How China’s Persecuted Reach China’s Marginalized

To protect the identity of Chinese Christians, all names are pseudonyms.

“Who is my neighbor?”

Two thousand years ago, a young Jewish leader brought this question to Jesus. The query still resonates today: In a world of such great need, how can anyone make a dent in the scale of suffering? Whom should we serve?

A few years ago, Sean, a house-church pastor in a major Chinese city, asked almost the same question. But instead of “Who?” Sean asked, “Where is my neighbor?” The answer: “Right next door to the building where our church gathers, there was a hospital.”

Before long, Sean began visiting the hospital. Soon, other believers joined him. Now, a team actively serves in hospice ministry at area hospitals. They pray and sing; they clean vomit; they hold hands and brush hair. They do all this with the blessing of hospital staff—even though as house-church Christians, their churches are illegal and any ministry could get them in serious trouble.

Telling Their Story

I work for China Partnership, a ministry that resources Chinese house-church Christians. We also try to motivate global believers to pray for and learn from their brothers and sisters in China. This past year, as I worked on a podcast about mercy ministry in China, I spent hours talking with Chinese Christians sacrificially pouring out their lives in mercy work. Sean is just one of those people. Some, like Sean, serve the ill. Others work with abandoned children, while teams of women reach out in red-light districts.

These believers don’t serve out of an abundance of time, resources, or money. Many are persecuted. All are marginalized because of their faith, with some facing additional social stigma because of the company they keep through their charitable work.

These believers don’t serve out of an abundance of time, resources, or money. Many are persecuted. All are marginalized.

Yet many Christians continue to engage in these labor-intensive, deeply relational acts of mercy and presence. Why are they doing this when their own position is so tenuous? What does it look like for the persecuted church to serve its communities? Is it worth the high cost when Christians are limited and powerless to enact large-scale change?

Theology of Mercy

Chinese house churches regularly debate these questions. Their answers stem from how they define “mercy.” Last year, in a closed-door meeting of house-church pastors, they passionately debated what mercy ministry is and how it’s lived out.

One minister, Pastor Wang, said he believes mercy is perceiving and feeling the needs of others. Wang said, “Jesus Christ himself is God’s mercy incarnate, and Jesus calls his followers to imitate his life and live out his mercy. . . . I personally believe the antithesis of mercy is indifference.”

But others say mercy is more than simply rising above apathy. Liu, a minister in another city, pushed back: “Righteous mercy isn’t simply that you love someone and therefore show mercy to them, but rather that God has mercy on all the people of the entire city.” Liu believes mercy isn’t a matter of individual action but a call on the entire church to proactively display God’s charity in the public sphere.

Mercy ministry is complicated in China, where nongovernment churches already face severe pressure merely trying to worship together. How can persecuted churches publicly show mercy?

Huang Li, a third pastor, says mercy ministry reminds him of the testimonies of elderly house-church Christians who lived through severe persecution. Their stories of following Jesus through trial tend to be simple, and today they might sound like moralizing. But Huang says mercy, like those testimonies, is a way to share the gospel—even if the gospel isn’t precisely spelled out.

Huang says, “When older believers shared their experiences in a seemingly moralistic way, it naturally exuded Christ-centeredness. They didn’t need to explicitly bring things back to Christ at the end—their stories naturally emanated his fragrance.”

Huang also tied house-church forebears to Western missionaries who came to China to share the gospel and built a legacy of compassion.

Within China, the Communist Party emphasizes the injustices Westerners perpetrated, as many missionaries came to China when the nation was forced to accept outsiders after its humiliation in the Opium Wars. But Chinese believers point to the hospitals, elementary schools, and universities that missionaries established as they sacrificially cared for the destitute. Many of those institutions still exist and are among the most important in the nation.

That legacy has had an enduring influence on how the house church views mercy today.

Freedom of Christian Mercy

As believers understand that mercy flows from Christ’s love, they’re free from pressure and can sacrificially love others without expecting specific results. Chinese Christians practice mercy because they follow Jesus, not because their religion tells them to “be good.”

Chinese Christians practice mercy because they follow Jesus, not because their religion tells them to ‘be good.’

Huang Enqing added that traditional Chinese see religion as a way to encourage good works: “Without the gospel as a foundation, this kind of mercy can lead to pride, self-righteousness, or inadequacy: ‘If I don’t do it, I feel guilty; if I do it, I feel morally superior.’”

Chinese Christians don’t have money, power, or freedom. But they have Christ. Their gospel-based mercy is motivated by gratitude. Thus, Huang says, mercy ministry brings joy and peace—not burdens—to those who practice it. That’s freeing for Chinese believers, who can’t build large-scale ministries. Instead, they walk, one by one, with the hurting.

Huang says a gospel foundation helps believers persevere despite difficult circumstances. When mercy is rooted in Christ’s accomplished work, he says,

you won’t feel like the character in Schindler’s List, who saved many Jews but at the end agonized . . . as if he never did enough. Within the gospel, there is profound security—what we call rest. The power that flows from this is very strong.