The Liaoning Provincial CC&TSPM hosted a collective ordination ceremony for 29 pastors and 31 elders.
Held last Friday in Panshi (or Rock) Church which is located in the Qipanshan scenic area of Shenyang, this was the first centralized and unified large-scale ordination ceremony in this province since the outbreak of COVID-19.
Rev. Hao Zhiqiang, editor-in-chief of Tianfeng, a magazine covering the Protestant Churches in China by CCC&TSPM, gave a sermon titled One Lord and Hundred Kinds of Disciples. Later, the ceremony was officiated by Elder Shi Aijun, chairman of the Liaoning CC&TSPM (Christian Council & Three-Self Patriotic Movement) and president of Northeast China Theological Seminary.
In addition to pastors from churches at the municipal level, some of the ordained clergies come from grass-roots ones in towns and villages. They all have served in churches or carried out pastoral care for years, and have received several years of studies and advanced education in the seminary, especially the closed intensive training before ordination.
Finally, all the pastors sang a hymn from the Chinese New Hymnal with the title Learn to be a Good Shepherd.
(The article is originally published by the Gospel Times and reported from Shenyang, Liaoning.)
- Translated by Abigail Wu
