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There are already thought to be more Christians in China (100 million) than members of the Communist Party (87 million). In fact, over the next 15 years, China is on course to become the nation with the worlds largest Christian population.

On a humdrum Sunday last summer the kind when most American churches struggle to fill their front pews the Thanksgiving Church in Chengdu baptized 55 people. Among them were senior adults, 20somethings, young children and one person with a physical disability.

Li Xia, a deacon at Thanksgiving Church, recalled her own baptism on Easter Sunday in 2008, saying she was moved her to follow Jesus. Ultimately, being a Christian is a journey of bearing witness to Christ in community, she said.

I could feel Gods love and guidance, Ii Xia said. But the most joyful thing for me is to live in the family of the church, to serve God together with my brothers and sisters, to see more people come before the Lord.

Bill and Michelle Cayard are CBF field personnel working in China. (Photo/CBF)

That family is a partnership between Chinese Christians and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel Bill and Michelle Cayard, who founded Thanksgiving Church a decade ago. With support from the CBF Offering for Global Missions, the Cayards are planting churches, training pastors and lay leaders in Chengdu.

While many parts of China continue to struggle with access to basic resources, Bill Cayard said, the economic growth that the country has experienced over the past 30 years has positioned the church in a unique way, namely as a source of spiritual growth rather than economic development.

Transformation here is about giving people an opportunity for a different hope in their lives, he said.

Economically, todays Chinese citizens enjoy better lives than the generations that have gone before them. Their material lives are improving daily, he said.

That opens the door for spiritual growth.

Our ministry with people in China is about hope beyond material existence, hope beyond dreaming that one day they will own their own home, hope beyond dreaming that one day they will own their own car, he said. Here, the message of Christ is relational and fills a void in peoples lives that they often never knew existed.

For Bill and Michelle Cayard, ministry here began a decade ago when the couple began meeting Chinese pastors and other Christians through a local service organization where they taught English. What began as simple relationships and Bible study blossomed into a full partnership toward planting a church in Chengdu.

Christianity has already grown larger in China than membership in the Communist Party. (Photo/CBF)

Months of prayer and planning for structure and leadership finally culminated in 2007 when the Thanksgiving Church was officially commissioned. Where 30 members once gathered at their shared worship space in Chengdu, 600 now fill the seats on Sunday at Thanksgivings three sites.

For the Cayards, however, growth is not about creating static church-goers. Its about continually equipping new leaders for the church across Chengdu and the entire country.

In addition to being baptized and becoming a deacon, Li Xia also spent two years in the theological training program spearheaded by the Cayards to resource indigenous church leaders. She believes equipping the church with theological knowledge helps it become a better witness to Gods work in China.

Many people are blind. Many people are tied. Many people are not free. Many people are suffering, Li Xia said.

When the Cayards first began partnering with Chinese pastors in Chengdu, they realized there were simply too few of them, Michelle explained. In most parts of China, she said, the church is beginning to outgrow the number of trained pastors available to help lead.

In the Sichuan province of 100 million people, a mere 25 pastors graduate with theological degrees each year. Moreover, aspiring pastors in Chengdu are often forced to leave their homes and families to receive masters level theological education in other cities or countries.

Churches are being planted rapidly all over China, but congregations struggle to find pastors to lead them. (Photo/CBF)

With so many bi-professional pastors and lay leaders in need of theological training, the couple began partnering with CBF and B. H. Carroll Theological Institute to offer seminary classes in Chengdu. With support from churches in the United States, the Cayards have also been able to help local Chinese congregations create their own training programs for pastors and lay leaders for church administration, Vacation Bible School, womens ministry, music ministry and outreach.

The work that Im most passionate about is the equipping of leaders for the church, Michelle Cayard said.

One of those leaders is Wu Yan, who became a pastor in the Bazhong church.

Because she and her fellow pastors help lead more than 40 churches, some in extremely remote areas, Wu Yan often begins her day at 6 a.m. and returns home after 5 p.m.

With a bachelors degree already in-hand, Wu Yan enrolled in the theological training with the Michelle and Bill Cayard and is now working toward a master of divinity degree.

She believes God gives her and her fellow ministers the strength to bear witness to Christ even in places people are reluctant to go.

Why shouldnt Gods love reach those remote villages when he can reach Bazhong? Wu Yan said.

The original version of this story appeared at cbfblog.com.

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Ministers in high demand in China, where Christianity has outpaced Communism - Baptist News Global

Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk

Kim Jong-Nam showed the warm and human face of North Koreas dynastic family.

You had to like the guy, judging from sightings in the gambling enclave of Macau, across the Pearl River estuary from Hong Kong off Chinas southeastern coast. One time he was spotted in a Macao bus. Another time he was seen at a doorway with a funny little smile on his face.

Then, for a while, he dropped out of the news. Speculation was hed been told to keep his mouth shut and stay out of sight after making disparaging comments about his younger half-brother, Respected Leader Kim Jong-Un. He had had the nerve to say he doubted if the kid would last long in power.

You cant imagine any offense much worse than suggesting the man on the throne might be deposed. Perhaps it was a case of sour grapes. Kim Jong-Nam, at 45 a dozen years older than Kim Jong-Un, had been cast aside as a potential heir by their father, Kim Jong-Il, after trying 16 years ago to enter Japan on a fake Dominican Republic passport. Apparently, the Dear Leader didnt care for the excuse that his oldest son, born of an actress who died in Moscow, had yearned to visit Disneyland Tokyo with his kid.

From then on, Jong-Un, not Jong-Nam, was destined as Kim Jong-Ils successor, and hes been ruling with an iron fist since taking over after his fathers death more than five years ago.

Not content with knocking off his uncle-in-law, Jang Song-Thaek, married to his fathers younger sister, Kim Jong-Un methodically ordered the executions of all those connected with Jang plus many of their family members. That word comes from an authoritative source, Kang Chol-Hwan, who recounts his own tale of imprisonment and escape from North Korea in his classic, The Aquariums of Pyongyang.

Perhaps Kim Jong-Nam was lucky to have lived as long as he did. He survived an assassination attempt seven years ago a staged car accident similar to any number in which North Korean have been killed in accidents after falling out of favor.

Now it seems Kim Jong-Nam has met his fate, the victim of chemicals smeared on his face, presumably at the behest of North Korean agents, by at least one woman identified as Vietnamese at Kuala Lumpur International Airport outside the Malaysian capital. Seems the chubby fellow, cut off from funding by his chubbier half-brother, had been moving now and again around the region, partly for fun, partly to evade agents who were out to get him.

The demise of Kim Jong-Nam is another of many innumerable tragedies that have befallen those on the wrong side of power in Pyongyang. What could be sadder than that of the hundreds of thousands consigned over the decades to the countrys vast prison camps?

And what about the hundreds of South Koreans whove been captured or kidnapped or otherwise fallen into the clutches of the regime? Considering the ferocity of Kim Jong-Uns rule, we may be pretty sure hes not going to show the quality of mercy by freeing any of these poor souls, mostly fishermen whose boats had strayed into North Korean waters.

One who seems destined never to get out is Hwang Won, a TV producer who was on a Korean Air plane hijacked over South Korea in December 1969 and forced to land near the North Korean east coast port of Wonsan. His son, Hwang In-Cheol, who was two at the time, has no idea why his father was among 11, including the pilot and co-pilot, whom North Korea refused to send home after freeing 39 passengers on Valentines Day, Feb. 14, 1970.

At the gates of the unification ministry in central Seoul on the latest Valentines Day anniversary, Hwang read an impassioned statement protesting the reluctance of Korean officials to press for his fathers release. They politely sympathize, then tell him theres nothing they can do and advise him to cool it. You wonder whats in it for North Korean rulers to display such cruelty. Was it totally coincidental that Kim Jong-Un ordered the firing of an advanced model of a mid-range missile the day of his brothers murder?

Kidnapping South Koreans to the North and killing foes of the regime such individual tragedies show the harsh insecurity of a regime that survives on chest-beating rhetoric while squandering resources on nukes and missiles.

Donald Kirk has been covering war and peace in Asia for decades. Hes at kirkdon4343@gmail.com

Brotherly love lost: More trouble in communisms first and last dynasty, WorldTribune.com

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Brotherly love lost: More trouble in communism's first and last dynasty - World Tribune

The political ideologies and opinions of a ten-year-old aren't often taken as seriously as they should be, but a YouTube user, alias "Sceneable," is one that you should listen to.

Sceneable's YouTube "About" section reveals that he once had lofty goals:

We're way past that now. Dylan's account has over 3,000 subscribers and is growing. The above video, titled "I'm Communist," has been making the viral rounds on Facebook after being shared by Jacobin. He gives a "very good disclaimer," that he does not support Josef Stalin or Mikhail Gorbachev (I won't even try to spell his adorable mispronunciation), but he does support communism and "the idea of a nation sharing the wealth."

Sceneable is BLOWING UP on "Socialist Twitter" and Reddit already. It's only a matter of time before the whole world sees the video.

Note the way he keeps looking over his shoulder, like he's worried a drone is about to come take him down for his political leanings. Good little commie!

In all likelihood, there will be some dank "Sceneable memes" coming soon, but let's not forget that this kid is woke and will probably be leading a proletarian revolution when he's in college.

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Meet Sceneable: the communist kid who will lead a revolution - Popdust

Jules et Jim of the revolutionary left? ... The Young Karl Marx Photograph: PR

Raoul Peck is the Haitian film-maker who has an Oscar nomination this year with his James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Now he comes to Berlin with this sinewy and intensely focused, uncompromisingly cerebral period drama, co-written with Pascal Bonitzer, about the birth of communism in the mid-19th century. It gives you a real sense of what radical politics was about: talk. There is talk, talk and more talk. It should be dull, but it isnt. Somehow the spectacle of fiercely angry people talking about ideas becomes absorbing and even gripping.

Despite the title, it is not exactly about the young Karl Marx, more about Marxs bromance with the young Friedrich Engels. Given the potent presence of his wife Jenny, they for a microsecond almost threaten to become the Jules et Jim of the Revolutionary left. Peck saves up his biggest joke, or coup de cinma, for the very end. After an austere movie featuring men in top hats and mutton chop whiskers, the closing credits explode in a boisterous and even euphoric montage of political events in the 20th century Che, the Berlin Wall, Ronnie and Maggie, Nelson Mandela, the Occupy movement to the accompaniment of Bob Dylan. No Stalin or Lenin or gulags or Erich Honecker in the montage, though.

Marx is played by August Diehl: ragged, fierce with indignation and poverty, addicted to cheap cigars, spoiling for an argument and a fight. Engels, played by Stefan Konarske, is the rich kid whose father is a mill owner, with a dandy-ish manner of dress and a romantic mien, like a young Werther who isnt sorrowful but excited about the forthcoming victory for the working class.

They meet cute. Marx glowers on being introduced; he remembers the young Friedrich from an earlier encounter, strutting and entitled, for all the world as if he had invented the class struggle. The chippy young bruiser clashes with the arrogant puppy. But the ice breaks: Engels admires the clarity of Marxs material thinking; Marx is a massive fan of Engelss groundbreaking study of the English working class. Together, they inhale the new thinking in the air, ideas for which Pierre Proudhon (seductively played by Olivier Gourmet) is partly responsible. Expelled by the French, Marx flees to London with Engels where they are invited to join the socialist fraternity League of the Just, and lend intellectual and methodological rigour to their evangelical movement. But the break with Proudhon emboldens them both, and in slightly entryist style, Engels finally declares to its stunned annual congress that the League of the Just is to be reconstituted as the Communist League.

This is a film which sticks to a credo that people arguing about theories and concepts while also periodically angrily rejecting the notion of mere abstraction is highly interesting. And Peck and Bonitzer pull off the considerable trick of making it interesting: aided by very good performances from Diehl and Konarske, although a real flaw is the films relative lack of interest in their partners: Jenny, played by Vicky Krieps, and millworker Mary Burns (Hannah Steele) with whom Engels is in love: it is a rather perfunctory relationship.

There is a tense moment when Marx and Engels chance across a wealthy mill owner who is a friend of Engelss plutocratic father: Marx coldly challenges him with his practice of exploiting child labour and says that the market force that demands this is not a law of nature, but a matter of manmade relations of production. The man replies sneeringly that this phrase sounds like Hebrew to him.

The action of the movie proceeds at a steady, intense rate: a pressure-cooker tempo, which despite the periodic shouting and yelling, does not vary much. But you can see Marx visibly ageing from his mid-20s to the brink of 30, exhausted by the birth of communism and the composition of his Communist Manifesto. It shouldnt work, but it does, due to the intelligence of the acting and the stamina and concentration of the writing and directing.

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The Young Karl Marx review intelligent communist bromance ... - The Guardian

The Left's Persecution of Real Refugees from Islam and Communism Breaking Israel News Amnesty International, which beats the Muslim refugee drum louder than anyone else, joined in the effort to cover up Communist genocide in Cambodia. Allegations made by refugees must be examined with care in view of their possible partiality, the ...

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The Left's Persecution of Real Refugees from Islam and Communism - Breaking Israel News