Blessed with favor, twice in one day!

God blesses people with favor. Favor with Him, and favor before men. Now and then things happen that reveal God's favor in my life in ways that just amaze me. Today it happened. Twice.

Hawaii has endured rain of Biblical proportions -- it has literally rained for forty days and forty nights with only brief hours of respite. I had a small, annoying leak in my office ceiling, with plans to repair it after the rains stopped. While I was away in Singapore that small leak was overwhelmed by the volume of the rain water, and I called home to learn that the ceiling had caved in destroying my desk, carpet and some paperwork. One of the young men in my congregation took upon himself the task of repairing the office. He ripped out the ruined carpet and sheetrock, and started the repairs. Often alone. He goes to college in the daytime and delivers pizzas at night. He has shown up night after night at ten or eleven o'clock and worked until the wee hours. A local construction man who doesn't attend my church showed up last week to volunteer to work on the floors. Today he came back to help tape and sand the walls. While he was here, volunteering his time and skills, he came over and handed me a check for $200. "The Lord laid it on my heart to bless you!" he said. Well, he had already been blessing me.

Today was also my daughter's 18th birthday, a very big deal in our house. We invited a group of her friends to join us at Dave and Buster's for dinner, birthday cake, and some games. We had a total of 14 people there, and had a great time. When it came time to pay the bill the manager told us "Someone in the restaurant has already paid your entire bill, and asked to remain anonymous." $300. Paid. Wow! (It's so awesome I'll say it again backward - !woW)

In one day, God gave me favor with a construction tradesman and his skills, with a $200 gift from that man, and a free birthday party for my daughter that saved me $300. Favor. It's a wonderful thing.

Conflicting views of China and the Church

At a recent Christian conference in Honolulu I met a group of representatives from Christian (read: protestant) churches in China. They were not from the unregistered, or underground, church we usually hear about. My friend, Dan Chun, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu took at trip to China a year or so ago, and preached in a 4,000 members church in Shanghai. He told me "they sang the same hymns we use, in Chinese, and raised their hands in worship and prayed fervently and spoke passionately about their love for Christ."

These representatives were from the "Three Self" movement, a uniquely Asian way of expressing the concept of an Indigenous Church. Three self... 'self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation' is intended to remove foreign influences from the Chinese churches, theoretically removing most of the government's objections to religious groups in China. It is also a post-denominational system, in which no differences can be promoted, so you will find staff members from varying denominational traditions serving together in a single congregation. This, of course, does not go over very well with most church organizations since they can have no control and can't even send in outside leadership. In the Three Self view, the Bible calls us to be both good Christians AND (to the extent that there's no conflict) good citizens also. That is why the group's formal name is "China Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee."

So I find myself torn.

I met these folks, spoke directly with them, listened as they talked of their love for Christ and their desire to see more Chinese people reached with the message of the gospel. I believe they are the real deal. And yet there's this:

I have friends -- dear friends -- who serve in China among the unregistered church movement. They avoid using the name of Jesus in communication, and seem cautious and covert in their approach. Could this because they violate the Chinese government-preferred concept of self-propagation? I am aware of people smuggling Bibles in China, when the Three Self representatives avow that Bibles (NIV in Chinese) can be purchased openly in Beijing bookstores for $2-$3 U.S. and are being printed and distributed, with government knowledge and approval, by the hundreds of thousands.

It is difficult for me to reconcile these two perspectives, and I am sure I have an incomplete understanding of the situation. For now I will praise God for my friends who work outside the system AND those who work with the system.