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ChinaSource provides the global Christian community with objective information about the church in China by promoting discussion and collaboration around critical issues facing the church and ministries in China through online resources, writing, speaking, conferences, and consulting.

Before Naicha arrived, some neighbors barely looked at her. After he arrived, they stopped to talk—and sometimes stayed ...
10/13/2026

Before Naicha arrived, some neighbors barely looked at her. After he arrived, they stopped to talk—and sometimes stayed for hours.
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In the spring of 2022, Lily Foster (pseudonym) found herself alone during Shanghai’s lockdown.
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She had moved to China only months earlier, overcoming extraordinary obstacles to get there. Now, close friends were planning to leave, her Mandarin was limited, and the city she had long dreamed of calling home suddenly felt terribly lonely.
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Then came Naicha (奶茶, “milk tea”), a little puppy whose arrival changed something unexpected.
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Neighbors who had previously kept their distance began stopping to pet him. Conversations followed. They encouraged Lily to practice her Chinese, patiently corrected her mistakes, and gradually became friends.
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But Naicha was only the beginning.
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When another round of quarantine brought back overwhelming anxiety and loneliness, someone from church listened as Lily cried and prayed with her. What followed was a series of relationships and unexpected turns that eventually gave her something she had been longing for: a place to belong.
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Lily’s story does not diminish the fear, isolation, or suffering of Shanghai’s lockdown. Her experience was one among millions, each different.
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Yet it offers a remarkable glimpse of how ordinary kindness, unexpected friendships, and a church community can change what it means to call a place home.
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As Lily reflects on the community that eventually surrounded her:
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“People who were far from family became each other’s family.”
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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲.
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Read Lily Foster’s deeply personal story, “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗵𝗮𝗶 𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲.”
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📖 English:
https://chinasource.org/articles/the-lockdown-that-made-shanghai-home/
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繁體中文：
https://chinasource.org/articles/the-lockdown-that-made-shanghai-home/zh-hant/
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简体中文：
https://chinasource.org/articles/the-lockdown-that-made-shanghai-home/zh-hans/
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Two families. Two hospital rooms. Two very different experiences of grief.When YiJu’s mother passed away, her family gat...
10/09/2026

Two families. Two hospital rooms. Two very different experiences of grief.

When YiJu’s mother passed away, her family gathered around her bedside, weeping and singing her favorite hymns.

Nearby, another family was also saying goodbye to a loved one. Their cries reflected a deep fear of what might come after death.

Both families were grieving. Both were facing the same painful reality of loss.

Yet something about the difference caught a doctor’s attention. How could YiJu’s family be so heartbroken and still have peace?

For YiJu, the answer was not that faith made losing her mother any less painful. It was that the hope of eternity gave her family something to hold on to in the midst of their sorrow.

Questions about heaven and eternity can seem distant—until death comes close to home.

In “When Questions about Eternity Become Personal,” the author shares YiJu’s story and introduces the Mandarin edition of "The Promise of Heaven," launching October 10.

What does Christian hope mean when grief is no longer theoretical?

Read the article: https://www.chinasource.org/articles/when-questions-about-eternity-become-personal/

“We are hungry, but we have no preacher.” An elderly woman in a rural church said those words three times as Shipaul dro...
10/07/2026

“We are hungry, but we have no preacher.” An elderly woman in a rural church said those words three times as Shipaul drove her home.

There were more than a thousand believers in the area, scattered among dozens of meeting points. Some congregations struggled with strained relationships and a lack of regular pastoral leadership. Meanwhile, in larger cities, Shipaul had met trained workers and young people studying theology.

Her words stayed with him: Who would pastor churches like hers?

In “Where Is God Leading Me?” Shipaul traces his own journey through very different parts of the church in China—from the rural congregation where his faith first took root, to a university fellowship, a Reformed discipleship program, ministry among students, and visits to churches in other regions.

Along the way, he encounters churches rich in theological knowledge but weak in relationships, churches with little formal training but deep spiritual vitality, and believers faithfully serving amid pressures and limitations.

Gradually, the question of calling begins to change. Instead of simply asking where he should go, Shipaul begins asking where the gaps are—and whether God might be asking him to help fill them.

No church he encountered was perfect. But each became part of the way God shepherded him and clarified where he might serve.

Read Shipaul’s story and reflect with us: When we see a weakness or unmet need in the church, how do we discern whether it is a reason to leave—or an invitation to serve?

https://www.chinasource.org/articles/where-is-god-leading-me/

On a street less than 500 meters long, a kindergarten, an elementary school, and a middle school stood one after another...
10/06/2026

On a street less than 500 meters long, a kindergarten, an elementary school, and a middle school stood one after another.
One day, as adults and children watched the school’s morning exercises through an iron fence, a grandmother told a child, “When you grow up, you will go in there too.”

For Wellspring (pseudonym), that ordinary moment became the beginning of a very different path.

For nearly ten years, she and her husband have homeschooled their two sons in China. Along the way came questions from relatives, calls from local officials, difficult seasons of conflict over schoolwork, and eventually an ADHD diagnosis that helped them understand their older son differently. They also discovered that what worked for one child could not simply be repeated with the other. ChinaSource

This is not an argument that homeschooling is the answer for every family. It is one Chinese Christian mother’s account of following a conviction, confronting her own expectations, and learning—sometimes painfully—to pay closer attention to the children God had given her.

Read “When Our Children Don’t Go to School: Ten Years of Homeschooling.”

English and 简体中文 available.

https://www.chinasource.org/articles/when-our-children-dont-go-to-school/

https://www.chinasource.org/articles/when-our-children-dont-go-to-school/zh-hans/

A red envelope at Lunar New Year. A green one at Hari Raya. A purple one at Deepavali.For Menghun Goh, growing up in Kua...
10/06/2026

A red envelope at Lunar New Year. A green one at Hari Raya. A purple one at Deepavali.

For Menghun Goh, growing up in Kuala Lumpur meant learning early that traditions can look similar without meaning exactly the same thing. Years later, living and teaching across the United States and Taiwan added still more layers to that experience.

In “Living at the Hyphens: A Biblical Reflection on Sinophone Theologies,” Goh turns to Paul to ask what these overlapping—but never fully interchangeable—contexts might teach us about theology.

His answer does not erase difference. Instead, he looks at the body of Christ, “similarity-in-difference,” and the work of the Spirit to imagine a theology in which our identities are formed in relation to others.

As he writes, “I live at the hyphens: Malaysian-Chinese-American-Taiwanese.”

What might it mean for Sinophone theology to begin there—not with one “real” center, but with lives already shaped across languages, places, and traditions?

Read the full reflection on ChinaSource.
https://www.chinasource.org/articles/living-at-the-hyphens/

More workers arriving does not necessarily mean local churches are getting the help they need.Writing from Thailand, Sun...
10/05/2026

More workers arriving does not necessarily mean local churches are getting the help they need.

Writing from Thailand, Sun Yong explores this tension in Chinese overseas mission. Learning a language, rebuilding trust, and recovering from exhaustion take time—even after someone has crossed a border.

What preparation and support make it possible to serve well alongside local churches?

Read [Leaving China, Entering Mission?] https://www.chinasource.org/articles/leaving-china-entering-mission/

STORIES WE DON'T HEARWhat if some of the most important stories about the church in China are also the least dramatic?​M...
09/29/2026

STORIES WE DON'T HEAR

What if some of the most important stories about the church in China are also the least dramatic?
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Much of Christian life is ordinary.
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Believers go to work, care for their families, worry about money, navigate relationships, make difficult choices, and try to remain faithful in circumstances that rarely become the stories that travel beyond their own communities.
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Prompted in part by Sam Ren’s recent essay, “The Displaced Minority,” “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗢𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵” turns our attention toward some of these quieter lives—and toward what we may miss when our understanding of the Chinese church is shaped mainly by the stories that make headlines.
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Stories of persecution and suffering are real and important. But they are not the only stories.
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Between dramatic accounts of suffering and equally dramatic narratives of revival lies a much larger landscape of ordinary Christian life: complicated, constrained, sometimes inconsistent, and quietly persistent.
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What might our understanding of the church in China look like if we learned to see more of that middle ground?
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Read “𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗢𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵,” the first installment in our new series, 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵ℎ𝘦 𝘊ℎ𝘶𝘳𝘤ℎ 𝘪𝘯 𝘊ℎ𝘪𝘯𝘢:
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https://www.chinasource.org/articles/the-pressure-of-ordinary-faith/
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For those considering doctoral research in Chinese theology, here is an opportunity worth knowing about.Lux Mundi is off...
09/29/2026

For those considering doctoral research in Chinese theology, here is an opportunity worth knowing about.

Lux Mundi is offering "two PhD scholarships" to support doctoral research in Chinese Theology in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.

Opportunities like this matter not only because they make doctoral study possible for individual scholars, but because they create space for sustained theological research emerging from serious engagement with Chinese Christianity.

We hope this reaches those who may be considering doctoral work—and also pastors, professors, mentors, and friends who may know someone for whom this opportunity would be a good fit.

Please share it with someone who should see it.

Further details and application information:
https://www.ccct.divinity.cam.ac.uk/news/lux-mundi-phd-scholarship-chinese-theologyshiguangzhonghuashenxueboshijiangxuejin

AI can respond patiently. It can affirm us. It can even seem to understand us.But what happens when we begin relating to...
09/14/2026

AI can respond patiently. It can affirm us. It can even seem to understand us.

But what happens when we begin relating to it as though it were a person?

In “Don’t Treat AI as a Person,” Jerry An offers a simple principle for thinking about our everyday use of AI: however sophisticated the technology becomes, we should resist confusing a tool that generates human-like responses with a human being.

The question becomes especially important when AI enters the spaces where we once depended on other people—for conversation, affirmation, advice, or companionship. Real relationships involve something AI cannot reproduce: the possibility of disagreement, misunderstanding, hurt, forgiveness, and still choosing to remain in conversation.

As Jerry writes, “AI may be able to generate a perfect response, but only real people can choose honesty and companionship even at the risk of hurt, misunderstanding, and broken relationships.”

What might our growing comfort with AI reveal about our desire to be understood—and perhaps even more, our desire to be agreed with?

Read the full reflection:
https://www.chinasource.org/articles/dont-treat-ai-as-a-person/

We usually ask technology to become more useful to us.​But Scripture does not always work that way.​We may come to the B...
09/11/2026

We usually ask technology to become more useful to us.
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But Scripture does not always work that way.
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We may come to the Bible asking how to deal with a difficult person and discover that the text is addressing our own anger. We may come looking for an answer and find that our question itself needs to change.
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That difference between 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 has increasingly shaped how Arleen Luo and her colleagues think about AI and Bible engagement while building Sparks.
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AI can make biblical knowledge more accessible, conversational, and responsive. Those possibilities matter. But even increasingly capable technology cannot replace the slow work of being known by others, being challenged, remaining with Scripture, praying, and learning to let Scripture interpret us rather than simply using Scripture to interpret our lives.
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So perhaps “Should Christians use AI?” is not quite enough.
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A better question may be: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀?
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Read Arleen Luo’s 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗗𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗜? https://www.chinasource.org/articles/what-if-the-church-does-not-need-another-christian-ai/
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