From a dozen people meeting at the pastor's house, Church Y has grown into a medium-sized city church with three to four hundred people meeting and a full range of ministries within two decades. During the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the church continued its worship services online and onsite, maintained its donations, and retained its members nearly without loss.
Achieving such results requires extensive effort, and the vitality of Church Y is attributed to the senior pastor’s philosophy: the church must grasp social development trends and think about how to address the issues of this era.
"It is not that this era does not need the gospel, but that we need to consider how to present it," Pastor A said. The church should address the needs of social groups and respond to their concerns with truth.
Pastor A identified marriage relationships as a key issue, believing that the greatest societal problem in China over the past forty-plus years of reform and opening up has been related to marriage. The problem of the parent-child relationship and the current young people's view of marriage are the continuation of marriage problems. Many parents are not good role models of marriage, and children can hardly expect a good marriage relationship. "We often say that education starts with children, but in fact, it starts with parents, and we cannot continue to be traditional Chinese parents."
After setting the right goal, the church promoted couples' fellowship as a key ministry. Pastor A and his wife serve together in the church, setting an example for the congregation with their marriage. The couples' fellowship is divided into small groups, with weekly group meetings and bi-weekly family worship services at the church to facilitate interaction among different groups. In addition, there are regular intensive courses or activities throughout the year, targeting both families and individual men and women.
By offering couples' fellowship, the church has attracted many families. Gradually, the majority of believers are families, and the age structure becomes quite healthy (believers are mainly middle-aged people, followed by young and old people). Families have become the backbone of the church, from which a core group of workers has emerged. The church relies on volunteers for various ministries, with volunteers comprising one-third of the congregation, and over 90% of these volunteers are couples.
Pastor A continues to learn and improve the couples' fellowship ministry, providing better counseling for existing families and creating conditions to attract new ones.
During the pandemic, with restrictions on travel and gatherings, the church introduced new marriage courses and learning methods within the couples' fellowship. The courses are promoted step by step from the core staff of the church. Two families who have completed the course lead a new family to learn. The courses are carried out in a rolling manner, and each lesson is new. At the halfway point of the courses, a second new family can be added. Families that complete the courses can remain as group members or form new groups with other completed families to lead new families.
The main advantage of this form of course is its flexibility and ease of scheduling; six people can arrange a time to study together. Additionally, the two-on-one learning format provides personalized care to the families being counseled, allowing for a detailed understanding of their situations and fostering close relationships between mentors and mentees.
What the church has is a continuous relationship, and through teaching and studying, the entire church is woven into a dense network of relationships that build life among believers and strengthen their sense of belonging to the church. Furthermore, families that have improved their marriages through the courses often enthusiastically recommend the program to non-believing families around them, expanding the course’s reach beyond the church and serving as a means of evangelism.
Despite the thriving couples' fellowship, Pastor A remains cautiously realistic. He deeply feels the overall decline of the church in the current environment, acknowledging the overwhelming pressures and temptations people face. The church’s response to marriage issues can only reach those who are eager for change. He is aware of the changing times, calmly accepts the situation facing the church, and does what he can do. "The decline of the church is irreversible, and people have no choice but to do what they can, and the power to change lies with God."
- Translated by Nicolas Cao
