Recently, an aged house-church pastor died in one of China’s global cities. Unlike the many famous Christians whose obituaries you read, you’ve never heard this pastor’s name. But his name is known by the Lord who gave him life, called him to ministry, and has now welcomed him into eternity.
Pastor Wang lived during a tumultuous time in China. Over his lifetime, China endured invasion by Japan, the Second World War, the Chinese Communist Party’s victory, the Cultural Revolution, China’s reopening and economic rise, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this backdrop, Wang witnessed the explosive growth of the Christian church in his homeland.
Formed Through Suffering
Born into a Christian family in the 1930s, Wang experienced renewal and conversion as a teen and participated in Christian student movements and retreats. He entered medical college after the Chinese Communist Party came to power but refused to cease his Christian activities. As a result, he was labeled a “backward element” and frequently criticized and excluded. During this time, he met another student—a young woman who was also a Christian—and they were married. They had two sons.
From a young age, Wang felt called to pastor; however, China’s political and social environment didn’t allow him to pursue this calling as a young man. Instead, he found meaning and purpose in serving people as a doctor.
With the advent of the Cultural Revolution, Wang and his family faced significant hardship. Wang’s wife had already been sent to work in a hospital in another province, dividing the family geographically. In the 1970s, the family was further separated when Wang’s openness about his Christian faith led him to be imprisoned for five years for “counter-revolutionary” activities, leaving his two young sons in the care of their grandparents. After his release, Wang was reinstated in his medical profession and his wife was finally reassigned to work in the same city.
As a young college student facing public criticism under the Communist regime, Wang had learned the most important lesson of his spiritual life—for every Christian, to walk with Christ is to participate in his earthly suffering. This belief shaped Wang’s entire life and sustained him during his many struggles during the Revolution. Yet, according to those who knew and loved him, this conviction wasn’t expressed with a dour attitude toward the world or withdrawal from society. Instead, Wang was empowered to do good work by this understanding of the Christian’s call to suffer with Christ.
Fruitful in Obscurity
In the 1990s, Wang battled severe stomach cancer. After making a full recovery, he volunteered every year as a doctor in one of China’s most impoverished provinces. Wang and his wife also began hosting a group of Christians in their home during this time. This regular meeting eventually grew into a church, fulfilling Wang’s long-held call. He pastored faithfully during the final three decades of his life and led countless neighbors, colleagues, friends, and strangers to the Lord.
Wang was empowered to do good work by this understanding of the Christian’s call to suffer with Christ.
In a reflection on his life that has been circulating on the Chinese internet, Wang’s son wrote, “The message of ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ that he conveyed and preached with his life was powerful, piercing hearts, yet also bringing people to the Lord in repentance and rest. The simple courtyard where he lived for 74 years witnessed countless people’s repentance, salvation, baptism, marriage, life transformation, and empowered service.”
He calls his father “a hero living in the real world,” reminiscent of the imaginary heroes in the stories Wang was fond of telling his children and grandchildren, stories which no doubt had roots in Wang’s own experiences of living out his convictions amid hardship.
Substance of Christian Heroism
Wang’s life invites us to ask, What’s the nature of a Christian hero? Does such a person exist?
In the creation of heroes, humanity is prone to navel-gazing. Throughout history, men and women have been tempted to make more of each other than they deserve, and it doesn’t serve the persecuted church to put it on a pedestal. After all, there’s only one true Hero of the story. Only one man, Jesus, is worthy of our full admiration and devotion. Apart from him, there are no original heroes, only disciples who, more often than not, look like faulty copies of the template.
Yet our churches are plagued by the temptations of celebrity. We ought to pay tribute to those Christians who die in obscurity, especially when their callings were marked by the cross. Their faithfulness isn’t counted by the number of people who recognize their name. It’s demonstrated by the quiet, determined fruitfulness of their lives and their persistence in reminding us that the Hero on whom we pattern ourselves was a hero marked by suffering and service, who “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2). In Wang’s obscurity and afflictions, his heroism reflected the Hero better than did anyone whose name is in the headlines.
Wang lived faithfully, as I long to. He had a successful secular career in a global city. He used his medical skills to serve his country’s poor and to bless his immediate neighbors. He was open about his Christian faith, despite the hostility it brought, and evangelized countless people. He was faithful to the church, becoming a bivocational pastor. He was creative and imaginative, known for his vivid storytelling and impressive poetry and calligraphy. He wrote beautiful hymns. His children and grandchildren walk with Christ and bless Wang in their memories of his dedication to his family and the godly example he set before them.
Wang quietly embodied so much of what I hear Christians in America today trying to figure out: how to be in the world but not of it, how the imagination gives depth and meaning to our faith, how to take seriously the call to serve the poor.
Wang quietly embodied so much of what I hear Christians in America today trying to figure out.
When Wang was incarcerated in the 1970s, many thought Christianity may have died in China. Today, it’s safe to estimate there are 100 million Christians in mainland China. How did it happen?
It happened without the trappings on which the American church can be so reliant. It happened without conferences; it happened without social media; it happened without celebrity. It happened without power.
It happened because Pastor Wang, and the many like him, were faithful. They walked by faith and not by sight.
Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.
We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.
