A church in China’s northeastern Jilin Province conducted online services and activities during the Holy Week, as the COVID-19 cases have recently continued to surge.
On April 10, Haikou Road Church in lockdown held an online Palm Sunday service, starting the virtual gathering activities during this year’s Passion Week.
Senior Pastor Yan Peng said the themes of the services were “self-sacrifice and self-control”, “repentance, fasting, self-denial, and love” and church members are divided into three large groups and several small groups. These online gatherings could cover almost all the congregation, who were encouraged to learn theological knowledge, traditions and spiritual practices.
In order to better hold these online Passion Week worship services, the church has made arrangements for eight days of activities, including scriptures for reading, sermons, and hymns. Rev. Yan preached one sermon on the first day of Holy Week with the theme of "The Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem" and the other sermon titled "The Lord Jesus is Risen" on Easter Sunday. From Holy Monday to Holy Saturday, several pastors gave sermons, as well as led believers to read the Bible. On the evening of the day of fellowship on April 14, the church is to host an activity titled "Meditation of Seven Words on the Cross" in a WeChat group which is praying for the end of the epidemic in Jilin. On April 17, the end of Holy Week, a virtual praise and worship service is to be held.
At the end of service, believers will make offerings and will have insisted on praying on the Internet for more than 1180 days.
Mainland China last Sunday reported 1184 confirmed COVID-19 cases (187 in Jilin Province) and 26411 asymptomatic carriers (797 in Jilin), according to the National Health Commission of the PRC on April 11.
(The article is originally published by the Gospel Times.)
- Translated by Abigail Wu
