Editor’s note: How can we pray for the city of Wenzhou? Local pastors share the needs facing their churches and their families right now.
China Partnership: How can we pray for your churches and families?
Pray for Courage
Hu Mujing: For our church, please urgently pray for the challenge we are facing: the government is asking us to install surveillance cameras, asking preachers to get licenses. Otherwise, preaching without a license is illegal, and once you’re caught, it’s an “illegal religious activity.” All sorts of things will follow.
Pray that brothers and sisters will have courage to recognize the essence of faith. Ask God to give us wisdom and space to dialogue – right now, we can still sit down and talk with the leader of the government department. He knows we cannot satisfy all his requests; he knows our bottom line.
The government is asking us to install surveillance cameras, asking preachers to get licenses…. Once you’re caught, it’s an “illegal religious activity.” All sorts of things will follow.
The church may have to disperse again, to go from larger gatherings to smaller ones. I hope that, in smaller gatherings, we can have stronger connections, that everyone will be clear about the purity of the faith. Make brothers and sisters true followers of Jesus and bearers of the cross.
Pray for our church system to develop holistically in many areas: theological education, missions, the workplace, children, youth, college students, adults, and the elderly. I hope we can be more multi-pronged and unified. More importantly, I hope everyone in our system will go deeper in study of the Bible.
As for my own family, it’s not so easy for us, as a couple, to serve in the church together. Many times the battle starts from our own home. I often have tension with my wife about church affairs. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.
The pastor’s family needs a lot of prayers: the couple’s relationship, education of children, the inheritance of faith in the pastor’s family. I mention this because, in my church system in Wenzhou, there have been several sex scandals involving pastors – men who cheated, had mistresses, and left their wife for another woman. Pray for the holiness of the pastor’s family and marriage, for God to protect it.
Pray for my children. My eldest child is in college. Pray the Lord will use their studies for the church. They also entering the stage where they will date and get married. Pray that they will meet a God-loving person who God has prepared for them to marry.
My second child is getting ready to take the college entrance exam. Pray that she will experience the God of the gospel in her heart as she gets ready for exams. Pray that she will be diligent and hardworking in her studies, running for God.
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If God gives us enough leaders, we could plant churches based on those small groups – especially in this kind of environment. Right now we are preparing, but we lack young leaders and co-workers.
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Pray for God to use both of my children in the future – right now, they are in a “stage of preparation” through academic studies.
Living Out the Path Jesus Walked
Lu Jianxi: First, pray that brothers and sisters in our church will have a greater commitment to the gospel. May each of our hearts be ignited by the gospel – not just with external religious activities, but with inner commitment and surrender based on the gospel.
Our church has been around for more than a decade. In the next decade, we expect to plant more churches. Right now, our church is divided into small groups of about 10 to 20 people. We could expand. If God gives us enough leaders, we could plant churches based on those small groups – especially in this kind of environment. Right now we are preparing, but we lack young leaders and co-workers. So the second request is to pray for this.
Third, in the past few years our church has been shaping others. We have a project called a “pastoral internship.” Our goal is to shape young preachers to take on pastoral ministry. We pray that, through the work we are doing now, in the next few years our church can bring blessing to other area churches. Pray for this ministry.
As for my family, a very important prayer is to pray for deeper spiritual unity between me and my wife. Pastor Hu just shared about the scandals happening now in many pastor’s families. If my wife and I are not satisfied in the gospel, such temptations may also come to us. Pray for deeper spiritual unity with my wife – I am really looking forward to this.
I believe Jesus has already walked this path, and I should walk with him. Pray that, in suffering and hardship, I can live out Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
Also pray for our family. In the past, our family has experienced many difficulties. God has given us great lessons, and every difficulty is painful, a huge burden. In such difficulties, our greater prayer is that God will make us more and more like Christ. May I and my family become more like Christ, instead of focusing on our own difficulties.
I believe Jesus has already walked this path, and I should walk with him. Pray that, in suffering and hardship, I can live out Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
Pray for our children. My oldest child will be a teenager soon. Although they were raised to be relatively obedient, the child still has to face the path and the lessons of a teenager. Most of all, pray they will know the gospel and be converted early. The child knows a lot about the gospel and theology. But my greater expectation is that they will bear the fruit of rebirth, the fruit of repentance.
Pray for the conversion of my children.
Hu Mujing and Lu Jianxi are pseudonyms for house church pastors in Wenzhou.
Pray for Wenzhou Christians to have courage to “walk the road of the cross” in difficult times, whether those challenges come through persecution or via hard life circumstances.
