Leaders of the Chinese Underground Church Wait for the Sound
of a Heavy Spiritual Rain

By: Dr. Howard Foltz
AIMS News: Posted 5/1/2004

I had not seen a setting like this in 41 years of missionary ministry. After traveling on what seemed like endless miles
of rough, backcountry roads, our team arrived at a secluded farm in the most persecuted province in China. As our five team members walked into our sparse, humble quarters, we passed a room where eighty Chinese male leaders laid sleeping side by side on the dirt floor in three tight rows. Likewise, we learned that forty women slept in similar manner in another room. We had expected to meet sixty top leaders of one of the largest underground house church movements. Instead, 120 leaders representing 10 million Chinese believers had arrived to receive training!

Prayer and worship began promptly at 5 am. We rolled up our sleeping mats and turned the room into a small auditorium. The 120 leaders sat shoulder to shoulder on narrow benches and listened with rapt attention. Most of them had been in prison and experienced persecution and depravation for the Gospel. These people are living Acts 29...what would we have to say to them?

God gave me a prophetic word about their desire to send thousands of missionaries. In 1 Kings 18:41-46, Elijah prophesied during a time of drought and famine, "there is the sound of heavy rain." After searching seven times, his servant finally saw a cloud "as small as a manís hand rising from the sea." This cloud became a "sky black with clouds, the wind rose, and a heavy rain came." The leaders' vision for missions would grow from a small cloud into a great rain. The room thundered with spontaneous praise.

During the next three days, we taught Harvest Connection, Stewardship, and Faith Promise Giving. The leaders eagerly grasped the vision of mobilizing their churches in a grass-roots missions movement. One leader said to the group: "This is the Word of God for us -we must do it."

We met with the movement's "Council of Nine" leaders and developed a partnership to help them send out hundreds, maybe even thousands of Chinese missionaries to the unreached of China and the Middle East. They believe that the 21st century will be "the century of Chinese missions."

Through this partnership, AIMS agreed to:

AIMS will provide the training and materials to help them develop these three goals to fit their culture. What a divine appointment of opportunity!

We plan to begin with this movement of 10 million, develop a transferable model, and then duplicate it in four other movements. As a result, 40-50 million Chinese, representing two-thirds of all the believers in China, will receive needed training! Now, we at AIMS have embraced our most challenging opportunity to date.

However, to accomplish this, we need a great deal of prayer and finance. Thank you for your partnership with AIMS in this effort. Your prayers for us have "paid off" with great dividends. This is only the beginning of our ever-increasing harvest of souls for the glory of God's kingdom.

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