It isn't something to be taken for granted or practiced freely. In fact, recent Chinese elections have put new faces into positions of power over the Christian organizations in the country, but they don't seem to be wise people to have in office. Rev. Chao Shengjie is now the president of the China Christian Council, but soon after her inauguration she made a very disturbing statement in my eyes. She said, "We will never support the evangelization of China. Because if we do not pay attention to the welfare of the Chinese people but go about preaching the gospel on a great scale, we will not only politically fall into the camp of the enemy forces but we will harm the church itself" (Mandate 2). Correct me if I am wrong, but that statement is terrible to be coming from a newly elected leader of Christianity in China. Granted, evangelizing is not an easy task in a nation where Christianity is not freely accepted, but it is still needed. I also must disagree with Rev. Chao where she says that it will harm the church if preaching the gospel occurs. It may be true that they will face some more persecution, but harming the church is not the right wording. In the book of James we are told to "rejoice whenever we face trials of many kinds because we know that the testing of our faith develops perseverance." (James 1) Obviously, preaching the gospel and evangelizing is not going to sweep the whole nation by storm and cause an uprising in Christianity, but it may cause a stir among some groups of people. They will never know unless something is done first about the general acceptance of stagnation. This can't be so. Fortunately, there is some positivity happening in China currently. There has been a recent growth in the house church movement, which is being credited to Bible distribution efforts. (Mandate) Since 1980, over seventeen million Bibles have been printed by the China Christian Council.
