During a visit, I had the privilege of meeting Pastor X who serves in a trade and industry fellowship in south China. His unique way of sharing the gospel is to pass the gospel to the guests through the way of tea gathering and preaching.
X conceived this idea last year, as he found that almost everyone had a Kung Fu tea set in the office during his visit with some of his business friends, and they had tea together while talking about general business, meetings, and communicating.
Therefore, the pastor edited a pamphlet for internal communication, hoping to share the secrets of the "tea gospel" with more people. He found that everyone knows about tea, but to explain the tea ceremony clearly, he needed to find a way to link tea with Christianity to share the gospel, in addition to the basic tea ceremony.
There are 18 topics in the book, which integrates some basic theological themes, spirituality, praise and other themes in the Bible. "Spiritual and worldly things are merged in this book." Pastor X said, "When drinking tea, we can subtly share the gospel." Tea can warm the body, soothe the soul, close the distance between people, and share faith and life during tea drinking and chatting.
The following are some sharing of tea ceremonies integrated with the Bible by pastor X:
I. The source of tea and the genesis of everything
Shennong, a mythological Chinese ruler who has become a deity in Chinese and Vietnamese folk religion according to Wikipedia, discovered tea, and Lu Yu, a Chinese tea master and writer, summarized the essence of tea. But they do not know where the tea comes from and who creates it. In the Bible, tea was created by God on the third day of creation day. God created light and darkness on the first day, air, water and earth on the second day, and vegetables, trees and fruits on the third day, including tea leaves and tea trees. Finally, the pastor would tell the guests that tea comes from God, and people are created by God.
II. Tea categories and the concept of numerous ethnic groups
Tea has many categories, including green tea, such as West Lake Dragon Well tea, Dongting Biluochun tea, Huangshan Mao Feng tea, Xinyang Maojian tea and so on. Green tea can further be divided into fried, baked, steamed, and sun-dried types. With the changes throughout history, tea has been classified into many categories. The same is true of people. Originally, the world consisted of only one man, one family and one race. However, due to the development throughout history and the influence of sin, the original one race has evolved into the present numerous ethnic groups. When humans gathered in the Tower of Babel, God confused them with languages, so that different ethnic groups spoke different languages, and the people with the same language were gathered together. Finally, there were 70 ethnic groups with different languages. The list of these 70 groups is recorded in Genesis 10, which were called families and nations. This is the origin of the human race.
III. The tea protection function of tea and the effect of God’s words (say something good to the use of edifying)
Tea has the effect of protecting teeth, mainly because of the interaction of various substances contained in tea, such as fluorine, tea polyphenols and tea tannin fluorine. As we all know, fluoride toothpaste can make teeth stronger and more acid-resistant. In fact, tea also contains fluorine, a substance that protects our teeth. It comes from tea leaves and water brewed with them. An appropriate amount of fluorine is important to prevent the occurrence of dental cavities and can protect the enamel on each tooth from being harmed.
IV. The anti-inflammatory and sterilizing function of tea and the purification of God’s words
Tea is anti-inflammatory and has sterilizing function mainly because it contains catechins, flavonols, and polyphenols. Catechins in tea have obvious preventative effects on many pathogenic bacteria such as typhoid bacillus, paratyphoid bacillus, yellow hemolytic staphylococcus, staphylococcus aureus and dysentery. Flavanols can promote the activity of the adrenal gland like hormone drugs, and have a direct anti-inflammatory effect.
- Translated by Oliver Zuo
