China's urbanization has accelerated since the reform and opening-up especially in the last two decades. The urbanization rate reached 50% in 2010 from 18% in 1978, and 60% by 2020. That is to say, China is now a country dominated by an urban population.
As a famous historical and cultural city, City-A is at the forefront of the reform and opening-up in eastern China, and its urbanization level is at the forefront of the whole country. Thanks to the city's profound historical and cultural heritage and rapid economic and social development, its churches have also developed rapidly in the past ten years. At present, there are 67 registered churches (including gathering venues), 105 full-time pastors, and about 120,000 regular churchgoers in the city. There are 11 churches that are directly under the Municipal Christian Council & Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CC&TSPM) with about 50,000 believers and 26 full-time pastors. It is roughly estimated that the ratio of pastors to believers is 1:1500 (the ratio in the province where City-A is located is about 1:3000). The present situations of its churches are that the pews and pastors are outnumbered by believers, and the growth of believers is far quicker than the graduation of trained pastors - the urgency of demand is still increasing.
For more than ten years, Christianity in City-A has made great efforts to pursue the healthy development of the church and put forward four modes of church development, namely, the transformation of worship, management, pastoral care, and missionary mode.
In my opinion, at present, for the development of Chinese urban churches, especially for church groups in southeast coastal cities like City-A, three dimensions or aspects need to be considered and solved at the same time.
Firstly, the same old problems have always troubled the development of Chinese churches: plenty of believers with much fewer pastors, many people with fewer gathering venues, many private gathering places with constant heretical interruptions, utilitarian beliefs, faith with a strong sense of superstition, overly simple understanding of the faith, far insufficient contacts with the society, as well as high barriers and too many huge differences with the society.
Secondly, with the development of the economy and society, a new personnel group, new challenges, and new crises have emerged in urban churches. The new personnel group refers to the increasing presence of youth, students, white-collars, overseas returnees, entrepreneurs, professionals, and foreigners in churches. They are highly educated, have high economic and social status, and have a high demand for the quality of belief in contrast to the more traditional church images of the old, the sick, and the dominant number of females. However, the existing churches generally fail to effectively meet their needs, resulting in certain waste of resources and leaving of personnel.
The new challenges refer to the aging of the population, uneven regional distribution of migration, and floating population leaving cities. The new crisis refers to the fast pace of society, the developed digital information technology of social networking such as the Internet and new media, the fierce competition in the spiritual field, and the situation in which little fishes eat big fishes and fast fishes eat slow fishes, etc.
Thirdly, the great transformation of national ideology and strategic policy has a far-reaching impact on the development of the church. The impact requires the church to conform to the historical trend of this era, make great efforts to promote the Sinicization of Christianity and realize the complete renewal of the political stand, theological thought, value concept, worship etiquette, belief life, and other aspects of Chinese Christianity.
In short, the urban churches need to grasp the above three dimensions: tradition, modernity and mainstream, and make up for the gaps, strengthen the foundation and bring forth the new.
First of all, in view of the tradition of the church, we know that the church is ultimately a spiritual group and a holy and public place. The most basic and fundamental activity we need to carry out is the traditional ministry of the church, that is, to shape a correct, godly and committed belief life and build an appropriate church management system.
On the other hand, most people in a church still recognize a series of activities, such as worship, prayer meetings, spiritual meetings, sermons and Bible study, which are considered to be the most traditional; and they still accept the norm that only pastors (backbone volunteers) give sermons while they quietly listen.
People's faith demands always stay at the shallowest level. For instance, they will ask or pay attention to the following questions repeatedly: How can I be saved (understood as whether I can go to Heaven in future)? What do I rely on to be justified? Can I be saved once and forever? What is God's will (generally referring to what the questioner should do and should not do)? Where is God when I am ill or have an accident? In addition, the activities and participants are obviously repetitive, with outdated concepts, even with the traditional agricultural, social, and cultural value of 'being rich is safe'. There is the utilitarian color of folk religious beliefs, which are the performance characteristics.
The above description and analysis reflect the problem of the construction of faith foundation, which involves the core basic essence of the Christian faith. In this respect, the church must establish and improve the belief growth mechanism of its believers. In church tradition, we call it disciple training.
The church should form a belief growth mechanism from scratch and from shallowness to depth. Generally speaking, we can have a step-by-step curriculum system of "elementary-intermediate-advanced" (believer-disciple-apostle). The primary level can be for seekers, which solves the problem of establishing basic beliefs. There may also be a stage of introducing the aims, values, organization and management, believers' life and activities of the church to which they belong. In this way, we get believers who are committed to Christ and the church.
Secondly, believers should enter the stage where belief life and spiritual needs are created, which is commonly known as the stage of herding. At this stage, the church should offer thematic courses, such as prayer and spirituality, teaching and evangelism, service and witness, family life, children's education, workplace work, and other important aspects, to help believers establish Christian faith practice in line with the Bible.
In addition, we should ensure that believers have committed fellowship and spiritual partners or team members who trust and support each other. For more than 10 years, the church in the urban area of City-A has devoted itself to the group work of hierarchical pastoral care. The believers have registered to join the family group established after being inspected and recognized according to the principle of proximity under the arrangement of each church, and have regular meetings to try their best to make sure every believer cares and is cared for.
At the same time, the church has a long-term vision of its own development and human resources. Accordingly, it has also established a systematic hierarchical volunteer training system, and established an investigation and selection mechanism to discover and explore the talents of volunteers.
Secondly, the modernity of urban churches is also the most remarkable new problem. At the beginning of the 20th century, Reinhold was still a pastor in a church in Detroit, a newly-developed industrial city. His five-year pastoral career was a moment when the United States was advancing by leaps and bounds. The process of industrialization was changing with each passing day and the social transformation was rapid. At that time, the original social system and the cultural and spiritual strength with the church as the main task-bearer were unable to adapt to the development of new industrial capitalism.
At that time, Reinhold was a new young pastor of the city church. He had not yet become a heavyweight theologian, a well-known public intellectual, or a consultant to several American presidents. However, in his pastoral practice named Essays of the Tamed Cynics, he wrote about the church's adherence to stereotypes and "talking to itself" with meticulous observation, profound analysis, and spicy and humorous words, which was a major disconnect from society. Therefore, he proposed that the theological thought of the church should be updated, advocated reading the Bible again, and preached the eternal truth of the Gospel of Christ in a way that modern person can understand, accept and apply practically.
Today, we in China have a similar situation. Compared with the second industrial revolution at that time, we are now in the fourth industrial revolution represented by artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things. We are not only in the process of industrialization but also directly entering the post-industrialization and consumerism era due to the late economic and social development.
Therefore, the emerging urban groups we are facing are quite different, and their way of thinking, life purpose and rhythm are quite different from those of traditional believers. If the teaching and pastoral care provided to them also stay in routine activities and ways such as gathering, studying scriptures, and praying, it will inevitably lead to drowsiness and inefficiency, which will eventually lead to their inability to commit wholeheartedly, failure to develop their potential and even produce side effects on the church under certain conditions.
For example, economic development has produced entrepreneurs, professional managers and professionals in the church. Up to now, according to incomplete statistics, there have been no less than 50 Christian industrial and commercial leagues in China, mainly distributed in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing, Sichuan, and other regions. This pattern basically corresponds to and reflects the leading advantages of the eastern coastal areas in China's reform and opening up and economic and social development.
These enterprises and professionals have formed new requirements and challenges to the original pastoral mode and ability of the church, which prompted the church to adopt new ideas and measures to meet the needs of this part of believers. They have more economic and social resources and strong abilities. They tend to have active thoughts, extensive contacts, rich resources and special status, and have considerable influence in the church and society. They can greatly promote the development and progress of the church in infrastructure construction, ministry resources expansion, management improvement, and social charity service.
At the same time, if there is no good pastoral ministry and management, it can also lead to church disputes and even divisions, destroy the original organizational structure of the church, cause foreign-related problems, breed external religious infiltration or appear in disguised pursuit of buying and selling business; and even induce illegal and criminal phenomena of illegal fund-raising, fraud and wealth collection causing extremely bad damage to the church.
Urban white-collars, overseas returnees, artists, and other new classes and industries are similar. For these participants, city churches need to adapt to local conditions, teach students in accordance with their aptitude and meet their different spiritual and social needs. It is necessary for the church to assign full-time teaching and herding co-workers for supervision and herding, and the responsibility should be fulfilled to people. However, it cannot solve all the problems, and it is necessary to "distribute food on time" and respond to them in a targeted way. It is necessary to form a characteristic gathering activity based on professional characteristics, living habits, hobbies, and specialties.
Accordingly, the church should also develop professional volunteers. The important characteristics of modern society are a division of labor and specialization. Different groups of people in the church have different needs, and many affairs of the church need to be handled professionally. In combination with its existing conditions and abilities, the church can train volunteers who specialize in certain fields such as sacred music, church acoustics, parenting education, marriage and family training, culture and art workshops, and social services.
Churches can also expand outward, seek resources, invite mature ministry teams or accomplished attendants, or professionals to give special guidance and training and establish their own professional volunteers by learning from other people's advanced experience. At present, the theological seminary education in the west is undergoing great changes, and the original theological education content and mode are being greatly challenged. A theological education for lay believers' leaders, which pays more attention to practice, pays attention to the world and emphasizes the church and church practice deeply rooted in the community as the base, is getting more and more attention and recognition.
In this respect, City-A Church has been exploring and trying. The branch campus of a provincial theological seminary in City-A is dedicated to training full-time pastors who adapt to the development of new churches in cities and lay leaders who have serious pursuits and are rooted in church service.
Finally, the reaching-out of Christianity which is based on ‘the Word became flesh’ as its core also requires us to actively adapt to and respond to our environment. Christianity also advocates "universal revelation" in its theological construction, and requires itself to enter the secular world, wear a cultural cloak, and understand and apply its surrounding culture. Christianity fully reflects its response, adaptation, reference and integration to different languages and cultures of different regions and nationalities in its two thousand years' spread and development, and there are many Christian forms that have far-reaching influence in history or reality, such as Greek Christianity, Latin Christianity, Coptic Christianity, Syrian Christianity, Byzantine Christianity, and Celtic Christianity.
After Christianity was introduced into China in history, it showed conflicts with Chinese culture in three aspects: doctrine and theology, experience and ceremony, and teaching system and power. There is also a tension between tradition and modernity in Christianity. In the present situation, it is worth pondering how the Christian church responds to the challenge.
(This article was originally published in a WeChat account named "Faith and Learning". CCD translated with permission.)
- Translated by Charlie Li
传统、现代、主流——浅谈华东地区A市教会发展过程中需要把握的三大维度
我国自改革开放以来城市化速度加快，特别是最近二十年来进入了高速发展期。城市化率从1978年的18%，到2010年已达到50%，截止2020年已达60 %，也就是说，当前我国已是一个以城市人口为主的国家了。
A市作为历史文化名城，华东特大改革开放前沿阵地，城市化发展水平居于全国最前列。得益于该市的深厚历史文化底蕴和快速经济社会发展，当地教会在近十多年里也快速发展。目前，A市共有登记的教堂（含聚会点）67间，专职教牧人员105名，经常参加教会礼拜的人数约有12万人。市基督教两会现有直属堂点11处，信徒约5万，专职教牧人员26名。粗略估算，该市基督教传道人与信徒比例为1：1500（A市所在省的比例约为1：3000），教会的现状是场所少信徒多，“羊多牧人少”，且信徒的增长远远高于传道人的补给，张力还在持续增加。
十多年以来，A市基督教努力追求教会健康发展，提出了教会发展的四大模式转变，即崇拜模式、管理模式、牧养模式和宣教模式的转变。
据笔者看来，当前中国城市教会发展特别是像A市这样的东南沿海城市教会群而言，三大维度或方面的问题需要同时思考并付诸努力加以解决。
第一、困扰中国教会发展的老问题一直存在。“羊多牧人少”，人多堂点少，私设聚会点生生不息，异端邪教侵扰不断，信仰功利，迷信色彩浓厚，理解简单粗暴，与社会来往少，隔膜深，差异大。
第二、伴随着经济社会发展，城市教会出现了新人员新挑战新危机。新人员群体指的是除了原来的“老人多、病人多、女人多”的传统教会面貌，教会有了越来越多的青年、学生、白领、海归、企业家、专业人士，外籍人员等，他们受教育程度高，经济社会地位高，信仰需求高，但现有教会总体而言未能有效满足他们，造成一定的资源浪费和人员流失。
新的挑战是指人口老龄化、人口迁移区域分布不均匀以及流动人口离开城市。新危机是指社会节奏快，互联网新媒体等网络社交数字资讯科技发达，精神领域竞争激烈，出现小鱼吃大鱼，快鱼吃慢鱼等之前基本未遇的情况。
第三、国家意识形态和战略方针的重大转型对教会发展产生深远影响，要求教会顺应这一时代历史潮流，努力推进基督教中国化，实现中国基督教彻底的政治立场、神学思想、价值理念、崇拜礼仪、信仰生活等各方面的更新。
简而言之，城市教会需要把握以上传统、现代和主流三个维度，针对性地查漏补缺，固本强身，推陈出新。
第一，针对教会的传统性方面，我们知道教会最终是一个精神团体，是圣而公之教会，我们所要进行的最基础、最根本的活动就是传统的教会事工，就是要塑造正确敬虔委身的信仰生活，构建合宜的教会管理体系。
另一方面，教会的绝大多数人仍旧认同被认为最传统的礼拜、祷告会、培灵会、布道会和查经会等一系列活动，大家也仍会接受一种传道人（骨干义工）单独讲授，大家安静聆听的方式。
大家的信仰诉求也始终停留在最浅层，譬如周而复始的会问或关注如下问题：我怎么得救（被理解为将来能不能上堂），我靠什么称义，是否一次得救永远得救，什么是神的旨意（一般指提问者具体该做什么以及该不该做什么），我生病了或出事了时上帝在哪里？另外，开展的活动内容和参与人员重复性明显，观念陈旧，甚至带有小富即安的传统农业社会文化心理和民间宗教信仰功利色彩，这都是表现特点。
以上描述分析就是体现信仰基础建造的问题，涉及基督教信仰的核心基础要义。在这个方面，教会一定要建立健全教会的信徒信仰成长机制。在教会传统中，我们这样称之为门徒培训。
教会应当形成一个从无到有、由浅入深的信仰成长机制。一般来说，我们可以有一个“初级-进深-高级”（信徒-门徒-使徒）的阶梯类课程体系。初级可以是慕道班，解决基本信仰的建立问题。这其中也可以还有一个对所属教会的宗旨目标、价值理念、组织管理、信徒生活、活动开展等全方位介绍的阶段。这样，我们得到的是委身基督也委身教会的具有双重委身的信徒。
其次，信徒应进入信仰生活和灵性需要被造就的阶段，也就是俗称的牧养阶段。在这个阶段，教会应开设主题式课程，诸如祷告与灵修、护教与传福音、服务与见证、家庭生活、子女教育、职场工作等重要方面，帮助信徒确立合乎圣经的基督徒信仰实践。
另外，应当确保信徒有委身的信徒团契，有相互信任和扶持的属灵伙伴或小组成员。10多年以来，A市城区教会致力于开展分层分级牧养关怀的小组化事工，信徒在各堂安排下根据就近原则报名登记加入被考察认可后建立的家庭小组，定期聚会，努力做到每个信徒被关怀和去关怀。
与此同时，教会对自身发展和人力资源有长远的异象，相应地也建立有系统的分层分级的义工培训体系，建立起一个发现发掘发挥义工才干的考察遴选机制。
第二、城市教会的现代性维度问题，这也是城市教会最显著的新问题。20世纪初，莱茵霍尔德尼布尔还在新兴工业城市底特律一教会作牧师，他的五年教牧生涯正是美国突飞猛进，工业化进程日新月异，社会转型急剧快速的时刻，当时原有社会体系和以教会为主干的文化精神力量力不从心，完全无法适应这样新兴工业资本主义发展的世代。
尼布尔当时还是城市教会新到任的青年牧师，彼时尚未成为重量级神学家，家喻户晓的公共知识分子和美国几任总统的咨询师，然而在其名为《被驯服的愤世嫉俗者的随笔》的教牧实践中，他以细致的观察，深刻的分析，辛辣而幽默的言语写下了当时教会的墨守陈规和“自说自话”，与社会的重大脱节，对城市和新兴城市平民、知识分子和社会新贵等人群以及城市乃至整个国家的问题似乎毫无参与。他由此提出教会的神学思想要有更新，主张再读圣经，对照时代将基督福音永恒不变的真理以现代人能懂能接受能切实应用的方式宣讲出来。
今天，我们中国也出现了类似的情形。相对于当时的第二次工业革命，我们如今处于以人工智能、大数据、物联网等为代表的第四次工业革命中。我们既处在工业化进程中，同时又由于后发经济社会发展还直接进入后工业化和消费主义时代。
因此，我们面临的新兴城市群体大不一样，他们的思维方式、人生旨趣和生活节奏都跟传统信众有巨大的不同。如果对他们的牧养和关怀也停留在聚会查经祷告等常规活动和方式，则势必出现困倦和低效，最终导致他们的心留不住，他们的潜能才干发挥不出，甚至在一定条件下产生对教会的副作用。
例如，经济发展使得教会里产生了企业家、职业经理人和专业人士等人群。迄今为止，据不完全统计，全国已有大大小小不下50个基督徒工商团契，主要分布在广东、福建、浙江、上海、北京、四川等地区和省市，这种格局基本上对应并反映了我国东部沿海地区在改革开放事业和经济社会发展中的领先优势。
对这些企业和专业人士对教会原有牧养模式和能力形成了新的要求和挑战，促使教会采取新思路和新措施满足这部分信徒的需求。他们拥有较多的经济社会资源，活动能力强，他们往往思想活跃，交往广泛，资源丰富，身份特别，在教会里和社会上都具备相当的影响力。他们可以极大的推动教会在基础设施建设、事工资源拓展、管理水平提升以及社会慈善服务等多方面取得发展进步。
与此同时，如果没有牧养和管理好，也可以引发教会纷争甚至分裂，破坏教会原有组织架构，或者产生涉外问题，滋生外部宗教渗透，或者出现买卖经商的变相追求甚至诱发非法集资诈骗敛财的违法犯罪现象，对教会造成极其恶劣的伤害。
都市白领、海外归国人员、艺术工作者等新阶层新行业也是类似。对这些参加者，城市教会需要因地制宜，因材施教，满足大家不同的灵性和社会性需求。教会派设专职教牧同工进行督导和牧养，责任落实到人，这是必要的，但不能解决全部的问题，还要“按时分粮”，针对性的回应他们，要依据职业特点、生活习惯、兴趣爱好和专长才干而组成的特色聚会活动。
相应的，教会也当发展专业型义工人才。现代社会的重要特征就是分工和专业化，教会里不同群体的人需求也不尽相同，教会的诸多事务也需要专业性的处理。教会结合自身现有条件和能力，可以培养学有专攻，专注于某事工领域的义工，譬如在圣乐、教堂音响、亲子教育、婚姻家庭、文化艺术、社会服务等事工领域发挥作用。
教会也可以向外拓展，寻求资源，邀请成熟的事工团队或有建树的服侍人员，或专业的培训人员作专门指导培训，通过学习他人先进经验建立自己的专业性义工人员。目前，西方的神学院教育也在发生重大变革，原有的神学教育内容、模式都在受到巨大的挑战，一种更加注重实践，关注世界，强调以教会和深耕于社区的教会实践工作为基地为导向的平信徒领袖神学教育愈来愈受到重视和认可。
在这个方面，A市教会已经在探索尝试。某省级神学院在A市的分校区致力于培养适应城市新兴教会发展的专职传道人和具有严肃追求又扎根于教会服侍的平信徒领袖。
最后，道成肉身为核心的基督教信仰的入世化也要求我们积极的适应回应我们所处的环境。基督教在其神学建构中也主张“普遍启示”，自身要求进入世俗世界、披戴文化外衣、理解并应用所处文化。基督教在其两千年的传播发展中充分体现对各地区各民族各语言文化的回应、适应、借鉴和融入，出现了希腊基督教、拉丁基督教、科普特基督教、叙利亚基督教、拜占庭基督教、凯尔特基督教等多种在历史上或现实中都影响深远的基督教形态。
历史上基督教传入中国后在教义与神学、经验与仪式以及教制与权力三方面表现出的与中国文化存在的冲突，以及基督教内部存在着的传统和现代之间的张力。在当下时代处境中，基督教会如何回应挑战，值得深思。
本文原载于“信仰和学术”微信号，本平台蒙允转载，不拥有版权。
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传统、现代、主流——浅谈华东地区A市教会发展过程中需要把握的三大维度
China's urbanization has accelerated since the reform and opening-up especially in the last two decades. The urbanization rate reached 50% in 2010 from 18% in 1978, and 60% by 2020. That is to say, China is now a country dominated by an urban population.
As a famous historical and cultural city, City-A is at the forefront of the reform and opening-up in eastern China, and its urbanization level is at the forefront of the whole country. Thanks to the city's profound historical and cultural heritage and rapid economic and social development, its churches have also developed rapidly in the past ten years. At present, there are 67 registered churches (including gathering venues), 105 full-time pastors, and about 120,000 regular churchgoers in the city. There are 11 churches that are directly under the Municipal Christian Council & Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CC&TSPM) with about 50,000 believers and 26 full-time pastors. It is roughly estimated that the ratio of pastors to believers is 1:1500 (the ratio in the province where City-A is located is about 1:3000). The present situations of its churches are that the pews and pastors are outnumbered by believers, and the growth of believers is far quicker than the graduation of trained pastors - the urgency of demand is still increasing.
For more than ten years, Christianity in City-A has made great efforts to pursue the healthy development of the church and put forward four modes of church development, namely, the transformation of worship, management, pastoral care, and missionary mode.
In my opinion, at present, for the development of Chinese urban churches, especially for church groups in southeast coastal cities like City-A, three dimensions or aspects need to be considered and solved at the same time.
Firstly, the same old problems have always troubled the development of Chinese churches: plenty of believers with much fewer pastors, many people with fewer gathering venues, many private gathering places with constant heretical interruptions, utilitarian beliefs, faith with a strong sense of superstition, overly simple understanding of the faith, far insufficient contacts with the society, as well as high barriers and too many huge differences with the society.
Secondly, with the development of the economy and society, a new personnel group, new challenges, and new crises have emerged in urban churches. The new personnel group refers to the increasing presence of youth, students, white-collars, overseas returnees, entrepreneurs, professionals, and foreigners in churches. They are highly educated, have high economic and social status, and have a high demand for the quality of belief in contrast to the more traditional church images of the old, the sick, and the dominant number of females. However, the existing churches generally fail to effectively meet their needs, resulting in certain waste of resources and leaving of personnel.
The new challenges refer to the aging of the population, uneven regional distribution of migration, and floating population leaving cities. The new crisis refers to the fast pace of society, the developed digital information technology of social networking such as the Internet and new media, the fierce competition in the spiritual field, and the situation in which little fishes eat big fishes and fast fishes eat slow fishes, etc.
Thirdly, the great transformation of national ideology and strategic policy has a far-reaching impact on the development of the church. The impact requires the church to conform to the historical trend of this era, make great efforts to promote the Sinicization of Christianity and realize the complete renewal of the political stand, theological thought, value concept, worship etiquette, belief life, and other aspects of Chinese Christianity.
In short, the urban churches need to grasp the above three dimensions: tradition, modernity and mainstream, and make up for the gaps, strengthen the foundation and bring forth the new.
First of all, in view of the tradition of the church, we know that the church is ultimately a spiritual group and a holy and public place. The most basic and fundamental activity we need to carry out is the traditional ministry of the church, that is, to shape a correct, godly and committed belief life and build an appropriate church management system.
On the other hand, most people in a church still recognize a series of activities, such as worship, prayer meetings, spiritual meetings, sermons and Bible study, which are considered to be the most traditional; and they still accept the norm that only pastors (backbone volunteers) give sermons while they quietly listen.
People's faith demands always stay at the shallowest level. For instance, they will ask or pay attention to the following questions repeatedly: How can I be saved (understood as whether I can go to Heaven in future)? What do I rely on to be justified? Can I be saved once and forever? What is God's will (generally referring to what the questioner should do and should not do)? Where is God when I am ill or have an accident? In addition, the activities and participants are obviously repetitive, with outdated concepts, even with the traditional agricultural, social, and cultural value of 'being rich is safe'. There is the utilitarian color of folk religious beliefs, which are the performance characteristics.
The above description and analysis reflect the problem of the construction of faith foundation, which involves the core basic essence of the Christian faith. In this respect, the church must establish and improve the belief growth mechanism of its believers. In church tradition, we call it disciple training.
The church should form a belief growth mechanism from scratch and from shallowness to depth. Generally speaking, we can have a step-by-step curriculum system of "elementary-intermediate-advanced" (believer-disciple-apostle). The primary level can be for seekers, which solves the problem of establishing basic beliefs. There may also be a stage of introducing the aims, values, organization and management, believers' life and activities of the church to which they belong. In this way, we get believers who are committed to Christ and the church.
Secondly, believers should enter the stage where belief life and spiritual needs are created, which is commonly known as the stage of herding. At this stage, the church should offer thematic courses, such as prayer and spirituality, teaching and evangelism, service and witness, family life, children's education, workplace work, and other important aspects, to help believers establish Christian faith practice in line with the Bible.
In addition, we should ensure that believers have committed fellowship and spiritual partners or team members who trust and support each other. For more than 10 years, the church in the urban area of City-A has devoted itself to the group work of hierarchical pastoral care. The believers have registered to join the family group established after being inspected and recognized according to the principle of proximity under the arrangement of each church, and have regular meetings to try their best to make sure every believer cares and is cared for.
At the same time, the church has a long-term vision of its own development and human resources. Accordingly, it has also established a systematic hierarchical volunteer training system, and established an investigation and selection mechanism to discover and explore the talents of volunteers.
Secondly, the modernity of urban churches is also the most remarkable new problem. At the beginning of the 20th century, Reinhold was still a pastor in a church in Detroit, a newly-developed industrial city. His five-year pastoral career was a moment when the United States was advancing by leaps and bounds. The process of industrialization was changing with each passing day and the social transformation was rapid. At that time, the original social system and the cultural and spiritual strength with the church as the main task-bearer were unable to adapt to the development of new industrial capitalism.
At that time, Reinhold was a new young pastor of the city church. He had not yet become a heavyweight theologian, a well-known public intellectual, or a consultant to several American presidents. However, in his pastoral practice named Essays of the Tamed Cynics, he wrote about the church's adherence to stereotypes and "talking to itself" with meticulous observation, profound analysis, and spicy and humorous words, which was a major disconnect from society. Therefore, he proposed that the theological thought of the church should be updated, advocated reading the Bible again, and preached the eternal truth of the Gospel of Christ in a way that modern person can understand, accept and apply practically.
Today, we in China have a similar situation. Compared with the second industrial revolution at that time, we are now in the fourth industrial revolution represented by artificial intelligence, big data, and the Internet of Things. We are not only in the process of industrialization but also directly entering the post-industrialization and consumerism era due to the late economic and social development.
Therefore, the emerging urban groups we are facing are quite different, and their way of thinking, life purpose and rhythm are quite different from those of traditional believers. If the teaching and pastoral care provided to them also stay in routine activities and ways such as gathering, studying scriptures, and praying, it will inevitably lead to drowsiness and inefficiency, which will eventually lead to their inability to commit wholeheartedly, failure to develop their potential and even produce side effects on the church under certain conditions.
For example, economic development has produced entrepreneurs, professional managers and professionals in the church. Up to now, according to incomplete statistics, there have been no less than 50 Christian industrial and commercial leagues in China, mainly distributed in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Beijing, Sichuan, and other regions. This pattern basically corresponds to and reflects the leading advantages of the eastern coastal areas in China's reform and opening up and economic and social development.
These enterprises and professionals have formed new requirements and challenges to the original pastoral mode and ability of the church, which prompted the church to adopt new ideas and measures to meet the needs of this part of believers. They have more economic and social resources and strong abilities. They tend to have active thoughts, extensive contacts, rich resources and special status, and have considerable influence in the church and society. They can greatly promote the development and progress of the church in infrastructure construction, ministry resources expansion, management improvement, and social charity service.
At the same time, if there is no good pastoral ministry and management, it can also lead to church disputes and even divisions, destroy the original organizational structure of the church, cause foreign-related problems, breed external religious infiltration or appear in disguised pursuit of buying and selling business; and even induce illegal and criminal phenomena of illegal fund-raising, fraud and wealth collection causing extremely bad damage to the church.
Urban white-collars, overseas returnees, artists, and other new classes and industries are similar. For these participants, city churches need to adapt to local conditions, teach students in accordance with their aptitude and meet their different spiritual and social needs. It is necessary for the church to assign full-time teaching and herding co-workers for supervision and herding, and the responsibility should be fulfilled to people. However, it cannot solve all the problems, and it is necessary to "distribute food on time" and respond to them in a targeted way. It is necessary to form a characteristic gathering activity based on professional characteristics, living habits, hobbies, and specialties.
Accordingly, the church should also develop professional volunteers. The important characteristics of modern society are a division of labor and specialization. Different groups of people in the church have different needs, and many affairs of the church need to be handled professionally. In combination with its existing conditions and abilities, the church can train volunteers who specialize in certain fields such as sacred music, church acoustics, parenting education, marriage and family training, culture and art workshops, and social services.
Churches can also expand outward, seek resources, invite mature ministry teams or accomplished attendants, or professionals to give special guidance and training and establish their own professional volunteers by learning from other people's advanced experience. At present, the theological seminary education in the west is undergoing great changes, and the original theological education content and mode are being greatly challenged. A theological education for lay believers' leaders, which pays more attention to practice, pays attention to the world and emphasizes the church and church practice deeply rooted in the community as the base, is getting more and more attention and recognition.
In this respect, City-A Church has been exploring and trying. The branch campus of a provincial theological seminary in City-A is dedicated to training full-time pastors who adapt to the development of new churches in cities and lay leaders who have serious pursuits and are rooted in church service.
Finally, the reaching-out of Christianity which is based on ‘the Word became flesh’ as its core also requires us to actively adapt to and respond to our environment. Christianity also advocates "universal revelation" in its theological construction, and requires itself to enter the secular world, wear a cultural cloak, and understand and apply its surrounding culture. Christianity fully reflects its response, adaptation, reference and integration to different languages and cultures of different regions and nationalities in its two thousand years' spread and development, and there are many Christian forms that have far-reaching influence in history or reality, such as Greek Christianity, Latin Christianity, Coptic Christianity, Syrian Christianity, Byzantine Christianity, and Celtic Christianity.
After Christianity was introduced into China in history, it showed conflicts with Chinese culture in three aspects: doctrine and theology, experience and ceremony, and teaching system and power. There is also a tension between tradition and modernity in Christianity. In the present situation, it is worth pondering how the Christian church responds to the challenge.
(This article was originally published in a WeChat account named "Faith and Learning". CCD translated with permission.)
- Translated by Charlie Li
"Tradition, Modernity, and Mainstream," Three Dimensions in Church Growth in Eastern China
