In July 2026, I had the privilege of attending the Chinese Congress on World Evangelization (CCOWE) for the first time. Ten years had passed since the previous congress. This was the first post-pandemic gathering and also a Jubilee gathering of the CCCOWE Movement.
If we take a word-by-word approach to the Chinese name of the CCCOWE Movement, each of its key terms is worth pondering. Although the context has changed dramatically over the past fifty years, each remains relevant:
- “World”: Chinese churches have indeed spread across the globe, even to its farthest corners. This CCOWE was also a gathering of those who had been scattered.
- “Chinese”: What was once a relatively fixed sense of identity has expanded into more fluid categories, including “overseas Chinese,” “people of Chinese descent,” and various combinations of slashies and hyphenated identities.
- “Evangelization”: This may be the most contested keyword in the acronym of CCCOWE. As one speaker put it, the church should not treat the gospel as something already “in our pocket.” 1 While our Protestant convictions remain unchanged, we all need to answer afresh the great question: What is the gospel?
- “Movement”: Although CCCOWE has a settled “Centre” and periodic “Congresses,” what it seeks to advance amid the many uncertainties of a fluid age is a sustainable “movement,” encompassing traditional forms of church as well as various outreaching initiatives.
Within the CCCOWE context, historical reflection usually goes back only as far as the movement’s origins, namely, the first CCOWE held in Hong Kong in 1976. At times it also takes into account the church history of the host location, as this year’s congress in Kuching did when it revisited Sarawak’s mission history. But if we widen the lens to a full century and look back at the Chinese church one hundred years ago, a very different frame of reference comes into view.
A century before 2026 was 1926, when the indigenous Chinese church faced two major challenges, one external and one internal:
- The Anti-Christian Movement, which began in 1922, continued through several waves. By 1926 it intensified further because of anti-Christian actions by the National Revolutionary Army during the Northern Expedition and the Kuomintang’s formal adoption, at its Second National Congress, of a resolution to “reclaim educational rights.” At the end of that year, the Anti-Christian Movement Grand Alliance was reorganized by the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party as the Great Alliance Against Cultural Aggression. Church property was damaged, preachers were attacked, and Christian schools were either forced to close or handed over to local leaders. Large numbers of foreign missionaries withdrew. Consequently, this accelerated the indigenization and independent movement of the Chinese church.
- In a striking coincidence, the same year in which the Anti-Christian Movement erupted, 1922, the Chinese church convened the National Christian Conference and established the National Christian Council of China. As liberal leaders gained increasing influence in theology and policy making, the China Inland Mission and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, among other traditional mission societies, formally withdrew from the Council in 1926; the United Society of Christian Endeavor for China followed the next year. 2 This was one milestone in the loss of the “Protestant consensus” that had existed since Robert Morrison’s arrival in China.
The external threat of the Anti-Christian Movement and the internal problem of the loss of the Protestant consensus became intertwined, producing a new vicious cycle: liberals fell into rationalism, while conservatives fell into anti-intellectualism. The Movement to Reclaim Educational Rights marginalized the role of faith within the Christian higher-education system, leading conservative mission societies and churches to cede Christian education and its related cultural mandate. The gospel was reduced to “the rebirth and salvation of individual souls,” and church life became increasingly inward-looking. Meanwhile, the liberals who appeared to have gained ground increasingly lost the salt and light of the gospel through mission drift and dilution, eventually succumbing to the secular government and becoming indistinguishable from the world.
The parting of ways between liberals and fundamentalists was only one episode in the larger history of Protestant division. Internal troubles and external threats exist throughout church history. Internal troubles are often more deadly: division or corruption within the church can produce suicidal consequences and lead to natural extinction, while the impact of external threats depends on how the church responds. A healthy and united church can withstand most external threats. One scholar has pointed out that, when the early church faced challenges to the Christian faith from non-Christian intellectuals, it engaged them seriously, ushering in the patristic age and the development of apologetics. The Chinese church, by contrast, failed to handle the relationship between reason and faith well because of its sectarian divisions, and thus failed to give rise to a Chinese patristic age. 3 During the five years of the Anti-Christian Movement, those who engaged directly in dialogue with anti-Christian intellectuals were primarily liberals. Among conservatives, Zhang Yijing 4 was the only one able to sustain the long fight. Wang Mingdao, John Sung, and Watchman Nee, all well known in Chinese church circles, seem to have regarded debating unbelievers as a contest in which even victory would bring little honor.
Returning to 2026, we find history repeating itself with startling force. Or perhaps the problems of 1926 have simply remained unresolved for a century, while new problems produced by a hundred years of upheaval have been layered on top of the old ones, creating an even more complex and difficult mission ecology. The church, as an organism, is like an individual life: traumatic memories do not disappear. Even when suppressed, they continue to ferment in the subconscious and shape our words, actions, and decisions. Chinese churches tend to be conservative and traditional. In today’s postmodern context, many still hold a fundamentalist posture formed a century ago: “Rather than wade into the world’s muddy waters, let us preach the pure gospel.” They avoid dialogue with the world and simply lament that “morals are declining and people are not what they used to be.” At times, the church’s criticism of the outside world may itself be an avoidance strategy, displacing internal tensions or deficiencies. In fact, external threats contain both “danger” and “opportunity.” The emphasis on “listening” at this CCOWE, together with the recurring silver, oversized-ear icon, reminded us to keep listening reverently to God’s word and also to the voices of the generations, to be “quick to listen, slow to speak.” This “silver ear,” composed of dots large and small, symbolizes churches large and small listening together and listening to one another.
The sharp divide between liberals and fundamentalists has had a deep and lasting influence. This is one reason that both the Lausanne Movement and CCCOWE today continue to promote the kingdom gospel and holistic mission, while renewing attention to workplace ministry and business as mission. The arts, relief, justice, compassion, equal rights, and related issues have once again become subjects of active discussion. In some respects, this is a return to the organic integration of personal spirituality and social concern found in British evangelicalism, or even to the medieval “faith-centered way of life.” At the same time, this CCOWE spoke more than previous congresses about contextualization. Rather than locking onto standard answers or clinging to convention, participants were encouraged to expect the Holy Spirit to lead us to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” Rather than merely “compelling people to come into church,” believers were encouraged to venture out incarnationally into the lives of people. Leaders and speakers no longer appeared simply as figures of spiritual authority, but openly acknowledged their weaknesses, blind spots, and limitations. One speaker 5 even used performance art to help participants recognize that when the church becomes “disconnected” from the world, it suffers a kind of “spiritual dementia” and can no longer serve as a channel for the gospel.
To a considerable extent, the Anti-Christian Movement of 1922–1927 was one of the global “spiritual aftereffects” of World War I (1914–1918). World War II (1939–1945) further accelerated the global process of decolonization, giving rise to postcolonialism in geopolitics and ideology, while the Western church entered a post-Christendom or post-denominational era. As part of the Majority World, Chinese churches worldwide have made great strides over the past century in evangelism and church planting, theological education, discipleship, and the coordination of resources. Chinese communities have long been present in the Majority World of Southeast Asia and, over the past half century, have also moved into other Majority World contexts. Yet whether in the Western world or the Majority World, Chinese churches often seem to enter as though into “no man’s land” or “virgin land”, habitually transplanting church traditions from homeland and rarely forming meaningful connections with the local society or with local churches. This CCOWE explored challenges of our era that the Chinese church shares with the global church, such as technological change, the intergenerational transmission of faith, and migration/diaspora. Its closing session also featured a thoughtfully arranged pairing: on the one hand, Pastor Rick Warren was invited to speak as a representative of the Western church; on the other, Rev. John Wang, with his distinctive bicultural identity, introduced the mission movement COMIBAM, a Latin American counterpart to CCCOWE, to the global Chinese church. I deeply hope this points to a bridge-building role CCCOWE can actively play in the future: bringing the Chinese church into the Majority World, and bringing the Majority World into the Chinese church.
“Ecumenical unity” is not part of the name “CCCOWE,” but it has always been a vision or goal. Pastor Rick Warren’s teaching on unity during the closing session also touched me deeply. The principle of unity, like many biblical principles, is easier said than done. Chinese people are quick to cluster together, but that does not necessarily mean we are united. Add to this Protestantism’s gene for division, and in a short two hundred years of church development we have already formed many separate camps. This American pastor is certainly not unaware of the disunity in both the history and present reality of Western churches. Yet when he exhorts the Chinese church, his distant role as an “outsider” somehow makes the message easier to receive. On the flight out of Kuching, I sat beside a pastor serving overseas. We talked about the disunity and even structural divisions that our respective churches face or have experienced. We found ourselves asking the same two questions: “If we could do it over again, could we have done better?” And, “Now that things have come to this point, how do we reconcile?” Keeping peace within an existing fellowship is difficult enough; making peace after relationships have broken down is even more complicated. But if our generation does not do its part, we will inevitably leave the problem for the next generation to mend.
Back at my long-term residence, a month after the closing day of the CCOWE, during a roundtable discussion with other participants, I recognized my multiple “bridging identities”: in terms of age, I am a member of the sandwich generation, in church life and ministry, I have “elders above and youngsters below.” In this rapidly changing era, I see both the need for the “elders-mentoring-the-youngsters tradition” and for “reverse mentoring.” In terms of ethnicity, as an overseas Chinese worshipping in a multicultural church where English is the common language, I get to experience both the beauty of ethnic diversity and the challenge of cross-cultural shock. In terms of gender, I often participate in meetings where brothers make up the overwhelming majority among very few women, if I am not the only woman present. This makes me reflect often on the role of women in church life. In terms of ministry context, I belong to a community church but also teach at seminaries, often struggling to reconcile ideals produced from the ivory tower and the pastoral scene on the ground. In terms of ministerial office, I am both an elder in a denominational church and a representative of an interdenominational society, facing the needs of both church and mission agencies. In terms of ministerial specialization, while I time-travel through history, I must also live in the present, inevitably evoking reflections on the past and present. If the ‘sandwich figure’ is sandwiched, the ‘bridge figure’ is under pressure, and the “slashies” stuck in the middle, it’s no wonder I’m often the only one in meetings to abstain, vote against, or make ‘bizarre remarks.’ Perhaps the multiple identities I embody reveal the diversity and richness of Chinese Christians today. If the worldwide Chinese church creates a culture of “co-learning” and “co-leading” while “co-creating with God,” what a wonderful symphony will it produce!
Looking back across a century, can we in 2026 develop a new awareness of the questions we need to ask? In a post-Christendom or post-denominational era, can the Chinese church rebuild a “Protestant consensus” in the language of the public square, such as English? In an age when accusations of “cultural imperialism,” a twenty-first-century version of the Anti-Christian Movement, have become a dominant narrative, how can the Chinese church forge a new identity? In an age of cancel culture, how can the Chinese church reclaim the lost ground of its cultural mandate? Every generation has its own challenges. Perhaps we are no wiser than our forebears and cannot fully answer the questions of our time. But at the very least, we can learn to view the world through the eyes of the kingdom, embrace the diversity of God’s creation, and distinguish changeable forms from unchanging truth. This CCOWE allowed many participants to glimpse from afar that the cultural realm once held by the Christian church, its “lost territories/lost promised land,” still awaits redemption; the human spirit, soul, and body, along with morality and aesthetic sensibility, must all come under the Creator’s reign. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Although CCOWE 2026 cannot provide all the answers, it is a starting point capable of jolting the church awake.
This article was originally written in Chinese and has been translated into English for publication by ChinaSource.
- Albert Chuang, senior pastor of Tamkang Church.
- More conservative mission bodies, including Lutheran missions, the Southern Baptist mission, and the North Kiangsu Mission of the Southern Presbyterian Church, had never joined. See Kevin Xiyi Yao, Contend for the Truth: Fundamentalist Movement of Protestant Missionaries in China, 1920–1937 (China Alliance Press, 2008), chap. 6, 177–225.
- See Yonghua Ge, “Why Did the Anti-Christian Movement Fail to Bring about a Patristic Age in China?” Huaren Jiaohui Shenxue Yanjiu [Chinese Church Theological Research], no. 1 (2022): 1–10.
- See Brother Wang, “Remembering Elder Zhang Yijing (1871–1931) on the Centennial of the Anti-Christian Movement,” https://shifengyesu.org/2026/07/31/feiji100zhounianjinianzhangyijing/, published August 12, 2022; accessed August 10, 2026.
- Elder George Huang.
