For the 6th consecutive Sunday, the police have arrested members of the Church of Shouwang who gather to pray outside in a square in the commercial area of Zhongguancun in Beijing. The persecution is increasing and affects the private lives of the faithful, but the repression has begun to attract international attention. Yesterday the police, deployed in force, arrested 13 followers of Shouwang as soon as they tried to start praying in the square. The first Sunday the police had arrested 169 faithful, the second about 50. Now tens of followers are under house arrest each weekend, and 6 Church leaders have been for over a month.
I continue to be astonished at the real faith on display in China and I’m in equal parts dismayed by any similar sort of devotion among most American Christians. Truth told, if Churches were locked up any particular Sunday less than 20% of the membership would even know it since church attendance averages around 20% of church membership on any given Sunday.
China’s economy is outdoing us and China’s Christians are too. Soon the Chinese will be sending missionaries to America. We could, frankly, use them.
Zwinglius Redivivus 
I read an interview a number of years ago with a pastor of an underground church in China. He was asked how we in America could pray for them. He asked to pray that persecution would not stop, for it is only in persecution that the church has grown. It was a response I surely didn’t expect.
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