Two churches in Suzhou, Jiangsu, held worship services to celebrate Thanksgiving which falls on Thursday.
In the second service held on the morning of November 21, churchgoers of Shishan Church sat at intervals per the social distancing requirements after they showed their health codes. They stood up to sing the hymn Great Are Thy Mercies, Heavenly Father, then the Good News Choir performed the song What a Wonderful Savior and the reading of "Psalm 103".
Pastor Liu Yingjie preached a sermon titled The Mercy at the Edge of the Field, citing Lev 19:9-10 and Deuteronomy 23:24-25.
Then, the Evergreen Choir presented a hymn Love, Joy and Life, with a dance The Beatitudes from Jeduthun Choir. After a male and female duetted the song, His Sheep am I, members of the expansion meeting of the church council sang the songs When I Praise and Living Sacrifice.
Next, Senior Pastor Meng Yanfeng called on believers to pray and donate for the new 81 stained glass windows containing 14 biblical stories, 29 faith signs and 30 color blocks, as they will cost more than 650,000 yuan.
On the same morning, Dushu Lake Church also hosted a Thanksgiving praise service. The worship and praise part was led by the praise team of Grace Church of the Korean Fellowship affiliated to the landmark church in the Suzhou Industrial Park.
Wang Tianlu, a deputy senior pastor of the church, shared a sermon Metaverse-Tower of Babel or Garden of Eden? The pastor mentioned that in traditional beliefs, we only needed to deal with relationships with God, men, and the world, but today and even in the future, we could not ignore the concept of "meta-universe". Regarding how Christians should live in the virtual world, she said that in common sense, we might think metaverse is still far away from us, but it is already everywhere in real life.
"Children play games and we need to use navigation when going to a place..." As an inseparable part of our lives, the Internet was both a crisis and a turning point for churches and believers. Finally, Wang pointed out, “Proposing this concept is not to draw a conclusion, but to provoke the question whether we can live without the virtual world.”
- Translated by Abigail Wu
