MINISTRY / Ministry is speeding up

15 Days of Prayer for China begins on Saturday, February 10. Our ministry blog during the Chinese Spring Festival will highlight matters we ask you to keep in your prayers. For more information about 15 Days of Prayer tap here.

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Ministry is speeding up

"Our ministry is speeding up now that we are past Covid," said the director of our Bible institute at a leadership meeting last Monday.

Covid challenges

As Covid swept through China in 2020, the Communist government imposed severe restrictions on its 1.4 billion people. It also used the pandemic to tighten its hold on the limited freedoms Chinese people enjoy. Internet speech was further curtailed. Any posts that seemed to pose a threat to the government's view of reality were forbidden. This included any religious messages. With few exceptions, religious worship services and Bible studies could not be broadcast online. Social media, texts, and emails had to be religion-free.

That severely impacted our online Bible institute. Most of our students immediately stopped attending classes. We canceled classes for the spring semester of 2021. When classes began again in the fall, few of our students returned.

A growing student body

Since that time, a number of our students have concluded that the government's threat did not have the teeth we feared and returned to classes. New students are finding our institute. Many are coming because of the work of our liaison.

In addition, we are praying that our efforts to reach expatriate Chinese on the west coast of North America will begin to add students to the institute.

A need for prayer

With our education ministry "speeding up," we anticipate adding more classrooms, more faculty members, more interpreters, and more mentors. Your prayers that the Spirit empowers 316NOW to meet these challenges are important.

Thank you for your petitions asking the Spirit to powerfully use 316NOW to proclaim grace to Chinese people.