Jesus Family was an indigenous church founded by Jing Dianying (敬奠瀛; 1890–1957) in 1921 in Mazhung, Shandong province, China. He received traditional Confucian education from his father, then embraced Taoism as a teenager. He converted to Christianity in 1914 while attending a missionary school and teaching the Chinese language to a Methodist missionary, Nora Dillenbeck. Eventually, he became a Pentecostal.

Jing’s idea to build up a novel Christian organization not only originated from religious reasons, but also from his concern with the rural problems …