MINISTRY / A house church leader finds gold

"We were in a group of Christians from his house church, but he silently paged through the copy of the Lutheran Confessions I gave him."

About the Lutheran Confessions

The Lutheran Confessions is a collection of documents that describes the central teachings of the Bible. Those documents are the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, as well as a number of writings that were developed during the Reformation to testify to what Lutherans believed about the Bible’s message. Those writings are:

• The Augsburg Confession

• The Apology (Defense) of the Augsburg Confession

• The Smalcald Articles

• The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope

• Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms

• The Formula of Concord.

These documents were assembled into a single volume called The Book of Concord.

Our liaison between the American part of our ministry and our students in China described the scene for our administrators.

Most of the members of the house church our liaison was visiting have taken multiple online classes from 316NOW over the last decade. The group has a newer member who has become a leader in the group. He is an eager student of the Scriptures and has found the Lutheran approach to understanding the Scriptures of significant value.

The gold of the gospel

When our liaison placed into his hands a copy of the Lutheran Confessions, he looked like he received a treasure chest filled with gold. Now he can mine for himself the spiritual wealth our Lutheran fathers handed down to us.

It's our prayer at 316NOW that this man's house church will continue to grow into a strong and expanding Lutheran church — a church filled with the gold of the gospel. We pray it will find fellowship with the other Confessional Lutheran churches scattered throughout China.

Under God's grace, we are determined to make that happen.