Liang Fa

Early Years in Poverty

Liang Fa, also known as Liang A-fa (梁阿发), was born in 1789 into a poor farming family in Gulao Village, Gaoming County, Guangdong. As a boy he had to leave school because of his family's hardship and went alone to Guangzhou to earn a living. He first learned brush-making and then entered a printing workshop, where he learned the crafts of character cutting and woodblock engraving and became a skilled artisan. This craft later became the vessel God used, and it also led him to the encounter that changed his life.

Conversion and Baptism

Around 1810, through work printing Chinese books, Liang Fa came to know Robert Morrison and William Milne, British missionaries of the London Missionary Society who had come to China. He followed Milne to Malacca in the Nanyang (Southeast Asia) to help carve and print Chinese gospel tracts. Day and night he was steeped in the truth of the Bible, and his heart gradually yielded. On 3 November 1816, Liang Fa was baptized by Milne in Malacca, becoming one of the earliest Chinese converts to Christ.

The First Chinese Preacher

After his conversion, Liang Fa was not content with his own salvation but resolved to proclaim what he believed. Around 1823, Morrison appointed him a preacher of the London Missionary Society, making him the first Chinese Protestant preacher; in 1827 Morrison formally ordained him as a pastor, the beginning of ordained pastoral ministry among the Chinese. From then on, a former character cutter became a pioneer in bringing the gospel to his own people.

Preaching through Writing

Liang Fa understood the power of the written word. In 1832 he gathered years of meditations and sermons and printed Good Words to Admonish the Age (劝世良言) in Guangzhou. The book was written especially for scholars coming to the provincial capital for the civil examinations, and he went in person to the examination halls to distribute it. A failed candidate named Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全) happened to obtain the book; he later drew on it to found the God Worshipping Society and launched the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement that shook the Qing dynasty. Although its teachings had strayed far from orthodoxy, this shows how widely the book spread and how deep its influence was.

Unceasing in Old Age

In his later years, despite the risk posed by the Qing ban on Christianity, Liang Fa travelled among Guangzhou, Hong Kong and various places in Southeast Asia preaching, distributing countless Bibles and tracts. In Guangzhou he served as chaplain at the hospital founded by Peter Parker, and he also worked with Benjamin Hobson's clinic to set up a small chapel, preaching through medicine and shepherding believers. On 12 April 1855, Liang Fa went to rest in the Lord in Guangzhou.

A Pioneer's Place

As one of the earliest Chinese Protestants to be baptized (the second, after Cai Gao 蔡高), and as the first ordained Chinese preacher and pastor, Liang Fa, a craftsman by background, carried on the work of those before him and opened the way for those after him. With a lifetime of faithfulness he cleared a path for the gospel to take root in China, and his name, together with Good Words to Admonish the Age, remains in the memory of the Chinese church.