Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Time to Shine: The Chinese Church, Church Planting, and World Missions
August 2008
To the Ends of the Earth
Persecution and hardship have been marks of the Chinese Church for decades. Western believers may find it odd that some Chinese church leaders, while not asking for pressure from the government, also do not run from it. Throughout Christian history, God has used persecution for the purifying and preparation of his Church. Many observers think the past decades of sacrifice in China may have laid a foundation for a future work involving the Chinese Church: the evangelization of the more than six thousand unreached people groups in the world.
In recent years, missions and the Chinese Church has often been associated with a movement known as Back to Jerusalem (BTJ). The original “Back to Jerusalem” band was formed in the 1940s on the idea that the Chinese Church is called to take the gospel through the largely unreached areas of Western China, Central Asia, and back to the Middle East and Jerusalem, where the gospel was first heard. While a trickle of Chinese believers headed westward at the time, this movement eventually fell silent for nearly fifty years. More recently, a renewed vision of the BTJ movement has been promoted among some rural house church network leaders with a vision to send 100,000 Chinese missionaries toward Jerusalem and the Middle East.
The vision received much publicity through the popular book The Heavenly Man, the miraculous story of a believer from rural China.4 Some Chinese churches have rallied behind the idea, but the movement is still largely in its infancy and is primarily active among rural networks made up of members with only an elementary or middle school education level.
“In fact, the new BTJ movement is probably more popular outside of China than within” says Joe*, a foreign Christian working with house church leaders in Beijing. He says urban Chinese Christians do not see themselves as alone in the completion of the Great Commission, nor do they see the advance of the gospel heading in only one direction.
“They don’t want to be seen as carrying the final torch,” says Joe, “but as participating with global brothers and sisters to accomplish the Great Commission together, taking the gospel to the ends of the earth—yes, toward the Middle East, but not exclusively.” Joe sees the emergence of the urban intellectuals as a positive sign for future mission work. Whereas China’s rural Christians might struggle with a lack of financial resources, learning new languages and adapting to foreign cultures, urban Chinese Christian professionals and academics already familiar with working in international environments seem better-equipped to deal with such issues.
“Culturally, they’re more prepared and sensitive,” explains Joe. “Their financial resources, long-term viability…who they are as people will have a longer, larger impact.” China expert Tony Lambert, in his latest edition of China’s Christian Millions, concurs:
While acknowledging the zeal and effectiveness of the rural believers in their own cultural milieu, it seems more realistic to accept the fact that educated Christians in the cities and those with business contacts overseas are much better placed to pioneer the first steps in cross-cultural mission—first within China, and then, as they gain experience, to the wider world.5
However, it won’t be an easy road. Like all prospective missionaries, China’s future cross-cultural workers will probably struggle with issues of leaving their home culture, learning a foreign tongue, and living as Christians in sometimes harsh spiritual environments. For China’s urban house church missionaries, that loss may be felt more acutely. Not only will they be giving up potentially lucrative careers, but they also risk crushing the hopes of family members from rural areas who look to them for the entire family’s financial security.
“It’s hard for them to turn their back on that,” says Joe. For now, it’s premature to say a wide-ranging mission movement is taking off among Chinese intellectuals. But a church-planting movement certainly is—and it has missions at the forefront.
One Beijing house church leader thinks it will be his children’s generation that may see a burgeoning mission movement from China to the rest of the world. He foresees the next ten years as a time of church planting among the Chinese within China, followed by a period of ten years time to reach out to China’s numerous minority people groups and, then, ten years after that to be the time for the Chinese Church to send out workers into the spiritual harvest fields around the world.
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Peter Sung (pseudonym) works in and around China with Chinese intellectuals and business leaders. |