China--The position of Three Self Church and Family Church

Officials of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), China' s government-recognized Protestant organization, paint a picture of a small but growing Church which enjoys full freedom of worship. The church is able to raise all the leaders it needs, and it desires no assistance from abroad except for prayer and some small material contributions given through TSPM channels.

In the early 1950s, when a group of government officials and church leaders who were sympathetic to the new Communist regime founded the organization. The movement took its name from the principles of self-government, self-propagation, and self-support, which foreign missionaries years before had set forth as goals for the Chinese Church.

On the other hand, family Churches have the great commissoin of pioneering church and preaching. Why Chinese Churches devlelop in such a rapid way? The main reason is God has rise up many preachers for evangelizing. But this natural growth of church development was regarded as illegal by the Chinese government. Family churches are required to register in Religion Commission, but in order to this, they must have a Pastor who are recognized by the TSPM. Usually when the family churches are registered, they must join the TSPM.

After the registration, they can enjoy the legal public worship, however they can't evangelize freely, they can only evangelize inside church or in some assigned areas. However the commission of family church is to evangelize. Therefore the family church prefer to obey to God, but not to man. They believe that Christ is the head of the church. Family churches grew up in many persecutions, they become stronger in faith and trust God more. Many stories like apostles in the book of Acts are founded. God will perform great miracles in this land and save his people.