While You Were Out

Since I haven’t really written about any church news for a couple weeks, I’ll try to do a brief rundown of recent happenings. A few weeks ago we had a really good week, arguably our strongest ever - both services packed and my Chinese didn’t fall completely flat. We had 75-80 in attendance that week, which we were really excited about. The next couple weeks, though, were kind of lower in attendance. It seems like that happens after every one of our high weeks - we kind of sink into doldrums for a little while.

 

This Sunday, though, felt really strong. We had a good number (though I have no idea how many), and it felt like people really responded to the message. This is something that I’ve really been praying about. Obviously we want the students to be engaged in and grow in the knowledge of the Bible. I know that in my life that has often been encouraged by sitting under strong, Biblical preaching. So I can’t help but think that better preaching will make them more desirous to have their own relationship with the word.

 

We’re still preaching through Philippians. Finally finished chapter 2 last week. Talked about Timothy and Epaphroditus and what made them great teammates for Paul and the first generation church. Great application for college students from the lives of both of those guys. In particular, Epaphroditus is the guy that everyone needs. Philippi needs him; Paul needs him. Wherever he goes, he serves his heart out. Which makes for a great challenge for a bunch of college students, who will be tempted to draw a geographical boundary on their relationship with the Lord. After they graduate, most of them will move to other cities, start jobs and families, and unless they determine to be like Epaphroditus, will forget about the Lord, His Book, and His people. I was extremely excited to see a group of students sitting together after the service talking about the message. Major praise to see seeds of response like that.

Surveying The Land

Spent most of the day yesterday walking all over town looking for a building for the new location for the church we want to start next month. Easier than last time, because it’s not just me and S. Three guys from church came with me to comb the area we’re interested in. Don’t remember how much of this process I wrote about last time we went through this, but it can be pretty arduous and taxing. It’s easier with more guys. It was pretty much Language School 2.0 for me - spending hours talking and listening about real estate. A little out of my league, but that’s where the best learning happens.

 

Not really any real estate agencies or anything. Actually, I’m sure there probably are, but that’s probably a little elitist for us. Basically you just walk around until you find a place that posts houses for sale/rent. Usually it’s a business that does something else as well, such as laundry or a phone bar. If a business like that is ambitious, they’ll slap up a bulletin board on the wall and let people search for their new house on the wall. If you’re interested in a place, the bulletin-board owner will give the home owner a call, and he’ll come to pick you up and show you the house. If you buy, you owe the bulletin-board people some cash. It’s like having a real estate agent, just with all the most friendly, helpful service aspects sucked out of it.

 

It takes forever to get to see a house you’re interested in. It doesn’t help that we’re so picky - we want a big living room and as little else as possible. And we’re looking for a fairly big place by local standards. Usually a posting place will have one or two places that we’re interested in. Naturally, a system like this ends up with lots of places posted that are off the market already. Another problem is looking at the same houses twice. Like yesterday we waited for half-an-hour for an owner to show up to take us to see their house, but when she arrived, she immediately recognized us as the people she had showed her house to a couple of hours ago. Apparently it’s free or extremely cheap to post the house, so lots of bulletin boards are repeats. Nice.

 

Anyway, I think we found a decent place. The guys like it a lot. It’s a decent size - we don’t need a place as big as the place we’ve already got. My biggest complaint is the front door and the bathroom door open right into the living room. Which makes for two major distractions to a service. And the bathroom is right in the middle of the room. It’s a good, quiet location though, so I think we might end up there.

Lap Around the Sun

I’m pretty sure today marks the end of our first year in China. Supremely hard to believe - the changes that have happened in our lives seem to have happened over a much longer time. On the other side of the coin, though, I’ve been near oblivious to time passing. Especially the last six months. Guess I have to blame the old equation: perceived speed of time is directly proportional to amount of enjoyment procured from said time. And I’ve honestly had an amazing time. It’s almost worth doing again - except maybe without the language school.

 

The most obvious marker of the passing of the year is the wonderful “no-water” day in the city. Once a year, they turn off the water citywide. I forget why. Cleaning something or other or conserving something or other. Anyway, we didn’t get the memo, so yesterday wasn’t a lot of fun. Nothing compared to last year, though.

 

After almost two days of flying and layovers, my wife and I arrived in the city. As anyone who’s made a trip like that knows, when you finally arrive, there ain’t much you want more than a hot shower. Unfortunately, we got here on “no-water” day morning. So we went another day water-less. We were staying at some little hotel on the other side of town. They told us there’d be water the next morning. Next morning we didn’t have water… or electricity. We were running out of utilities fast, so we were getting worried. About mid-day though the water came back on - apparently piped from Siberia - it was freezing. I guess I shouldn’t complain, though - that was just our first couple days here - some families pretty much live like that everyday on the field.

 

Anyway, thanks for your prayers for us the first year here. Please keep praying for us through the second, too. My original plan was to focus hard on the spoken language the first year, on the written the second. Though my spoken language is hardly perfect, it is about time for me to switch my focus. So here we go…

Prayin Thru The Quake

Sorry for the amount of time that’s passed since my last entry. We’ve been busy - and really blessed! First of all, I hope you’re aware of the earthquake that has hit Sichuan. Death toll is really skyrocketing. I know that investing emotions in things like disasters on the other side of the world is not something we do often - it’s too far away, we’re too desensitized, and it’s too painful to connect to something you feel you can’t really fix. But I hope you’ll spend a little bit of time in prayer for the area - between this and the cyclone in Myanmar, it’s seems like one disaster after another this week.

 

A student asked me on Sunday why disasters happen all over the world. Actually she asked if anyone could know why. I suppose some people could venture a guess or two, but when it comes right down to it, that’s one of the fundamental differences between God and man. We can’t separate God’s omniscience and His omnipotence. Take Job - though everyone says that the topic of the book of Job is “why do the righteous suffer?” - at the end of the book, Job doesn’t find out. Apparently the answer is, “None of your business.” But it leads Job to repentance and humility before God. Which is about all the “why” that concerns us, I imagine. As if we could even understand the intricacies of God’s plan if He did condescend to explain it!

 

All that to say - how to pray through a tragedy like this on the other side of the world? Certainly pray for them physically - there is more death and tragedy in those places than most of us will ever come near to. But how to pray spiritually? Pray that many will end up at the feet of Jesus, like Job on his face before the God that knows the “why” of all our deepest pains and bitterest tears. Not repentant because the tragedy was a punishment for their godlessness (you’d think Job would teach us better than to say something like that) - but repentant for the same reason that a person living in the security and quiet of an American suburb has to be repentant. Because we are the sinful Creation, and He the loving Creator. Who does what He does because He knows what He knows.

The Hills Ahead

This has been a really busy week. Our numbers were down Sunday, and my Chinese was apparently on holiday, but it seemed like the Lord really blessed, anyway. Still had a great number of first- and second-time visitors.

 

T. and J. are going to look at new properties near another campus in town today. We’re hoping to find a reasonably priced and sized place close to this, the biggest campus in town, to launch another location for our church this summer. Our current location is still pretty out of the way for the students from that school, but we’ve had lots and lots of visitors from out there. Plus I think the thing we need right now for growth at the place we do have is space. So this is our major summer goal/project/PRAYER - we’re praying the church can splinter off a small team to plant another location about half an hour away. I hope you’ll pray with us - this is a really big step, and we really want to do things the Lord’s way.

 

On the language front, I’ve found myself in good arguments with people two or three times this week! While in markets and stuff like that, of course, over prices, junk merchandise, etc.. But it’s fantastic language practice. Each time I’ve only been half-concerned with the subject at hand, but completely interested at trying my hand in a full-fledged argument in Chinese. (Arguing makes you a green belt in your second language, in case you’re wondering). I’d give myself a C+ overall, I guess. There was only a couple times when I totally lost my thoughts and had nothing to say. I wouldn’t say I won any of the arguments; maybe a tie or two, though. Good arguing requires a lot of vocabulary, idioms, slang, and speed - so it’s a tough thing to do well. Great practice.

 

Edison Has Left The Building

Tonight was our Old Testament Survey class - had a good number of guys show up. Also a couple of unbelievers joined us. That’s what happens when you give an open invitation. That’s okay - a great opportunity to preach the Gospel according to Ezekiel and Daniel! Which as I prepared for tonight’s class, I really began to think that Daniel is incredibly relevant for university students. Young people, away from home, trying to study hard, hoping to get a good position, in situations where it seems impossible to be a believer. We’re going to have to do a series on it in the future. We’ve been studying the books in chronological order, rather than the book order, so we’re almost done with the Old Testament. Then we’re going to jump right into a hermeneutics course.

 

On a less theological note, we got our T-shirts in today. One hundred Omega shirts with Romans 8:28 on the back. They don’t say “church” on them anywhere, so I don’t think it’ll cause any problems. The Christian bookstore here sells shirts and stuff, so it seems like it’s no big deal. Our shirts are admittedly much cooler, though, and that could be our downfall. We’re going to do a special Sunday about Romans 8:28 in a couple weeks and give a shirt to everyone in attendance. Cost us about $1.50 a piece, but a bunch of college students sporting our message all over their campuses is well worth the money. Hopefully, it’ll create lots of easy-to-find opportunities to talk about the church.

 

I had a great talk with one guy tonight. He’s been coming to church more and more regularly, and tonight he decided to come to the class. He’s always come with a friend, but this time he came by himself. Dude’s got a majorly Mufasa-esque voice - people about applaud for him after he reads a verse. He’s kind of a disconnected, here-for-the-spectacle kind of attitude. He came up to me after the class tonight to actually have a meaningful conversation, which blew me away.

 

I could tell it was serious because he used Chinese. A lot of dudes talk to me in English all the time, just for their own practice. But when a guy like this drops that whole deal, he’s usually got something actually worth talking about. His first question was why God was so concerned with His own name (a big theme of Ezekiel’s). Which led to talking about the glory of God, which led to the glory-seeking nature of man, which led to Jesus emptying Himself of glory for us, which led us to talking about how to receive His gift of eternal life. If I’ve ever seen it, that guy was going through some conviction. Just really expressed some genuine amazement at the beauty and simplicity of the grace of God.

 

He told me that he had gone to one of the big state churches and saw people worshipping, praying, and crying - and he was really blown away by that. Couldn’t understand it. He told me that he’d felt far away from God for a long time, but since he’s come to Omega, he’s starting to discover some real happiness. Not sure I know what that means, and I’m almost positive that he’s not a Christian, though he claims to be one.

 

Oh yeah, and the electricity went out tonight (apparently we owe money), so we had to study by candlelight which, as romantic as it sounds, just makes your eyes hurt.

New Prayerground

S.’s mom and uncle came into town on Monday to sign him out and move him out of the university. The thing that really scares parents is that once you get out, you can’t get back in. Apparently with all the students trying to get into colleges, it’s a real pain to get back into college, especially the specific one you dropped out of. What S. did though - in a smart move that really puts his parents at ease - is take a leave of absence of sorts. This will allow him to not study but keep his name on the list for up to two years. His family drove a car up from two provinces south of here (several hours - not sure how long it took exactly), and only stayed in town for about an hour and a half before turning around and heading back. Inconvenient, but his mom’s signature was necessary for making this happen.

 

They had to put a reason on the paper for why he’s taking a leave. For lack of better available categories, they chose - “annoyed by studying.” This whole dropping-out isn’t very normal. Last night at an English corner, I told some students that I was talking to that S. had just dropped his major, and they looked at me like I said half his face fell off.

 

So S. is all moved into the house where our church meets now. We had bought a bunk bed and mattresses and all that a couple weeks back, but he was waiting on this paper to get moved in. We’ll have a couple guys from the States arriving in about two months who will also move in. Fortunately, there’s plenty of space - there’s two bedroom-areas in the house - so one of them is now just “dorm/living space.” We’ve still got one as our very square, very miniature “fellowship hall.” And the big room.

 

Speaking of our building, it’s about 20 stories high. We’re on the eighth floor, so I don’t often run into reasons to go up to the top. But Sunday, I decided to run up there to check the door to the roof - which has always been locked. But wonderfully, this time the door was wide open, permitting access to the roof. Awesome view of the city! Of our area anyway. Not high enough to see the big picture of the city, but big enough to see our Jerusalem. I could see parts of the campuses of three different universities. Pretty amazing - and heart-breaking.

Our Fakers Vs. Yours

Great number of new faces last night! The girls had an activity the other night and lots of new students came out. Three of them came to church last night. Some good conversations with them afterwards - I actually think that a couple of them are going to come to our Friday night class. I talked to one of them for a while after the second service - she had lots of questions, but I think she was pretty surprised by the answers. Specifically about our distinction between religion and relationship and the eastern, non-Amercian origin of Christianity.

 

She asked me about what percentage of Americans are Christians. This implication being, of course, the first step towards the tired “faith is a product of a geographical accident” argument. You’re a Christian because you’re an American, so why do you want to make Chinese people become Christians. She really was wondering though, no real interest in argument. When I told her that a lot of Americans are professing, in-name-only Christians. It’s a religious, cultural affiliation rather than a life-central relationship. That confused her at first. It always seems so strange to them, but an illustration came to me that helped get the point across faster than ever last night.

 

As Friday night was the Pure Brightness Festival, I asked her if all the people that burn money are Buddhists. Of course not - but after many years, religion soaks into a culture. Many people that participate in religious ceremonies, or even call themselves by the name of the faith, are not true believers. That really helped her to understand the American situation. Plus my favorite trump card about there being more Christians in China than America - of course, that’s chucking out the logic of the illustration I just gave, but if you want to count America’s fakers, you gotta count China’s, too.

 

On to week two of Philippians. This series is going to give me an aneurysm. You could preach all day long on any one or two verses in the first chapter - covering thirteen or so in one message is quite the exercise. We hit verses 12-26, which is Paul’s “how-I’m-holding-up” message to the Philippian church. Turns out he’s doing alright! Death, life, prison, freedom, whatever - in Paul’s eyes, they’re all just different ways of doing the same thing - magnifying Christ. (Another awesome concept - magnification: to make something larger, more obvious, more evident, more noticeable) We gave out a card to every attender that said, “For to me to live is _______, and to die is _______.” In Chinese, of course. I told them to think about it for a few days and then fill it out.

Burn Money Day

Yesterday was the Pure Brightness Festival. This is kind of Chinese/Buddhist Memorial Day. Celebrated by going to graves of loved ones (often outside of the city on a mountain or something) and by burning money in the streets. Not real money - just some fake Afterlife-opoly money. Let the deceased buy themselves something nice in the next world. A friend of mine joked with me that today the inflation rates in the afterlife are really terrible - all this new money filling up their world. But it was pretty amazing to see little groups of campfires by the curb all along the street. As you could probably guess, there’s not a lot of college students out burning money, so I’m not sure how devout the average person is out there burning money. It’s a strong tradition - but not strong enough that indifferent college students take part in it.

 

On the training front, we’ve decided to transform the Friday night class into the beginnings of our Bible institute. I was tempted to teach three or four classes this semester, but then I had a moment of clarity and realized the insanity of such a plan. So what we did was make the Friday class open invitation for anyone interested in a little deeper Bible study. The reason we didn’t before is that I wanted a time to talk to S. and T. about what was going on around the church without a bunch of other “outsider” ears listening in. But we’re meeting at other times throughout the week now, so that doesn’t matter too much - I’ve got lots of other opportunities to talk to them privately.

 

We really had a great number show up last night for that - at least a dozen students showed up. Not sure they’ll come back - we were on Jeremiah and Lamentations. But I was really surprised by the interest level. It seemed like everyone had a good time. I couldn’t resist with that many faithful members in one spot and took the last twenty minutes to do a short discipleship lesson. It really surprised me which students came out for the class. I honestly don’t know how half of them even knew about it - we didn’t really push it hard or anything.

Profitable Inconvenience

So Sunday we tried our two service arrangement for the first time (not counting Easter). It’s quite a bit more exhausting, but I think it’s definitely worth the hassle. If we put all those people into the same service, it would be pretty uncomfortable in there, less attention would be paid, and I think we would have made personal connections with a lot fewer students. As it was, the first service was close to full, and there were probably half as many in the second. So I tried to make it more personal, and it seemed to go at least as well as the first.

 

We had three Korean students as visitors who came with a Chinese student who has come before, but I couldn’t place him. At least one of them is a Christian and speaks a little bit of Chinese (though she can read and write a lot more than me), and the other two have just arrived here. Our new piano player did a great job yesterday, though she was super nervous. She had some friends come to see her play - one was not a Christian and wanted to become one, but Debbie didn’t really know what to do about that (we found out about that after they had left). So pray for her.

 

We started our Philippians book study last night - “Objective Joy” we’re calling it. Meaning there is a joy that is a product of the work of the Holy Spirit, not of our surrounding circumstances. My original intention was to spend six weeks in the book, but that doesn’t look feasible now - I only made it to verse 11 this week. I struggled to get the language rolling in the first service, but it finally came. I manuscripted my entire message again this week. When I preach, I’m nowhere close to word-for-word from the manuscript, but preparing in that much detail pretty much guarantees I know all the vocabulary and sentence patterns necessary to make it through the message. So though it probably doubles my prep time, I’ll probably keep doing it like this for a couple months.

 

Part of the problem is that by Sunday night, I’ve gone almost two days without language school. I mean speaking the language for multiple hours, not studying the language. I study on the weekends, too, but not as much oral drilling. So I’m a little rusty on Sunday night. Fortunately, there’s usually some people with some Bible questions before we get started on Sunday night, which lets me get a good warm-up before I have to stand up and go.