Response to “Church in the Wilderness”

Moving Beyond Advocacy to Education

The publishing of missives like Pastor Paul Peng’s “Church in the Wilderness” mark a significant moment in church history, both for China and the global church at large. We are now moving from receiving the valuable stories and testimonies of Christians in places where their faith is illegal, to the thoughts and theology of endurance that undergird their teaching and their lives. In the words of the old African American spiritual, they are singing the ancient melody of the saints, telling us “How I Got Ovah...”

Two Perspectives

The testimonies have been most helpful in our advocacy work, but now we are moving beyond advocacy to education. Pastors who are writing from the subdominant position in their own societies, and from their experience of Christianity as its own cultural minority, give us two important perspectives from the persecuted and persevering: first, the greater picture of the long historical line of thinkers, practitioners, and lay persons who have come before, and second, a more focused real-time understanding of a particular church, in a particular context, under a particular form of government, at a particular place in time.

Perspectives like Pastor Peng’s must not be undervalued. Not only will they be useful for future secular and church historians, they are also instructive and edifying for present missional communities who are themselves stepping into the murky waters of anti-Christian indifference, soft hostility, and soft marginalization. Moreover, they are also useful in helping others already embroiled in persecuted cultures to see how others are advancing the kingdom of God in their own inhospitable circumstances. They inform such communities that they are not alone.

Seeing the church in action in her “natural habitat”—the hard circumstances into which the New Testament church was born—underscores the powerful simplicity of the New Testament reality, her principles and priorities, and the marks of the True Church—word, sacrament, and discipline.

More Than a How-To Manual

What we are studying here through such writings is not a “how to” reference, full of stealth prescriptives. If only such a book could be produced, without the enemies of Christ exploiting it for the destruction of the True Community! No, rather than a prescriptive “how to” full of endurance methodologies, we find one singular voice out of many, rising from the history of a people who continue to find their way as they follow The Way. They follow at the same cost as their Savior—the deep sacrifices of risking life and cultural affection, so that others may live.

Through these writings, we find even more thrilling and grounding gifts. We find that the ancient ways are still the best ways; that the great missiologist Dr. Andrew Walls was right in arguing that by the Spirit every earthly culture adds something helpful to the historical mix of Christian life, and each culture, in their fallen humanity, contributes things less-than-helpful; but the word of the Lord and his promise to keep a people set apart for himself remains unchanged.

This is the effective and faithful witness of the global underground, with the ability to teach the larger body what it means to persevere as the people of God, re-discovering a power that is not of this world—the power of powerlessness. Pastor Peng is preparing global Christians to enter into the simple power of New Testament living in complex and hostile societies. This is, historically, the transformative gospel that has the power to pull down dehumanizing strongholds, to change not just local communities and cultures, but sometimes, entire governments.

We have much to learn from these movements about kingdom-centric prayer: prayer movements that spark revival in the heart and bring significant personal and communal transformation. We learn of disciple-making movements that are exploding with knowledge of precisely what they are preparing disciples for, producing highly obedient Christians who are able to stand alone, and are all discipled into leadership positions lest one of them should fall.

Listening for the Unheard

The kingdom of God doesn’t come with our careful branding, our public proclamations, news articles, powerful speeches, cultivated social media management, or strategic movement shaping. Those things have their place, and God will judge the effectiveness and wisdom of them all. But God’s kingdom is far more likely to come from among the unpopular, unlikely, unknown, and unheard; from among those engaged in the daily grind, who are faithfully bringing light to the shadows, just as Christ came to this burdened, darkened world.

The names of ordinary people mark the Book of Acts far more impressively than the names of kings and rulers, proving once again that the kingdom more often surprises us with its quiet intrusion; it is the birth of a baby when everyone is expecting a full-grown king. The coming of the kingdom on earth is not forceful or coercive, but rather it spreads in the small and surprising places. The kingdom has always run underground, beneath the noise of talking heads.

Every Christian who is now experiencing new forms of soft cultural marginalization would do well to recognize the quiet gift that such writings bring—it should be a welcomed disruption of our American Christian lives. I anticipate that these writings will continue to arrive at our doorsteps, from experienced voices that have resisted the pull of secular and anti-Christian ideologies in their own cultures.

The window is always open to re-evaluate the power of simple Christianity under fire: prayer, sacrament, word; discipleship, idol-rejection, stealth, simplicity, and anonymity; death before disobedience. Whether these writings come from China, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, or any other place where biblical Christianity is regarded with disdain, as long as they are following the biblical Christ, these are the voices I wish to hear. They are living water flowing from a small and overlooked population of Christians living a different kind of political and cultural reality—a politics and culture based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let the living water flow, we are eager to learn.

K.A. Ellis is the Director of the Edmiston Center for the Study of the Bible and Ethnicity in Atlanta, Georgia. She's passionate about theology, human rights, and global religious freedom. Her research explores Christian endurance from society's margins, particularly in places where it's most difficult to live the Christian life.

Mrs. Ellis travels internationally with the Swiss-based organization, International Christian Response, to connect local and global Christians while studying and advocating for global religious freedom. She is also the Cannada Fellow for World Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary. She holds a Master of Art in Religion from Westminster Theological Seminary, a Master of Fine Art from the Yale School of Drama, and is a Ph.D. candidate in World Christianity and Ethics at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies in England.