Seven Million Yuan, 60,000 Members, Then Dynamite: China Demolishes the Golden Lampstand Church

• Chinese authorities demolished the Golden Lampstand Church in Linfen with dynamite and bulldozers
• The church cost 7 million yuan to build
• It served about 60,000 Protestant faithful as an unregistered house church
• Police had seized the building two days earlier

Chinese authorities demolished the Golden Lampstand Church in Linfen, Shanxi province, on January 9, 2018, using dynamite and bulldozers, AsiaNews reported on January 12, 2018.

The church had been under construction since 2009 at a cost of 7 million yuan (about 911,000 euros). It served about 60,000 faithful of an unregistered Protestant “house church” community. Police seized the building on January 7, two days before the demolition. Church members, including the pastor and his wife, had been arrested and sentenced in 2009.

According to the report, the faithful cried as they watched the destruction from a distance. AsiaNews noted that in Zhejiang province between 2013 and 2015 more than 1,000 churches were destroyed, including some with proper permits, and that both official and unofficial churches have faced demolition.

A building that took years and millions of yuan to complete was gone in a day.

The Linfen demolition is an extreme case, but it shows how much a congregation risks when it builds without secure legal standing. In Jamaica, the risks are more ordinary: building without planning approval, on land without clear title or in breach of zoning rules. A church should secure title and approvals before committing members’ money to a large building.