Now in his fifties, Pastor Enosh was baptized at 14. Since then, his journey has taken him through hardship, a period away from the church and a return, followed by more than 20 years of pastoral ministry in major cities.
He now finds himself at a point of transition between generations: carrying forward the faith and legacy of the previous generation of pastors while exploring new paths for the church. His journey has taken him from rural churches to urban pastoral ministry, from large teams to more decentralized models, and from full-time ministry to bi-vocational ministry. He has also learned to delegate responsibility and invest in younger leaders. His story may offer a glimpse into the journey of pastors of his generation and the new paths they are exploring.
Following Christ Amid Hardship
Pastor Enosh grew up in China's Central Plains, where the local church was influenced by the China Inland Mission in its early years. After the gospel was introduced, the church experienced growth and revival, as well as persecution. Some preachers were forced to leave the area, planting new churches wherever they went. Enosh was born into this church community against the backdrop.
His grandmother was a well-known devout Christian in the area. For years, she had urged her family to believe, but neither Enosh nor his parents initially did. Later, when Enosh and his brother fell ill, their grandmother went to the hospital to pray for them. Both eventually recovered. Following this experience, the family embraced the faith and opened their home to serve the local church, hosting worship gatherings and providing accommodation for visiting preachers.
At 14, during the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, Enosh was baptized in a river in subzero temperatures. That same year, he received a New Testament. There were no theological training at the time, nor any adults to teach him how to study the Bible, so he knelt in his bedroom and read it on his own. By 16, he had begun preaching at small meeting points.
Around 1993, Enosh married a woman from a devout Christian family. At the time, those serving in the local church were volunteers and received no regular income, while poor harvests had affected the area for several consecutive years. His wife remained in the church to serve, while Enosh went elsewhere to earn a living.
He later made considerable money through the timber trade. Yet as he spent more time with non-believers, he began smoking, drinking, and gambling, and then gradually drifted away from the church. It was only after enduring several hardships that he repented and returned to his local church. He went on to serve there for more than 20 years, preaching sermons and overseeing church affairs, while his wife taught hymn singing.
Three years later, he left his hometown in response to God's calling and moved to a major city.
Forty-Three People and Ten Thousand Gospel Tracts
In the early days of planting churches in the city, a testimony left a lasting impression on Enosh.
In 2008, he read a story about gospel tracts. A pastor and his 11-year-old son would distribute tracts every Sunday after the service. One rainy Sunday, the pastor decided not to go out, but his son continued going door to door. At one house, no one answered. Just as he was about to leave, the door opened. He handed an elderly woman a tract, told her, "Jesus loves you," and left.
The following Sunday, that same woman stood up in the pastor's church to share that both her husband and son had passed away, and at the last Sunday's noon, she had fallen into despair. Right at that moment, someone knocked on her door and told her, "Jesus loves you." Those simple words led her to Jesus. Hearing her story, the pastor felt ashamed—this was the spiritual fruit of his son.
This story made Enosh look closely at the city he was in—its many factories and large population of migrant workers.
For the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2008, he printed 10,000 gospel tracts, each with a dedicated mobile number. His logic was quite simple: "I reasoned that if we passed out 100 tracts, one person might reach out; 1,000 tracts would attract 10 responses; and 10,000 tracts would bring in 100 people. A hundred people is not a small number."
At the time, his church had only 43 people, including Enosh himself, spread across two suburban areas of the city. That day, the congregation prayed together, and they went out onto the streets in teams of three.
Then, the phone calls never stopped. Many callers had family members who were Christians, were Christians themselves but had nowhere to gather, or simply wanted to understand who these people were and what they believed. Some migrant workers from Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shandong provinces took the tracts back to their hometowns and passed them on to local church leaders, creating connections across different regions. That year, they established their first training center. Within a few years, this model of ministry had expanded across the city, with theological training, discipleship, and worker development gradually taking shape.
During this process, Enosh also noticed that the frequent movement of the city's migrant population was not necessarily only a challenge; it could also become an opportunity for the church to grow. He took a longer-term view of discipleship: "One day, young people will leave here. Wherever they go, they can be a seed."
From Pyramid Structure to Walking Side by Side in Church Management
The rural churches in the Central Plains that Enosh knew were often part of a "house church network." Books and resources from overseas intended to support the Chinese church were also often distributed through these centralized networks.
Around 2000, however, the situation began to shift. As more churches emerged, became more geographically dispersed, and involved more people in ministry, large centralized networks found it increasingly difficult to respond to the specific needs of different locations. They gradually became more decentralized, with responsibilities divided among smaller groups and leaders.
Enosh described the shift: "In the past, it was a pyramid; today it is about balanced development." Rather than operating as one large network, house churches began to "move forward side by side."
The decentralization was far-reaching. Enosh himself was one of the leaders of his network, and his congregation had reached a fourth generation. "By the fourth generation, they didn't even know that their network was the same one as before," he said.
Enosh was reluctant to judge the older generation's contributions or shortcomings. Speaking of elders who had been imprisoned and had led periods of major revival, he said, "I recognize that they made great contributions in the past. Human beings all have weaknesses. At the time, the church's culture was not yet well developed, and as the church grew and expanded, different issues were bound to arise."
Bi-Vocational Ministry: Tools in One Hand, Weapons in the Other
Traditionally, Chinese churches have distinguished between "full-time" (全职) workers and "those who serve while holding other jobs" (带职). In recent years, Enosh has increasingly emphasized the idea of "bi-vocational" ministry (双职).
In his view, the traditional term for those who serve while do ministry alongside another job can imply a status lower than that of "full-time" workers. He said, "We are 100 percent preachers … Yet in the workplace, we are also working professionals."
For Enosh, the bi-vocational approach first resolves the question of identity while helping urban Christians to navigate practical realities in family and relationships. Friends from his hometown who have visited him in his field of work know he is a business owner.
He sees money itself as neutral: "There is nothing wrong with money; it is the love of money that is wrong. If earning money is not spiritual, then spending it is not spiritual either. One is simply earning, and the other is putting it to use. We should earn money with a sense of reverence."
In 2021, he was invited to speak on "Fearing God in Business" at a gathering of a Christian business association. He does not advocate church control over businesspeople, believing that some people are gifted in business while business itself can become a means of serving and blessing others.
This perspective extends to professions such as teaching and medicine. In his view, every professional community can become a "field" for ministry.
One Can Only Serve One Generation
For Enosh, what truly needed to transform was not only the church's organizational structure but also the next generation's involvement in the ministry.
In 2011, Enosh gathered five young people around him: one graduate student alongside four undergraduate and vocational college students. Inviting them to a local restaurant, he made an announcement: "Starting today, the youth fellowship is entirely in your hands. You are responsible for building it, running it, and serving in it." Within two months, the fellowship expanded to 11 young members and has continued to this day.
"We didn't step in at all. We simply let them do it in their own way." Enosh recalled, "If we had intervened, the results might not have been as good."
He believes young people have an advantage that others cannot offer: simplicity. "They carry no historical or religious baggage," he explained. By contrast, "older members, especially those who have served for a long time, are harder to lead because they already have their own ideas." He gave an example: when starting a ministry, "someone with a lot of experience tends to judge things based on that experience. The inexperienced just gets on with it. In some ways, that gives them more freedom."
Enosh has always respected the older generation for their faithfulness and self-sacrifice, but he is also frank about their limitations. He once visited a church where a ministry leader shared their experience with a youth fellowship: more than 30 young people had been invited, and the church had bought plenty of fruit and snacks for them. Yet within 30 minutes of the sermon beginning, the young people had all left. Enosh believed one reason was that the 76-year-old preacher was still trying to reach young people in an outdated way.
"When speaking to young people, you need to hold their attention every single second to make them interested," he suggested. He asked the minister, "Why not let young people preach instead? Young people are very effective at leading other young people because they have so much in common. Their ways of thinking and expression are different from those of the older generation."
He often cites a regulation in Leviticus: the Bible records that priests retired at 50 because temple service was demanding, and the detailed sacrifice procedures could not be carried out incorrectly. For Enosh, handing over responsibility early benefits both sides: "It helps you grow, and it also protects you."
He does not believe young people need to be left waiting until they are "fully mature." Rather, "there are many potentials within them that we cannot reach, and we need to help bring those out."
"One can only serve one generation—the people of their own time," Enosh said repeatedly. "Once your time has passed, you no longer understand what that generation needs."
That is why he handed over the youth fellowship early, delegated some of his pastoral duties, and thought ahead about what he would do after stepping down. Stepping down, he said, does not mean quitting; it means going on to train a new generation of "priests."
The boy who was baptized in a freezing river years ago is now an elder to a younger generation. Behind him, a group of young people with formal theological training has already emerged—and they will likely do things that he himself may not understand.
- Translated by Poppy Chan
Originally from the Evangelical Vision
CCD edited and translated with permission
