I Will Call Upon the Lord... but Not Too Loudly

The Beijing Int'l Christian Fellowship

The Beijing International Christian Fellowship (BICF) seeks “to build a vibrant, reproducing community unified in Christ that embraces and transforms people of all nations to impact their cities, their nations, and the world for Jesus Christ.” Your passport is required at the door, please; expatriates only.

The BICF was one of many interesting experiences on our recent trip to Beijing, marking the primary occasion of place-neutralization during my time in China. The worship service functioned as a direct transplant of contemporary evangelical worship services in the United States, with familiar songs and messages. We were welcomed to worship with a sterile rendition of “I Will Call Upon the Lord,” a campy, liturgical stowaway in late-emerging worship circles. The same middle-aged, newly balding white men hoisted their electric guitars for this service as those who grace the stage of my home church’s gymnasium; and the same threesome of 40-year-old women wielded their lavaliere headsets as they sought redemption and feigned youthfulness. Ultimately, I had the same problems with this worship service as I have with similar services at home, primarily in their failure to articulate the gospel through intentional and processional worship, all for the sake of new-fangledness and synthetic aestheticism. Not to mention, of course, its lack of confession, absolution, communion, gospel text, psalm, and any other number of critical liturgical components. Even still, though, the BICF is subject to a restriction that no American church must bear, in its inability to welcome Chinese citizens into its comfortable confines.

I struggle with what it really means for expatriate Christians to worship in seclusion, in a sort of ivory-tower circle jerk that leaves everyone feeling relieved, but altogether unsatisfied with a sense of faux evangelism. In a country where proselytizing is strictly outlawed, what does evangelism really mean? If the declared mission of the BICF is to “go, make disciples,” then how is one able to return to worship each week, knowing not that he failed, but that he was utterly impotent to reach the 1.27 billion people who surround him daily? Importantly, and the thing that sets this person apart from any other, what does it mean for this Christian to have a legal excuse to fall short of his calling to evangelize? Aren't those who confess such an excuse better off than those subject to no such restrictions, who also exhibit no disciplical intentionality? I certainly don’t claim any superiority to the members of this congregation; the Lord knows that I am no adequate disciple. But then again, I don’t claim to evangelize when I know full well that I cannot – and I don’t check passports at the door.

Ultimately, I left this worship service feeling relieved for having attended, but unsatisfied with a distinctly inclusive community operating on a strictly exclusive plane. I was uneasy with this community in a way that I have never been uneasy with a community of closed-communion; a willing party is always received in baptism. No, I was uneasy with this community in a way that I am uneasy with a school that only accepts white kids, a hospital that only serves rich people.

Yet, while I can loathe the school and detest the hospital, I cannot bemoan a congregation that must adhere to local laws. And that is what makes me absolutely sick about my visit to the BICF; the culprit is a society, a government, a people who fear authority structures outside of governmental control. The culprit is hardly the congregation – they were forced to become “expat only” in 1996 – the congregation certainly has no vested interest in keeping its doors filtered.

Thus for the time being, I presume, the ivory-tower method of worship will suffice to support those who have the willingness and capacity to exemplify faithfulness, no matter the local laws. In fact, it likely even drives some towards underground evangelism – the kind that I discovered when I bought a bible from the hidden back room of a local bookstore. The BICF worship service thus supports those who have the capacity to sneak around the laws in their efforts to evangelize, which is no doubt a good thing.

And certainly, any worship service is better than no worship service whatsoever; but simply put, this was any worship service.

Note: Maybe I wrote this too late at night. As some of my friends have already noted, it is pretty scathing. I'll try to be kinder in future entries... maybe.