A church for a small population of Christians

A church in Shanghai. Image source.

I recently went to an international church in Shanghai, and I have some thoughts about what church is, what we want to get out of church, and how that looks different when Christians are a small minority, vs a majority.

But first, a basic overview of churches in China. Americans have a lot of misconceptions, so here, let me fix that. I'm not involved with any church group in China now, so I don't know the whole picture, but I have at least attended different kinds of churches in China.

Also, this is specifically about Protestant Christianity. In China, Catholicism is categorized as a different religion from Protestantism, and I don't have any experience with the Catholic churches in China. (Except the one in Sheshan, which I visited one time because it's a landmark of interest for tourists.)

Here are the 3 types:

1. Chinese "3 Self" churches. These are the government-approved churches. In my experience, it's very easy to find them. You can just, like, search for "教堂" [church] on any map app. The church buildings look like obvious church buildings. It's not like "oh we have to be sneaky, we're not allowed to be Christians in China" like American Christians imagine.
   These churches are supervised by the Chinese government, so I know there must be some kind of restrictions on what they're allowed to say and do. But to an average churchgoer, you wouldn't notice there are any restrictions. I know that American evangelicals would be concerned "these churches are only allowed to say what the Chinese government lets them say, so they're not preaching REAL CHRISTIANITY" but I've attended church services at Chinese churches and I never noticed anything being censored. Like, I never noticed anything that was like "they're not preaching the REAL GOSPEL, they're preaching a censored version of it." All the doctrines that were preached were basically within the range of what I've heard in American churches.
   I'm sure that the leadership of these churches is aware of being watched by the government and maybe not being allowed to do some things, but without any clear rules. I once heard a Chinese pastor talking about feeling like "are we allowed to have a Sunday school? We don't really know... let's just start doing Sunday school and see if the government says anything."
2. International churches. These churches are required by law to check people's ids, and only people with a foreign passport (or Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Macao id) are allowed to attend. (Yes, people from Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Macao are explicitly allowed by the Chinese government to attend international churches, whereas citizens of mainland China are not. Make of that what you will.) It must be the case that international churches have more freedom in what they're allowed to do, compared to Chinese 3-Self churches- but I am not familiar enough to know any details on this. The Chinese government always says their main concern about religion (and the reason why there is persecution of Christians) is that foreign groups will come and influence Chinese people. So, if your church does not allow any Chinese citizens to attend, the government is not as concerned about what exactly you're doing in there.
   When I first heard about churches literally barring an entire demographic of people from attending, I was like, wtf, that doesn't seem like what Jesus would do. I guess there's sort of a trade-off- if you follow this rule, your church has more freedom in what you can do. And maybe it's not that big of a deal because Chinese citizens have other churches they can go to.
3. Underground churches. I don't really know anything about these because they're secret, obviously. American Christians have the idea that all churches in China have to be underground churches, but wowww that's not true!

So these different types of churches exist in a sort of ecosystem, and I think each type has a valid role. I think American evangelicals might totally write-off the 3-Self churches and say they're just worthless and totally misguided because they're only teaching what the Chinese government approves of, and the only real church is the underground church, but that's vastly oversimplifying it. 

SO ANYWAY. Recently I went to an international church here in Shanghai. Why? Well, I don't want to be a member of a church. I don't want to attend regularly. But just on that one particular day, I wanted to experience a kind of churchy atmosphere. So I did.

The greeter at the door made me show a photo of my US passport- because only non-Chinese are allowed to attend. It was nice to not be racially profiled in China for once! Hooray! Everywhere else I go, everyone assumes I'm not a Chinese citizen, because I'm white, but at this church they explicitly asked. 

(It has not escaped my notice that, as a Chinese citizen, my husband would not be allowed to come to this church. He's not interested in church anyway, but that's one of the reasons I don't really want to get that involved.)

This church was extremely diverse. Wow. Just a huge mix of people, from different countries all over the world- Africa, Asia, etc- people talking with different accents, people expressing themselves in different ways during the worship songs. 

And so it made me wonder, how does it even work, having such a diverse church? These people are all coming from different church systems in their home countries. Different flavors of Christianity, with different beliefs about what it even means to be a Christian, what the non-negotiable Christian beliefs are. What do they do about the question "are women allowed to be pastors?" Or "are same-sex relationships sinful?" These are questions that, in the US, frequently cause half of a church to split off and go start a new church. (And who knows what issues cause church splits in other countries?) But that doesn't really seem like an option here in Shanghai- the population of international Christians is so small, you can't sustain that many different churches for every little niche.

And so, doesn't it follow that the model of what a church *is* has to be different, when we're talking about a place like Shanghai where international Christians are such an extremely small percentage of the population, and you need to cast a wide net and gather a very diverse group of people, in order to have a church, compared to a place like the US, where there are lots of Christians, and large swaths of them are culturally similar to each other.

In my experience with evangelicals in the US, when people are "church shopping," they're looking for a church that agrees with them on all of the big doctrines that they consider essential to Christianity. Evangelicals believe that many many churches are not preaching "real" Christianity, the real gospel, biblical Christianity, but have been led astray by our sinful culture and are just preaching nice things that people want to hear, rather than real Truth. So, you have to find a church that's "really preaching the gospel." You might have to filter out quite a few churches, if they have a belief about something, which you feel is not the "correct" belief that Christians should hold. Or, filter them out because they *don't* have an official belief on some issue, they think different Christians can have different opinions, and you think that's unacceptable and there's only 1 right answer. 

And then you would also have additional preferences about music styles, how well you get along with the other churchgoers, etc. And that's how you choose a church.

It's based on a model of church attendance where the church is in charge of you. You carefully research churches and find one that believes all the correct things, and then you commit to them, and you are subject to their teaching. (And perhaps at some later point, something happens that causes you to have concerns that this church is not "really" preaching the "real" gospel, and so if that happens, you leave and look for a different church.)

But that's not really possible for me in Shanghai, and actually, I don't think it is possible for *most* international Christians in Shanghai. You're not going to find a church that explicitly agrees with all the beliefs that you personally consider essential to Christianity- there just aren't enough churches for that.

So, under these circumstances, church has to be something different. It can't be "the church is in charge of me"; it has to be more like... there are certain things I am looking to get out of this church, and that is why I choose to attend, but I'm in charge of my own beliefs and my own spiritual life- I know that I'm not going to agree with everything the pastor says, and that's fine because I'm not expecting the church to be in charge of me.

It seems like the church's overall approach has to be, this is a group of Christians who want to have a church. And they can't really get extremely specific about "here's our official position on this or that controversial issue." Yeah, sure, the church should have some standard "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth" and so forth, the abstract doctrines that are the foundation of Christianity, but different Christians understand those doctrines completely differently, and so your church policy can't really get into those specific details.

The church can't really take a stand on any of the "controversial issues", but instead has to be inclusive of a wide range of opinions on what Christians are supposed to believe. And therefore even if you choose to be a member of this church, you can't really look to them as an authority on the "controversial issues" that you think are very important. So, your motivations for attending the church have to be something other than that.

(I guess? This is my speculation, upon seeing how extremely diverse this church was.)

So if, as a churchgoer, you're saying to yourself "there are certain things I am looking to get out of this church, and so obviously if the church isn't giving me those things, then there's no reason to attend"- wow, I find this very interesting. You have to understand yourself and your own desires, and what kind of church would be worth attending. And everyone's answer is going to be a little different. 

This is a completely different mindset from the evangelical view on church- there have been so many articles posted on conservative Christian sites about how it's terrible that people are going to church less and less, that Christians think it's okay to not go to church, that Christians think it's okay to have requirements about what they want from a church, and to stop going if those aren't met. These conservative organizations, scolding us all and telling us how wrong and sinful it is to not go to church. Listicles about excuses people give for not going to church, and why all of them are invalid. You have to go to church.

So it seems like, if you're in Shanghai and you're looking for an English-speaking church, you have to see what churches are available- there aren't that many- and kind of see how they are and what you're able to get out of them, and decide if it's worth your time to attend. You have to be in charge of your own religious life, because you won't find a church that perfectly fits your ideals about what Christianity is supposed to be. It's not like I always conceptualized it when I was evangelical- that you find a church that is preaching "real" Christianity, and then that church is "in charge" of you (unless you ever determine that they have stopped preaching "real" Christianity)- and that Christians are all obligated to do this.

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