Lausanne World Pulse – A Focus on Northeast Asia: 624 Least-reached People Groups Remain
The reasons are not surprising. Many people are disillusioned with the direction life is taking them. Unbridled materialism is leaving many people out in the cold. Even some who are part of China’s privileged middle and upper classes are aware of the emptiness in their lives. “People are so busy making money that they’ve lost sight of the most important things in life,” explained one churchgoer to a BBC News reporter. In general terms, the Church is growing because people need support—to the poor its monetary support; to the wealthy it is emotional support.
“It used to be said by Chinese politicians of this Western faith, ‘One more Christian—one fewer Chinese.’ Now, they are more likely to say, ‘One more Christian—one fewer criminal.’” Although the government may appreciate the internal changes that faith in Christ brings, they want to keep Christianity under their control. China still has a communist government, meaning that they want allegiance to themselves, not to God. They do not want anyone to rival their role in setting the moral standards. Realizing that they cannot stamp out religious activity, there are government-sanctioned “Three Self” churches, filled with registered believers. The churches that they fear are the unregistered house churches.
What Future Church Growth in China’s Cities Might Mean
Paul Hattaway, author of several excellent books on the people groups of China, suggested that the vast majority of China’s urban population is from the reached Han Chinese groups. However, his book China’s Unreached Cities, Vol. 1 indicates that there are small communities of unreached people groups residing in many of China’s cities. Jim Nichols, former director of the U.S. Center for World Mission’s Institute of Chinese Studies think-tank, wrote the forward to the book. In it, he made a significant statement:
The cities of China are gateways to the unreached of the country. Most efforts to reach the unreached peoples of China, especially among the minorities, have focused on taking the gospel to the villages that comprise their traditional homes. However, sizable populations of most if not all of these peoples may be found in the cities of China. Urban migration has resulted in ethnic ghettos springing up in many cities—“Chinatowns within China” one pundit has dubbed them. There is a high probability that discipling unreached peoples in the cities will result in the rural peoples they represent being reached as well.
Later in the article he pointed out that rural migrants to the cities frequently return once or twice a year for festivals. This can potentially be an excellent time for them to share Christ. He went on to say,
One of the advantages of this approach is that in the cities the differences between various subgroups of a given unreached people group become less important than their shared identity as part of the larger group. Our research has found that the migrants in urban centers from various Hani tribal villages, though they spoke as many as fourteen mutually unintelligible dialects at home, identified with one another as Hani, using Mandarin to communicate. This dynamic considerably simplifies the task of reaching the many people groups among the Hani with the gospel! The same may be true for many of the other unreached people groups of China.
Let Us Pray!
Thank the Lord that the efforts to reach China’s unreached millions are being simplified in the cities. Pray that the pockets of unreached people groups in China will be reached with the gospel, and that they will in turn take Christ back to their rural villages.