The Community and Creativity of the Persecuted Church

Dannah Gresh: Are you afraid persecution will overtake the Church? Karen Ellis says . . .

Dr. Karen Ellis: We don't need to fear any earthly empire. It can never hate us more than we can love its people.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Facing Our Fears, for September 12, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Do you ever wonder how you would respond to intense religious persecution? I mean, we hear about horrific situations Christians are facing in other parts of the world, and it’s easy to think, Wow, could I endure that kind of difficulty?

Well, my friend Karen Ellis works as an advocate for the global persecuted church, and she says there’s so much we can learn from our brothers and sisters around the world. They’re already facing serious persecution—but they’re flourishing in spite of it. Today, we’re hearing part 2 of a session Karen led at True Woman '22. It’s called “Persecution, Perseverance, and the Key to Sustaining Faith.” 

On yesterday’s program (which, if you missed it, you’ll find it on the Revive Our Hearts app), Karen helped us answer the question, “Who are the people of God?” Here’s Dr. Karen Ellis.

Karen: Here’s the second question, “What’s our responsibility to each other?”

I already talked about how the Church is now feeding us. The global Church is now feeding us. “How I Got Over.” It’s an old song. “How I Got Over.” They’re telling us how they’re getting over. How are they making disciples in the Middle East in one of the fastest disciple-making movements in the world? And they’re not fast and shallow. These are fast, deep disciples who are willing to be made leaders within three years and go to prison for it.

Seventy-five percent of the world’s Christians are living under some form of anti-Christian hostility. If you add the number of those living under hostility to the number of us living in the freer world, the 25 percent, for a total of 100 percent—that’s the Church. How many churches are there in the world? I need an exact number. I know I’ve got a good missiologist in here who can give me the exact number of how many churches there are existing in the world today. ONE! There’s one Church. Can we talk?

If we’re going to get through this next season . . . This is not your daddy’s Christianity in America. We must reclaim our understanding of our oneness in Christ in this country and around the world, across denominations.

We must reclaim our understanding of our oneness because our oneness creates a responsibility to the people of our household. “As we have opportunity,” Galatians 6:10, “let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

I have to care about the local communities across town from me. As long as they’re being biblical and following the Jesus of the Bible, this is family business.

I have to care if their church has been torched. There’s been a lot of churches burned in the last ten years. You’d be surprised in America. Go Google it.

For the genuine Christian, the most significant number in approaching persecution is one. We give you a lot of statistics talking about persecution. One isn’t just a number for us. It’s a state of being.

We are one because Christ has determined that we should be one. Our union with Christ’s literal body puts us in relationship with each other that is intimate. It’s Christ-centered. It’s physical. Why do you think they chose the language “body”? “This is My body broken for you.” The Body of Christ, our union with Christ—no other earthly relationship, no other family relationship, is bound up in our union with Christ.

So the language Paul uses throughout Romans, his whole body languages that he uses, that’s intentional. “Once we existed dead in the body of Adam, now we’re alive in the body of Christ.” One new man.

There’s simply no comparison to any other earthly alliances. The language “household of faith,” that’s family language, the language of a people who dwell literally together in one flesh—the Body of Christ.

We should be able to feel the rest of the body when it rejoices, when it hurts. We should be able to feel each other. If someone came into your home and assaulted three out of the four—that’s 75 percent, right?—three out of the four people in your family, or harassed them or made life difficult for them or stole their economic opportunities or controlled their marriage decisions or caused debilitating mental health issues or limited where they could go or what they could say or dictated when and how and where they could worship or slaughtered them or killed those three in the house and then burnt the house down and made you watch in horror, and you were the only one left to tell the story, would you stay silent?

Politically progressive Christians tend to be dismissive of the plight of marginalized Christians. While, on the other hand, politically conservative Christians tend to kind of romanticize Christian suffering. Both of those approaches miss the mark. We need to be able to feel the Body again and wake up from our spiritual analgesia.

There’s a condition that I often reference, it’s called congenital analgesia. It’s a for-real condition. There’s a community in Europe that actually has a gene that’s passed on. They can’t feel pain. So, literally, all of life becomes a hazard. Like, you could break a bone, and you won’t feel it. You could bleed out, and you won’t know that you’re bleeding.

We have to move from having spiritual analgesia to the rest of the Body, to wake up and feel those synapses connect. I don’t just mean the global Church. I mean our local churches.

Here’s the good news: I mentioned earlier that the Church is once again beginning to talk to herself across linguistic and geographic lines. They are now speaking to us about their sustaining faith in their own words.

I want you to watch out for a book that’s coming out from The Center for House Church Theology. These guys have been publishing the works and the sermons and the letters of the Chinese House Church. They’ve been translating them into English. They’re on their third book. The one that’s coming up this November is Pastor Wong’s sermons that he wrote before he was sentenced to ten years hard labor in China. So keep an eye out for that. It’s called, Faithful Disobedience, which I love. I love that title.

These kinds of writings are not only new to this era of Church history, they keep us grounded in the realities and the endurance methods of the persevering Church. They keep us connected to other members of our Body.

Okay. Last question, “How can we develop not just the faith to endure, but the skills of endurance?”

There is only one way to develop the faith that it takes to endure anti-Christian hostility, whether it’s insults or all the way to physical pain and outright persecution. There’s only one way to develop that kind of faith. Look at the faithful One. There it is. That’s the method. Look at the One who is faithful. Do not take your eyes off of Him. And encourage each other to keep your eyes fixed on the hope of Jesus Christ.

We learn persevering faith by looking at the faithful One who went to the cross, obedient to the Father, who has His eyes on us, yes, but also on His plan for us, who set His face like flint toward the hope of His own resurrection.

Christ is the faith. He is the sustainer. He is the keeper. He is the hope. 

• We learn so much from Christ about hope over despair.
• We learn about the difference between justice and revenge.
• We learn about the many dimensions of forgiveness.
• We learn about caring for the souls of our enemies, the person who’s beating and hurting you. That’s other cultural. That’s other worldly.
• We learn most about balancing the temporal with the eternal.

These are a few things I’ve found among the persevering saints around the world who are literally living the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus Christ. Our family living under hostility are some of the most resilient, wise, and creative practitioners of the gospel you will find on earth.

We can go beyond studying their survival skills because the methods change according to region and culture and the history of the people. Some people have more freedom to do different things than others. Some people have deep concerns.

But it’s not just their methods that are important. It’s their head space. It’s their priorities that we need to consider. They help us rediscover how to read our Bibles. I hesitate to call it a persecution hermeneutic because I’m not really sure about putting a lens on the Bible like that, but it is the context in which the New Testament was written. Even the Old Testament has hostility against the people of God because they’re the people of Yahweh. Maybe we can call it an exilic hermeneutic . . . I don’t know.

What hostile conditions drive the choices that you will make? What were the priorities of the apostles and the earliest followers of Jesus? This is so relevant for us. In this country, what does it mean for us to represent a completely different culture living inside of a superpower in the world?

That’s what happened to Daniel. Nehemiah, too. What are the deeper meanings and practices we can learn about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection? The Bible has answers to these things if we see them through a different lens than the lens of comfort.

At the Edmiston Center, we believe the time is right to rediscover perseverance as a Christian virtue. That’s where the power is, in the overcoming power of Christ, to bring life from death, to bring beauty from ashes, peace from despair. I’m constantly surprised by this covenant-keeping God who specializes in making something out of nothing and has promised to keep a people for Himself.

In these last few minutes we have together, I want to share with you three principles. I’m a good Presbyterian, always in threes. Three points and a gripping illustration.

Okay. Three questions. Now, three principles of perseverance from the field that may be useful to us in this uncertain season for Christianity in America.

First principle: Build that persevering faith. 

Persecution is determined by a lot of factors, including culture, legislation, the history of the people in the region, the politics. Hostility, no matter which manifestation it takes, historically causes the faithful to build a persevering faith.

What do I mean by persevering faith? Persevering faith is different from saving faith, but one leads to the other. God gives us saving faith that leads us from darkness to light. But He also gives us this operational faith. This is persevering faith. This is the faith that leads to courage, and it, too, is a grace of God just like saving faith.

Christ gives His disciples a window into persevering faith. He says, “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested. And for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:9–11 paraphrased).

Persevering faith is not something you realize you’ve been granted until you are standing in the place when you need it.

The world of anti-Christian hostility is a place of ever-changing rules. Oftentimes you cannot plan or predict how you will respond. Sometimes you cannot strategize it. Sometimes you cannot anticipate what the volatile religion of Cain will do. Life comes at you fast.

Sometimes, to show the imago Christi to a hostile culture, we have to speak or act the truth as a part of prophetic confrontation. Sometimes this is the truth unto discomfort. Sometimes it is truth unto death. This is when you need persevering faith.

Second principle: Build persevering communities.

Hostility causes the necessity for persevering communities. Christian community expands our concept of family beyond what we can see with our eyes or even with the biologist’s microscope.

I speak from experience when I say I have not had biological children of my own, but to be regarded as “mother,” when one technically and biologically is not, is exquisite. And it’s humbling. In fact, it brings me unspeakable joy.

So in persevering communities, the celebate single or the infertile man or woman can suddenly become parents. The only child can become sister or brother to many. This is redemption of a broken world. Even barren places birth great fulfillment.

Christ Himself didn’t come to Israel at a time of great kings or after a great victory in battle. He was born into Israel when there was no fruit on the fig tree—true of the words of Isaiah—after a lengthy silence from God, like a root out of dry ground. This is the economy of God.

Even in creating our persevering communities, our family, Christ is creating ex nihilo—He’s creating out of nothing. That’s His specialty. How did all this stuff get here? Out of nothing!

So when we think about communities like this, Christ's injunction from John 15 to “love one another” becomes enormous. Galatians says, “Do good to all, especially those in the household of faith.” Why? When we read the passages, we see that Christians were not getting much love outside of the household of faith. Lost employment. Beatings. Unjust arrests. No housing. Displaced families. Family rejections. They needed love and support from the inside. This underscores the value of persevering community under hostility.

Third principle: Develop persevering creativity.

What is the persecuted Church doing when horrible acts aren’t being perpetrated against her? She’s planting churches. She’s reflecting the kingdom. She’s doing it creatively. Cultural hostility tends to infuse communities with new creative energy that rises to meet the challenges of new cultural circumstances.

There was a group of . . . Anybody here from Texas? Anybody here from Dallas? Okay. In Dallas, Texas, South Dallas, there’s a farm called Bonton Farms. Bonton Farms is huge. It’s about seventeen acres now. It started with a group of Christians who realized that their area, their neighborhood, was a food desert. Nobody could work because people were sick.

So they stole a city lot that wasn’t being used—a vacant lot from the City of Dallas. And from that, they developed a farm. There was a big David and Goliath battle between them and the city. And they were, like, “We just want to plant vegetables. Why are you being so mean to us?”

And so the city of Dallas said, “Well, good luck.”

Some people from West Texas trucked in all this great soil for them. And now they are feeding everybody in their community of God. They’ve got bees. They’ve got goats. They’re making milk and cheese. This is all the folks in this dead urban community . . . coming to life. That’s creativity.

You know, exile for Israel in the Bible was a period of intense creativity as it was for the early Church. Creativity in art. Creativity moving in and through your communities, in your jobs, in your families, in your relationships.

Thinking underground, but also creative underground. How does the Bible express life in the place where I live? You start to see the radical transformation of lives that are powerful silent witnesses.

You know who has the best silent witness in the Bible? Lazarus. Lazarus had the best silent witness in the Bible. I’d like to tell the story of Lazarus as we finish up. I like to tell their story as if they had been living in my neighborhood—Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.

So the undertaker comes, and he comes out to Big Martha’s house (In the south, you go to Big Mama’s house, but this is Big Martha’s house.) to get the body so they can funeralize him. (Yes, funeralize is a verb.) So the undertaker comes out to get Lazarus, and Mary and Big Martha are trying to decide if he should wear his black usher suit, or should he wear his green suit from the club that he liked to wear.

So at the funeral Mary and Martha are on the front row with their big church hats, and the ushers with the white gloves are on the front row, and everybody has their popsicle stick fans. And the open mic happens, and people come up and say, “Yeah, I ran track with Lazarus in high school,” and blah, blah, blah. And somebody is going to get up and try and sing and can’t.

This is a black church funeral. Right? Everybody gets in their cars. They put on their hazard lights to drive out to the tomb. And after the repast is over, Big Martha is putting her last serving dish back onto the shelf, and Jesus walks in the door.

And Mary, with all her hurt, turns around at Him and says, “You’re late!”

And Jesus says, “Oh, let Me go and pay my respects.”

And they go on out to the cemetery, and Jesus says, “Lazarus! Come forth!” And Lazarus just, “Deuces, I’m up and out of here! Bye!” (laughter)

And Mary says, “Whoops, He’s an on-time God!”

And the next Sunday, as per usual, because everybody goes to Big Martha’s house, right? As per usual, everybody comes past after the service for chicken and waffles after lunch, and people walk by, and there’s Lazarus sitting in his brown Lazy Boy with his gold toes socks on and his TV tray and watching the game.

And people walk by, and they’re like, “Weren’t you just . . .?” And he’s, like, silent witness. Lazarus didn’t have to say a word. The transformation from death to life spoke for itself.

The radical transformation of lives, and the radical transformation of communities toward flourishing—this is the silent witness of the power of Christ. It’s amazing to me that the least of these are often on the forefront of perseverance overseas—the illiterate, those with low literacy, the poor, the elderly, the infirm, the youngest of the young. They’re planting churches and taking care of war-torn communities.

God loves to surprise our sensibility. But we take that first step, and we get creative, bringing life from death.

Christ has promised that He will build His Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Won't He do it? We’ll learn to be a people of faith, living after the pattern of Christ’s life, His death, His resurrection, and His glory, as that other political, other cultural community, that both indicts and brings hope to the other cultures around us just by virtue of being who we are.

That’s worship.

Ask God to remind us constantly that He keeps those He has called. That’s a word for your wayward children.

It’s not our strength that makes us persevere. It’s His. Our obedience is a byproduct of our faith, not the source of it. God is the source.

We don’t need to fear any earthly empire. It can never hate us more than we can love its people.

And as Vance Havner once said, “Christianity always outlives her pallbearers.”

 

You all see that article that came out that said, “Well, Christianity will be the cultural minority by 2035, 2045 . . . within twenty years.” And I was, like, “That’s okay. So many people have tried to bury the Church.” I’m, like, “I’m just here for the ride, Lord. Help me to be obedient while You’re doing Your work.” Amen?

All right, Sisters. Allow me to pray over us. (singing)

Lord, dear Lord above, God Almighty, Lord of love,
Please look down and see Your people through.
I believe that God is now once and always will be.
With God’s power we will make it through eternity.
Oh Lord, dear Lord above, God of kindness, Lord of love,
Please look down and see Your people through.

Amen. Go with God.

Nancy: That’s the beautiful voice of Dr. Karen Ellis singing a prayer over us. I’m grateful Karen has devoted her life to giving the church a vision for perseverance, especially in times of persecution. Please hear me—this is so important for our day. We live in a world that is increasingly hostile to God and we’ve got to be prepared, we’ve got to be equipped for faithfulness no matter what comes. 

By the way, in just about three weeks Karen will again lead a breakout session at True Woman '25 in Indianapolis. For more information, check out TrueWoman25.com. 

Now, for the global church, life often feels heavy, whether from persecution or just the effects of a fallen world. We hear story after story about how God gives grace to those precious brothers and sisters to endure. Maybe you’re weary today. I want to assure you that God offers the strength and grace you need to keep going. Our team created a booklet for you called Endure: 40 Days of Fortitude. It’s designed to help you walk daily with Jesus, drawing grace for each step, each challenge. Through Scripture and encouragement, you’ll learn to stand firm in Christ.

We’d love to send you a copy as our thanks for your gift of any amount to Revive Our Hearts this month. To donate, you can visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. When you do, be sure to ask for your copy of Endure.

Our theme for the month of September is fortitude—endurance when the Christian life looks like a wilderness, when you’re feeling weary. We’ve had some really helpful, encouraging programs so far. If you’ve missed any of those, you can search for this month's programs in our archives at ReviveOurHearts.com. I hope you’ll browse through and listen for more encouragement to persevere.

Dannah: Thanks, Nancy.

Well, on Monday, we’re beginning a series from Nancy called "Spiritual Strength for an Evil Day." That’s something we all need, isn’t it? You won’t want to miss it. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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