Editor’s note: This year, China Partnership is praying for the church in China to hold fast. In the fall of 2022, we spoke with Chinese house church leaders and asked them how the global church can pray for and support them in 2023. They specifically asked that we pray that they would hold fast to Christ and to his promises in the midst of pressure, persecution, and uncertainty.
They also asked for encouragement. In 2023, we will be periodically publishing letters of encouragement to the church in China from the global church. We hope these letters will remind Chinese Christians that they are not alone or forgotten, but that around the world, their brothers and sisters in Christ care and pray for them regularly. We invite you to join us as we labor in love and prayer for the church in China.
Perfect Unity in Christ
I stand in awe at this opportunity to address you directly, as I never imagined such a thing could happen on this side of eternity. I write with deep admiration for your faith, for your creativity in challenging circumstances. I also write to honor our shared desire to see today’s global body of Christ reconnect to awareness of our oneness in him, as we live and move around the world today.
There is a global awakening to long-neglected parts of Christ’s body. I thank our God for your candor, and for this Spirit-driven dialogue.
Many of us are reading your pastoral writings with humility and curiosity. We recognize that there is a global awakening to long-neglected parts of Christ’s body. I thank our God for your candor, and for this Spirit-driven dialogue. I even thank our God for our imperfections, because have One in whom we are perfected together: our Lord Jesus Christ. I thank our God for our perfect unity in him. There is no other earthly relationship that is so close as we are with each other!
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
We Are Being Stirred
For purposes known only to our Savior, he has at various times allowed more religious freedom to some in this world than the historic Church typically has known. Some have historically handled this responsibility well to proclaim Christ’s kingdom; others have faltered, stumbled, and not finished well. In our case, it seems our Christian privilege has made many of us soft and apathetic, captured by many distractions and great infighting. Our comfort has lulled us to sleep, with our heads resting on the rough pillowcases of the sufferings of the invisible church. Our slumber has made us numb, unable to feel the blows against Christ’s global body, made one in him.
It seems our Christian privilege has made many of us soft and apathetic, captured by many distractions and great infighting. Our comfort has lulled us to sleep… But now, we are being stirred and awakened with every cultural blow we ourselves experience.
But now, we are being stirred and awakened with every cultural blow we ourselves experience. The earthly cultures that surround us show growing hostility, with a spectrum of emotions toward Christianity’s truths: ranging from apathy and indifference, to resentment and open hostility. And so, biblical Christians are being pushed to remember our union in Christ. No longer can we say to the global suffering church, “I have no need of you”:
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Never miss a story
Indeed, we need each other. The conversations you have initiated feel vitally important, and even historical as we await Jesus’s return with upturned faces. They are helpful to each of our own cultural moments, educating and edifying. Of course, our conversation does not add to the biblical canon, but one feels the weight and significance of the Church speaking to herself across geographic and linguistic lines at this historical inflection point – the time to remember our oneness is here.
Pray Also for Us
I pray you will continue speaking with us, and with the rest of the church across God’s creation. Satan has blanketed our age with a global deception about the nature of God and man, of personhood, of male and female, so much that many question reality itself. With each passing hour, a New Testament reality of the church under hostility grows for the church everywhere. We need each other’s wisdom and strengthening encouragement that we are not alone, that we are made one in Christ, and that our unity is tangible, eternal, and indivisible.
Many in our corner of the world are learning the painful lesson that there is no salvation in politics. There is no salvation in cultures, or earthly tribes, temporal relationships, or in any of the world systems in which we mistakenly place our trust. Christ is our only salvation, and our sole sufficiency in a world hostile to his mission and his people.
Many in our corner of the world are learning the painful lesson that there is no salvation in politics. There is no salvation in cultures, or earthly tribes, temporal relationships, or in any of the world systems in which we mistakenly place our trust. Christ is our only salvation.
As you remember the churches scattered across the world, pray for us. Pray that we become more like him, and that we grow to behave as the set-apart culture that Christ loves. Pray that we not merely serve as a counterculture, but as an ‘other culture’ altogether – one body, who moves differently from all other cultures around us, reflecting the One True Kingdom culture that invites as it indicts.
I pray that by the Spirit, you can feel our hands grasp yours – to strengthen, comfort, enrich, and endure this global season as the one body that we are. Pray, as we pray for you, that we all may stand strong in the days of our own challenges, and love those who hate Christ and his people – even unto our own death – until the day we are perfected, harmonized and gathered in Christ.
For indeed, we are promised to see each other soon.
K.A. Ellis
Director, The Edmiston Center at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia
K. A. Ellis is passionate about preparing the next generations to live faithfully under anti-Christian hostility. Her research areas include Bible, theology, ethics, human rights, and global religious freedom, and she has spoken and written often on Christian endurance under persecution. She is director of the Edmiston Center at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Robert Cannada Fellow in World Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary.
Pray for Chinese Christians to feel united, through the Spirit, to the global body of Christ. Pray they will know they are not alone, but that others walk with them in prayer.
