.

Alen Martin and Dian Ginter, “Power House: How Prayer Can Saturate the Life of Your Church,” Pray! (Issue 23, Mar/Apr 2001), pages 14-17.

Looking for some practical advice on transforming your church into a house of prayer? This issue of Pray!, and this article in particular may offer the simple steps needed to get your church on track.

Cover from the 2010 re-release from CrossBooks.

Martin and Ginter say that churches establishing a prayer ministry should see this as only the first step toward becoming a church saturated by prayer. In a house of prayer, prayer is a part of every aspect of individuals lives and the corporate life of the church. There are nine elements that Martin and Ginter say are common to churches that are houses of prayer: 1. Prayer is visible from the pulpit. 2. Prayer saturates every aspect of the service. 3. The leadership is committed to prayer. 4. Prayer is an agenda item in every meeting and class. 5. Prayer is part of Christian education. 6. The pastor has a strong prayer covering. 7. Prayer is the first step, not the last resort. 8. Intercession is an integral part of the church life. 9. The church has a recognized prayer leader other than the senior pastor.

Although this brief article is actually an adaptation from the book Power House: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Church That Prays (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), it summarizes what the heart of Pray! magazine is all about: encouraging all of God’s people to have a passion for prayer. This article is followed by “Firm Foundations: A Blueprint for Building a House of Prayer” by Pastor Wesley Tullis, “Developing a Prayer Strategy for Your Church” by Gary Kinnaman, as well as an article on developing a pastor to prayer leader relationship.

Reviewed by Raul Mock