Editor’s note: How can we pray for Chinese Christians? Today, a few Xiamen pastors shared the needs they see in their city, their churches, and their own personal lives. Pray for Xiamen believers to be fervent about sharing the gospel, and to grow in spiritual maturity and depth. Pray for them to use persecution to grow, and not to simply live on the testimonies of previous generations.

China Partnership: ⁠ How can we be praying for your city and for Christians in your city? How can we be praying for your churches and families?

Reaching Out, Growing Deep

Wei Yan: First, pray for the church to maintain a fervent passion for evangelism. We spend a lot of energy on things like Christian education, family education, and internal discipleship. But when it comes to proactively reaching out to non-believers, the church’s motivation is quite low.

We encourage church planting, but rarely hear encouragement for how to evangelize, or concern for the city. Concern for the city and for evangelism are prerequisites for church planting!

We spend a lot of energy on things like Christian education, family education, and internal discipleship. But when it comes to proactively reaching out to non-believers, the church’s motivation is quite low.

Second, pray for us to be more rooted in building godly lives. The economic downturn of recent years, along with persecution the church has faced (or even family disputes over finances or relationships) – these things have made many brothers and sisters realize that discipleship focused on intellectual, superficial things doesn’t have good fruit.

There are not good testimonies to share with others. We keep repeating the testimony of the older generations – but in our generation of younger churches, it doesn’t seem like there are many stories to tell. Pray for us to have more deeply rooted, godly lives.

Lacking Passion for Service

Zu Dong: The church I pastor has been around a relatively short time. Our church is more like a blank slate. We don’t have much traditional baggage. Because people in our church may not have been very serious about their faith before, they may not have formed many ingrained habits. The church’s overall temperament and culture is more open, receptive, and willing to be taught. In my preaching and in promoting certain ideas, I feel that brothers and sisters are generally receptive.

But I’ve found that our church has a different crisis. Everyone is very gentle, and with this gentleness comes a lack of the kind of tenacity, persistence, and strength that should be present in the faith. It’s weak. It’s like people can say, “This is good,” or “That’s good, too” – but people haven’t formed their own attitudes. I think this is a crisis in teaching.

We keep repeating the testimony of the older generations – but in our generation of younger churches, it doesn’t seem like there are many stories to tell.

I hope that our church, through my learning and leadership and the leadership of the elders-in-training, can help brothers and sisters take their faith more seriously.

Second, we are preparing to church plant, but so far have only determined the direction. We are still exploring how to lead a healthy church. We are thankful that as we do this, we’ve started to have a weekly online elders’ learning meeting. Our elders also meet once a month in person to learn and figure out how to structure a church and plant another one. We focus on spiritual growth. It seems like we all have the same opinion, and we’ve seen some follow-through.

Our church is very thankful that a couple in the church has offered that we can use their house. This is good because we can use it for church planting, for a new small group, or a place to train co-workers. We hope we can move forward and build a healthy church and have healthy church planting rhythms.

For me personally, I’ve reflected a lot on my heart’s fervor for ministry and service. I feel weak and lacking. It’s not that I’m doing less or doing it more poorly – but as I serve, I feel like I don’t have the inner enthusiasm I did before. I feel like I’m relying on my gifts and things I’ve learned. I can do the work, but I don’t feel like I’m following my Lord and moving forward with him. Recently I’ve been praying and repenting over this, and asking the Lord’s help.

Pray that house church Christians will not waste the opportunity of this persecution.

Our church, including the many young people, really need prayer for spiritual growth and godly practice.

Don’t Waste Persecution’s Opportunity

Preacher Yang: Pray that house church Christians will not waste the opportunity of this persecution. May house church believers actively repent even during persecution, and actively bear the cross to evangelize.

Pray for believers in the Three-Self Church[1] to see through the devil’s schemes as soon as possible. May they break away from the devil’s control, establish a house church, and establish the pure faith of the cross.

Pray that the people of Xiamen will not covet superficial vanity. Remember in prayer how the missionaries blessed this city in all areas. Finally, pray that the people of Xiamen will be just and righteous, and will stop persecuting Christians.

[1] The Three-Self Church is the state-sanctioned Protestant church in China. Because the church submits to government oversight, there are deep disagreements between Three-Self churches and house churches, who believe that Christ is the head of the church, and refuse to acknowledge secular human institutions as church leadership.

Wei Yan, Zu Dong, and Preacher Yang are all pseudonyms for house church pastors in Xiamen.

Pray for Xiamen believers to be deeply rooted in Christ. May their passion for sharing Jesus, for persevering through persecution, and for serving the church come from a vibrant relationship with Christ.