hen the Spirit of God touches a teachable heart, miracles occur. This is what is happening in China. That is why when missionaries go there as teachers, most of them come back as students. We thought you would be inspired by reading about a Spirit-led church in China.
Our church began in 1980 and was formally established in 1985. Since then, it has grown steadily. By 1990, the number of churches in the area had increased to over 1000! The well-known national Chinese newspaper, People’s Daily, even wrote an article about us entitled, “Christian Tide Between the Strait of Huai River.”
In 1991, the believers strongly felt God’s lead to preach the gospel outside of Anhui Province and into Sichuan, Xinjiang and the three provinces in the Northeast -- Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. In three years, we established over 3000 churches. God made people’s hearts turn to us. Although we were not like the Apostle Peter, whereby 5000 people repented through his sermon, one of our sisters in Sichuan established 21 meeting points in one week.
Each individual spirit is saved by God. Every single church is established by God although the number of preachers is few. A pastor must go to different places to lead the meetings. One pastor had to walk over a thousand miles of hilly roads in one year to lead several churches. Some churches were misled by heresies because the pastoral care could not meet all the congregational needs. This is why we see the great importance of training disciples.
At first we started training without any preparation or arrangements. There was no classroom. Believers met at a brother’s house and there were no tables or chairs. They sat on the floor and wrote notes on their own knees. There were no dormitories and they slept in the classroom. There was no canteen or cook. As a result, they built a tiny house to serve as the kitchen and everyone took turns to cook the meals. Even though we just had water and vegetables, we were still full of thanksgiving to God. Students called this kind of training center, “The Wilderness Seminary.”
At this time, teachers had no teaching materials. All of them totally relied on the Holy Spirit’s leading. They woke up at 5am to pray and worship God. Two lines of tears were hanging on every single smiling face. It’s the best way to express how they met the Lord. Those who had great burdens on their soul, wept bitterly. Every day, there were two hours of prayer, eight hours of learning and still people’s spiritual hunger was not met. Some students even hid in the restroom to read the Bible until midnight and eventually it became a big problem for the teachers to manage.
Many servants for God were trained under these types of conditions. Today, they are all out in the field serving in various ways. They are either shepherding a church, training disciples, evangelizing in various provinces or doing mission work in the Arab nations.
Despite the poor teaching environment, we have not stopped training disciples since we began in 1994. We have continually added classes and now we offer 48 classes in our training program. Depending on the subject, they may last from one to three years.
As to be expected, there are joys and challenges in running such a training school. The joys are seeing the results of the student’s passion and sacrifices eventually pay off as we watch a new group of students go out into the field each year. From a practical point of view, the challenges are always financial. The health conditions of the students diminish over time because of the stark living conditions. Eventually, their backs and legs ache due to sleeping on the floor for long periods of time. Eye ailments are also common because some students read books for over ten hours a day without sufficient light. We have been praying to God that we might have a better learning environment. At the same time, we hope God’s servants can provide us with more support and assistance in discipleship training. Please keep praying for us!
—The Wilderness Seminary