This month I thought you’d like to read this very ordinary and down to earth progress report from an evangelist in India.  He doesn’t waste time embellishing it, he just tells it like it is:

REPORT FOR JANUARY – JUNE 2010

1. How many new House Churches were planted?   109

2. Training Seminars – how many? 33

How many participants? 1132

3. How many Baptisms:  2639

Little Stories:

• Sister Y accepted the Lord last year and has been reunited with her husband after 7 years of separation.
• BS’s young daughter who suffered from chronic asthma was healed as God’s people prayed for her in April 2010 at a Conference.
• HS wept with joy as he was given 60 Bibles for distribution in his House Churches. He reports that Children in his House Churches are reading Stories from the Bible to their illiterate Parents and Grand Parents.
• M who suffered a stroke and could not walk was healed as God’s people prayed. Today one can hardly tell if she had a stroke at all.

GOALS FOR JULY – DECEMBER 2010

(1) New Believers: 8000

(2) Baptisms: 8000

(3) New House Churches : 800

Please pray for the safety of this dynamic man as he ministers.

Pray for those who hear his message, and for the safety of those who respond.

Pray that others would be inspired to spread the gospel.

Pray that he’ll exceed his target for the current six months!

Chinese believers in an unregistered church (China Daily)

Several recent articles in the authoritative website China Daily have prompted observers to wonder if the Chinese government may be softening its traditionally tough stance against Christians.  The official government daily has published a number of positive articles about Christianity during the last six months and while it must be remembered that they may merely be part of a ‘charm offensive’ (particularly since none of the articles were published in the Chinese language version of the paper), they are published in an official government organ and will have been scrutinised by censors.

The most significant of these articles (25^th December) concerned an official report for the government in which the Chinese Academy of Social Scientists (CASS) estimated that there are now over 70 million Chinese who are members of unregistered churches.  Add these numbers to the Catholic Church and the official Three Self Patriotic Movement church and this is the first time that there has been an official estimate that there are now over 100 million Christians in China.  In 1979, when the TSPM church was relaunched after the Cultural Revolution, there were only about one million.   One western commentator remarked that it is unthinkable that an article like this has slipped past the censors unnoticed, and therefore this must be an indication of a change of government policy.

Miao Christian choir (China Daily)

Another article (17^th March) talks about how house churches are thriving in Beijing.  It states that there are now over 50,000 Christians in Beijing, and as the registered churches are often overcrowded, many people are joining smaller unregistered churches where they can connect more effectively.  The article even quotes Cao Zhongjian, an expert on religion in China at CASS, as saying “The authorities have a much more open attitude toward discussion and debate on house churches.”  This has led to freedom for the churches to acquire premises or rent permanent locations.  This is all a far cry from even a few years ago when reports of serious oppression of Chinese Christians were commonplace.

Other publications include a positive article about influential Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, reference to a thriving church in Shanghai, a report about a village in Yunnan province where 80% of the villagers are Christians, and (amazingly) the testimony of how a young Beijing believer found Jesus after being given a Bible by a colleague.

Chinese choir (China Daily)

This cute little boy is Igor.  He wasn’t always so cheerful.  During the Serbian war, Igor and his family had to flee their home, and ended up with hundreds of others sleeping rough in a half-complete school building which became an ad hoc refugee camp.  Traumatised by the event, he withdrew, and became known throughout the camp as the child who never smiled.

Some while later, some Christians from Belgrade Bible School began a regular ministry to the refugees.  They built up relationships and helped whoever they could.  One day they asked Igor’s parents if they could take him on a children’s camp they were organising, along with his brothers and sisters and other children from the refugee camp.  His parents agreed.

When the children came back, people didn’t recognise Igor.  They thought he looked familiar, but they didn’t know him.  Only after a few days did somebody work out what the difference was – his cheeky grin!  When they asked him why he smiled so much, he told them that he’d met Jesus.

Belgrade Bible School has hundreds of similar stories of what God has done in the lives of Serbian people.  Since its beginning in 1996 amid the death throes of Yugoslavia, it has sent out church planters and evangelists all over Serbia.  They have endured much hardship and struggle, but the gospel is prevailing.  Please pray for them.  Supported by Oak Hall, the well-known organiser of Christian expeditions, the bible college is under Serbian leadership and continues to grow and develop.

Read more about Belgrade Bible College: http://www.oakhall.org.uk/

Visit the Bible College with Oak Hall: http://www.oakhall.co.uk/pages/summer10serbiaatom.asp

This story was published in “CrossTies Asia” January 2010 newsletter) so it’s not new, but it’s too good not to recirculate.  My Hope for Thailand was an outreach event which took place in December 2009.  Here’s what the organisers reported:

“On this day about 50% of Thai churches participated and more than 41,000 of their members were involved in reaching out to over 200,000 of their friends and neighbours to tell them about Jesus. We now have the responsibility of calling the church leaders to find out what God did during this time.  The news is exciting!  We have recorded over 6,580 decisions of people who have decided to become Christ followers, from all corners of the country.  We anticipate by the time we finish calling all the leaders we will have recorded more than 12,000 new Thai Christians. This is an amazing work of God in a land where only half a percent of Thailand’s 65 million people are Christians. This is the first time there has been a national harvest of this size in this country. As we are calling, our staff also has the privilege of documenting miraculous works of God that happened during these meetings.  Each of our staff members has recorded dozens of reports of healings, people freed from demon possession, people being freed from addictions and families being reconciled.”

Please pray for these new Thai believers as they face the challenge of walking with Jesus in a Buddhist-animist culture.

Baptism of Thai believers (photos courtesy of Julia Birkett)