Lausanne World Pulse – A Focus on Northeast Asia: 473 Least-Reached People Groups Remain
Nestorian “Heretics” Begin Evangelizing China
Nestorian missionaries reached China in 635 AD and they won converts among the upper classes. A few small Nestorian churches survived in China into the fourteenth century. Catholic monks sometimes stumbled upon these dying churches. Between 1200 and 1400 AD groups of Catholic monks traveled to China and tried to win Chinese leaders to Christ; however, they had little success. In 1580 Mateo Ricci, a Jesuit priest, entered China and quickly learned the language. He was a scholar who won converts from the educated upper class in Beijing. Other Jesuit missionaries continued Ricci’s work after his death in 1610. They planted a few churches but limited their outreach efforts to Beijing’s educated elite. Disaster struck in 1644 when the Manchus overthrew the existing regime. Because they associated China’s Christians with the old regime, they persecuted the Church. By 1645 there were no known Christians left in China.
In 1807 Robert Morrison became the first of many Protestant missionaries to serve in China. At that time all missionary activity was confined to China’s coast. In 1854 Hudson Taylor became the first missionary to take the gospel to China’s interior provinces. In 1865 he founded the China Inland Mission (CIM) to extend this vital work. Many other mission agencies followed the lead of CIM. These efforts established the Church in each of China’s provinces. Between 1854 and 1949 many strong churches were founded in China, despite the political unrest of the 1911 Nationalist Revolution and the chaos of the Japanese invasion of 1937. In 1949 the communists took control of China and expelled all missionaries. Persecution forced China’s one million Christians underground; however, this same persecution fanned the flames of faith. Today there are fifty million Christians in China; yet there are still hundreds of unreached people groups as well.
Stop and Go Mission Efforts in Japan
Outreach efforts in Japan began during the sixteenth century. The first convert in Japan, a feudal baron, was won to the Lord in 1580 AD, the same year Ricci began his work in China. Catholic missionaries entered Japan during a time of unrest, when various warlords fought to unify the country. Since religion and nation state were inseparable at that time, Japanese rulers were either for or against this new religion depending on whether or not they thought it would help them maintain power.Fearing the power of this new religion, Tokugawa II issued an edict that forbade the sale of food to Christians in 1622. The barons on the southern island of Kyushu, some of whom were Christians, ignored it. Fed up with having his edicts ignored, Tokugawa II invaded Kyushu in 1637. That crackdown attempt provoked the barons of Kyushu to declare independence from Japan. The result was civil war. It took Tokugawa II a year to put down the revolt. In his rage he killed 300,000 people, most of Japan’s Christians. He then banned all foreigners, thinking that was the only way to keep missionaries out of the nation.
The door for outreach did not open again in Japan until 1859 when Western pressure allowed Protestant missionaries to enter the country. In 1900 Charles and Lettie Cowman began work in Japan. Unlike previous workers who emphasized preaching, these American Methodist missionaries emphasized the use of personal testimonies. That approach led to the conversion of thousands of Japanese to Christ. Christians from other denominations wanted to join the Cowman’s work, but denominationalism proved to be a barrier. The couple saw the need to form an inter-denominational mission agency, which they called the Oriental Missionary Society (OMS). Between 1900 and 1941 OMS missionaries won many to Christ and planted churches.
That work got sidetracked in 1941 when World War II expanded and Japan expelled all Christian missionaries. The Church did not have mature national leaders. During the war years, 1941-1945, only churches that accepted emperor worship as being co-equal with the worship of Jesus were allowed to stay open. Many Japanese Christians compromised their faith; Christians who rejected emperor worship were forced underground. After World War II ended, Christian missionaries contacted some of the believers who had remained true to the Lord. Much ground had been lost. In 1950 only 0.5 percent of Japan’s population was Christian, a figure that would not change for almost forty years. In 1988 Billy Graham preached a revival crusade in Tokyo. His previous crusades in Japan had won hundreds of Japanese to the Lord; this time thousands were saved during each night of the crusade. Follow-up teams incorporated the new converts into existing churches and organized new bodies of believers in cities where none had existed before. Many of these churches still exist today.
Between 1988 and 1998 the number of Christians in Japan tripled, from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent of the population. Many of the new converts were high school or college students. Even today, a high percentage of Japan’s Christians are from the younger generation.
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