Tan (pseudonym) is a cross-cultural missionary, serving God in a place far from her home in China. She’s spent the past several years living in a foreign country, experiencing the joys and challenges of cross-cultural living. But before Tan moved abroad, she was serving God within mainland China. Tan recalls what she herself experienced several years ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic: “Lots of missionaries have left. The internationals had to leave, but then the Chinese staff were left alone. And it was just hard for them. There are different ways that the government can stop them from doing what they’re doing. We kept going as a group of Chinese. We kept going for a few years after that, but it was very hard. It was difficult because we had to be so careful all the time.” When Tan and her friends needed to continue their ministry in the absence of their foreign missionary mentors and friends, the struggles that they endured nearly overwhelmed them.
From the place where she is serving now, Tan sees the Chinese government ramping up its restrictions on house churches. “Just looking at the past few years, how our government is operating, how they’re being so harsh on the church, it was very hard on me because it looks like the church is kind of being shut in. Not just shut in the country, but shut in such a small space. A lot of churches are facing severe persecution, and they can’t even have their place to meet. And then the church, I’m not sure if they still have the same sense of calling and mission on their heart.” As she watches the churches in China struggle to even gather for worship, Tan feels that this pressure of government persecution has had a major effect on the Chinese mission movement.
In spite of these restrictions, the Chinese house church mission movement is growing. This post will explore the current state of the Chinese mission movement, particularly with university graduates. In spite of many challenges, God continues to call and send Chinese university graduates to join his global mission.
Ongoing Challenges: Restrictions Lead to Revival and Mission
As we discussed in a previous post, one of the theological markers of the Chinese mission movement has been an expectation of suffering. Writing in the late 1980s in Jonathan Chao’s edited work, The China Mission Handbook, Jim Stewart asserts that the Chinese church’s growth through suffering was largely inspired by the faithfulness of Wang Mingdao and other preachers who refused to join the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) church in the 1950s: “During the early years of the communist take-over, all Christians, particularly pastors, came under pressure from the Chinese government. Those who did not become part of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement were persecuted. These pastors’ faithfulness to Christ under pressure, inspired the young people of the subsequent generation to be faithful to Christ. The revival in the Chinese church resulted from what they saw these faithful servants of God do ahead of them.”1
Jin Tianming and Ezra Jin are just two examples of the “young people of the subsequent generation” who have followed in the footsteps of those preachers. Having come of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these two modern church leaders in mainland China have also experienced persecution from the Chinese government because of their Christian faith. Even so, Tianming and Ezra helped to launch Mission China. In 2018, both of them were sending out missionaries while they were under severe restriction by the Chinese government (Tianming during a 10-year term of house arrest, Ezra when his Zion Church was banned and dismantled).2 This ongoing work of mission mobilization within mainland China belies Tan’s worry that the church in China has lost its vision for doing mission in cross-cultural contexts.
David Ro concludes that the climate of persecution in China has “prepared Mission China house church leaders to find creative strategies to send their missionaries into similar political environments of pressure and persecution. The political climate has shaped their mission strategies as they are more aware and prepared for persecution at home and on the field.”3
Besides the challenges of persecution and restrictions, Ro points to another factor driving the Chinese mission movement. Revival, or a movement of God, has been essential for the rise of the Chinese mission movement. “China’s missionary movement comes from the rural house church revivals in the 1980s and 1990s, and the urban church in the 1990s and 2000s. China church leaders understand that the essential factor behind Mission China was a revived church.”4 As God works to bring revival in the church, he also sends out people from his church into his worldwide mission. Amid persecution and challenges, the Chinese church has experienced revival and has grown into a mission-sending church.
Developing Sending Structures: Closed-Down Churches Supporting Missionaries
Though Chinese house churches experience ongoing and intensifying restrictions, they have begun to develop sending structures to support cross-cultural missionaries. Even churches that have been forced to close are still finding ways to support missionaries that they have sent.
Wu (pseudonym) has been living in her cross-cultural context for more than seven years. Wu says that while she was initially enthusiastic about missions when she first arrived, the following years took their toll. Loneliness and other cross-cultural stresses depleted her initial enthusiasm. The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated these challenges for Wu, particularly because she was not able to return to her home in China to visit her family or her church.
Shortly before we talked, Wu was finally able to return to China for the first time in five years. Though her church in China had been shut down by the government, Wu’s visit left her with a sense of encouragement as she thought about her own struggles in her cross-cultural context: “So when I talked with the people back in China, it really encouraged me. Actually, the church disappeared because of the government policy. They cannot gather together, so the church became different groups, like life groups. I visited several of the life groups. I see God’s work through them and in them I feel so encouraged. I can say that ‘Wow, I’m not alone in this journey. There are so many people who walk with me.’” Wu felt that God provided her encouragement through others who were experiencing suffering through persecution.
Tan shares her own sense that the Chinese church has received a prophetic word about being involved with missions in spite of persecution. “I still remember what God spoke to the church in China. I still do believe God has spoken to us as a people to be a blessing to the nations, and, of course, that’s also a principle in God’s kingdom. He’s blessed us with the gospel, and we are to bless the nations with the gospel. It needs to be that way. It has to flow in and out for it to be alive.” Echoing the promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 12, Tan feels that God has given the Chinese church a role to play in that blessing of the nations.
Hope for the Future
The leaders of Mission China remain optimistic in the face of increasing government restrictions. Ro asserts, “The mass movement of thousands of missionaries would be an unlikely scenario unless there is a change in the external political environment. Mission China leaders are expecting further tightening under the current regime but are nevertheless generally optimistic and preparing for the difficult road ahead.”5 As the Chinese mission movement continues to move forward, younger university graduates potentially represent a changing of the guard within the Chinese mission movement.
Until recently, many Chinese missionaries were seen to be young and ill-equipped. In his 2013 assessment of the trainees that joined the Back to Jerusalem movement, Chan Kim-Kwong observes that “they are mostly young people from 20 to 25 years of age with an average education of junior school to senior high school. Only a few have some college education. Most of them come from rural areas with little experiences of city life, and almost none have had any cross-cultural experience outside of China prior to their joining the program for training.”6 Chan also notes that “church leaders in the Middle East have stressed that future missionaries to that part of the world should acquire some sort of professional status and have in-depth understanding of Islamic culture. There are few Chinese Christians who meet those two criteria, especially with regard to quality training in cross-cultural issues.”7
Since 2014, and particularly after the launch of Mission China in 2015, an increasing number of Chinese university graduates have been doing mission work in cross-cultural contexts. These university graduates could have the professional skills that church leaders in the Middle East and other areas hope to see in future missionaries coming to their regions. The last post in this series will focus on the implications of these changing demographics in the Chinese mission movement and how they impact the expansion of God’s mission throughout the globe.
- Jim Stewart, “Dynamics of Christian Growth in China,” in The China Mission Handbook: A Portrait of China and Its Church, ed. Jonathan Chao (Hong Kong: Chinese Church Research Center, 1989), 55–56.
- David L Ro, “A Study of an Emerging Missions Movement in Urban China: From the Perspective Of Four Beijing Pastors,” PhD Diss., Oxford Center for Mission Studies, 2023, 191.
- Ro, 210.
- Ro, 190.
- Ro, 256.
- Chan, 186.
- Kim-Kwong Chan. “The Back to Jerusalem Movement: Mission Movement of the Christian Community in Mainland China.” In Mission Spirituality and Authentic Discipleship, edited by Wonsuk Ma and Kenneth R. Ross. Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series 14. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013.
