For a moment, it was easy to understand the dream of finding something of home among one’s own, even far from home. Yet I wondered about the reverse: might someone still feel like a stranger among people who shared their language and cultural memories, longing for a belonging that familiarity alone could not provide?
For the past three decades, Song of a Wanderer has been a go-to apologetics resource in many overseas Chinese churches and student fellowships seeking to share the gospel with students and scholars from China.
Chinese churches in Germany often bring together people whose paths might otherwise remain separate: migrants from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia; students and businesspeople; recent arrivals and long-term residents; people carrying very different political memories and assumptions.
Hadn’t we tried our best? If you don’t need to use me, what am I supposed to do?
Following the first installment in our Stories from Inside the Church in China series, “The Pressure of Ordinary Faith”, these three stories circle around a question facing some Chinese Christians today.
Through my many travels and encounters, I have discovered that the non-fitting place is precisely where I am meant to be as a disciple of Jesus among God’s people.
When I moved to China, I had no idea what would happen or where God would lead me. All I knew was that he had clearly led me to Shanghai.
What drew me out of that familiar shadow narrative was the even sweeter voice of Jesus, calling me to abide in him and rest in an identity found in him before bearing fruit.
Knowing our final destination is not only hope for the future—it changes how we face sorrow today.
We did not choose this path to raise elite children, nor to escape the pressures of school. We need to stay close to the Lord with the simple trust of a child and seek his will for us.
Instead of being treated as an obstacle to be removed, difference becomes a prompt for inquiry and conversation, and, one hopes, for unexpected revelation.
Chinese churches are going abroad—but are they truly entering mission?