From international editor Angela Lu Fulton: What comes to mind when you think of a Chinese house church? Believers squeezing into an apartment living room to worship? Renting out a private room at a restaurant to gather for Bible study? Watching sermons on Zoom with a handful of other Christians? Or perhaps worshiping in a modern, spacious sanctuary inside an office building?
All those descriptions would be apt—at one time or another—to describe the influential Chinese house church Zion Church. Chinese police have detained nearly 30 leaders from Zion since last Thursday, including its senior pastor Jin Mingri, also known as Ezra Jin.
Yet Zion’s own history shows that persecution leads to growth. In 2018, Beijing authorities shut down the church’s building, where about 1,500 people worshiped. The church moved to hybrid services, with pastors preaching on Zoom as small groups (numbering between 5 and 50 people) gathered to watch and fellowship. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an explosion of new groups, with about 10,000 people within the church’s network. Let's pray for similar growth as the church faces a new wave of repression.
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Does today’s political landscape make you feel like we’re more divided than ever? As Christians, we’re clearly called to unity but living that out in a polarized climate is sometimes far from simple. That’s why The After Party created a free course designed for this moment. It will help believers across denominations focus less on what might divide us and more on a single, clarifying call as outlined in the Sermon on the Mount.
Here’s what you’ll find inside the course:
• Concrete steps for engaging in political conversation without compromising your core beliefs.
• A nonpartisan, non-polarizing framework rooted in spiritual and theological formation.
• A unifying resource built to bring believers together across divides.
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There’s nothing quite like a story well-told. A curiosity-stoking beginning, a conflicted middle, a compelling conclusion—these elements, woven together with rich characters and relatable dilemmas, go beyond delivering information to…
October 14, 1066: William the Conqueror leads the Normans to victory over the English Saxons in the Battle of Hastings. William’s also had great religious impact. He spent significant effort combatting paganism and bringing English Christianity into stricter conformity with Rome (in part by outlawing English Bibles and liturgy), which lasted through the English Reformation. He spent his last days in intense Christian devotion.
The city of Opole is 275 miles from Poland’s eastern border. But Ukraine never feels that far away. And at Ostoja Church, a Pentecostal congregation that has served the city…
One night while chasing my five-year-old nephew at x0.33 speed—to give him the steady assurance of being faster than me—a branch broke off from an overhead tree and smacked the…
Past fragrant mango trees and shacks with clothes hanging on laundry lines stands a canopy made of coconut timber typically used to shade locals waiting for a tuk-tuk or habal-habal…
We were not created to bear the weight of sin in this world. Yet judging by our constant engagement with every breaking news story, we often seem hell-bent on trying.…
in the magazine
The Christian story shows us that grace often comes from where we least expect. In this issue, we look at the corners of God’s kingdom and chronicle in often-overlooked people, places, and things the possibility of God’s redemptive work. We introduce the Compassion Awards, which report on seven nonprofits doing good work in their communities. We look at the spirituality underneath gambling, the ways contemporary Christian music was instrumental in one historian’s conversion, and the steady witness of what may be Wendell Berry’s last novel. All these pieces remind us that there is no person or place too small for God’s gracious and cataclysmic reversal.
