Underground church in my house

The skinny blond kid ran down my alley, past my deck. I was watching for him. He saw me step outside, and asked me a question. I responded, and he darted into my house...safe from the secret police.

OK, it didn't EXACTLY happen that way. The question he asked me was, "Are you with the thing my church youth group is doing?" I retorted back, "That's not the password!" To which he quickly responded, "Are-you-with-the-YMCA?"

"Yes, I am. Are you?"

"ORANGE!!!" he shouted, "ORANGE!"

"Come on in, and have a brownie."

A couple of weeks ago my friend Angel called and said the church youth group she and her husband helped with was having an activity they call Underground Church. Basically, kids are divided into groups, find people who give them maps and instructions, and then go out into different neighborhoods. Certain houses are safe houses, and their job is to get to a safe house without getting caught by the "secret police", teams of people armed with Super Soakers. Anyone the secret police manage to get wet gets taken to "jail". Anyone who makes it to the safe house would give a password, and if admitted to the house, could call the leaders to come pick them up. The point of the activity, in addition to having fun, is to raise awareness of persecuted Christians around the world. Angel asked if we would be willing to be a safe house. It sounded like a blast, so I said "Sure!"

Earlier today she dropped off a sheet of paper with instructions for safe houses:

"The Game begins at 4:30 and will run until approximately 6:30. They will come to the door and say, "Do you belong to the YMCA?" You will say, "Yes, I do. Do you?", then ask them for their color. If it matches your designated color group, let them in. They will stay until someone arrives to pick them up. Have them contact Tim or Angel when they have arrived. Two groups will be coming to your house: Brown and Orange."

Cell phone numbers for both Tim and Angel, as well as their walkie-talkie channel, were listed.

I baked brownies and watched for kids starting around 4:30. Around 5:00, while I was watching an ER rerun, I vaguely heard the next-door neighbor talking to someone. "741 is down that way," I heard him say. WAIT...that's our house number! And he was not sending them our way...what is up with that? Then I realized...on our block, the house numbers are a bit out of order. Our number is indeed 741, but the houses on either side of us are 500s. Apparently years and years ago, when people moved down the street, they took their house numbers with them. Anyway, that makes our house a little harder for people to find, including people on the run from the secret police. Oh well, I thought...that's just part of the fun! About a half hour later, the blond kid ran past, and the above exchange took place. He was ecstatic...he was pretty sure he was the only one from his group who'd avoided the secret police. A few minutes later, though, two other guys from his group also showed up. Out of about 12 in their original group, they were the only ones who'd made it. They munched on brownies, guzzled water, and regaled us with stories of their day's escapades until Angel arrived in the church van to pick them up.

This was not an insignificant activity for Leo and I to participate in. Although China is opening up a great deal as far as freedom of religion (people can now even worship in homes as long as the group is small, 10 or 20 I think is the number), there is still some pockets of religious persecution there in some rural areas. Although the state-sanctioned "Three-Self Church" counts many true believers among its members, many larger secret house churches still exist. The Three-Self Church is not free to run itself, and many Christians in China have problems with some of the restrictions, prefering to worship God as they please, even if it risks their freedom.

Though it's a serious issue, we enjoyed helping these kids learn more about it in a fun way today.