During the Cultural Revolution Christians were forced to meet in homes. These house meetings involved from 20 to 500. Many Christians, while continuing to meet in house groups, have braved exposure and now publicly worship in the reopened churches. Others are wary and some are still waiting for the reopening of churches in their areas. It is impossible to gauge how many Christians there are in China today.
Conservative estimates list one and a half million.
Others put the figure much higher. I will always treasure memories of those congregations with which we worshipped. We visited a church in a commune three quarters of an hour's drive from Shanghai. The building seated 400 and was too small for the numbers. The morning congregation numbered around 600.