The rainbow never sets

first being directed to a Roman Catholic church, which was only a quarter full, when I peeped inside. When we eventually arrived at the Protestant church, the service had just finished. People were streaming out, not only from the church, but also from an overflow hall, seating about 1500 people. We met the Rev. Cai Weng-hao for a chat, and his assistant, David King. This David was to write to us a couple of years later asking for some help. He wanted to come to Australia for some post graduate studies, which we were able to organise for him. It was lovely to welcome him and his wife and son into our home, after we had retired.

I wanted to know what Mr. Cai thought about the rapid growth of the christian church in China: "We are amazed ourselves," he said. "It is God's Spirit working among us. Members are taking their faith very seriously. They are pious in the good sense, and lay workers are taking an important part in evangelism. We run about one hundred courses per annum for lay leaders in this province. We do not have big rallies as in other countries. We believe this is contrary to the gospel. We don't believe in triumphalism. Witnessing is done on a personal level to friends, neighbours and at the work place, and they are not only invited to our church services, but actually taken. In our province there is no discrimination against Christians whatsoever by the state."

As we had missed the morning service, we attended the evening service with a large congregation of about 800. A woman minister was preaching, and some people had brought their own bibles to follow the sermon. The congregation consisted mainly of younger people, with a sprinkling of older ones. They tried to be helpful to us, but since we don't read or speak Chinese, there was not much point. Only one hymn we recognised as one from our own hymn book.

For sightseeing it must have been the wrong season. It was raining and at times quite foggy. But we still got the impression of a most beautiful city, with a lovely lake and parks and the usual pagodas and temples. One temple was nestled into a fairly high mountain, which we started to climb, but soon gave up because of the rain and it became too steep.

We continued our journey in 'soft class' again to Shanghai. It was rather amusing, we thought, how in this classless society one got around the problem of having 'first' and 'second' class train compartments. Shanghai is China's largest industrial and commercial city. Rev. Shen Yi-fen had booked us into the YMCA, and then took us to his Community church. The building could seat approximately 700 on the ground floor, 300 on the first floor, and 250 on the second floor, both with closed TV circuit. Mr. Shen is now the general secretary of the China Christian Council, where he had worked when we visited.

There were six ministers serving at that church. The Rev. Mrs. Pong conducted a bible reading class, a form of outreach. It was pointed out to us that the church considered the most important job to be that of the ushers. As open evangelism was not allowed, the ushers were the first

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