In 2018, the Lily Gospel Church, which directly belonged to the Christian Council & the Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CCC&TSPM) of Dalian, celebrated the tenth anniversary of its founding. Bai Zhenjian, the president of Dalian Christian Council and the pastor of the Lily Gospel Church, recalled that in the early days of the church, there were less than 200 believers, and most of them were elderly people. Thanks to the grace of God, the church now has three pastors, three choirs (of more than 80 people), more than one hundred and sixty co-workers, and more than a thousand baptized believers.
On October 6, 2019, the author visited the Lily Gospel Church on a Sunday. It has three characteristics: firstly, there are more young believers (almost 40%); secondly, the number of believers is not decreasing but steadily increasing; and, thirdly, the proportion of intellectuals is relatively high. The church even has an English and a Japanese group.
The ministry includes a promotion department that is good at writing, photography, graphic design, and copywriting. The music ministry group and the Ark sacred drama club focuses on the Christian drama and creating Christian music. The youth ministry is in charge of the church's literature, Bible readings, nurture of believers, English ministry, etc. And the church also organizes worship and other activities for various festival occasions such as Christmas and Easter, etc..
All the believers of the church especially participated at the three-day annual Thanksgiving celebrations. This event attracted some non-believers to come to the church and they made commitments to accept the gospel. It has also donated more than 200,000 yuan for social welfare ministries, being motivated by the motto of "serving the society, honoring God and benefiting people". These ministries included helping disabled children, poor students, widowed elderly, critical patients, and victims of various kinds. The church also visits and helps the church's elderly, weak, sick and destitute. For more than ten years, the church has focused on pastoral training, and referred them on to the provincial and municipal CC&TSPM, the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, the Northeast Theological Seminary for further studies, so that the quality of pastors' ministry could be upgraded.
- Translated by Heirs Han
