Let’s pray that the Belt and Road Initiative and the wide diaspora of Chinese throughout the world, including the West, will be an expansion of opportunity to reach them, since the restrictions in China have become so limiting.
From the desk of the guest editor.
Changes in China over the past ten years are dictating changes for the church in China. Kim reviews the main areas of change and the ways these have affected the churches. Then he looks at new roles for both workers from overseas and China’s churches.
The key to the Western church’s ongoing effectiveness may well be its ability to learn from majority world believers, many of whom have experience in living out their faith in the face of political and cultural restrictions.
Preventing infiltration through preaching, seen as a national security concern, has become a valid reason for prohibiting foreign missions whenever the pendulum swings towards the restrictive side…. I propose revisiting the concept of missions in order to find a breakthrough.
Questions of money—supporting Chinese Christian workers, paying local assistants, giving gifts to “needy” Chinese—return like revolving doors as often as new expat Christians arrive in China.
Mission-sending organizations have limited personnel and resources to invest. How should they make good decisions?
From Bible exposition to K-pop worship, through seminars and workshops, Asia 2022 Congress participants were encouraged by the stories of what God is doing in countries all over Asia.
An experienced cross-cultural worker discusses the issue of Christian denominations in China, in light of questions raised in the recent post, “When the Golden Age Is Over.” He argues that denominations can help churches unify and work together to further the spread of the gospel throughout China.
As the number of expatriate cross-cultural workers in China, and the scale of their work, has shrunk dramatically, it is vital that we take time to reflect on what we have done and how we have done it.
To begin this reflective series based on the webinar, “Chinese Christianity in the Modern Era," we consider what it means to see the whole of the Chinese church and what theological lenses are needed to make sense of what we see.
Whether a century ago or today, whatever our China stories may purport to tell us about being apolitical, of “leaving our politics at the door” or “staying out of politics,” one of the hard lessons of history is that foreign Christian involvement in China is unavoidably political.