The Global Chinese:
Rethinking Kingdom-Building and Nation-Building
 - Carol Hamrin -

    All we tend to hear about the Chinese church from the media and ministry newsletters likewise is amazing statistics of growth. It seems that both Chinese and foreign Christian leaders have a similar “rapid church growth” fever, focused on the miracle of the largest and longest church revival and growth in the history of Christendom which has taken place in the past thirty years in China. But what would be a more balanced perspective? 

    Last year, ten house-church leaders gathered together to study the history of the life and death of revivals. With tears they asked, “Why does God bring people to Himself faster than we can disciple them?” One leader lamented, “We can only ask new converts to disciple new converts, and it results in so much bad teaching that we are beginning to fear that the gains of the revival could be undone.” Another leader added, “This revival looks statistically incredible, but it is spiritually vulnerable. Millions of Chinese Christians are just one unanswered prayer away from moving on to another religion.” 

    Political repression and social discrimination are obviously major reasons why the church in China is having trouble discipling its converts, and why it remains marginalized in society. These external troubles are well known, but it is the internal problems of the Chinese church that we need to learn more about. It is time for us to take a realistic rather than romantic approach to the problems in the church and our contributions to them. 

    For example, there is a false sense of urgency and there are mass conversion methods that leave a shallow faith. Here we can see a combination of the “quick results” mindset of outside supporters with a traditional Chinese “short-cut (or Great Leap Forward) mentality. Often, only a few weeks of training (mainly in evangelism) are given to new converts, and then they are sent out on the road. This approach leaves the revival “a mile wide and an inch deep.” There is insufficient time and attention given to spiritual formation - to the deep transformation of character, lifestyle, and relationships. As a result, immature church leaders are vulnerable to temptations that discredit their witness. (Remember that even Paul took three years after conversion before he began to evangelize.) 

    Also, there is competition and a lack of accountability. Fund-raising often leads to exaggeration of accomplishments and cover-up of problems. Chinese church leaders are tempted to monopolize resource channels and to double-dip in multiple channels for the same projects. Outside supporters are tempted to compete rather than work together in order to get the requisite photo-ops with “top leaders of China’s largest house church movements” or reports of large numbers of converts. I am afraid that the genuine need in China for caution, discretion and secure communication may be abused at times to avoid partnership, transparency and accountability. 

    The Back to Jerusalem Movement may be a good case study of both the pluses and minuses. The idea of training thousands of Chinese missionaries to take the gospel to ethnic minorities, such as Tibetan Buddhists and Turkic Muslims, across China’s Western borders and along the Old Silk Road through Central Asia all the way back to Jerusalem is a genuine and admirable calling of the Chinese church with deep roots in the 1930s. But current efforts often reflect a simplistic and naive response that focuses on idealistic goals and fast results more than on realistic plans. 

    For example, talk of building 10,000 training centers and sending 100,000 missionaries in ten years reflects both outside influence promoting Year 2000 goals, and Chinese millennialism. The numbers game sets idealistic inspirational goals that often dissipate into thin air. Overseas champions have added hype to the facts in their fund-raising efforts, which may be attracting enthusiasm but wasting resources without good accountability. Added to this are authoritarian church leaders who practice army-style “volunteering” of young evangelists to go out with little preparation, cultural or language knowledge - and no ticket home. These leaders may have great faith, but there also may be a problem with irresponsibility. They may need to be challenged and helped to develop a servant leadership style. 

    Among participants in the Back to Jerusalem movement, there are some with mixed motives, who seek any means of leaving China. When I queried one young trainee about his motive for crossing the border, he said, “It is too hard to work in China.” The assumption that it will be easier to work outside China in turn is based on a naive expectation that ethnic groups in neighboring countries will welcome Han Chinese more than Westerners discredited by the Crusades. This totally ignores the history of Han oppression and neighbors’ fears of Chinese expansionism. Chinese evangelists may stumble into unnecessary conflict with those of other faiths, and also with state agencies who view them as instigators of intra-religious strife. There may also be an element of nationalistic pride in claiming a key role for China in world missions that creates a blindness to potential partnership, for example with Mongol Christians who want to bring the blessings of Christ to countries their ancestors pillaged, or Turkic Christians who have an ancient legacy of Christianity and in fact helped first bring the gospel to China! 

    By raising these concerns about the Chinese church, and by questioning the Back to Jerusalem efforts, I do not mean to denigrate the work of the Chinese church or this positive vision of world missions, and I do not mean to overlook the sacrificial and fruitful work underway by dedicated Chinese believers around the world and by Chinese-speaking expatriates committed to long-term service in China. Right now, experienced mission agencies and educated Chinese church leaders are beginning to grapple very creatively with some of these challenges. They are expanding leadership training to include personal and family counseling, conflict resolution, and administration and management.

    The effort to deal with these issues cannot come too soon, because we face a new wave of ad hoc missions, as a whole new set of actors in North America is getting involved in China ministry. Large churches or church coalitions with little experience, limited discernment in identifying ministry options, and very little awareness of the cultural baggage and sectarian agendas they carry with them are getting involved. Also, young mainland Chinese congregations in North America are beginning mainland ministry, but they lack experience in providing leadership either within their church or in missions. I personally think we should place a high priority on mentoring and supporting these mainland leaders right at our back door, so they can take the lead in mainland missions. 

    This wave of church-based missions has inspired a new effort by ChinaSource to encourage wise and effective agency-church partnerships, both English- and Chinese-speaking, and we ask for your prayers and participation in this effort…

    What could we do differently to help the Chinese church prepare for an era of globalization, to meet the challenges of sectarianism, consumerism and nationalism? How could we help them sustain and expand this period of relative toleration in China? 

    First, as Luis Bush’ World Inquiry has suggested and modeled, learn to listen and learn to follow! Note that this may require slowing down and taking the less efficient route. What do Chinese believers ask for? They ask, “Help us help ourselves.” 

    Chinese church leaders want to move beyond the ad hoc sporadic training formats and materials translated from other cultural contexts, provided by whatever group or denomination happens to choose them to “help.” They want to learn how to discern for themselves what to adopt from foreign experience and how to draw out lessons from China’s indigenous experience and realities. Shanghai house church leaders told me in January 2003, “We’ve learned from Saddleback’s seven-fold growth experience, but help us all learn from our 70-fold growth history.” One current goal is to create a comprehensive and systematic leadership training curriculum. This will require unprecedented cooperation within the church and among outside mission actors. 

    Second, we need to adopt a long term commitment and mindset and help develop sustainable strategic initiatives that can transform society. Lay leaders want mentoring, advice and support in all occupations and professions. Some are involved in popularizing the Christian worldview as a coherent social philosophy in academia and the media, building up civil society institutions in the non-profit sector, and reforming government and developing the rule of law, including a new “edict of toleration” to provide full religious freedom protected by the Constitution and legislation. There is a civil rights movement just around the corner in China in which Christians will be involved or even take the lead. The protest demonstrations in Hong Kong over the anti-subversion law are an important harbinger. 

    And too, we can help the church position itself to reach urban youth in the coming post-Cold War, postmodern generations. To some extent, Protestants from evangelical and charismatic circles have been more successful than other wings of Christianity in the industrial era of international modernization. They lead the way to a post-modern global era because they are flexible in structure. They focus on small group fellowship that provides personal nurture and community support, and they are quick to use new technology. Charismatic missions have had an especially powerful impact in poor rural areas, perhaps because charismatic worship and healing “fit” better with pre-modern traditional religion. (The downside of this is the danger of syncretism and cults around charismatic leaders.) The more fundamentalist evangelical mission efforts, which focus more on preaching than worship, seem to do especially well in societies in transition from authoritarian rule. They are independent and relatively more democratic, rather than part of a denominational hierarchy. 

    But looking to the future, evangelicals may make the mistake of fueling China’s worship of the Idol of Modernity, and fall far short of reaching post-modern generations growing up in the most advanced parts of maritime (urban, coastal) China and Asia. Youth are open to the cosmopolitan global pop culture, but they also have a renewed interest in seeking their traditional roots. Ignoring this, we inadvertently or even consciously pass on our contemporary American ways as the best or only way for them to do church or missions. We are oblivious to the full legacy of biblical and pre-modern Christian experience relevant to them, including early missions to China and pre-1949 independent Chinese church experiences, which they know nothing about. Helping reintroduce this history could promote pride in being at the same time both Chinese and Christian, and mitigate the pull between Chinese and foreign ways.

    After 25 years as the senior China research specialist at the U.S. Department of State, Carol Hamrin is now a Chinese affairs consultant and Research Professor at George Mason University as well as a Senior Consultant with ChinaSource. 

<Article originated from Mission Frontiers Nov-Dec 2003>