Sanjie Bafu(Eight Beatitudes) Church in Chuzhou, Anhui Province held its dedication ceremony on May 5. The new church covers an area of 560 square meters with a total usable area of 1,500 square meters. The church can hold over 1,000 people for services.
Bafu Church is in a typical Roman style design with a single three-story building, which has a multi-function room and subsidiary sanctuary. The 12 sides of the church foundation symbolize the 12 apostles in the Bible; the 24 surrounding pillars represent the 24 elders in the Bible; the sides, angles, squares, and circles imply that the faith of the church can be smooth on the surface and firm at heart.
There are three cylindrical structures on the stage that represent the pillar of truth and the trinity. The 12 peaks and one dome symbolize Jerusalem surrounded by mountains. There are eight beams, eight pillars, eight surfaces and eight petals to symbolize the beatitudes, which is why the church is named Bafu Church (Ba is the sound for eight.)
The church was first built by three lay workers in 1987. The old site covered an area of 666.6 square meters. 1,000 square meters of land was acquired near the old site in 1991 and they built six accessory rooms. They later expanded with two more rooms on the basis of the five-room house. 1,666.6 square meters of land near the church was acquired near the church in 2010, bringing the total area to 3,333.3 square meters.
Originally called Sanjie Church, the old venue was not only too small to meet the needs for religious life of the believers; it also greatly hindered the ministries of the church. Sanjie Church submitted a new church building application to the government of Sanjie Township and upper-level government and was approved thanks to the implementation of the Beautiful Village Policy in Meiying Village, Sanjie in 2012.
The construction of the new church began in September 2013 and was completed in December 2015. The brothers and sisters of the church donated around two million yuan (US $145,159) since 2015.
Translated by Grace Hubl
