In the past two years, the recurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the pace of many people’s work and life. The fear of the pandemic and the worry about the future have become a common “emotional disturbance” that plagues the public. Confusion, sadness, and tangle are such depressions that are gradually felt on the Internet. In the popular trend of self-deprecation among countless young netizens, there emerged a new online catch phrase, “I have emo” (emo traces back to "emotional hardcore" and here means "I'm down in the dumps").
In the Baidu Encyclopedia, “emo” generally refers to all unstable emotions caused by sadness. Unlike pessimism with negative tendencies, emo denotes more negative expressions when under pressure.
Under the current pandemic situation, emo will more or less appear among fellow believers in the grassroots churches. For instance, difficulties to resume in-person worship and the lack of love on online platforms may all be the reasons for their emo. For pastors, the emos they have to a great extent shown their judgment and thoughts regarding the situation in their own church.
Recently, the Gospel Times, an online Chinese newspaper, had an interview with three pastors of several grass-roots churches in North China. Though the emotions they show are different, behind this sad or anxious mood is actually the realistic and complicated situation that the grassroots church is experiencing.
(At the request of the interviewed pastors, their church names, addresses, and other relevant details are not revealed in the text.)
The melancholy of hard times
Church A, located in a small mountain town in North China, is the central church of the local county. Because the area covers quite a few rural gathering points, the number of believers is large. Since the pandemic, this church has been in the cycle of opening and closing.
Since the Spring Festival this year, the church has been suspended for half a year. Although online ministry is still going on as planned, Elder Z is very sad when it comes to the current economic situation of the church.
“In the past two years, the pandemic situation has had a significant impact on my church’s income. True that the number of churches in urban areas has also decreased, it is passable, but the situation of rural grass-roots gathering places is not optimistic.” Elder Z said, “Grass-roots churches themselves receive fewer donations every year. When small-scale village gathering points and rural churches are suspended, it basically equals ceasing income. The daily water supply, electricity, heating, equipment maintenance, and visiting ministries of the church all need funds, and it is even more difficult to update information as to which church needs techno support. For important expenses, the church can pay some money in advance, but such a big project as house repairs can only be delayed if it can be delayed. However, when will the churches be resumed?” In his sharing, he mentioned that in the past two winters, the church would often fail to pay for heating.
For Church A, the economic situation not only affects the actual operation of the church but also concerns the viability of the nearly 100 grassroots pastors. According to Elder Z, because the church’s income itself is not sufficient to support the pastors’ living expenses, there is no financial subsidy for them except for a little subsidy for theological students who do the monthly ministering practice. With the impact of the pandemic in the past two years, the economic situation of the church has become increasingly tense, and sometimes even subsidies are not available.
“Although there are currently no pastors in our church who have quit their service posts due to a lack of financial support, some voluntary pastors will focus more on maintaining their daily living than serving. I think this can also be counted as another level of loss of pastors,” he concluded.
Talking about whether the church will look for some other ways to maintain its normal operation in the face of today’s post-pandemic era, Elder Z said helplessly that there was no good way for the time being. “The church has no channel in terms of resources and talents, but it can only be put in prayer. I hope the church can resume as soon as possible so that everyone can return to the temple to worship as soon as possible. I believe that God’s preparation will exceed what we ask for and imagine!”
Confusion when leading the fellowship
Different from the situation of grassroots Church A with relatively scarce resources, Church B, which is located in a prefecture-level city in North China, has not been greatly affected in terms of income. However, another rather realistic situation is also troubling the pastors of the church.
Pastor W from Church B, a young man, has been in his particular service role for 10 years, after graduating from his seminary. In addition to regular pastoral work, he is the head of a youth fellowship in his church. In his personal opinion, the biggest challenge brought to him by the pandemic is the pastoral leadership of the fellowship.
“Although there are many believers in the church, there are not many brothers and sisters who are willing to participate in youth fellowship.” Speaking of youth fellowship, Pastor W said, “Before, there were at most 100 young people, but during the pandemic in the past two years, there are only over 20 fellowship participants, sometimes even fewer.”
Similar to the vast majority of small and medium-sized cities in contemporary China, the phenomenon of youth leaving is also prevalent in the local area. Countless young people are unwilling to have a dull life in small cities, and they have chosen to pack their bags to integrate into the prosperous first-tier cities. The direct impact of this phenomenon on the church is that there are fewer and fewer young believers, and the middle-aged and elderly groups have become the mainstream groups of the church.
Due to the sharp decline in people and the current situation of pandemic prevention and control, the pastoring and leading work of youth has been restricted. “Now many activities of the fellowship are suspended, and there are basically no activities online. It’s just that there are often some prayers or spiritual sharing in a WeChat group.” W said.
“Actually I won’t lead the youth fellowship either. I don’t know how to gather everyone’s hearts in the Lord, and I don’t know how to attract more young people to join the fellowship.” Facing the next steps of youth fellowship, Pastor W gave a helpless long sigh.
“We’re semi-problematic. It can be said that this is the case in our church.” W explained, “Compared with small churches, we have the ability to establish a diversified fellowship for believers, but we lack as rich experience in fellowship leadership and energetic staff as churches in first-and second-tier cities. I also tried to learn from the excellent experience of foreign churches before. When I came back, I found that many conditions were quite low and could not be applied. So, where is the fellowship going? How can it be developed? I can only explore it by myself.”
Recently, in addition to offering prayers to God and communicating with the pastors in the church, he has been contacting theological students who serve the front line all over the country, constantly learning from the exchange and sharing, hoping to find some new ideas.
Tension in the face of crisis
Different from the situations of the above two grass-roots pastors, Pastor F, who is also in charge of a county-level city church, is facing a much more severe situation, and “nervousness” has become his emotional state almost every day recently. When it comes to the reason why Pastor F is nervous, it has to start with the pandemic.
With the suspension of in-person activities during the pandemic, the church started “online” and “small group” ministries. However, since the second half of last year, he gradually discovered that some abnormal state existed among some believers and even the serving staff.
“For studying and service arrangements, there are always three or five people who make excuses to say that they are too busy to attend.” Pastor F recalled, “At first, I thought it was an occasional phenomenon, but later, they repeatedly disobeyed the arrangement of the church, did not attend studying, and stopped serving the church. I slowly discovered that something was wrong.”
After a focused observation, Pastor F learned about a situation from informing believers. It turned out that these believers had participated in an “online devotion group” active on the Web and had long-term online gatherings.
As this “online spiritual group” is not a pastoral group set up within the church, Pastor F was immediately alerted, suspecting that these believers might have been “sheep-knapped” (a slang among Chinese Christians meaning attracting membership from one church to another, translator’s note).
After some scrutinizing, Pastor F found that there was a mystery behind this so-called “network spiritual group”. It not only disguised itself by plagiarizing theological theories, but also used the Web to infiltrate into grassroots churches, confusing believers, and urging believers to keep wooing new believers to leave their original churches and join the “network group”. At present, this “network group” has a considerable membership in many places such as Northeast China and North China.
Pastor F, who realized the seriousness of the matter, quickly inquired about it from the church pastors in the surrounding areas, only to find that the “network group” had already carried out the work of infiltrating in the neighboring areas. A church meeting place in a neighboring city was almost completely wiped out, and most of the people from the meeting place to the believers were tempted to join the “group”, resulting in the division of the church.
The situation is urgent. After the Spring Festival this year, Pastor F held staff meetings with the pastors many times and asked the responsible staff of the pastoral groups to take strict precautions against the infiltration of extreme heresy on the Internet of an unknown origin.
“I didn’t realize that I was a step behind, and the staff in the church were actually brainwashed.” When mentioning the situation of the church, Pastor F’s tone was full of sadness. “This staff served on Sunday and was also the head of the group. I didn’t pay too much attention to the situation before. Who knows that she will affect the lay believers.”
After learning about the grim situation facing the church, Pastor F carried out more systematic training on the theological equipment and leadership ability of the group leader. Moreover, they began to warn those brainwashed fellow believers, hoping that they could quit the “groups” of unknown origin as soon as possible and stop the “sheep-knapping”.
As for the lay believers who fall into the trap of “sheep-knapping”, the church wants to help them believe and that they listen to them, by strengthening pastoral care and having focused talks. As for the “brainwashed” staff who actually participated in the service, Pastor F and other pastors decided to suspend their services as soon as possible to prevent more believers from being affected by it.
“Jesus also said, ‘It's better to lose one of all the members than to throw the whole body into hell.' The church plans to make a decision as soon as possible and not let the Lord's sheep get lost during the suspension of the church," he said.
As for why the church is facing the present situation, Pastor F has also done introspection and thinking. He explained that facing the pandemic situation, some small and medium-sized grass-roots churches adopted a laissez-faire attitude of "lying flat" because of the lack of conditions or one-sided judgment on the general environment. Their pastoral care for believers is limited to Sunday, thus giving the heretical cults on the Internet an opportunity.
Nowadays, in the era of information explosion, the Internet not only facilitates people's lives but also brings many temptations. He added that many lay believers think that they could not get enough spiritual food to sustain themselves, so they started to search for spiritual resources such as Taoism on the Internet spontaneously. However, if they were hungry, but they didn't have the ability to discern, they would easily fall into the trap of fallacies, resulting in the situation of being "pulled by sheep".
"So, on the one hand, we need the pastors of grass-roots churches to be alert all the time. The more churches suspend meetings, the more we need to strengthen the pastoral care and management of believers; In addition, it is necessary to pay more attention to the equipment of the group leader, emphasize the connection between the group and the church, emphasize unity, and not let the church become a situation without sheep to graze after resuming," Pastor F concluded.
- Translated by Charlie Li
近两年来，疫情的反复肆虐使得许多人的工作、生活节奏被打乱，对于疫情的恐惧与未来不缺定的担忧成为了困扰社会大众的普遍“心病”。迷茫、忧伤、纠结……诸如此类略显低沉的情绪也逐渐在互联网上流传，并在无数青年网友的自嘲解构中，成为了新的网络流行语——“我emo了”。
在百度百科的释义中，“emo”情绪可以泛指在忧伤的基调下的一切不稳定情绪。而与含有负面倾向的消极悲观情绪不同的是，“emo”情绪中，夹杂的更多是压力面前的心声吐露。
而回到如今疫情下的基层教会，“emo”情绪也会或多或少在诸位同工信徒之中出现。例如难以回归教堂共同参加敬拜、线上灵修缺乏爱的交通……都可能成为大家“emo”的原因。而对于牧者们而言，他们所流露出的“emo”情绪，极大程度上表明着其对于自身教会境况的判断与思考。
近日，福音时报与华北地区几位基层教会的牧者进行了近况交流。几位牧者的所展现的“emo”情绪也不尽相同，而这或忧愁或急切的情绪背后，实则是基层教会正在经历的现实且复杂的处境。
（应受访牧者要求，文中将隐去教会名称、地址等相关细节内容）
运行艰难的惆怅
位于华北某山间小城的A教堂是当地的县城中心堂，由于覆盖较多的农村堂点，信徒人数也颇具规模。疫情以来，这间教会一直处于开开关关的循环往复阶段。
自打今年春节算起，A教会已经连续暂停了小半年时间。虽然线上牧养还在按照计划开展，但一提起教会目前的经济情况，Z长老却十分忧愁。
“这两年疫情对于教会奉献还是有不小影响的，城区主堂虽然也减少了一些，但还过得去，但是像底下的农村聚会点情况就不容乐观了。”Z长老介绍道，“基层堂点本身每年收到的奉献就比较少，小规模的村里聚会点和农村堂点一暂停，基本就等于断了奉献。教会日常的水电暖气、设备维护以及探访事工的开展都需要资金，再赶上哪个堂点需要修缮加固，更是难办。（对于）要紧的开支，教会可以先垫付一些，但是修房子这种大工程量的只能是能拖就拖了。可是，教会什么时候才能恢复呢……”在分享中，他提到，近两年的冬季，教会也会时常遇到支付不出暖气费的情况。
对于A教会而言，经济状况不仅影响着教会的实际运行，同时还关乎着近百位基层传道人的生计问题。据Z长老介绍，由于教会奉献本身不足以供养传道人的日常生计，因此，除了神学生传道每月有少许经济补助以外，其他的义工传道并没有资金补贴。而随着近两年疫情影响，教会的经济形势愈发紧张，有些时候甚至连补贴也拿不出。
“虽然我们教会目前还没有因为生计问题退出服侍岗位的传道人，但是有一部分义工传道相比服侍牧养，会把精力更多的放在维系生计上，我觉得这也可以算作另一层面的‘传道人流失’的情况吧。”Z长老总结道。
在谈起面对如今后疫情时代，教会是否会寻找一些其他出路来维系正常运行，Z长老无奈地表示，暂时没有什么好办法。“教会在资源、人才方面都没有什么渠道，只能是放在祷告里，希望教会能够早日恢复，让大家早日回到圣殿敬拜，相信神的预备会超过我们所求所想吧！”
团契带领的迷茫
与资源条件相对匮乏的县级教会A情况不同，位于华北某地级市市区的B教会在奉献方面并没有受到太大影响。但是，另外一个颇为现实的处境也在困扰着教会的牧者。
W传道是B教堂的一位青年传道人，自神学院毕业进入服侍岗位已有10年时间，除了常规的牧养工作以外，他还是教会青年团契的负责人。在他个人看来，疫情带给他的最大挑战还是在团契的牧养带领方面。
“虽然教会信徒不少，但是愿意参加青年团契的弟兄姊妹却不多。”说起青年团契，W传道如此介绍道，“之前最多的时候能有小一百人，但近两年疫情期间，团契聚会也就20多人，有时会更少一些。”
与当代全国绝大多数的中小城市相似，青年流失现象在当地也十分显著，无数年轻人不甘于在小城市度过平淡乏味的生活，纷纷选择背起行囊融入繁华的一线都市。而此现象对于教会的直接影响就是——年轻信徒越来越少，中老年群体成为教会的主流群体。
由于人数的锐减加之疫情防控的现实处境，青年团契的牧养带领工作也受到了许多限制。“现在团契的许多活动都处于暂停状态，线上也基本没有活动，只是在微信群里时常有一些祷告或者是灵修分享。”W传道说。
“其实……我也不会带领青年团契……不知道怎样在主里聚拢起大家的心，也不知道怎样吸引更多年轻人加入团契……”面对青年团契接下来的方向，W传道发出了这句充斥着迷茫与些许无奈的叹息。
“‘比上不足，比下有余。’可以说，我们教会就是这样的情况。”W传道向笔者这样解释道，“比起小教会，我们有能力为信徒建立起多元化的团契，但却又缺乏像一、二线城市教会那样丰富的团契带领经验，以及有活力的同工。之前也尝试过借鉴外地教会优秀经验，回来一看发现，许多条件又挺缺乏，没法适用。所以，团契往哪发展？怎么发展？只能全靠自己摸索。”
最近，除了向神献上祷告并与堂里牧者沟通以外，他还一直在与全国各地服侍一线的神学生同学们保持联系，在交流分享中不断取经，希望能从中找出一些新点子。
危机面前的紧张
与上面两位基层牧者境遇迥然不同，同样负责某县级市教会F牧师所面临的态势明显严峻了许多，“紧张”也成为了他最近几乎每天的情绪状态。而说起F牧师紧张的原因，那还得从疫情说起。
随着疫情期间教会暂停，F牧师所在的教会开始了“线上”与“小组”并行的牧养。但是，从去年下半年开始，他逐渐发现教会中部分信徒乃至服侍同工的反常状态。
“对于教会安排的灵修学习以及服侍安排，总有三五个人找借口说自己忙，没空参加。”F牧师向笔者回忆道，“一开始我以为偶尔现象，但是后面他们三番五次不服从教会的管理，灵修也不参加，服侍也不来教会，我慢慢发现事情不对劲了。”
在经过一段时间的重点观察后，F牧师从知情信徒那里了解到了一个情况，原来，这些信徒共同参加了一个活跃在网络平台的某“线上灵修小组”，并长期在该小组进行线上聚会。
由于该“网络灵修小组”并非教会内部设立的牧养小组，于是F牧师便立刻提高了警惕，怀疑这些信徒可能是遭遇了“拉羊”。
经过一番了解，F牧师发现，这个所谓的“网络灵修小组”背后果然暗藏玄机，其不仅借助四处剽窃的神学理论包装自身，还利用网络大肆渗透进基层教会，迷惑信徒，并怂恿信徒不断拉拢新信徒脱离教会，加入“网络小组”。目前，该“网络小组”在东北、华北等多地都拥有了相当一部分的受众。
意识到事情严重性的F牧师又赶紧向周边地区的教会牧长打听此事，才发现该“网络小组”早已在邻近地区开展了渗透拉羊的工作。相邻地市的一间教会聚会点甚至几乎“全军覆没”，从聚会点负责人到信徒，绝大部分都受蛊惑加入了该“小组”，造成了教会的分裂。
形势紧迫，今年春节过后，F牧师多次与堂里的教牧同工召开同工会议，要求各位牧养小组的负责同工严加防范，抵御来历不明的网络极端异端渗透。
“没想到还是迟了一步，教会里的同工居然也被洗脑了。”提起教会的状况，F牧师语气中满是痛心，“这个同工主日有证道服侍，同时也是小组的负责人。之前没过多关注，谁知道她会影响底下的平信徒。”
自从得知教会面临的严峻态势后，F牧师一方面对于小组长的神学装备与带领能力开展了更加体系化的培训；另一方面则开始在教会中有指向性地向这些被“洗脑”的同工信徒发出警告，希望他们能够尽早退出这些来历不明的“小组”，并停止“拉羊”行径。
至于陷入“拉羊”陷阱的平信徒，教会希望能够通过加强牧养，并针对性的谈话来帮助他们正信正行。而对于实际参与服侍的被“洗脑”同工，F牧师与牧长们决定尽快暂停其圣工服侍，避免更多信徒受其影响。
“耶稣也说过：‘宁可失去百体中的一体，不叫全身丢在地狱里。’教会计划尽快做出决断，不能让主的羊在教会暂停期间迷了路。”F牧师如此说道。
而对于教会缘何会面临如今的境遇，F牧师也进行了许多的反省与思考。他认为：
如今面对疫情，有一部分中小规模的基层教会出于条件的缺乏或是对大环境的片面判断，采取了放任自流的“躺平”姿态，对于信徒的牧养只局限在主日，因此就给了网络上的异端邪教可乘之机。
在如今信息爆炸的时代，网络既便利了人们的生活，同时也给人带来许多的诱惑试探，许多平信徒认为得不到充足的灵粮喂养，就开始自发在网络上寻找证道等灵修资源，然而空有渴慕的心，却没有分辨能力，就容易被歪理邪说迷惑跌入陷阱，从而造成被“拉羊”的局面。
“所以，这一方面需要我们基层教会的牧者时刻提起警醒，越是教堂暂停聚会，就越是要加强信徒的牧养与管理；另外就是需要更加紧抓小组长的装备，着重强调小组与教会的关联，强调合一，不能让教会在恢复后变成无羊可牧的局面。”F牧师如此说道。
透过三位牧者的“emo”情绪，一窥基层教会正在经历的处境
In the past two years, the recurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the pace of many people’s work and life. The fear of the pandemic and the worry about the future have become a common “emotional disturbance” that plagues the public. Confusion, sadness, and tangle are such depressions that are gradually felt on the Internet. In the popular trend of self-deprecation among countless young netizens, there emerged a new online catch phrase, “I have emo” (emo traces back to "emotional hardcore" and here means "I'm down in the dumps").
In the Baidu Encyclopedia, “emo” generally refers to all unstable emotions caused by sadness. Unlike pessimism with negative tendencies, emo denotes more negative expressions when under pressure.
Under the current pandemic situation, emo will more or less appear among fellow believers in the grassroots churches. For instance, difficulties to resume in-person worship and the lack of love on online platforms may all be the reasons for their emo. For pastors, the emos they have to a great extent shown their judgment and thoughts regarding the situation in their own church.
Recently, the Gospel Times, an online Chinese newspaper, had an interview with three pastors of several grass-roots churches in North China. Though the emotions they show are different, behind this sad or anxious mood is actually the realistic and complicated situation that the grassroots church is experiencing.
(At the request of the interviewed pastors, their church names, addresses, and other relevant details are not revealed in the text.)
The melancholy of hard times
Church A, located in a small mountain town in North China, is the central church of the local county. Because the area covers quite a few rural gathering points, the number of believers is large. Since the pandemic, this church has been in the cycle of opening and closing.
Since the Spring Festival this year, the church has been suspended for half a year. Although online ministry is still going on as planned, Elder Z is very sad when it comes to the current economic situation of the church.
“In the past two years, the pandemic situation has had a significant impact on my church’s income. True that the number of churches in urban areas has also decreased, it is passable, but the situation of rural grass-roots gathering places is not optimistic.” Elder Z said, “Grass-roots churches themselves receive fewer donations every year. When small-scale village gathering points and rural churches are suspended, it basically equals ceasing income. The daily water supply, electricity, heating, equipment maintenance, and visiting ministries of the church all need funds, and it is even more difficult to update information as to which church needs techno support. For important expenses, the church can pay some money in advance, but such a big project as house repairs can only be delayed if it can be delayed. However, when will the churches be resumed?” In his sharing, he mentioned that in the past two winters, the church would often fail to pay for heating.
For Church A, the economic situation not only affects the actual operation of the church but also concerns the viability of the nearly 100 grassroots pastors. According to Elder Z, because the church’s income itself is not sufficient to support the pastors’ living expenses, there is no financial subsidy for them except for a little subsidy for theological students who do the monthly ministering practice. With the impact of the pandemic in the past two years, the economic situation of the church has become increasingly tense, and sometimes even subsidies are not available.
“Although there are currently no pastors in our church who have quit their service posts due to a lack of financial support, some voluntary pastors will focus more on maintaining their daily living than serving. I think this can also be counted as another level of loss of pastors,” he concluded.
Talking about whether the church will look for some other ways to maintain its normal operation in the face of today’s post-pandemic era, Elder Z said helplessly that there was no good way for the time being. “The church has no channel in terms of resources and talents, but it can only be put in prayer. I hope the church can resume as soon as possible so that everyone can return to the temple to worship as soon as possible. I believe that God’s preparation will exceed what we ask for and imagine!”
Confusion when leading the fellowship
Different from the situation of grassroots Church A with relatively scarce resources, Church B, which is located in a prefecture-level city in North China, has not been greatly affected in terms of income. However, another rather realistic situation is also troubling the pastors of the church.
Pastor W from Church B, a young man, has been in his particular service role for 10 years, after graduating from his seminary. In addition to regular pastoral work, he is the head of a youth fellowship in his church. In his personal opinion, the biggest challenge brought to him by the pandemic is the pastoral leadership of the fellowship.
“Although there are many believers in the church, there are not many brothers and sisters who are willing to participate in youth fellowship.” Speaking of youth fellowship, Pastor W said, “Before, there were at most 100 young people, but during the pandemic in the past two years, there are only over 20 fellowship participants, sometimes even fewer.”
Similar to the vast majority of small and medium-sized cities in contemporary China, the phenomenon of youth leaving is also prevalent in the local area. Countless young people are unwilling to have a dull life in small cities, and they have chosen to pack their bags to integrate into the prosperous first-tier cities. The direct impact of this phenomenon on the church is that there are fewer and fewer young believers, and the middle-aged and elderly groups have become the mainstream groups of the church.
Due to the sharp decline in people and the current situation of pandemic prevention and control, the pastoring and leading work of youth has been restricted. “Now many activities of the fellowship are suspended, and there are basically no activities online. It’s just that there are often some prayers or spiritual sharing in a WeChat group.” W said.
“Actually I won’t lead the youth fellowship either. I don’t know how to gather everyone’s hearts in the Lord, and I don’t know how to attract more young people to join the fellowship.” Facing the next steps of youth fellowship, Pastor W gave a helpless long sigh.
“We’re semi-problematic. It can be said that this is the case in our church.” W explained, “Compared with small churches, we have the ability to establish a diversified fellowship for believers, but we lack as rich experience in fellowship leadership and energetic staff as churches in first-and second-tier cities. I also tried to learn from the excellent experience of foreign churches before. When I came back, I found that many conditions were quite low and could not be applied. So, where is the fellowship going? How can it be developed? I can only explore it by myself.”
Recently, in addition to offering prayers to God and communicating with the pastors in the church, he has been contacting theological students who serve the front line all over the country, constantly learning from the exchange and sharing, hoping to find some new ideas.
Tension in the face of crisis
Different from the situations of the above two grass-roots pastors, Pastor F, who is also in charge of a county-level city church, is facing a much more severe situation, and “nervousness” has become his emotional state almost every day recently. When it comes to the reason why Pastor F is nervous, it has to start with the pandemic.
With the suspension of in-person activities during the pandemic, the church started “online” and “small group” ministries. However, since the second half of last year, he gradually discovered that some abnormal state existed among some believers and even the serving staff.
“For studying and service arrangements, there are always three or five people who make excuses to say that they are too busy to attend.” Pastor F recalled, “At first, I thought it was an occasional phenomenon, but later, they repeatedly disobeyed the arrangement of the church, did not attend studying, and stopped serving the church. I slowly discovered that something was wrong.”
After a focused observation, Pastor F learned about a situation from informing believers. It turned out that these believers had participated in an “online devotion group” active on the Web and had long-term online gatherings.
As this “online spiritual group” is not a pastoral group set up within the church, Pastor F was immediately alerted, suspecting that these believers might have been “sheep-knapped” (a slang among Chinese Christians meaning attracting membership from one church to another, translator’s note).
After some scrutinizing, Pastor F found that there was a mystery behind this so-called “network spiritual group”. It not only disguised itself by plagiarizing theological theories, but also used the Web to infiltrate into grassroots churches, confusing believers, and urging believers to keep wooing new believers to leave their original churches and join the “network group”. At present, this “network group” has a considerable membership in many places such as Northeast China and North China.
Pastor F, who realized the seriousness of the matter, quickly inquired about it from the church pastors in the surrounding areas, only to find that the “network group” had already carried out the work of infiltrating in the neighboring areas. A church meeting place in a neighboring city was almost completely wiped out, and most of the people from the meeting place to the believers were tempted to join the “group”, resulting in the division of the church.
The situation is urgent. After the Spring Festival this year, Pastor F held staff meetings with the pastors many times and asked the responsible staff of the pastoral groups to take strict precautions against the infiltration of extreme heresy on the Internet of an unknown origin.
“I didn’t realize that I was a step behind, and the staff in the church were actually brainwashed.” When mentioning the situation of the church, Pastor F’s tone was full of sadness. “This staff served on Sunday and was also the head of the group. I didn’t pay too much attention to the situation before. Who knows that she will affect the lay believers.”
After learning about the grim situation facing the church, Pastor F carried out more systematic training on the theological equipment and leadership ability of the group leader. Moreover, they began to warn those brainwashed fellow believers, hoping that they could quit the “groups” of unknown origin as soon as possible and stop the “sheep-knapping”.
As for the lay believers who fall into the trap of “sheep-knapping”, the church wants to help them believe and that they listen to them, by strengthening pastoral care and having focused talks. As for the “brainwashed” staff who actually participated in the service, Pastor F and other pastors decided to suspend their services as soon as possible to prevent more believers from being affected by it.
“Jesus also said, ‘It's better to lose one of all the members than to throw the whole body into hell.' The church plans to make a decision as soon as possible and not let the Lord's sheep get lost during the suspension of the church," he said.
As for why the church is facing the present situation, Pastor F has also done introspection and thinking. He explained that facing the pandemic situation, some small and medium-sized grass-roots churches adopted a laissez-faire attitude of "lying flat" because of the lack of conditions or one-sided judgment on the general environment. Their pastoral care for believers is limited to Sunday, thus giving the heretical cults on the Internet an opportunity.
Nowadays, in the era of information explosion, the Internet not only facilitates people's lives but also brings many temptations. He added that many lay believers think that they could not get enough spiritual food to sustain themselves, so they started to search for spiritual resources such as Taoism on the Internet spontaneously. However, if they were hungry, but they didn't have the ability to discern, they would easily fall into the trap of fallacies, resulting in the situation of being "pulled by sheep".
"So, on the one hand, we need the pastors of grass-roots churches to be alert all the time. The more churches suspend meetings, the more we need to strengthen the pastoral care and management of believers; In addition, it is necessary to pay more attention to the equipment of the group leader, emphasize the connection between the group and the church, emphasize unity, and not let the church become a situation without sheep to graze after resuming," Pastor F concluded.
- Translated by Charlie Li
Three Pastors Share General Situation of Grassroots Church in China: 'Realistic and Complicated'
