Memorial Service of Elder Fu Xianwei, Chairman of China’s Registered Church Body, Held in Shanghai

On September 6, 2018, the memorial service of Elder Fu Xianwei, chairman of TSPM, was held in Shanghai Moore Memorial Church. 

Elder Fu died in a Shanghai hospital on Aug 20, according to CCC&TSPM. After his death, CCC&TSPM received 97 messages and letters of condolence from China and foreign countries. 

The service was presided over by Rev. Xu Xiaohong, vice-chairman and general secretary of TSPM. 

Funeral wreaths were placed at the corridors on the two sides and before the altar. Some of them were given by foreign Christian organizations like the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Presbyterian Church in the USA, the Church of England, and the United Bible Societies.

His brief biography said that born in Shanghai on February 12, 1944, Elder Fu Xianwei grew up in a Christian family and was baptized in a church in his early days. From 1961 to 1978, he worked in a chemistry factory,a boat factory, and a university, successively. After the church in Shanghai was reopened in the early 1980s, he was active in the church ministries as a volunteer.

He devoted himself to full-time ministry in 1987 and was ordained an elder of Shanghai Moore Memorial Church in May 1996. From 1987 to 2008, Elder Fu successively worked in the Shanghai TSPM and Christian Council then the TSPM National Committee of the Protestant Churches in China. Since 2008, he served as the top leader of TSPM.

Fu Yinbing, the daughter of the deceased Chinese Protestant church leader, said it was special for her to conduct such service because his father became a Christian and was baptized in Moore Memorial Church where her mother, paternal great-grandmother, grandmother and her were also baptized. 

She added that after his conversion, he was active in the church service like joining the choir, having fellowship, and acting in nativity plays. However, due to his busy work, she only saw him once or twice a year and even grumbled about that. But a few days ago, when she sorted out his personal remains, she happened to see his workbook in which the schedule was arranged until this November. With a great "ah ha!", she regretted for her complaints because she was proud of the father who put work the first place. 

The participants included leaders of China's registered churches and representatives from foreign Christian churches and institutions.