MINISTRY / Christmas for Chinese Christians

Merry Christmas!

By the time you read this, Christmas Day will be over in China. For many Christians today was a work day. Or a school day. There were no family gatherings. Or football games to watch.

On this day

None of that stopped Chinese Christians from celebrating Jesus’ birth with all the enthusiasm that fills American Christians.

Of course. We share the same Savior. The same grace. The same sure hope of the same heaven.

All the house churches that 316NOW works with are small, with less than two dozen members. Because Christmas Eve fell on Sunday this year, that’s when most of these churches gathered to recall the assurances of Jesus’ birth. In other years, they celebrated Christmas on the Sunday before December 25.

A day of celebration

The worship services in those churches are made as special as their resources allow. Small groups sing Christmas carols. Instrumentalists add their musical praise. (There may even be a little drummer boy to pa rum pum pum pum.). Dancing troupes bring worshipful motion to the service.

There are reenactments of the Christmas story. One group of our friends is comprised of older adults. They thought themselves too old to act out the parts of Mary and Joseph so they presented the story of Zechariah, Elizabeth, and the birth of John the Baptist.

Christmas is the year’s best time for Chinese Christians to invite non-Christians to worship. Often worship spaces are filled with both believers and their yet-to-become-believer friends and family.

Someday

How wonderful to know that someday, in heaven’s courts, believers from all over the globe and from every era, will join the angel army to sing and shout, Glory to God in the highest, and on heaven peace, good will toward mankind., because, in the town of David, a Savior was born…. He is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:11,14).