The Happiness Group and the Baptism Competition: How a Gospel-Spreading Program Led to Failure

Abstract

This article presents a case study that examines why a seemingly effective evangelistic strategy failed within the Sien Church in Wenzhou, China. By tracing the implementation of the religious ministry, it argues that the patriarchal leadership style, goal-oriented strategy, and emphasis on public impression management ultimately undermined the church’s original mission. The pursuit of efficiency and an obsession with numbers created new pressures and anxieties among various teams, transforming the Sien Church’s evangelistic plan into a target-driven competition focused on “baptism numbers” and “conversion rates”. Furthermore, fundamentalist teachings, intertwined with the church’s disciplinary structures, collectively fueled this baptism competition. Finally, the article situates the failure of the gospel project within a broader cultural context and local community.

1. Introduction

For years, institutional religion in China has been a prominent political issue in the international community. Western scholars and policymakers focused on religious freedom in China tend to over-politicize the development of Chinese Christianity (Bays 2009). Within this political narrative framework, the “state” is often portrayed as a dominant political force (Sun 2017), while the growing Christian population under an atheistic regime is framed through a doubling up of the revival and political narratives (Ma 2021a, p. 109). The historical memory of repression suffered by Christians in mainland China has been a convenient narrative and enduring stereotype to overexploit (Ma 2021a, pp. 153–69).

However, there is an apparent gap between commonly held views on contemporary Chinese Christianity and the complexities of everyday life (Wielander 2013, p. 12). When political narratives become a more convenient way of storytelling, they often overlook the dynamic power relationships between church leadership and congregations within the local communities1. In recent years, more academics have sought to go beyond the usual domination/resistance perspective to understand the dynamic interplay between local Christian practices and the state (Vala 2017; Zhu and Chen 2023). Ma’s research (Ma 2019, 2021b) highlights how the faith confessions of Chinese urban churches have been entangled in highly politicized narratives of international relations and global media. Unregistered church leaders, who are good at telling stories about piety under the communist regime, have accumulated enormous reputational capital in the USA2. However, within their churches, they have created a relentless and oppressive leadership culture alongside a highly centralized management structure. Similarly, Zhu (2011, pp. 205–11) demonstrates that the existence of underground churches is not simply a consequence of political regulation. Instead, these church leaders “consume” national symbols as a means of constructing their identity, validating the purity of their faith, and strengthening their leadership positions. Therefore, emphasis on the relationship between the state and the church has served to displace consideration of the internal political conflicts and power dynamics within the church itself. As Wielander (2013, p. 16) observed, the reasons why people worship in one type of church or another are often practical rather than theological, let alone political, although the emergence of the phenomenon of “house churches” is usually linked to political developments. For the majority of ordinary believers, terms such as “church-state relations” don’t feature in their discourse, and religious policy is not their primary concern. Instead, believers who are committed to their faith tend to focus more on spiritual salvation and the present grace and tangible blessings they receive from God (Shi 2012).

These studies demonstrate that, when we shift our focus from the spotlight to the everyday contexts of Chinese Christianity, we often find that its complexity and creativity cannot be fully captured within the singular institutional framework of church–state relations (Cao 2017, p. xiii). In comparison to the relationship between atheist regimes and theistic religious groups, the astonishing growth of churches, and the actions of religious leaders, the everyday religious practices and lives of local believer communities often seem too ordinary, diffuse, and trivial to be taken seriously.

Since the 1980s, Christianity has witnessed a conspicuous revival in China (Lee and Huang 2023; Cao 2007, p. 46). Similarly, the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang has experienced a surge in missionary enthusiasm and church-building fervor. The Christian community in Wenzhou often takes pride in the resurgence and distinctiveness of its local form of Christianity: Wenzhou is called “China’s Jerusalem” (Cao 2010) due to its high proportion of Christians (approximately 15%), the “City of Churches” for its abundance of places of worship, and the “Wenzhou model” for its innovative approach to church development and potential growth (Zhang 2022). These religious projects have contributed to the “religious fervor” and have shaped an impressive public impression. Scholarly attention is often directed to the number of Christians, the abundance of luxurious churches, and the ambitious expansion plans of the ministries in Wenzhou (Zhong 2016). However, little attention was given to the potential problems behind these religious projects, or the moments of subversion within local Christianity.

In contrast to the dominant narratives of regulation and development within Chinese Christianity (Kindopp 2004; Bays 2003; Hunter and Chan 1993), this article examines a “failed” gospel outreach program at the Sien Church in Wenzhou. Furthermore, the following questions are further addressed: What factors contributed to the failure of a gospel strategy that had been regarded as remarkably successful? What kind of practices did local believers adopt during this process? Additionally, how did the Sien Church respond to the subversive moment within its religious project?

This article explores the church’s dominance and the manifestation of Christianity by capturing moments of failure and subversion within the religious project, challenging the mainstream narratives of success in existing research. In contrast to the scholarly focus on state control and religious policy, this study examines local Christian practices within various disciplinary structures and local cultural traditions, focusing on forms of Christianity that extend beyond political agendas and institutional frameworks (Stark and Wang 2015; Madsen 2017; Yuan 2021). Unlike studies that center on the views of religious leaders and elites (Chen and Huang 2004; Madsen 2011), this research takes the viewpoint of marginalized Christians3 to uncover the diversity, hierarchy, and complexity within Christian communities. Marginalized Christians are often overlooked in two ways. Firstly, scholars who focus on church–state relations tend to neglect the internal power dynamics and relational complexities within Christian communities. Secondly, studies from a marginalized perspective rarely engage with religious fields. Therefore, the focus on marginalized believers helps to reveal the power relations and patterns of dominance that are obscured by the revival narratives and political discourses. At the same time, it provides insights into the faith doctrines that diffuse through religious settings through the lived experiences of the weak, offering a grassroots perspective for understanding the landscape of Chinese Christianity.

I argue that fundamentalist teachings and the power structures of the church are intertwined, together contributing to the failure of the gospel project. On the one hand, fundamentalist teachings offer dualistic moral judgments, a dichotomous framework that more easily simplifies faith into an antagonism between good and evil forces: God or the devil, obedient or disobedient, sacred or corrupt. When the charismatic leadership of religious elites is equated with the members of the church and its local influence, the reality is framed as a “spiritual battle” between Christendom and secularism, simplifying everything to the need for the expansion of the divine kingdom and the salvation of souls. On the other hand, moral judgments based on the distinction between good and evil, and the subjective processes of religious culture (Zheng 2017) are embedded within the organizational and power structures of the church. The dominant role in power relations and the black-and-white moral discourse are mutually reinforcing, linking secular visions with the divine kingdom. During the implementation of the Happiness Group project, the personal vision of the church leader is transformed into the collective blueprint of the church through a patriarchal, centralized management model. In this model, progressively increasing achievement targets are embedded within the hierarchical structure. The top-down mobilization approach gradually evolved into an opportunistic competition between groups focused on baptisms, which fostered a lack of honest feedback.

Throughout this process, the pursuit of numerical growth, effective mobilization, and dualist moralism reinforced one another, driving the church’s rapid expansion. Here, “failure” does not simply refer to the outcome of a religious ministry project. More importantly, it refers to the underlying ministry mindset, power structures, and the form of local Christianity in everyday life. More importantly, the discussion about the failed religious ministry inevitably involves a broader context, including local concepts, social networks, and traditional moral orders. Key local elements—such as the pursuit of quick success, the emphasis on the Face, Confucian patriarchal authority4, and the relationships within the society of acquaintances—are further emphasized.

The data for this article come from the fieldwork conducted in Wenzhou, China, from 2021 to 2023. During this time, I moved primarily between five different churches, including three large churches with about 2000 members, a medium-sized church with 500–1000 members, and a small church with about 200 members5. These church leaders often claim to belong to evangelical churches, but “evangelical” in this context implies orthodoxy, which is, in itself, a cross-denominational term (Chow 2014, p. 15). More often, I focused on the silent groups of believers in public religious life and rituals, observing the words and actions of lay believers in informal settings, and tracking how certain events were staged within the Christian community.

This article selects the Happiness Group gospel project of the Sien Church as a case study, based primarily on the following considerations: (1) This is a relatively comprehensive religious ministry project, encompassing stages such as shaping the organizational vision, introducing the project, implementing it, evaluating its results, and managing public impression. (2) The Sien Church is an ordinary church in Wenzhou, and its evangelism strategy, organizational structure, and church culture are typical of many other Chinese churches. Through this case study, this article seeks to reveal a church culture and form of local Christianity with broader, universal characteristics. (3) In contrast to the dominant narratives of revival, these “failed” religious narratives are rarely heard in existing research on Chinese Christianity, thus inspiring the writing of this article. The primary method for conducting this fieldwork was through church networks and personal connections. To protect the privacy of the individuals involved, pseudonyms were used throughout the article.

2. Gospel Plan and the Escalating Targets

Since the reform and opening up, the rapid growth of Chinese churches and their congregations significantly stabilized by 2020 (Ma 2021a, p. 139). With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, church buildings were intermittently closed for nearly three years, leading to a significant loss of believers. This phenomenon of “believer attrition” has caused widespread despondency and concern among the churches in Wenzhou6. The pursuit of believer growth and evangelistic efficiency has created new pressures and anxieties, leading to competition—either within or between churches—over the number of new members. Church leaders competed to present the number of newly baptized believers each year as a key indicator of the church’s rapid expansion and faith revival, prioritizing it in the spiritual vision and annual plans of the entire congregation. This quantifiable performance target, along with ambitious projects, has shaped the ministry model of the Sien Church in recent years—the Happiness Group—a gospel strategy centered on the goal of “baptism”.

According to Elder Huang, the leader of the Sien church, the Happiness Group was a gospel strategy he learned during a visit to Singapore. After returning to China, he shared this project and the related materials with the pastors and workers, actively promoting it at the church. In 2019, the Sien Church launched the Happiness Group program, and, by 2022, it marked its fourth year.

The Happiness Group’s official website states that it originated from the Blessed and Blessing Church in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, one of the fastest-growing churches in terms of membership. The website also claims that this evangelical strategy has “changed the entire DNA of the church” and “flourished both domestically and internationally, sparking a new wave of evangelical movements”7. In ten years, the Blessed and Blessing Church’s adoption of the Happiness Group strategy has led to more than 6000 baptisms. According to the website, the number of baptisms at the church began to rise rapidly in 2015, peaking at 1131 new believers in 2019. Even during the three years of the pandemic (2021–2023), the church maintained an annual record of more than 500 new baptisms. Featuring a world map, the website highlights the locations of Happiness Group workshops held around the world. Notably, Wenzhou is marked, indicating that a workshop was held in Wenzhou in January 2020. The website further states that since 2016, the Blessed and Blessing Church has held numerous workshops, with 6187 participating churches and 90,986 attendees. It asserts that “God has continually used the Happiness Group to ignite waves of revival”, promoting the strategy as a major revival for churches globally. Under the careful packaging of the message and internet technology, the Happiness Group has become a symbol of rapid success in Christian ministry, inspiring church leaders in Wenzhou with impressive baptism numbers, efficient evangelistic strategies, clear implementation steps, and an ambitious vision.

The Sien Church, as my field site, is an ordinary large church in Wenzhou. Established in 2003 with an initial investment of over 8 million RMB, the church underwent renovations in 2013 to mark its tenth anniversary, with an additional investment of 1 million RMB. The church covers an area of 2600 square meters, with a total building area of over 6360 square meters, comprising two main structures: a general building and a sanctuary. The general building rises over 50 m, with a cross reaching the sky. It serves as the residence for full-time preachers, housing for the resident workers, and a venue for weekday meetings. The sanctuary, built with modern technology, features a main hall with over 2500 seats. The first floor of the sanctuary includes a parking lot, the second floor houses a dining hall that can accommodate more than 1000 people, and the fourth floor has a rehearsal room. The sanctuary has central air conditioning, and the church is fully equipped with facilities. According to the Sien church’s 2016 report, there were approximately 2100 registered households with nearly 7000 believers. During my fieldwork, the actual attendance at the weekly Sunday services was about 1000 people.

As a large church, the Sien Church organized the Happiness Group project through smaller “congregational units”. First, the church divided its members into five units based on age: “Post-90s”, Post-00s”, “Post-70s”, “Post-60s” and “Post-50s”; each unit was led by a full-time preacher8. Second, each unit was further divided into several happiness groups, which were managed by fellow believers. The cost of running each group ranged from 10,000 to 15,000 RMB per time (Figure 1).

The Happiness Group program at the Sien Church consists of eight weekly sessions. This means that the church aims to use these eight gatherings to “convert”(转化) an unbeliever into a baptized Christian within two months. A Happiness Group event includes 6–7 segments, which are as follows: preparation of the venue and theme before the activity, icebreaker games (10 min), worship (5–10 min), prayer (20 min), the sermon (25 min), sharing and testimony (15 min), and a post-event review with additional flexible time. The entire process typically takes 2–3 h, while the organizers typically spend even more time on coordination. In the eighth week, the church will invite newcomers to fill out a “Baptism Form” and participate in the baptism ceremony after the Happiness Group concludes. Newcomers invited to join the Happiness Group are called “Best”, meaning the most cherished.

If a “Best” decides to be baptized and accept Christ through the Happiness Group program, it marks a “successful conversion” (成功转化). Afterward, the new believer is required to “settle into” (落户) the “nurturing class” (养育班), which is a “new life” gospel course designed for new members. Finally, they are expected to join the “cell group” (细胞小组) and engage in regular church activities9. The Happiness Group program operates like an efficient production line, with each stage preparing the believer for the next and guiding them toward further training (Figure 2).

Among these, the “conversion” step is the most critical and attention-grabbing aspect of the Happiness Group program. The “conversion rate” (受洗率)—calculated as the ratio of baptisms to invited participants—was introduced by the church leader as a key indicator for measuring and evaluating the performance and enthusiasm of the preachers and fellow believers in the various congregational units and groups. A high conversion rate indicates more baptisms within each unit and thus a more successful strategy. It is not only a key threshold for a non-believer to become a Christian but also determines whether the follow-up training process can proceed. Therefore, the “conversion rate” directly reflects the effectiveness of the church’s evangelistic efforts. In order to maximize the number of baptisms and expand the congregation, the church launched an evangelistic project aimed at increasing the conversion rate of non-believers. This also sparked a competition between different congregational units and groups, each striving to achieve the highest “number of baptisms” and “conversion rate”.

In the competition, progressively higher targets are integrated into the hierarchical organizational structure, with each level reinforcing the next. Full-time preachers usually set a minimum recruitment target for their unit members, while fellow workers are expected to leverage their networks to identify and recruit unbaptized family members and friends. For example, Preacher Zheng, leader of the “Post-60s” congregational unit, set a minimum target for each group member to invite at least 20 “Bests”: “What did I ask of them? I told them, our goal for each group is 20 people—20 as the baseline, with no upper limit”. Meanwhile, the “Post-90s” unit described their expansion model with the principle “whoever recruits, whoever nurtures” (谁生谁养). The unit leader noted: “The worker who invites someone is responsible for guiding them during the Happiness Group program, and after baptism, that person becomes their disciple… One generation of disciples mentors the next… This one-on-one discipleship approach ensures an almost 100% settlement rate”. At the Happiness Group evaluation meeting, the “Post-60s” congregational unit reported recruiting 351 non-believers, with 279 baptized, while female believers, with a 98% baptism rate, received public praise and applause. The “Post-50s” unit achieved a 93% baptism rate, while the “Post-70s” unit recorded over 170 baptisms. In comparison, the “Post-90s” unit had just over 50 baptisms with a conversion rate of around 80%, and the “Post-80s” unit reported over 40 baptisms and a 60% conversion rate.

Summing up, Elder Huang, the leader of the Sien Church, stood up and confidently addressed the audience:

“Recently, some of our members have been saying that another church (Grace Church) is doing well. Later, I called their leader and verified that in this round, they ran 76 groups and recruited just over 280 Bests, which means each group averaged fewer than four people, ……far fewer than our total of 600+. I don’t want to hear such a statement—why say that? Moving forward, many churches will come to learn from us. I will send our full-time workers (preachers) from Sien Church to help train other churches. It won’t just be one or two churches; many will invite me. This is how the culture of the Sien Church will spread and influence more churches”.10

At the evaluation meeting, the church leader expressed immense pride in the Sien Church’s achievement of recruiting over 600 newcomers through the Happiness Group strategy. This figure significantly exceeded that of other churches employing the same approach, bringing both the Sien Church and its leader significant recognition within the local church network and becoming a central element of their external promotion efforts.

3. Performance Competition and Fundamentalist Teachings

In this evangelical program, the obsession with numbers, efficiency, and impression created new anxiety and subsequently new forms of control and outlooks on reality (Ma 2021a, p. 32). On the one hand, it is reflected in the emphasis church leaders place on the organizational image management. As Elder Huang emphasized in his remarks, church members were expected to act as enthusiastic supporters and advocates of the Sien Church’s cultural identity to promote and expand the ministry’s brand. Here, church members are not only required to avoid negative comments about the church’s ministry but are also tasked with upholding and enhancing its image, reputation, and legitimacy. This has fostered an organizational atmosphere of “church loyalty”, which can easily encourage a lack of honesty within the congregation.

On the other hand, the fixation on numerical targets has led church members to conflate recruitment numbers, divine promises, and personal abilities, fostering competitive pressure and promotional anxiety driven by comparison. As Preacher Zheng shared in his unit: “One group leader, seeing other groups nearing 20 newcomers while hers had only about 10, became so desperate that she cried and fasted in prayer, saying, ‘Lord, I need 20 ‘Bests’. Please, Lord, give me ‘Bests’”. Similarly, Brother Wu, a group leader within the post-70s unit, described his efforts to persuade “uncooperative” newcomers through frequent phone calls: “In earlier years, the ‘Bests’ were more cooperative, but this time, they’re seasoned and difficult to handle (老油条). At least half of them needed about ten calls before they agreed to show up. Right now, I still have about ten who refuse to join”. At the same time, Sister Chou said, “At the beginning of our Post-70s unit, only one group had about 20 people, while the other two had no one at all. During that time, I made countless phone calls and was even scolded by some people on the phone”. In this project, many group leaders, driven by the goal of “finding a few people no matter what”, eventually “saw God’s presence” and managed to recruit newcomers. Some admitted to feeling “extremely anxious” about reaching the target numbers set by their congregational unit leaders, and turned to “fasting and prayer” for divine help. “Those who sow with tears shall reap with shouts of joy” is a verse frequently mentioned by believers during the implementation of the Happiness Group program. To some extent, it reflects the sense of urgency of the members—devoting intensive time and effort to quickly and efficiently win a significant number of new believers.

Furthermore, the driving force behind this passionate evangelical outreach program lies in its fundamentalist teachings and evangelistic approach. The obsession with “baptism efficiency” often aligns with conservative theology. On the one hand, conservative theology appeals through its promise of certainty. On the other hand, its sharp simplicity makes it particularly effective for mass communication. In reality, this results in a type of mechanical, reductionist conservative theology, which distorts reality into a two-dimensional, narcissistic battle between good and evil, Christendom and secularism, often proclaimed to be a “spiritual warfare” (Ma 2021a, p. 34). Such dualistic spiritual narratives are constantly reproduced in evangelistic strategies driven by numerical targets.

Fundamentalist doctrines, as a rallying call, are grounded in the great spiritual vision of the church leadership. During the mobilization meeting, the leaders of congregational units emphasized that the Happiness Group was about “raising God’s people for His Kingdom and recruiting soldiers for His cause”. As such, those involved are expected to “give willingly, love wholeheartedly (用心给，甘心爱)” and carry a “deep burden” for the salvation of others’ souls. This indicates that “church expansion” is founded on one deep-seated belief: God has prepared the church to extend Christianity’s influence. As Ma (2021a, p. 40) observed, church growth has become a visible sign of success, with proclaimers arguing that there’s nothing wrong with any form of opportunism as long as it furthers God’s kingdom on earth. More importantly, these binary, black-and-white fundamentalist teachings not only provide scriptural justification for goal-oriented evangelistic strategies but are also continually reproduced within the broader community of ordinary believers.

The pursuit of numerical growth, effective mobilization, and the binary concept of spiritual warfare reinforce one another, as conservative preachers frame everything around the need to expand God’s Kingdom and save souls. For example, Preacher Li, a congregational unit leader, underscored the urgency of salvation while setting a minimum target for fellow believers: “We know that life waits for no one, and life is fragile. We must seize every opportunity to spread the gospel, so the baseline goal for each group is set at 20 people”. For them, in a zero-sum theology, one more convert for Christ and conservatism means one less recruit for the devil and humanism (Flake 1984, p. 52)”.

Therefore, narratives of the “battle between God and Satan” and personal testimonies are common within the Christian community. A member of the Post-70s unit shared how “Satan disrupted the newcomer’s willingness to be baptized” and described the “miraculous work of God’s grace”: “This year, I brought three Bests (newcomers), and when they decided to be baptized, Satan created obstacles. One called me the day before his baptism and said he wouldn’t go through with it. Since I had brought him this far, I couldn’t give up on him. I reached out to talk with him again and shared God’s grace. Another had also decided not to be baptized, so I prayed for him with tears streaming down my face. Miraculously, by noon, he came on his own and was baptized”. The concept of “the devil/Satan”, regarded as the antithesis of God, not only holds a significant place in the everyday language, but also shows flexibility and extensibility in religious practices of believers. It may refer to an abstract, cosmic force of evil, a dark power that causes harm, disobedience, illness, or death (Zhang 2022, p. 79), or at times, even a tangible, identifiable entity. During the recruitment process for the Happiness Group, Brother Xie shared a testimony with a newcomer in his group about “God’s triumph over Satan”:

“This Sister Yang I lead, who is in her seventies, has a very terrible family situation. She has been victimized by the devil. Her feet rotted and her toes were amputated. But the devil is very rampant in her family, and he stirs her up every time. The devil turned into bees and all of them hid in her house, many of them under the wood. The bees came back over and over again then they were beaten away. Her nephew introduced her to Jesus Christ and then we asked the pastor to pray for her. Later, we invited her to join the Happiness Group. In the process of attending these eight times, the devil did everything he could to disrupt her every day, so we prayed earnestly for her. When she finally decided to be baptized in Christ’s name, this dark power was gone, the demon ran away and the bees disappeared. It was one of the greatest graces”.11

In this conversion story framed as a “battle between God and Satan”, Brother Xie attributed Sister Yang’s family misfortunes and physical ailments to the attacks and power of the devil. Determining the root causes of these events based solely on Brother Xie’s narrative and reasoning is challenging. However, the framework of spiritual warfare deeply shapes his religious understanding and recognition. With God’s power always portrayed as triumphing over the devil’s schemes, Sister Yang was persuaded to convert, driven by the hope of relief from illness and physical suffering. Here, Brother Xie and Sister Yang share a common faith pattern—that the superiority of Christianity over other traditional religions lies not in its theological distinctions but in its perceived greater effectiveness in fulfilling the same functions. (Xiao and Li 2015, p. 12) As Brother Xie emphasized, “That place is desolate, under the rule of the devil. Many families there are in great suffering, but God will work to save souls and spread the gospel”. These frequently shared testimonies highlight the significant role that the dualistic narrative of spiritual warfare between God and the devil plays in evangelism and conversion. This good-versus-evil epistemology often provides an uneasy yet efficient path to salvation for those enduring suffering.

The efficiency, however, is often characterized by the reduction and simplification of the gospel message. As Wielander noted, the voices that are most articulate and effective and that have the strongest public influence are indeed very conservative voices (Wielander 2013, p. 159). Fundamentalist teachings provide a narrow and simplified version of the gospel to align with the efficiency demands of promotional strategy, as this “religious product” is perceived to offer greater certainty. The target-driven, efficiency-focused proselytizing approach has fostered a quick-fix mentality toward church ministry, ultimately contributing to the problem itself. To meet the numerical targets set by the church leadership, fellow workers often attract potential believers by “promoting” a simplified and easily accessible religious product. However, this approach has led many to regret their baptisms. As Pastor Li explained, “When they invited people, they said there were no requirements—just believe, and that’s it. Many came for the party atmosphere of the Happiness Group… It’s like those ‘Shouters’. The first time you attend an activity, they ask if you believe. If you say yes, they baptize you immediately, without considering whether you truly understand it or not”.12 The Shouters is regarded as a cult by both the Chinese government and mainstream churches. Here, Pastor Li uses this comparison to highlight his negative comment, arguing that the low recruitment threshold often dilutes the intrinsic quality of the religious message and significantly undermines the level of commitment among believers.

4. Failure and Church’s Impression Management

In fact, the fellow worker responsible for preparing communion at Sien Church noticed that the number of communion receipts distributed (one cup for each person) on Sunday had not increased in line with the growing number of baptized believers. This discrepancy suggests a significant loss of new members. During a private pastoral gathering, the high attrition rate among new believers and the unsustainability of the Happiness Group program emerged as an unavoidable issue that could not be ignored.

“Starting a Happiness Group project feels like a mission (for everyone)—just turn in your results”, remarked Preacher Huang, who was involved in the Sien Church program. Similarly, Pastor Lee, offering a critical perspective, added, “A net is cast, over 600 people are baptized, and the next step is to ‘settle in’ by adding 60 cell groups, but there aren’t any cell groups ready to take in these newcomers—this is an unhealthy model. In his view, this is not an evangelistic outreach strategy but “more like selling insurance”. Preacher Li, responsible for the “Post-90s” congregational unit, attributed the disappointing results to the constraints of the church system: “There’s not much we can do. We can only try our best to compensate for and recover losses within the larger framework of the church. The church leader’s style requires each of us to follow his goals, focus on our own unit’s targets, and report directly only to him”. Operating under the church’s patriarchal authority structure and centralized management, Preacher Li, despite raising concerns, lacked both the authority and the space for dialogue or negotiation.

Failure, in this context, refers to multiple meanings. First, in the case of the Happiness Group project, the actual results differed significantly from the claimed outcomes. In particular, the high attrition rate of new believers and the lack of sustainability of the project stand out, forming the first layer of failure. Second, there is a striking contrast between the “perfect” religious brand image promoted by the Sien Church and the internal strategy of restricting the spread of negative information. From this viewpoint, the limited space for discussion, the unquestioned church culture, and the centralized management structure represents the second layer of failure. As a research perspective, “failure” highlights the underlying problems, the internal tensions, and the form of Christianity behind the “effective” religious project.

To some extent, the failure of the Happiness Group program was almost inevitable.

First, the program was propelled by the combination of the religious leader’s willpower and the hierarchical structure of the church organization. As the church leader, Elder Huang presented an inspiring vision and ambitious ministry blueprint to the congregation. Leveraging the centralized church management system and his great persuasive power, Elder Huang transformed his personal spiritual aspirations into the collective religious vision of the ministry team and the broader church organization. Like the surrounding culture that emphasizes the Face, Wenzhou churches also identified success with size, local visibility, and status. Slogans such as “high impact” and “fast growth” have become powerful rallying cries within the congregation. If the rapid and efficient strategy embodies the carefully crafted brand image of the Happiness Group ministry, then the Sien Church’s adoption of this religious project reflects its alignment with the leadership’s pursuit and vision of more efficient evangelism, a stronger local reputation, and greater influence for the Christian ministry brand. Like other church leaders in Wenzhou, Elder Huang manages the Sien Church with a business-like approach. Many of these religious entrepreneurs believe and proclaim that they are serving God while unaware of mixed motives for realizing personal importance and organizational greatness. On the one hand, the grand religious vision rooted in the leader’s charisma and personal appeal forms the foundation of the Sien Church’s Happiness Group project. This vision imposes new demands for obedience and new standards of service and sacrifice from pastors, fellow workers, and other church members. These efforts are often enacted within emotionally charged relational frameworks and activities (Ma 2021a; Dawson 2007). On the other hand, success-driven pragmatism leverages the Sien Church’s patriarchal organizational structure to facilitate top-down mobilization. These two dynamics are further reinforced by increasing demands for centralization and uniformity to achieve the church’s broader goals.

Furthermore, the obsession with numbers, fixation on efficiency, and reliance on impression management subverted the original purpose of the religious ministry during its implementation. Driven by a strategy focused on numerical targets, the Sien Church’s Happiness Group evangelistic plan gradually evolved into a large-scale “baptism competition”. Quantitative measures such as the “baptism rate” or “settlement rate” were repeatedly emphasized. These straightforward metrics reduced evangelism to a numbers-driven performance competition. At its core, it is conservative theology that maintains the enthusiasm and dynamics behind this competition. Bowler (2019, p. 2) highlights the parallel relationship between conservative theology and religious promotion: “Megaministry was an overwhelmingly conservative Protestant phenomenon. Size was the most dominant feature of this modern ministry”. Conservative theology tends to be well suited for mass communications due to its narrow and simplified gospel messages. Therefore, fundamentalist teachings are more appealing because they offer a more “certain” religious product. This approach has led to a decontextualized, mechanical, and reductionist dualistic faith framework that distorts and simplifies reality into a spiritual discourse rooted in the dichotomy of good and evil (Oblau 2011, p. 349). Proclaimers often invoke the battle between God and Satan, using biblical terms like “Satan’s attacks” and “sin” to persuade non-believers struggling with various life challenges. As observed in the Happiness Group program, the concept of the devil in everyday religious practices is ambiguous and flexible. It could refer to the hesitation and doubt experienced by non-believers contemplating baptism, the evil power that distracts people toward secularism, or the root cause of misfortune and illness. In contrast, God is depicted as a powerful and protective symbol that triumphs over these adversities (Lambert 2006, pp. 110–11). In everyday life, such religious discourses are often decontextualized and framed as causal links between real-life events and spiritual narratives. While these attributions may sometimes seem arbitrary, they are still legitimized through a literal interpretation of the Bible. As Bruce describes it, conservative preachers tend to have an almost magical view of the ability of scripture, reducing everything to the need to preach the gospel and save souls (Bruce 1990, p. 46). We can see that the process of religious moral judgement is also a subjective and spiritual process. In this process, the proclaimers in a dominant position occupy the subjectivity of religious culture, selectively choosing, combining, and arranging biblical terms to illuminate their own situation.

In the Happiness Group program, the gospel message is frequently repackaged to please and attract potential converts. “It’s like hosting parties every day”, said Brother Lin, a participant in the Happiness Group program. The term “party”, a Western term typically refers to leisure gatherings focused on entertainment and socializing. Here, “party” refers to an evangelistic atmosphere that incorporates elements of consumer culture while distancing itself from overt commercialization. Much like shopping malls decorated for festivals to captivate consumers, members of the Happiness Group were asked to create uniquely styled fruit platters for each of the eight sessions. These visually striking displays aimed to stimulate newcomers’ senses and ultimately capture the minds of potential converts. During the evaluation meeting, church leader Elder Huang repeatedly emphasized the crucial role that “beautiful fruit platters” play in the entire evangelistic strategy. He criticized, “Some groups are too careless with their fruit platters. They just slice up some melon and pile it on a plate… But the Post-70s congregational unit, for example, turned their melon into a beautiful decoration in a basket. The newcomers’ feelings are completely different when they see something like that. That’s why I say all eight sessions need unique fruit displays. Every time newcomers arrive, they should experience something different and enjoy the atmosphere. When I was in Singapore, I specifically invited a teacher to learn about fruit presentation. If you, as group leaders or co-leaders, are casual about it, it will be very difficult to carry on with the group afterwards”. At the same time, church members were required to distinguish different guests with unique table markers and name tags. Elder Huang compared the design of the Happiness Group name tags to the setup of a delegate meeting, highlighting the importance of creating “touching moments” in the program. This aligned to the Happiness Group’s focus on “creating emotional resonance” and “accumulating emotional moments” as part of its project design. The innovative fruit platter designs, sensory experiences, and carefully chosen group venues were heavily stressed throughout various stages. Here, these elements work together to create a lively and welcoming atmosphere and are directly tied to how church members were assessed as being “committed and wholehearted” in their efforts. This highlights Sien Church’s meticulous attention to detail in its evangelistic strategy, even if such focus sometimes seems to reverse priorities.

When the charisma of religious leaders intertwines with the church’s size, local visibility, and social status, they tend to devote their enthusiasm to achieving visible success for the church. Both church leaders and their followers share a narrative of “spiritual warfare” framed as a battle between Christianity and secularism (Lian 2010). The pursuit of numerical growth, effective mobilization, and the dualistic concept of spiritual discourses reinforce one another, fueling the church’s ambition for rapid expansion. This ministry mindset is reflected in the church’s internal evangelistic strategy, which is oriented toward measurable success.

The church leader aims to build a prominent Christian ministry brand. However, the emphasis on public impression management paradoxically fosters a lack of honest feedback. As Elder Huang proudly noted, Sien Church’s baptism achievements have attracted the attention of other churches and sparked their interest in imitation. He sought to capitalize on this momentum by shaping it into an influential church culture, a replicable ministry model, and a unique religious brand. Within this ambitious evangelistic plan, the church leader discouraged preachers and fellow believers from spreading negative information about the Happiness Group and actively mobilized the congregation to maintain its positive public image. The standardization of external promotional language demonstrates the emphasis Elder Huang places on impression management and brand promotion. On the one hand, this is reflected in a strong desire to shape public opinion and control evaluations within the congregation. On the other hand, it is manifested in the cultivation and reinforcement of “brand loyalty”, where followers are encouraged to protect and enhance the church’s reputation. Together, these two dynamics lead to a restricted space for discourse within the church, a more uniform evaluation language, and more hidden informal feedback channels. Ultimately, this fosters an unquestioned “church culture” and a ministry promotion team lacking self-reflection.

During a private gathering, two preachers involved in the Happiness Group project admitted that the program’s actual outcomes had fallen short of expectations, pointing out the lack of transparent feedback channels as a significant issue. One preacher said, “As long as (the leader) thinks the numbers are high, it’s always better than having fewer…But the church should stick to the facts. If the church reports inflated numbers… that’s not normal”. Despite recognizing the problems, they felt powerless to address them. Indeed, the combination of the leader’s charisma, an inspiring spiritual vision, and a utilitarian focus on short-term success nurtured a collective sense of spiritual pride. This systematic effort to create a religious brand often “enforces” a perfect public image and inevitably leads to self-deception in external promotion and ultimately harming to the healthy development of religion itself.

5. Conclusions

This article aims to examine why a seemingly effective evangelistic strategy ultimately led to the failure of the Sien Church in Wenzhou, China. While previous research has focused on church–state relations—particularly how Wenzhou churches leverage their significant economic capital to engage with state control and shape external opportunities for development (Zhong 2014; Cao 2010, 2017)—this study shifts the focus to the church’s internal organizational structures and operational dynamics. Tracing the implementation of the Happiness Group evangelistic project within the church, this article argues that the patriarchal leadership style, goal-driven strategies, and public impression management ultimately subvert the church’s original mission. The capture of the “failure” of the religious program not only responds to the dominant narrative of revival in existing studies on Chinese Christianity but also seeks to uncover the disciplinary structures and the church’s dominance that are hidden beneath the political framework.

In this gospel program, the church leader often acts as a religious entrepreneur, creating organizational visions, developing projects, and evaluating the results. In the process of implementation, the spiritual vision and authoritative will of the religious leader are operationalized through a patriarchal leadership style and a hierarchical church structure (Kang 2019). Spiritual slogans and church goals such as “rapid growth”, “brand culture”, and “creating emotional resonance” are prominently emphasized and widely circulated within the evangelistic movement. The pursuit of efficiency, minimum recruitment targets, and quantitative assessments all contribute to a goal-oriented evangelistic strategy.

However, this obsession with measurable success has created new pressures and anxieties, ultimately transforming Sien Church’s evangelistic plan into a target-driven competition among groups for “baptism numbers” and “conversion rates”. Fellow believers are expected to mobilize large numbers of potential baptism candidates within a short period, this numbers-driven strategy often results in shortsighted methods and mindsets. More importantly, it is fundamentalist teachings that drive this competition, with their binary and conservative evangelical messages offering a sense of “certainty” and accessibility due to its simplified and narrow content.

On the one hand, it reduces the complexity of reality into a mechanical, two-dimensional battle between good and evil. By framing these struggles as a “spiritual warfare”, life’s indescribable pains, misfortunes, and sufferings are conveniently attributed to sins, the devil’s malevolence, and the corruption of the world. On the other hand, the simplicity of fundamentalist doctrines makes them more easily integrated into a success-driven, pragmatic evangelistic strategy. Religious symbols are readily detached from their specific contexts and repackaged into a more appealing and popular consumer culture. “Creating emotional resonance” is seen as a technical process rather than a natural outcome of prolonged interaction. It is deliberately crafted through the design of activity workflows and specific segments. Key elements such as scene setting, fruit platter arrangements, and game development are deemed essential. A combination of the leader’s charisma, innovative skills, and number-driven expansion strategy shapes the operational model for the religious ministry. The church’s carefully curated public image, filled with impressive statistics, becomes an unquestionable religious brand through self-promotion. Here, evangelistic results are selectively highlighted, while issues such as the rapid loss of new believers, the narrow and arbitrary interpretation of doctrine, and the centralized organizational structure are either overlooked or deliberately concealed. This lack of honest feedback ultimately leads to the subversion of the Christian ministry project.

In this “failed” process, moral judgments based on the dualist antagonism are also presented as an intellectual, subjective, and spiritual process (Zheng 2017), which allows the dominant to have greater discursive power and the advantage of interpretation. Furthermore, the subjective of religious culture is intertwined with power relations within the Sien church, manifested in its patriarchal centralized management model and hierarchical organizational structure. Similar to the surrounding culture—the emphasis on rapid success, the value placed on the Face, the Confucian patriarchal authority, and the relationships rooted in a society of acquaintances—these local elements are further magnified within the church. Here, the spiritual charisma of the church leader takes on familiar everyday forms, which align not only with the consumerism and commercial culture, but also with the reproduction and dissemination of the traditional moral order. In this sense, localized Chinese Christianity sustains and expands itself by sharing a common emotional structure and conceptual framework with the local community.