A Life Spared for a Purpose
Security Note: Pastor Yong’s name and certain identifying details have been changed for security.
His Mother’s Faith
Long before Pastor Yong became a Christian, someone was already praying for him. His mother was a believer, and Yong grew up knowing about her faith. However, being raised in a Christian home did not automatically make that faith his own.
For the first 23 years of his life, he had not made the decision to follow Jesus for himself. Then came an accident that nearly took his life. Yong was seriously injured and was not expected to survive. His mother prayed over him, and miraculously, Yong lived.
For Yong, surviving the accident became about much more than escaping death. People around him told him that God had preserved his life for a reason and had a calling for him. Yong began to believe this and made the decision to follow Jesus.
Discovering His Calling
Becoming a Christian did not mean Yong immediately knew what his future would look like. He began attending a government-regulated Three-Self church because, at the time, he did not know of anywhere else to meet with other Christians. He remained there for approximately two years before encountering several Christian leaders who introduced him to the house church movement and encouraged him to join them. They also began teaching him.
For more than two years, Yong received biblical instruction as his understanding of Scripture and the Christian faith deepened. Gradually, the sense of purpose that had followed his accident began to take a more definite shape. Yong believed God was calling him to preach.
It was the beginning of a journey that would eventually see him become a pastor himself, but first he needed to be taught.
Learning, Step by Step
Through a Bible study group, Yong met another Christian who would later introduce him to the ABC Discipleship and Leadership Curriculum. When she eventually sent him the material, Yong discovered something that addressed a practical need he understood firsthand: believers needed a clear pathway for growing in their understanding of Scripture and learning how to share it with others.
He describes ABC as comprehensive, beginning with foundational teaching about the Gospel before progressing into discipleship, pastoral training and equipping believers to share their faith.
“All the steps are very gradual and complete, step by step,” Yong said. “So it’s very good.”
For a man whose own journey had unfolded gradually, the approach made sense. Yong began using the material in his own study and preaching. He found it so useful that he eventually decided others should have access to it too.
In 2011, he gathered approximately 10 people from his church and began taking them through the curriculum. It was a small group, but what began there would eventually spread to other churches and locations.
“Most of the attendees who came to this study course benefited a lot and learned a lot from it,” Yong recalled. “Afterward, they also developed many, many sessions in different churches, in different locations.”
The student had become a teacher.
Now his students were teaching others.
What One Believer Passes On
At one of the churches connected with Yong, there was an older Christian man who began studying the same curriculum. Yong remembers his commitment partly because of something unusually tangible: his notebook.
The man took extensive notes as he worked through the material. By the time ABC students gathered together in 2013, the notebook had grown so large that Yong remembers it astonishing those who saw it. The pages represented more than diligent study. The older man explained that he had previously struggled when trying to preach. He did not know how to organize his thoughts or develop what he wanted to communicate from God’s Word.
Now he had something he had lacked before. “I am no longer lacking the materials and thoughts and flow to share the gospel,” he said. “So I really benefit from it.”
It was a simple example of something much larger. Someone had once taken the time to teach Yong. Later, another believer placed biblical training into his hands. Yong then gathered a small group and passed what he had learned to them. Those believers carried it into other churches and other locations. Disciples were making disciples.
A Different Side of Christianity in China
Today, Yong leads a small congregation of approximately 20 to 30 people while continuing his own theological education as a full-time seminary student. His experience also offers a more complicated picture of Christianity in China than the one often seen from outside the country.
Christians in many parts of China live with significant restrictions and pressure. Yong, however, says the situation in his particular area is different. His small congregation is currently able to gather relatively safely. Even his relationship with Christians attending government-regulated Three-Self churches is more nuanced than might be expected.
“In my area, differences between the government churches and the house churches [are] very blurred because we have lots of interactions between one another,” he explained. Yong recognizes genuine biblical teaching taking place within those churches. The significant distinction, he says, is government oversight. Sermons and those permitted to preach can be subject to scrutiny, while his house church operates with greater independence.
For Yong, however, the relative freedom enjoyed by Christians in his area has created another challenge: complacency.
He sees people around him consumed by ordinary life and the pursuit of financial success, with little sense of spiritual need. “In our area, it’s hard to talk to people, talk people into believing in Christ because all they think is ‘make money,’” he said. “‘Make money,’ not spiritual things.”
It is a striking observation from a pastor serving in a nation so often described primarily through the lens of persecution.
Sometimes the challenge facing the Church is opposition. Sometimes it is indifference.
Yong has encountered both realities in the wider Chinese context, but his calling remains the same: to faithfully teach God’s Word and help others follow Jesus.
A Life Still Being Lived for Its Purpose
Nearly three decades have passed since the accident that changed the direction of Yong’s life. He is still learning. He is still studying Scripture. He is still leading a small church. And he is still passing to others what was once passed to him.
There is no way Yong could have known at 23 where his decision to follow Jesus would eventually lead. He could not have seen the small group he would one day gather, the believers who would take their training into other churches, or the older man who would fill an enormous notebook because he was finally learning how to communicate God’s Word.
But this is how discipleship often moves. One believer teaches another. That believer teaches someone else. A small group becomes another group in another place. What was received is faithfully passed on.
For Pastor Yong, the life that was spared became a life given to that work.
Become Part of This Story
Pastor Yong’s story demonstrates what can happen when biblical training is placed into the hands of local believers. What Yong received, he passed to others, and they in turn carried it into other churches and communities.
OneCoMission helps strengthen this work by equipping local believers with biblical resources such as the ABC Discipleship and Leadership Curriculum.
The goal is not simply to provide information, but to help believers become disciples who can make disciples.