The ways in which the Gospel has been proclaimed in contemporary China have varied over time, from itinerant evangelism in the 1970s and 1980s to social media today. While these and other methods have been instrumental in the exponential growth of China’s church, the witness of Chinese believers goes beyond mere proclamation, encompassing on a deeper level how their faith finds expression in their lives. As restrictions on opportunities for public proclamation increase, the nature of this witness takes on greater significance.
Contagious Evangelism
The rural revival that broke out in the 1970s following the Cultural Revolution was characterized by rapid evangelism, as young believers were sent out two by two across China to spread the Gospel, holding revival meetings in farmhouses and planting churches in remote villages. Personal witness, often accompanied by miraculous answers to prayer, was key to the spread of the Gospel.
In Witnesses to Power: Stories of God’s Quiet Work in a Changing China, Kim-kwong Chan, a Christian leader in Hong Kong, tells the story of Chen Shaoying, a retired schoolteacher in southern China who heard the gospel for the first time while visiting her daughter in the hospital. When a relative of another patient offered to pray for her daughter, Chen became curious and asked her to explain her beliefs. Both Chen and her daughter accepted Christ as Savior.
Returning home to a province with no church and no known Christians, Chen began telling others about her newfound faith. Soon a home fellowship formed. Within two years, over 150 new believers were meeting in five groups. These continued to grow as more lives were transformed through the power of Christ. Eventually, despite fierce opposition from a stubborn religious affairs official, Chen and her fellow Christians received permission to formally start a church. Dr. Chan was invited from Hong Kong to assist with the new congregation and he had the privilege of baptizing 60 of the recent converts. Within ten years there were more than 1,000 baptized believers meeting in two large communities and numerous small gatherings.1
With China’s rapid urbanization came new opportunities for evangelism. Often through the testimony of Christian English teachers from abroad, young people on college campuses began turning to Christ in large numbers. They in turn reached out to their classmates, resulting in new fellowships being formed. One urban pastor recalls sharing the Gospel as a young man with a fellow student who listened patiently but, when asked whether he would like to receive Christ, said no.
As he turned to leave the dorm room, suddenly a sleepy face looked down from the bunk above. The student’s roommate, who, unbeknownst to them, had been listening the whole time, said eagerly, “I want to receive Christ!”
Encounters like these speak to the unashamed zeal of Christians in China to share their faith. Yet, although verbal transmission of the Gospel has been central, the witness of the church extends beyond mere proclamation.
Embodied Truth
In their book, Chinese Christian Witness, Xiaoli Yang and Daryl Ireland make the case that the Western Enlightenment-inspired conception of Gospel transmission falls far short in explaining how the faith has spread in China. Citing Jesus’s promise in Acts 1:8, Yang and Ireland argue:
To be a witness . . . is not conditional upon any organization, but upon a promise: Jesus’ disciples will be witnesses, and their testimony will be heard in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Given its broad meaning, it allows us to think expansively about Chinese missiology, specifically the way Chinese Christians are bearing witness to Jesus Christ before their neighbors, both near and far. It involves the totality of transformation of individuals, cultures, society, as well as the rest of creation.2
The witness of China’s Christians is not only in what they say, but in who they are. As a faithful presence in a civilization that has long been inhospitable to the Gospel, they witness through lives that are countercultural, embodying the truth and beauty of Christ in ways that stand in stark contrast to the customs and values of their society.
This “cultural apologetic,” says Charlie Wang, a church planter, aims not simply to argue for the truth and goodness of the Gospel, but to make it felt in such a way that others long for the Gospel to be true. As ChinaSource’s Andrea Lee puts it, “When the church becomes a place where grace is believable—where love feels unearned and joy unforced—it offers a glimpse of heaven’s reality on earth.”
Visible Unity
While observers of China often focus on official persecution of the unregistered church, a significant part of the church’s witness is playing out in China’s registered congregations. China currently has over 66,000 official places of worship. These churches, many of them landmarks in China’s major cities, stand out as a testimony to the endurance of the faith in China, particularly at a time when the government seeks to limit the visibility of religion in society.3
The “official” church’s witness is also seen in the unity among its members. Even as denominationalism is making a comeback in China’s unregistered churches, Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) seminaries and churches continue to draw together believers from diverse Christian backgrounds who share what most would consider to be an evangelical faith.
Some would argue that theirs is a unity born out of political necessity. Yet demonstrating this core commitment to the fundamentals of the faith while acknowledging the validity of diverse traditions provides a visible example of the unity to which we are called as believers. Their example deserves closer attention by Christians in the West and elsewhere, who often find themselves dividing over doctrinal differences, worship preferences, political loyalties, and myriad other issues.
Being Transformed
Becoming a faithful presence means leading not with superior moral arguments or declarations of propositional truth, but rather, as Charlie Wang suggests, by embodying a beauty that makes others long for the Gospel to be true. This requires a process of formation whereby our loves and habits are retrained so that our lives become a testimony to the truth. As China’s church has long demonstrated, this formation process involves suffering as the means by which we die to self and are conformed to the image of Christ. It is the beauty of a transformed life that gives credibility to our words and vitality to our witness.
- Tetsunao, Yamamori and Kim-kwong Chan, Witnesses to Power: Stories of God’s Quiet Work in a Changing China (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: 2000), 69-74.
- Xiaoli Yang and Daryl Ireland, “Introduction,” in Xiaoli Yang and Daryl Ireland, Eds., Chinese Christian Witness: Identity, Creativity, Transmission, and Poetics (Boston, MA: Brill, 2026), 6.
- Yang and Ireland, 9.
