Be great. Okay, cool. Okay. According Yeah, okay. Well, I'm I'm Erin and I'm I'm here on behalf of sola network. And I am talking to Clara Kim. Claire Kim. Right. That's your last name Claire Kim. Yeah. And Clara, you're here for the Center for house church theology. I've linked to many of your articles on our TGIF roundups. And I also reviewed the book faith in the wilderness, which I loved. I'll link all of those. But can I just hear in your own words? What is the Center for house church theology? And what's your role? How'd you get involved?
Well, the Center for hosters theology is really trying to do something that I don't think has been done before, which is to connect us directly to the words and teachings of the house church in China. Now, it historically has, of course, as a church that is not officially sanctioned by the Chinese government, it has been cut off in many ways they've been unable to travel to Christian conferences outside the country to teach to, to kind of officially be in conversation with the global church. Many of its pastors have been persecuted arrested have had to use pseudonyms, even in the writing. And so it's been very difficult, if not impossible, in the past to really know what was happening in the Chinese house church to really hear their words. And we now have, partly because of technology, just connections to some of these pastors in the writings. And we also have an amazing translation software now and the amazing translation team headed up by Ryan Jiang that is able to give us high quality translations of sermons, writings, things that are happening in cities and modern China, which is also new, this sort of, there is a lot more in common now between cities like Shanghai, and Chengdu, and places like Boston and LA. Because we're all living in this globalized world. And we're all living in a, this sort of postmodern era of tradition is kind of out the window. And we're all sort of trying to figure out faith and life from scratch, our parents, faith, and life doesn't really work anymore. So there's this amazing opportunity now to connect with what is being preached in these, these house churches, many of them urban, and many of them, quite modern. They're trying to evangelize and preach Christianity in a context where it's just foreign and where it's countercultural. And that is that is the situation we're facing now across the world, in the West, in the global south and the east. And so it's just suddenly it's become very relevant to have this conversation to listen and to exchange ideas and to hear preaching and to apply the gospel in completely new ways.
Yeah. When you say house church, let's just get a basic definition going here. Because when you say a house church, I'm thinking, oh, like a small group that gathers in my house? Is that what you're talking about?
Thank you for asking, yes, we cannot assume that the people are familiar with the house, because it has been, quote, unquote, underground or out of the official circulation for so long. How surge in China is really what we would call the in the past, it might have been called an underground church because it was actively persecuted. And in times, like the Cultural Revolution under the communist government. It's not so much underground anymore, but they are still called the house church. And they still very much identify with these early kind of mostly rural, mostly anonymous churches that existed in the countryside and met in people's houses. And so today, the house church might look urban and might look bigger and might meet in a public space. But they very much connect to this tradition of church history. of people who just did not follow the government's supervision or guidelines. They just follow the fate of their their own faith. It's the indigenous church in China. That follows scripture over the Chinese government and refuses to come under their regulation.
And there is persecute you would call that persecution.
There have been kind of varying eras of persecution throughout their history. From what I've read, it's it's even before the Communist Party took over there was persecution. Early in the 20th century, there was a lot of people were anti Christian. When the Communists took over, they They, they were persecuted again, the Cultural Revolution was probably the most extreme example, where they really outlawed religion completely. And there have been areas when they sort of allowed churches to operate without too much interference. But we've seen in under Xi Jinping, the current Premier, there's been an increase in interference, you could say.
And you said that like, kind of rural areas, right, so like, are we like, Are we are we imagining or how should I envision this? Should I envision, like a group? Like how big, like numerically is a single house church? And then, like, what kind of building? Are they? Are they meeting in? If any?
I'm probably not an expert on answering this question, because I have not personally attended, I'm sure, sure. Yeah, understanding is that the really kind of very, again, what unites them is really just there that they refuse to come under a communist supervision, but they can be small or large, they can be urban, they can be in a person's house, or they can be in a high rise building in a city. Okay, so the way it looks, the denominations can vary, the way the church looks and functions can vary. Even their stance towards the government can vary that some, some are really trying to try to get along, as well as they can and aren't trying to cause any trouble. Others are a little bit more confrontational and outspoken about. The government has no no business regulating us, but what they have in common is that devotion to, to their faith and what they read in Scripture over and above what the state church says.
Yes. And that's, that's so beautiful. And I think something that that the book conveys really well. I wanted to ask you, Clara, what, what made you involved with with this, like, what, what's your what's your what? What made you say, hey, I want to be involved with the hosters theology. You're not? Are you Korean? Okay, right.
I've been to China, I've traveled to Hong Kong and she on as a tourist, okay, I have no Chinese relatives, except for maybe like a eighth century General. Right? My family history. So I really don't have a strong personal connection to China. However, I worked at Redeemer Presbyterian church up sorry, routine was city to city. It was like I worked for 12 years. And I, so I became familiar with some of the people involved with what would become the center for hosters theology, including Hannah nation, and others, Ste Huang, who is our Director of theological content, I know him quite well, from my time at Redeemer. So I and I was actually involved at Redeemer and trying to get Tim Keller's books published in China as well. So I became familiar with some people through that effort, some of the same people that I'm working with now. So I just I just, I will just say that as a an outsider, originally to this movement, I was really struck by the the prayers I heard some of these Chinese leaders give some of the personal humility and maturity I saw in depth and the leaders I meant, and working with in the church planning world for 12 years, you meet a lot of young immature leaders, who are perhaps have high ambitions and may not be able to follow through for a lifelong commitment. But the people I met from China were different. They were really committed for life and really, had already had to face some some real risk to do so. So when Hannah, Hannah asked me to help her publish the works of these pastors, and leaders that I've met over the years, I was a little skeptical. It's not something that we've conventionally seen in America, I do have some background publishing similar familiar with the publishing world, right. But when I started reading their words, I was again, I was really struck by how wise and and Hawaii's they were, and how hearing from a different cultural perspective is so helpful. I think in the West, we just have such a long church tradition that we start to see things that we hear the same sermons and we hear the same stories and we even have like rituals and holidays and things that have evolved around Christianity just because it's Western culture. Sure. And we've lost that immediacy of how shocking and how challenging the Bible really is. And these these leaders because they're in China because that many of them are first, the first in their, in their families to be Christian first generation Christians and first generation churches. They're really dealing everyday with how, how countercultural and how beautiful. And how difficult like all these things that it is to be a Christian things that we're all experiencing now in a real way, but our culture hasn't really caught up, our culture is still sort of telling the same old fashioned Christian stories, while these leaders in China are having to just speak from the heart and completely new ways. They're just trying to come up with new words all the time, to describe the faith to their followers, and to tell them what is really involved with loving their faith, which is not going to be a lot of comforting, inspiring words, it's really difficult in China. So hearing their words is just it shakes you up, it challenges you it. It's refreshing, it's relevant. I was really, I've been really a converts to the importance of hearing from these Chinese leaders, even though I am not Chinese and don't have much of a background connected to China.
Well, I appreciate your work. And I share the same sentiments with you on on falling in love with the house church and China. Thank you so much for for what you do, and it's it's been my joy to kind of follow you guys along. What's What are the future plans for? For, for the for the center? And then, you know, is there another book on the way? What can we expect from you guys?
Well, Hannah nation is our managing director. And she always has many book ideas. It's a little scary for me to talk about what's coming, because she just has so many dreams and ambitions about books to come out of the Chinese house church, which is wonderful. I'm just sort of there to help her practically make it happen. We need your book coming out this December about that's really inspired by the work of Wang Yi, who is a pastor and one of the more famous house churches, pastors in China, who is currently in jail serving nine years. And this book was sort of his vision of telling the story of the house church. So it's really putting together some historical documents and some writings of major leaders in the house church. And then we've added some documents about his own church and what happened around his arrest and his church's persecution in 2018. So that church will be coming out from University Press academic in December of this year. Very excited about that. I think it's going to be a very important book for historians and theologians, people who are interested in China at all. And we have just lots more topics to explore. We are going to continue to do articles on our website that are free as well as books with different different kinds of books and different kinds of publishers. And yeah, that's all I can say for now, I think but there's there's some exciting projects in the pipeline.
Yeah, that's, that's amazing. I cannot wait for everything that you guys are going to do. Thank you so much, Claire for the time.
Thank you. Is that okay? Okay, well, I will definitely have to run that by hand over that, yeah, no problem was the one
