This church was established by American missionaries in 1887 and expanded in 1931 to seat more than 1,000 worshippers. It has built up a local membership that numbers in the thousands since reopening in 1979 after its closure during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Originally the Methodist church of Shanghai, the nondenominational church has a Chinese woman serving as its pastor. Two bishops were consecrated here in 1988, the first in China in 3 decades; the same year, American evangelist Billy Graham preached here.