Enduring Thanksgiving

ChinaSource Team • November 26, 2025

Red lantern reflecting the Chinese word for "love". November news from ChinaSource.
Image credit: Photo by Zhen Yao from Unsplash. Licensed for use by ChinaSource.

A True Spiritual Community

Five years ago, in the November 18, 2020, ChinaSource Lantern entitled, Thanksgiving, Especially Now, I wrote the following:

It would be easy in this year of COVID-19 to be anxious, stressed, and even bitter about the problems, obstacles, and losses we have experienced, rather than to count our blessings. Yet, I hope you will join me in thanking and praising the Lamb upon the throne. Jesus is our king for all eternity, and he promised to be with us through every storm.

The ChinaSource team has grown together through this season of turmoil. In a recent thanksgiving and praise meeting, one of our team members said he felt the Lord was forming us into a true spiritual community, something more than simply Christian colleagues working together and meeting goals.

The process of seeking his will together has stretched us at times, but the result has been a deepening of friendships and camaraderie, producing fruit that remains. Thank you for praying for the ChinaSource team, board of directors, and our amazing network of volunteers to grow closer to our Lord and to each other as we follow his will and purpose for ChinaSource.

As we prepare to celebrate the season of Thanksgiving 2025, we can look back and praise the Sovereign One for how he has led us, even through very painful seasons, as we have sought to walk his path for ChinaSource together, as his growing spiritual community in Christ.

Cultivating Resilient Faith Together

The bottom line for ChinaSource is to bless, learn, and serve alongside the church in China and the diaspora. God is currently calling us to help address the pressing need for spiritual resilience within the Chinese churches—both in China and throughout the diaspora.

Currently, we are seeking our Heavenly Father and friends for the provision of $150,000 for the “Cultivating Resilient Faith” campaign by December 31 to strengthen initiatives that provide transformational discipleship resources, facilitate wisdom-sharing among believers facing similar challenges, and create spaces for authentic kingdom community in Christ across geographic boundaries.

Your partnership is helping to empower Chinese Christians to develop deep spiritual roots that sustain vibrant faith, regardless of external pressures or changing environments. Your support is also enabling ChinaSource to help the global church learn vital life lessons in Christ from our Chinese brothers and sisters, as well as to partner with the global church.

Thankful for You!

Just as we were five years ago in the middle of the COVID-19 siege, we are again thankful to God and to you, our precious network of staff and board members, and our praying and contributing friends, for your part in the ever-growing spiritual community in service to Jesus for his purposes through ChinaSource. 

Have a blessed Thanksgiving and Advent season!

Kerry Schottelkorb
President

Ways to Pray

Praise and Thanksgiving

  • Praise the Lord with us for opening many more doors in 2025 to strategic partnerships! Only the Lord could orchestrate these collaborative friendships, and we are thankful.
  • Thank the Lord for guiding his church on how to address the “crisis of knowing, being, and doing, and the need for integrating truth, character, and practice…through mutual learning…that allows theology to breathe through the life of the church and the church to shape theological imagination.” Please see ChinaSource Blog, Bridging Theology and Church Life, November 21, 2025, by Andrea Lee.
  • Praise the Lord for godly parents in China who call their children to the joy of obedience in Christ. Ask God to give parents strength and endurance as they run the race in parenting. Pray that God would encourage and provide for parents who are training their kids in a fallen world and ask him to change the hearts of their children so they may know, love, and serve him. See The Joy of Discipline, by Red Lily, November 11, 2025.

News and Notes

ChinaSource Team News

  • On November 22, Joann Pittman gave a talk, The Church in China: Beyond the Headlines, at The North Church in Mounds View, MN. 
  • On November 15, China Academic Consortium hosted Brent Fulton’s lecture, Continuity and Change in China’s Religious Policy, held at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley. This lecture was part of the joint lectures series, Exploring Christianity and Culture in China: Today and Yesterday, presented by the US-China Catholic Association, the China Academic Consortium, and ChinaSource. A recording will be available later.
  • On November 12, Christian Daily International republished ChinaSource’s article by Red Lily on disciplining children, The Benefits of Discipline for Raising Godly Adults. 
  • On October 21, Christian Daily International republished Sonya’s article, Trusting in God’s Presence in the Midst of Strangers, from ChinaSource.
  • On October 8, Christian Daily International republished Samantha Ling Krebs’ article, We Bring Our Ethnic Uniqueness with Us When We Become New Creatures in Christ, from ChinaSource.
  • On September 11, Christian Daily International republished the ChinaSource article, The Jesus Guys.

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Written, translated, or edited by members of the ChinaSource staff.