Dear Friends,
This week, please join us in prayer for “Jack” (name has been changed for security reasons) in China.
The world’s most populous nation, China is home to over 1.4 billion people. Within 15 years, China will likely also have the world’s largest Christian population, as unregistered and registered churches continue to grow rapidly. According to a 2014 Peking University study, 74% of Chinese are irreligious or practice folk religion, 16% are Buddhist, 3% Christian, and 0.5% Muslim. In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened control over religious minorities, detaining at least a million Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps, shutting down and demolishing churches, arresting and surveilling prominent leaders, and censoring religious literature.
Jack recently graduated with a PhD in Intercultural Studies from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies in the UK. His dissertation is a theological reflection on faith and identity among Chinese Christians – a topic of particular importance in a country where many view Christianity as a foreign religion and an instrument of Western imperialism. Currently, Jack teaches Christian Studies to college students at a Chinese university while serving his local church.
Jack shares the following message:
Thank you very much for this opportunity to receive prayer.
Here are a few descriptions that may offer you a glimpse of the conditions in China:
1. Missionaries are either leaving voluntarily or being kicked out of the country.
2. Sunday school is prohibited in official churches.
3. In some areas, any house worship meeting with more than five people will be targeted.
4. People are showing less care for the Good News because they are either scared of the ruling party’s disapproval or tired out from trying to survive.
Please pray for the following needs:
1. Pray that believers would be faithful in creatively finding ways to share our faith and that new churches could be planted. Pray that the Lord would deliver us from the day of evil.
2. My wife is homeschooling our kids. All other homeschoolers need the Lord’s shielding from the public’s attention.
3. Pray that my academic writing would be fruitful.
In Him,
Jack