church practice.

I heard a story the other day. Apparently the underground church in China is exploding. The first thing that struck me as different from church in the West in that this church is led almost entirely by women. The reason for this is largely unknown, however its speculated that the native men may think that the Christian faith is the equivalent of being a panzy and so they stay away. This sounds funny coming from a country where freedom of religion doesn't really exist.

The second thing I heard about the underground church in China is that a lot of the churches (which are unconnected) have their own little quirks that sound fairly ridiculous to us. For instance, before embracing Christ, one of the current leaders of a church spent three days in mourning because of their sin. And so the church that this person leads requires each person to spend three days in mourning once they choose to follow Jesus. Another leader vomitted just before conversion. Apparently they thought this should be common place and so now the true mark of a Christian for this church is to vomitt at the point of conversion.

This sounds ridiculous and totally unbiblical but...

Think about our churches. Is there anything we do that is like these traditions? Think of this- the altar call. We know what it means. It is not unexpected in some of our churches and it is usually associated with a conversion experience or the first step towards salvation. The altar call was first used by Charles Finney as a way to sign up recent converts to fight for the abolition of slavery. Of course, the altar call experience is not found in Scripture but somehow we manage to make it a focal point of our evangelism services. Oh well, I guess that's just part of becoming a Christian...right... no?...