God's Double Agent (25 page)

One night, I was talking with Heidi about our new life together. During the day, I taught future Communist leaders. During the night, I trained the illegal house church.

“I’m a double agent,” I said, and laughed.

“It’s quite possible the people you teach during the day will one day arrest you and those you teach during the evenings,” she said.

We didn’t have too much time to think about how dangerously we perched on the edge. We knew China was inhospitable to the truth of the gospel, and every spare moment and every
spare yuan went to helping the underground church while we could. This caused many problems within our family. There were certain expectations that came with living in Beijing.

“Why did your son get all of that education just to be an English tutor?” my dad’s friends asked. Though my family supported my decisions about ministry, I feared they might resent the fact that we weren’t sending them more money. My salary at the Communist school was so small it hardly mattered, and everything else went to the church. It was difficult for both Heidi’s family and mine, and it pained me very much to know that they were struggling financially because of our choices.

We pressed on with our work. I accompanied Jonathan to academic conferences in universities in Beijing. I went with him to the very poor areas in the Chinese countryside to train house church leaders. We noticed the urban university students had a lot of Bible knowledge, but not a lot of passion. In the countryside, the believers were full of fire—willing to die for the Lord—but lacked basic biblical knowledge.

That summer, we created “Fire Taking Time,” a program designed to get the university students into the Chinese countryside. The students stayed with the house church leaders, who, though they had nothing, were lavishly hospitable. Even though they were poor, they prepared the nicest meals they could for us and tried to pamper us. Every morning when we woke up, for example, we’d find that our coats had been washed. Their pure faith and love for Christ were so evident that it deeply affected the university students. Miracles and signs followed the house church leaders. We heard so many stories that Heidi and another Christian sister from a university tape-recorded many testimonies to preserve them. We heard stories of healings and miraculous provision. One man told a story about how he fell off a tractor and was run over by it. However, he was unharmed.

That summer in the countryside, Heidi and I visited one house church network comprised of over six hundred churches.

“What a great network you have,” I said to one of the leaders. “How many preachers do you have?”

“Well,” he said sheepishly. “We only have two teachers for six hundred congregations.”

I looked at his face, which was full of the joy of the Lord, and I thought of the passage in Hosea that says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos. 4:6).

Instantly, I knew I was supposed to help educate more people about Christianity, but I was a brand-new Christian too. Over the past few years, my main source of theological information came from dog-eared books smuggled into the country in strangers’ suitcases. Though I’d devoured all the Christian material I could find, my knowledge was incredibly limited and I felt ill-equipped to meet the ever-widening need. I spoke to his little house church, but within a few short minutes I’d used up all of my big theological words. I told them about “general revelation,” “special revelation,” and “common grace,” and then I was done. That exhausted my knowledge of theological terms.

I went to Jonathan Chao and an American evangelist named Ronny Lewis, who’d founded King’s Park International Church in Durham, North Carolina. “Those house churches in the countryside really need training,” I said, and explained the situation.

They listened intently and were in complete agreement. “We’ll do all we can to support you,” they said. We decided to establish a Christian training center for the underground church. First, however, we had to train our co-workers. Pastor Ronny and a missionary from Taiwan volunteered to teach a Bible training session on the tenth floor of a tall Beijing apartment building owned by a Christian. To avoid arousing the suspicion of the residents, we climbed the stairs instead of using the elevator. Most of us wouldn’t go out for the week during the training. Heidi, however, was tasked with going out to shop for groceries and run errands. That meant she had to climb up and down the ten stories almost daily. It wore her out. (Even to this day,
she takes the elevator or escalator if she has the option.) But we appreciated her sacrifice, because it allowed us all to stay holed up in the apartment and learn about God.

“Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity,” Pastor Ronny read from Hebrews (6:1 NIV). He decided to conduct a topical exegesis on that chapter, which included the basic foundations of faith. I was thankful to be with people like Pastor Ronny and Jonathan, who always encouraged biblical scholarship. I felt suspicious of some of the more emotional experiences I’d heard about in China and wasn’t a big fan of the charismatic movement. As we moved forward in ministry, I wanted to make sure our students were trained to think logically and clearly about the Holy Scriptures.

When Pastor Ronny began talking about baptism, we realized several of our co-workers hadn’t been baptized. “What’s stopping us from being baptized now?” someone asked. Without a baptistery handy, we did the next best thing. The apartment had two bedrooms with attached bathrooms. The women went into one of the bedrooms, while the men went into the other. One by one, we had baptism ceremonies right there in the showers. Afterward, we went back into our training session, full of joy. As we all settled back into our seats, Pastor Ronny continued to read where he had left off. “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (v. 19 NIV).

Just as the words were coming out of his mouth, I felt a breeze on my face, looked up, and was surprised that no windows had been opened. My co-workers looked up from their notes as well. Suddenly a very strong wind, like you might feel while standing by an ocean, filled that Beijing apartment.

I knew from my reading of Scripture that God sometimes performed miraculous works with wind. When God parted the Red Sea for Moses and the Israelites to elude Pharaoh’s army, for example, He did it by causing an east wind to blow. Later, on the
day of Pentecost, a noise like a strong, blowing wind filled the whole house where the apostles had gathered. Though I’d read about the Spirit of God in the Bible, I’d never felt it—literally and physically—as I did on that day.

As the wind whipped around us, we began praying aloud and crying out to God. People began speaking in what sounded like other languages, which was very much at odds with my solid Presbyterian training. As I called out to God, however, the Holy Spirit came upon me and I too spoke in tongues. A peace and comfort surrounded me, and I was filled with unspeakable joy.

After the training, we were filled with boldness and courage. We worshiped the same God as the ancient Israelites, the apostle Paul, Wang Mingdau, and Billy Graham. And this same, unchanging, eternal God equipped us to spread the gospel throughout China.

With Jonathan’s and Ronny’s support, Heidi and I moved forward on our secret training center for house church leaders. We found an old, deserted factory in the Fangshan District of Beijing.

“This is perfect!” I said as I stood in the wide-open space, imagining it teeming with young Christians.

“What are you going to do?” Heidi asked. “Just hang out a sign that reads ‘Theological Training’?”

“Actually, I was hoping to camouflage it a bit,” I said. “We need to establish a fake business to give us cover.”

“What kind of business?”

“I don’t know, but we need to be creative,” I urged. “Let’s say we’re a school for technological training. Do you know anyone who has any computers?” After asking around, we came up with one old, outdated 386 computer, which we set up right in the middle of the large factory.

Heidi walked around the single computer on the lone desk,
every step echoing in the massive room. “Do you think one computer is convincing?” she asked. “Where will all the students sit?”

“I think I have an idea,” I said. The next day when I went to work, I asked about a large stash of old chairs with attached desks. When I found out the Communist Party School was willing to sell them at a reasonable price, I purchased them. That’s how our new Christian ministry training center was stocked with red desks decorated with Communist Party logos.

We set up the center, arranged for foreign teachers to present lectures, and found full-time teachers to live in the center. We spread the word among different house church groups that we were ready to offer ministerial training. We didn’t want to have too many people in the building at once, because we couldn’t risk drawing attention from the authorities.

“How will we select our students from all of these?” Heidi said, holding up several hundred applications. That night, we waded through the applications and selected thirty students for our first ministerial training center. Students in our first class would be coming from as far west as Tibet and as far north as the provinces near Russia. Because we’d conduct classes under the most dangerous circumstances, we had to be almost militaristic about the operation.

When we alerted the students, we told them what would be expected of them. They had to come for three solid months, meaning they weren’t allowed to leave the four walls of the building the entire time they were in training. Our full-time teachers would organize the living quarters, provide food for the students, and leave the school for discreet errands. Every day, those thirty students grew in biblical knowledge and were being trained to go into China after graduation to teach the good news of the gospel.

Not only was I one of the leaders of my house church in Beijing and a teacher at the Communist Party School, I was suddenly the cofounder of this theological training center, as well
as an instructor there. Every week, I took a two-hour bus ride to the center, where I taught and ministered. Frequently, I’d design and grade tests for my Communist Party students on the way.

The work just grew and grew. Every week, Heidi and I had to go to the airport to pick up guest teachers on their way to the training center. We also had to find hotels for them and give them basic instructions on how to not tip off the police. We also received many Bibles smuggled in from all over the world and had to find appropriate places to distribute and store them.

All religious literature in China was strictly controlled, which meant that there was always a Bible shortage. The Bible was the only religious book among all religions that was not allowed in any Chinese bookstores. To purchase a Bible, a believer had to travel to a Three Self Church and buy it at the church bookstore.

In China, only one press was authorized to print Bibles, which meant it was only available in limited numbers that could not meet the rapid growth of the church. Many believers couldn’t travel the long distance to the church to acquire one. Some people ordered Bibles from the church, got traced, and were promptly arrested. We didn’t want to deliberately violate the law, but we also knew it was very important for the church to have access to the Holy Scriptures.

Since some of our church members were skilled printers who worked in the government-owned printing press, we decided to use their skills to print hundreds of thousands of Bibles. Printing was much safer and more economical than smuggling. Usually a foreign mission organization or a church funded our efforts, but one day a woman we didn’t know appeared with an order.

“I’m a friend of Craig’s,” she said, referring to an Australian missionary who was a dear believer in Christ. “Can you help us print three thousand copies of the
Moody Bible Handbook
?”

“Did you say three
thousand
?” I asked, shocked to receive such a large order from an individual.

“I have cash.” She reached into her purse and handed over
three thousand American dollars. “I think that will cover the deposit. When you’re ready, I’ll send more.” I accepted the order and gave the money to my co-worker Zhuohua, who was in charge of the illegal printing.