Ren Chengyuan — The Apostle of the Zhejiang Church
Ren Chengyuan.
Each generation of the Church in Zhejiang seems to have had one key leader who faithfully showed the way forward to the children of God. For several decades Ren Chengyuan (also known as Ren Ziqing) was a key pillar of the Church in the province, which earned him the nickname 'the Apostle of the Zhejiang Church.'
Ren was born in Jiangsu Province in 1852, amid a time of great upheaval caused by the Taiping Rebellion. God protected him during those calamities, and at the age of 17 he believed the gospel and was baptized.
In 1874, a few years after his conversion, Ren was called to Zhejiang Province. At Hangzhou he met the esteemed church leader Wang Laijun, who was a close friend of Hudson Taylor. Ren immediately forged a deep connection with Wang, and a spiritual baton appears to have been passed down from one to the other. Ren married Wang's only daughter, and the remainder of his life was spent ministering in Zhejiang.
Ren was described as a Christian Nehemiah—a man who was skilled at dealing with the business of the Church, while maintaining a sterling reputation as a consecrated man of God. At a time when other Chinese church leaders struggled in their relationships with foreign missionaries, Ren enjoyed strong and mutual respect with a host of missionaries from different denominations.
For decades Ren Chengyuan provided wise and godly service to the body of Christ, helping the Lord's people through the diabolical Boxer onslaught of 1900, and proving himself a faithful guardian of the Church until his death from pneumonia in February 1929, at the age of 77. After his death, many tributes flowed in from those who knew him best. W. H. Warren, the CIM superintendent in Zhejiang, summarized Ren's life with these words:
"Pastor Ren was a man of outstanding ability, and would have been a force to reckon with in any calling in life. He early chose to walk in the way of the Lord, and amid all the vicissitudes of life held firmly to his guiding principle. Having set his hand to the plough he never seemed to look back, but with steady perseverance moved forward as led by the Spirit of God....
There is an association of Chinese pastors at Hangzhou, whose members hold regular prayer meetings. Pastor Ren was a tower of strength in such an assembly. Time and time again, when difficulties of church government or discipline have engaged the attention of the brethren, perplexed their minds, and presented an apparently insoluble problem, this man has sat, saying very little, with an inscrutable countenance, hearing and weighing all that the others had to say, then finally giving the clue, indicating the direction for action, and so finding a way through the maze." 1
Eternity will reveal the full impact made by godly church leaders like Ren Chengyuan during the formative years of Christianity in Zhejiang, when a solid foundation was put in place for the mighty harvest of souls that were reaped for the kingdom of God in later generations.
Footnotes:
1. Herbert Hudson Taylor & Marshall Broomhall, A Tamarisk Garden Blessed with Rain, or, The Autobiography of Pastor Ren (London: China Inland Mission, 1930), pp. viii-ix.
© This article is an extract from Paul Hattaway's book 'Zhejiang: The Jerusalem of China'. You can order this or any of The China Chronicles books and e-books from our online bookstore.