Secret Training Church Exercise

Prepare to Work Where Authorities Are Hostile

If trainees plan to work in restricted fields, then form a second, secret church, and simulate working and worshipping “underground.” Not all trainees have to participate.

RULES

First day

• Explain these rules and warn how the leader that loses will be ‘executed.’
• If trainees want to perform this exercise, then name a liaison person who secretly appoints a secret church leader.
• Explain: To join the secret church, tell the liaison person; he will direct you to the underground church leader.

Second day

• The liaison person secretly names a “chief of the secret police.”
• This chief recruits other policemen to help detect illegal meetings.
• Police can use any methods except violence and interrupting meetings.
• Police are to detect time and place of any meeting of the church or its branches.

Ensuing days

• The secret church meets at least three times and does all activities that Christ requires of a church.
• The liaison person occasionally reports to the trainees the secret church’s activities without revealing names, times or places of meetings.

Final day: trial and ‘execution.’

• The police chief reports the time and place of any one meeting of the secret church or of a branch of it. If he suspects more than one meeting, then he is to report the meeting of which he is most sure. Do not require him to tell names of members of the secret church (that is normally obvious, and in reality the police will need to detect the time and place of meeting, for evidence).
• The secret church leader reports when and where they met.
• If the police chief detects the time and place of any meeting, then execute the church leader who was named by the liaison person, whether he was present at the meeting or not (he is responsible). Go outside and pour a bucket of ice water over his head. Prepare it ahead of time.
• If the police chief fails to guess both time and place, then execute the police chief for incompetence.
• Have a debriefing time for participants to talk about what they learned, the tension they felt while meeting in secret, and the suspicion they felt concerning who might be the secret police.
• Pray for believers who face these conditions in harsh reality every day of their lives.