EVANGELISM

The most powerful moment of the trip was watching a young woman pray to receive Christ. A friend of mine was talking with her and a national over coffee who had apparently been witnessing to her for some time. At some point, the discussion drifted to the topic of God and she had many questions. You could feel the Holy Spirit being part of their conversation with her making the decision to accept Jesus. Months later she sent my friend an incredible email of her first several weeks of learning to walk with the Lord. It was filled with such great insights, challenges and especially her overwhelming joy of living in faith for the first time.

And what amazes me most is the purpose and mission of evangelism in China is already moving far beyond the Chinese. They take very seriously the Great Commission and Jesus’ last words before ascending into heaven. Envision a map of the world with China in the center and arrows reaching out around the globe. That’s the vision for evangelism. This is really humbling when you think of all the western missionaries going into China and other parts of the world. I can easily imagine it won’t be long before Asian missionaries far outnumber westerners in the world.

And why is this important? For one Asians are already bringing the gospel to other parts of the world such as eastern Europe, the middle east and Africa where it is harder for westerners to be accepted because of the geopolitical climate. Doors are more easily open for them than westerners in many regions. You can learn more about this vision and what some call the “Back to Jerusalem” movement here: http://www.backtojerusalem.com/.

So in summary, we experienced and learned about:

• A culture that has no recent historical concept of religion where children are taught to rely on solely on themselves
• Real government persecution and costs to publicly standing up for Christ, but at the same time increasing pragmatism and higher levels of openness in a “don’t ask don’t tell” kind of way
• Worship in small group and home church settings that grow and replicate rapidly.
• The Bible as the primary way to teach, learn and live – very limited access to other resources.
• Amazing commitment to world evangelism
• Real battles within the church movement itself over doctrine and interpretations, but also a commitment to the overarching mission and accountability

I look forward to learning more about this region and hopefully returning again soon. I would love to hear about other people’s experiences and whether what we saw and learned is consistent. If you have an experience to share, please post a comment or contact me via the Agile Ministry contact form.

Thanks for letting me share my experience with you!

THE CHURCH

I had no idea, but apparently China has official state sponsored churches. My friends also saw a factory which prints Chinese editions of the New Testament. However much of the evangelism, discipleship, and churches exist in secrecy outside this environment for two reasons. First, is apparently the sermons and teaching in state churches are reviewed by the party. This can create semi-censorship of the pastors and changing or diluting the message. Also, participation means labeling oneself a believer. This can have negative repercussions in employment or other aspects the culture as it’s not something yet embraced by the party. We are proud to talk about religion and faith publicly. There, as in the early church, it comes with a real price.

Hence much of the spread of the Gospel happens the way it did in the Bible. Small groups worshiping and learning together in homes (think upper room) as opposed to big community churches. Perhaps most interesting is the way they learn. Let’s just say there aren’t Family Christian Bookstores nearby. No TV evangelists, no Christian libraries, and no yellow pages listing all the independent churches you can visit. They grow through leaders discipling new leaders. When a home church gathering becomes too big, they split and multiply. There’s no concern for building programs, Sunday Schools or a lot of what we are accustomed to for “running a church.” Imagine all of this in a world of potential persecution. You can see the parallels to the early church. And you certainly wouldn’t want to use something like Church Director to manage and schedule volunteers because you wouldn’t want lists of members and ministry activities so easily discovered.

So what is the main source of learning and teaching? The Bible. I found such amazing knowledge and deep Biblical based theological discussions happening amongst local believers that I rarely see in the west. We’ve augmented the Bible with so many surrogate ways of learning that have many bypassing a direct and consistent study of God’s Word altogether. In China it’s quite the opposite. There is also a strong commitment to not being hypocritical to the Word. Imagine having to actually do what we say we believe (tithe, study, fellowship, minister, etc.). There is a strong level of support and accountability that helps make this real.

The church is not without its challenges of course. In talking with some leaders (we weren’t allowed to actually visit a home church gathering because of privacy concerns), there are many who drop from actively participating. This is especially true of young believers who enter the workforce and begin to encounter the career pressure and competitiveness. They are not surrounded by a strong support structure and, as I mentioned, being a believer is not considered a resume booster by any means.

Perhaps the most interesting challenge is one also faced by the early church. There are increasing levels of doctrinal debate occurring amongst the church leaders. 1 Corinthians gives us a glimpse of how this kind of divisiveness can play out. I heard this tendency to debate the “right way” to teach and evangelize is becoming a real challenge and taking focus away from the real mission.

Despite these challenges, their mission and the evangelism movement is amazingly strong. We’ll discuss this in the final post.

In late 2008, I had the opportunity to fulfill a long standing dream and visit China. While there I learned a little more about the growth of Christianity in the region. I talked about my experiences with James and he asked if I would share some observations with the Agile Ministry community.

I was only there for a short period, but walked away amazed and moved by what I learned in 3 areas:

• The Culture and Christianity
• The Church
• Evangelism Encounters

I will offer up some insights about each of these areas in upcoming posts.

Even though I prefer not to generalize about the culture, I’ve tried to make these posts short enough while providing you with some insight about their culture. If those out there have more experience and insights on China and the church movement, I would love to hear if these experiences are typical. I would also like to know what other opportunities exist that I may have missed, as I plan to return again soon.

I can sum up my experience this way: I saw the book of Acts and the experiences of the early church being recreated in our times in ways I never could have imagined from what I see daily in The United States. Never before has the experience of the early disciples seemed so real to me.

THE CULTURE AND CHRISTIANITY

We hear many stories about the government’s opposition to religion in China, including persecution of Christians. I have heard that this is especially true in more conservative, rural, and western parts of the country. I visited only large cities in the east during this trip. In talking with many believers there I would best describe the experience as one of détente or maybe “don’t ask, don’t tell”. This seems especially true as it relates to foreigners with locals needing to be more careful. But in general if we weren’t drawing attention to ourselves we could have reasonably open conversations and prayer in public areas. You surely wouldn’t see “bullhorn guys” or public evangelism demonstrations.

The Chinese seem very pragmatic people. They are deeply interested in growing their economy and maintaining an orderly society. To the extent openness to religion supports the former and doesn’t threaten the latter allows religion to be tolerated more than ever before. It’s like a great experiment by the government to see how things evolve.

One example of this pragmatism came from American doctors we met who were doing missionary and medical work. They had been coming for years and said the hospitals they worked in let them pray over patients and witness to the staff. The reason was that when they first came to China, certain surgery recovery rates were incredibly low. As these doctors educated Chinese counterparts there was orders of magnitude improvement in survivability rates to near western standards. When asked by locals why these doctors were coming to share their expertise for free they explained it as part of their ministry. This opened the door for them to share the Gospel and practice their faith.

Students and business people shared stories about the same pragmatism in their world. It’s good for China to have western business investments and westerners attending and teaching in universities. Those benefits seem to allow greater freedom to practice religion. I wonder if the realities of the current economic crisis and China’s reduced dependence on western consumers will change this openness. This may be something to watch.

As far as the culture itself, I can see why the Gospel would be so appealing, yet so hard to grasp. I say this for two reasons:

First, their core belief systems are so different from the west. We surveyed a number of young adults about what belief system motivates their behavior and interests them. The overwhelming answer (90+%) was “belief in self” or “science”. A very small minority mentioned a religion (including Islam or Buddhism). Basically the whole idea of faith, religion or spirituality is not a concept people inherently grasp. It’s like asking someone to contemplate having 3 eyes – it is absolutely strange and amazing to them.

In addition, very few admitted having heard of Jesus. When I asked why, they shared that, from childhood, you are taught to count on yourself for success and be very competitive. Also, like in many Asian countries, mistakes are frowned upon and avoided at all costs, with the need to “save face” very real. This makes concepts like grace, need for a savior and a power outside of you very hard to understand. It just doesn’t compute.

The second reason is the control of information remains strong. For example, I asked our young tour guide (a recent college grad) in Beijing what she had learned growing up about the protestors in Tiananmen Square. Her answer was “nothing” except than her grandfather knew some controversy happened there, but wasn’t sure what. Control of information about Christ is especially managed.

These cultural aspects have had a unique aspect on how the church has flourished. We’ll discuss this further in the next post.