Editor’s note: All the names in the article except for Ezra Pan have been changed, as house churches are unregistered in China and Christians can face reprisals for speaking to media.
During an Advent service last December, a family walked in front of the congregation to read a line of Scripture and light a candle on the Advent wreath, set on a table draped with purple cloth. As the candlelight flickered to life, the congregation responded with “Prepare the way of the Lord.”
It’s a scene playing out all over the world this time of year, yet this church was meeting not in a historic brick church in the US but in an office building in Shanghai.
For Robert Wang, observing Advent is a new Christmas tradition. In the past, his house church would hold large Christmas gatherings with around 60 first-time visitors in attendance. Because the Chinese government passed tighter religious regulations in 2018, the 150-member church has split into several smaller churches, one of which is pastored by Wang.
Today, Wang has changed how the congregation celebrates Christmas, not because of government restrictions but out of a desire to better integrate Christmas into the life of the church. Instead focusing on of one isolated event, he wants church members to walk through the Advent season and make evangelism part of their weekly rhythm.
“Through meditative reflection during Advent, learning Christmas hymns, prayer, and worship, the preparation for the season has become the most anticipated and exciting time of the year for our church,” Wang said.
The changes at Wang’s church are happening all over the country. Traditionally, churches in China would rent hotel conference rooms to host elaborate evangelism outreaches on Christmas, filled with choir singing, Nativity plays, testimonies, and gospel presentations. They aim to use the holiday as an opportunity to invite their non-Christian friends and introduce them to Jesus.
Some churches have moved away from this tradition due to tighter religious regulations that make it difficult to gather, fatigue in planning large events, failure in seeing new converts return to church, or changes in theology.
Yet amid the disillusionment, many pastors say they are rediscovering the beauty of the holiday through holding smaller Christmas celebrations, adopting traditions like Advent, and emphasizing the hope of the Incarnation. Those who continue holding large evangelistic events take care to focus on authentic relationships rather than the numbers.
“In the past, we viewed Christmas as merely an evangelistic outreach,” said Justin Xing, a minister in Shenyang who has also downsized his church’s gatherings. “Now we realize that Christmas is also an opportunity to equip believers to understand the gospel better.”
A turn toward liturgy
Wang, who became a Christian through college ministry, said that traditional Christmas events often felt obligatory, with little thought given to the message presented. Often, preparations were rushed, and the performances were not well rehearsed.
After becoming a pastor in 2018, Wang introduced his church to Advent material created by Redeemer City to City and encouraged congregational reading and group discussions. He also started teaching his congregation traditional Western Christmas hymns translated into Mandarin, like “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.” In 2022, he began the practice of lighting Advent candles.
Unlike evangelical Western churches that have returned to high liturgical practices to resonate with younger generations’ desire for sacredness, Wang said he seeks to incorporate these elements to help Chinese house churches cultivate a lasting Christian culture in a country where such traditions are scarce.
“Our focus is no longer solely on a Christmas party but on the message of Christ’s birth from multiple angles,” Wang said. He found that even as COVID-19 forced churches to stop meeting in person, the congregation could still go through Advent devotions together online.
Meanwhile, Daniel Han’s house church in Shanghai began observing Advent in 2020. The pastor said the congregation stopped holding large Christmas outreaches after he realized that the congregation relied on it as the church’s primary evangelistic activity.
He noted that for the early church, evangelism often happened through everyday interactions, citing Acts 5:42: “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.”
Now, instead of focusing on one big Christmas event, the church views every Sunday service as an evangelism opportunity.
“From a pastoral perspective, we should focus on how to creatively and proactively engage in smaller-scale ministries that allow for personal evangelism and stronger interactions,” Han said.
Questioning Christmas’ pagan roots
At Rebecca Xiao’s house church in Linyi, Shandong province, Christmas was once a lively affair. In 2006, her church held a Christmas party at a community center for more than 400 attendees. Church leaders preached about Jesus’ birth, couples dressed in wedding attire and sang Christian songs to renew their vows, and new members shared their testimonies. But in 2014, church elders stopped their Christmas celebrations based on their new conviction that Christmas was a pagan holiday.
The elders had been influenced by Reformed Chinese leaders who pointed to accusations of paganism by Puritans in the 16th and 17th centuries that led to a ban on Christmas celebrations. Some elders went as far as deeming outreach efforts unnecessary due to their understanding of predestination.
Courtesy of Rebecca Xiao
Xiao believes halting the celebrations overlooked the powerful ways God used those events. “The believers who went on stage all experienced dramatic transformations in their marriages and their family relationships because of their faith in Christ,” Xiao said. “The testimonies were especially powerful because everyone knows each other in this small community.”
Last year, Xiao’s church resumed its Christmas gatherings after those elders left, although they now hold the events in their church rather than renting out larger venues so they don’t attract government attention. Though fewer than 100 people attended, she felt joy in reconnecting with her community.
“Our previous approach may not have been wrong, but we unconsciously diluted the significance of Christ’s birth,” Xiao said. “Now, we are renewing our Christmas evangelism because Christmas is a time when people of all ages are willing to come to church.”
Continued Christmas celebrations
Even churches that continue to hold Christmas evangelism events have shifted the mission of their events over time. Ezra Pan, who pastors a house church in the suburbs of Hangzhou, first started seeing Christmas as a “window of opportunity for evangelism” in 1994 when he was 15.
At the time, he joined an evangelism team that trekked through the hills of rural Wenzhou, visiting different families to share the message of Jesus and help them with farm work. Every night, they would invite their new friends to evening Christmas services, where many decided to follow Jesus.
Today Pan continues to evangelize and unite the body of Christ during the Christmas season. For the past five years, his church has held Christmas parties that draw about 500 people.
Although the church faces constant government pressure and often needs to change the location of the event, they haven’t skipped a single year, even during the pandemic. To skirt notice, they typically hold the parties on the weekends around Christmas instead of on Christmas Eve and choose venues in the remote suburbs.
They bring friends who may never otherwise step inside a church and even invite them to participate in the program. Pan said that one year, the young man asked to play Jesus in a skit initially said that he didn’t believe his character was the Savior of the world. Yet after the performance, he became a Christian. Pan has also seen unbelieving spouses join the church after watching their children’s Christmas performances.
“Christmas has become an integral part of our pastoral care and evangelism; it is no longer an isolated event,” Pan said, pointing to the opportunities it provides for his church members to serve together and invite others to join their church body.
Christmas canceled
During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the Chinese government banned religion, and Christmas became a museum artifact, Pan said. Yet even then, Chinese Christians kept meeting and celebrating Christmas, at times in caves, in cemeteries, or privately in homes with their windows drawn and doors shut.
Some churches, like Lydia Xu’s house church in Chengdu, are experiencing a return of this type of “gray Christmas.”
Since her church joined Early Rain Covenant Church and pastor Wang Yi in creating the Western China Presbytery in 2013, it has become more difficult for Xu’s church to rent venues for Christmas celebrations. As Wang’s influence grew and his outspokenness drew the ire of the government, local officials began to more closely monitor all the churches in the presbytery.
So Xu’s church started to hold Christmas activities only at their own building and stopped inviting as many nonbelievers. When authorities shut down Early Rain and threw Wang in prison in 2018, her church stopped Christmas celebrations altogether.
Today, Sunday services in December are no different from the rest of the year. Xu is disappointed that they can’t witness on Christmas anymore but says the church now thinks more intentionally about evangelizing regularly.
“The message of Christianity doesn’t have to necessarily be delivered through Christmas,” Xu said. “We use weddings and funerals to show that Christians have a different understanding of life and death.”
Government-sanctioned Three-Self churches face even tighter restrictions, as authorities banned Christmas celebrations in 2019 and do not allow anyone under 18 to attend church.
Yet for Luke Zhu, who serves at a Three-Self church in Anhui province, Christmas has held a deeper meaning since the restrictions went into effect. “Christmas is not merely about celebrating Jesus’ birth; it reminds us that Christ came into a dark world, bringing hope and light,” he said. “Jesus’ humble birth in a stable reflects God’s will to bring comfort and redemption amid worldly challenges.”
Local believers have learned to navigate these restrictions by discreetly organizing Christmas activities for children and teaching them the significance of the holiday.
Although Zhu misses the freedom of inviting friends to Christmas gatherings during his early days of faith, he noted that “since Christ was born amidst crisis and persecution, the worldly powers will always oppose the true King. Regardless of external circumstances, Christ’s life has brought salvation, and God’s kingdom will endure and ultimately triumph over all secular authorities.”
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