Yugan County is located in the northeast of Jiangxi Province with a population of 910,000. There are more than 90,000 Christians which accounts for about 10% of the total population.
The writer recently paid a visit to Yugan County to find out why the local Gospel is so revived and discover the current situation of the church.
One important reason why Yugan County has become a Gospel county is the long-standing history of the Gospel. According to the historical materials, 42 churches existed and were dispersed among different towns before the establishment of the People's Republic of China. There were 33 churches with known individuals in charge, and 9 churches with unknown people in charge. There were about 10,000 believers in the county with around 3,000 baptized.
Yugan Church has always been very passionate about evangelism. From 1936 to 1943, Yugan Church organized seven "Evangelism Groups" to preach the gospel in the market, dock, peripheral villages, and the junction of neighboring counties. According to Teacher Zhang Xin, chairman of the CCC&TSPM of Yugan County, believers in the surrounding counties were all converted because of Yugan.
The Gospel of Yugan fell on the believers after entering the new period, yet people are still passionate about evangelism. "The believers preach the Gospel purely out of love, so that more people can hear the Gospel. Modern people are overwhelmed with pressure. If they have heard of the good news, they would naturally think about the Gospel when dealing with difficulties in careers and families," Pastor Zhang said. Moreover, believers also carry out a love visitation ministry to testify Christ's love with their own love.
Many entire households in Yugan believe in God. Like Brother Xu of Huangjinbu Church, three generations in his family are Christians. And Elder Chen, who first believed in God as a child and is almost 70 now, has been serving in the church for many years.
Furthermore, believers in Yugan admire the Word of God very much. When attending services in the Gospel Church, there were several scenes that left a deep impression on me. One was at around 7 AM before the service started, at the church's main gate, there were two elder sisters with one laying her hands on the other and praying. Another was after the service, a group of three to five believers gathered together and started praying. There was also an elder brother who bent over the pew and wrote down the service information from a little blackboard. Even when waiting for the car along the roadside, I could hear a tricycle delivering gas playing the sermon of Romans.
There are currently 378 churches and gatherings of Yugan Church scattered among the villages of the county, according to Director Wu of the local CCC&TSPM. The old official statistics showed that there were 98,000 believers but many believers were out for work. Based on the new statistics from two months ago, 72,000 believers attend the service here. Yugan County has also become a study subject in political, academic, and religious circles because there are so many believers and churches.
With so many gatherings, churches and believers, how does the local CCC&TSPM supervise? It is learned that the CCC&TSPM of Yugan County divided the 36 villages into 28 districts, and set up three-self groups with three-self committee members of the county as group leaders. The local CCC&TSPM holds one big meeting in each village once a month, and strengthens the faith of the volunteers and brothers and sisters in the form of revival meetings. At the same time, from 1996 until now, CCC&TSPM of Yugan County has been sending fellow workers to go to the countryside every month to preach, hold Bible studies, and distribute some learning materials like "Tianfeng" (the magazine of the Protestant Churches in China) and other teaching material.
However, like churches in other places, Yugan Church also faces problems like the outflow of theological students and inadequate preaching on contributions. On one hand, Yugan Church takes the fostering of theological students seriously, and the theological students walking out of here account for half of the students of Jiangxi Bible School. On the other hand, the church should raise its awareness in fostering the theological students and fellow workers. Such problems are very obvious in rural churches.
Huangjinbu Town is called "Town of Power", and it is also the key town in the south of Yugan County and the "sub center" of the whole county. There are 14 churches within its jurisdiction, and it is a fairly wealthy county in Yugan. Elder Chen, in charge of the town's CCC&TSPM, is now actively carrying forward the ministry of fostering preachers. According to him, there is currently no system for fostering preachers in Yugan Church. The salary for the pastoral workers mainly comes from the church, "people get paid if they work in a church, but if they don't there is no income. That's why some theological students left the pastoral positions to go out to work, because they couldn't support themselves."
Starting two years ago, CCC&TSPM of Huangjinbu began to promote building a system for fostering the preachers. They set up a Gospel foundation two years ago, and started paying the theological students through CCC&TSPM. They also encourage the churches to hand in some of the offerings they receive in normal times to the CCC&TSPM, so that they can pay the pastoral workers and theological students in the whole town uniformly. Director Wu said that the CCC&TSPM of the county hopes to carry out the ministry with Huangjinbu Town as an experimental unit.
Just like most rural churches, preaching on tithing in Yugan Church is not enough. "Many people don't preach about tithes of one tenth, so the idea of contribution is still the same as it was 30 years ago. Many believers think that contributions are only needed when building a church, otherwise, there's no need for tithing. They lack the idea of supporting the preachers." Such a situation is also related to the ideas of some of the people in charge of the churches. Some think that they served in the church without compensation for many years, but the moment someone else comes they receive a salary.
In recent years, Huangjinbu Church started preaching about contributions. "For the moment, Churches in Yugan lack neither believers nor churches, but they need to renew their ideas," Elder Chen said.
Besides, the CCC&TSPM of the county expects to promote the work of changing terms hoping that fellow workers over 70 would step down for the next generation to take over the ministry. For the senior fellow workers who devoted many years to the church, apart from financial compensation, they should be treated with gentle respect. Of course, it is no easy job. Also it was learned that the fellow workers that are over 70 account for half of the current church fellow workers in Yugan.
Translated by: Grace Hubl
