Tonight, almost 800 million people will gather in China with family around their TVs for the most-watched entertainment program of the year, the Chinese New Year Gala, broadcast by China Central Television. (By contrast, the Super Bowl will be watched by about 120 million viewers.)
Chinese New Year will be celebrated around the world, drawing attention to this ancient culture’s history and its spring festival’s colorful traditions. Chinese people are spread more widely than ever among the nations of Asia—Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia have millions—and even now throughout the West: our churches in Australia, for example, now have many Chinese disciples.
To mark the Chinese New Year, for the next several days Disciples Today will publish a series of articles written by our correspondent in mainland China, who will celebrate the Chinese New Year with friends and family in southern China and share more about how disciples of Jesus live in the world’s largest nation.
Part I: Good news from China
Disciples of Jesus in China can celebrate this New Year festival with good news of growing churches and many saved this past year.
The Hong Kong Church of Christ, one of the first church plantings from the Boston Church of Christ, continues to inspire, encourage and strengthen Chinese disciples all over the world. God blessed the Hong Kong church with its fifth consecutive year of growth and how has more members than at any time in the past 10 years. Over 60 people in Hong Kong came to faith and were baptized into Jesus in 2015!
The church also appointed five evangelists as well as several women’s ministry leaders who serve in churches throughout the greater China region and sent out a new mission effort to a university in Macau (formerly a Portuguese colony but now a special administrative region of China) in 2015.
In Taiwan, 2015 was a year of recovery. After two difficult two years of leadership changes and heart-breaking division, the disciples who endured and stayed unified were blessed by God with the most growth the Taipei church has seen in 10 years, and stability throughout the six churches around the island of Taiwan.
Growth in the so-called “underground” churches must be shared with more care, but we delighted to see over 80 men and women baptized into Jesus in 2015 across a number of young and growing churches scattered over this vast country (China is almost exactly the same size as U.S.!).
Next in this series: What’s it like to be a Christian in China?