What do they know that we don't?

For about the first 270 years of its existence, the Christian Church was a viral movement of the Spirit. It spread like a beautiful, healthy virus from person to person. But then the most significant event in the history of Christianity occurred, the Edict of Milan, in 313 AD. With one sweep of his quill, Emperor Constantine turned a viral movement of the Spirit into a human institution.[1] The church went from being viral to something that no longer spread and grew like a living organism. It changed from Christianity to Christendom. The Christian Church remained an institution for 1,636 years. It growth was difficult, sporadic and hard to maintain. Often, like the current condition of the Western Church, we lost ground.

The church became accustomed to its institutionalism. It even got to the point of thinking that institutionalism was right and good; even though it is not proscribed or even described or hinted at in the New Testament. Institutionalism became like a backpack full of bricks. We have never experienced life without our familiar Christendom bricks and eventually could not imagine life without them. We even convinced ourselves that we wouldn’t really be comfortable, or be able to walk, without them. Who knows, perhaps we would fall flat on our face if we weren’t wearing the all important counterbalance of our heavy Christendom backpack.

Gatherings are sometimes small, sometimes larger, but alive with Jesus.

Then along came the miracle of the Chinese Church. For the first time in over sixteen centuries the Church was relieved of its institutional backpack. You can read about that process in Thank You Chairman Mao. Despite all conventional Christendom wisdom, when the Church stepped out of its familiar backpack, it learned to sprint again. It learned to be a living organic organism again. It learned to be just like what Jesus described in the New Testament, a small seed that grew to a large plant (Matt. 13:31-34).

This story of the church set free from the burden of Christendom is even more startling when explained in its context. In 1949 the Communist Chinese won the civil war for the control of China. They began a slow process of trying to strangle the Christian church, which they considered an opiate of the people. At the time, there were two main expressions of the Church in China, the Catholic Church and the Protestants. The Catholic Church was far bigger and more powerful than were the Protestants. The Communist government’s plan was to take control of the Church by absorbing it under its governmental control. It did this by dividing the Church into two government run organizations, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), the government sanctioned Protestant church. The idea was to control the Church and then cut off its resources so that it would slowly die.

To read true stories of the vibrant Chinese Church buy The Heavenly Man by clicking here.

What the Chinese government hadn’t foreseen was that faithful believers in both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church would refuse to submit to government control. This led to four expressions of the Church; the CCPA (the largest group), the TSPM (the second largest group), the underground Catholic Church (the third largest group) and the underground Protestants (the smallest group). This last small group became the Chinese house church movement.

No one knows exactly how many were in the Chinese house church movement in the early 1950’s. My guess would be less than 100,000 people. Now that group has grown to about 100 million faithful believers.[2] It is by far the largest segment of Christianity in China. Instead of shrinking under the persecution of the Communist government, it exploded. The other segments of the Church in China, all of which were still tied to institutional forms, yet in the exact same context, did not prosper or grow as did the organic house church movement. The CCPA and the TSPM, at one point, were nearly squeezed out of existence. But the growth of the organic house church movement from under 100,000 to approximately 100 million is the fastest growth ever recorded in the entire history of Christianity; and this under persecution.

What happened to allow this miraculous growth? Christianity, for the first time in 1,636 years was freed for its heavy institutional backpack. It could finally be what it had been designed to be in the first place. And, despite the incredibly difficult surroundings, it learned to run, not crawl. I tell this story in much more detail in my book Viral Jesus which is due to be released Feb. 2, 2012.

We in the Western Church are still wearing a backpack full of bricks. And, not surprisingly, we are not growing at all. We are, in fact, losing ground. We are even losing many of our own children to the world. Yet we have religious freedom. We have freedom of the press. We can do almost anything we want and we lose ground. These are freedoms the Chinese house church movement would love to have. Isn’t it time we learned from our Chinese brothers and strip off the burden of Christendom and learn how to run?

  • Why do you think we find the heavy backpack of Christendom so comfortable? 
  • Why do you think that despite our incredible freedoms we are losing ground? Can you think of another reason besides the backpack of Christendom? 
  • Many fear that by being freed from the control of Christendom the Chinese house church movement would fall into heresy. For the most part, that hasn’t happened. In fact, it is doctrinally just as healthy as or healthier than Western Christianity. Why? 
  • What other lessons do you think we can learn from our Chinese brothers? 

 

[1] I’m aware that the institutionalization of the Church was actually a gradual affair starting in the early 2nd Century. However, the Edict of Milan was the powerful watershed event. I’ll document the history and the key events in my upcoming book Viral Jesus.

[2] No exact figures are available. These are estimates using the best available information.

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