Xu (pseudonym) has been serving God as a cross-cultural worker.
She’s not planting a church or preaching the gospel to young people at a language center. Instead, Xu is serving with a relief and development agency.
After completing a master’s degree in international relations with a focus on development economics, Xu felt God’s call to serve him cross-culturally. As she serves the Lord there, Xu wrestles with the question of whether her work in relief and development is really mission work. But her reflections suggest a more holistic view of God’s mission in the world:
There’s so much to God’s kingdom, and I think we all play a different role. Paul said, “For me, to live is Christ.” I think it’s in the daily things. Even if I’m not evangelizing on a very frequent basis, how can I feed people in a godly way? How can I love myself and others in a very gracious way? The Bible teaches us to work as if we were serving the Lord. So, I think that’s just something that applies to everybody.
Even if her work does not involve evangelism, Xu sees that her work is still a valuable part of growing God’s kingdom.
Xu’s story is just one example of how today’s university graduates from mainland China are adopting a more holistic view of mission.
In this article, we will explore how university-educated missionaries from China are participating in the holistic mission of God, serving Him in ways that go beyond evangelism.
Re-Thinking Mission: Holistic
The concept of holistic mission, also called integral mission, rose to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s through the influence of key Latin American leaders of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), including C. René Padilla and Samuel Escobar.1
Padilla’s address to the first Lausanne World Evangelization Congress in 1974 brought the concept of integral mission to a wider international audience, generating responses ranging from enthusiasm to outrage among the delegates.2
For non-western delegates, the gospel was not complete without both evangelism and social responsibility. Yet for western delegates, social action was seen as something added to the gospel; social action was a worthy pursuit, but not something necessary in mission work.
In a recent article examining Padilla’s integral mission concept, David Kirkpatrick quotes Padilla’s vivid summary of integral mission:
The proclamation of the gospel (kerygma) and the demonstration of the gospel that gives itself in service (diakonia) form an indivisible (indissoluble) whole. One without the other is an incomplete, mutilated (mutilado) gospel and, consequently, contrary to the will of God. From this perspective, it is foolish to ask about the relative importance of evangelism and social responsibility. This would be equivalent to asking about the relative importance of the right wing and the left wing of a plane.3
Just as an airplane needs two wings to fly, Padilla argues that both “proclamation” and “demonstration” of the gospel are equally important in God’s mission.
Christopher Wright continues to take up these ideas of integral mission in the context of the Lausanne Movement and other settings. He uses the term holistic mission, defining it this way:
Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation.4
Some mission leaders, including those with Mission China, have pushed back on this concept of holistic mission. David Ro quotes Daniel Jin, a key leader of Mission China:
In the “theology of the Great Commission,” the core should be laid on Jesus Christ’s gospel, including sharing the gospel, discipleship training, establishing churches, training workers, and mobilizing such a ministry continuously. Therefore, establishing such a “theology of the Great Commission” is necessary for the Chinese missionary movement. The Chinese church needs to pay more attention to overseas missions to deliver the message that we will do missions, not to emphasize local social care or environmental protection.5
Yet others from the Chinese church seem to be advocating for a holistic mission. Ji Yajie and Thomas Hale cite a Chinese missiologist, Suk Ki-Tan (pseudonym), who has written Blessings Restored for All Nations. Ji and Hale offer a translation of Suk’s words:
The main term in this book is “restoring blessing,” which replaces the two terms “evangelism” and “mission,” commonly used in the past. From a biblical perspective, “restoring blessing” is the most basic intention and will of God for all human beings. Restoring blessing is not only concerned with the number of people who believe in the gospel, but also with the renewal of all cultures through the truth of the Bible.6
Suk’s words align well with how Wright sees the blessing of Abraham: “There could be worse ways of summing up what mission is supposed to be all about than ‘Go … and be a blessing.’”7
In his observation of campus ministry in China, Zhu Zi Xian (pseudonym) asserts,
The revival of the contemporary Chinese evangelical student movement has had an important impact on the Chinese church. There has been increasing attention on societal issues, such as caring for marginalized groups, social justice, publishing ministries, and Christian education.8
Seeing that more university graduates are doing mission in cross-cultural contexts, Zhu goes on to say,
These missionaries have high educational and professional skills, so they can quickly learn the local language, integrate into the local cultural situation, and work with international organizations. For the foreseeable future, university graduates and young professionals will continue to be the main force of the Chinese church in world missions.9
Chinese University Graduates Doing Holistic Mission
When Pang (pseudonym) moved to her cross-cultural context to become a middle school teacher, Pang learned that the people there didn’t trust her: “My principal told me directly when I first entered, ‘I don’t like Chinese people.’ Many local people say that they don’t like Chinese people.”
Because of this latent mistrust that the local people had toward outsiders, particularly Chinese people, Pang needed to take time to build trust. To do that, Pang would form relationships with the students by spending time with them on the playground. But she didn’t just supervise them; she played games and sports along with them. Pang would also eat lunch together with the students, taking time to chat and build relationships with them.
Soon, some students began to tell her their struggles:
One day, I remember vividly, there was a child who came to my office, he said he didn’t want to go to class. I asked him what the reason was, but he wouldn’t tell me. It turned out that he was afraid of going to his teacher.
Pang’s colleagues noticed how the students responded to her in these positive ways. Gradually, these colleagues came to trust her, too.
Pang’s story brings to mind the image of planting found in the book of Jeremiah, where God urges His people in exile to “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” (Jeremiah 29:5, NIV) God encouraged Pang when she wondered whether she was doing what she was supposed to do:
God reminded me, ‘You are doing missionary work now, and your missionary work is not what you imagined.’ It’s not about how many people believe in the Lord, but rather by God allowing you to sprout like Him, to live rooted, very rooted in this place, you set an example.
Pang eventually came to understand that her work as a teacher was part of God’s mission work in that place.
Some of these students did put their faith in Jesus through a short-term mission team who helped Pang and others organize a camp for the students. Pang reflects now on what her role might have been in the process of these students coming to faith in Jesus:
I don’t know what role I played in this process, or who helped them, but at least we set an example. Even if I was distracted, we let them see that the lives of these Christians are different, and it is through this silent language that they understand.
As a teacher in a cross-cultural context, Pang embodied God’s call to His people to “sprout” in the place where they find themselves.
Qi (pseudonym) has a similar mindset about mission work being a lifestyle, not just preaching the message of the gospel. As she and her team minister to the poor, their lifestyle is as important as their words:
I really see the hopelessness among people, and I see the children, they can’t go to school, and they really don’t have food to eat, and they don’t have clothes to wear. And the mothers, they don’t know how to educate their children. I think life shouldn’t be like that. I think that’s the thing that really not only breaks my heart; I’d say that really breaks God’s heart.
Qi goes on to say,
I think God called us to go to the nations, to make disciples. People do really need to hear the gospel, to see the examples, and to see that there is something more than what we can just hear. So, I think if they can see you, if they can hear, and they can interact with you, that has more impact on people’s lives.
Her words reveal a holistic mindset in mission that seeks to do more than share the gospel through words.
Xu also mentions that she has been inspired by a well-known prayer, which says in part,
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.10
Reflecting on this prayer, Xu says,
We are the workers, not the master builder. And we are part of a vision that is beyond us. And you are just a small part of this big picture, and there’s comfort in that. And, it’s enough just to do your part well; you don’t have to be the savior. I’m a small part. I’m just one step along the way, and that is okay.
Xu seems to recognize that there is a larger work that God is doing in the world, and that her work is a small but worthwhile part of God’s work.
Xu, Qi, and Pang each use their unique gifts, education, and skills to serve God in his mission to the world. These three cross-cultural workers reflect the ideas of holistic mission that Padilla, Wright, and others have espoused in recent decades.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally written in English and was translated into Chinese by the ChinaSource team.
- Timothée Joset, Priesthood of All Students: Historical, Theological and Missiological Foundations of a Global University Ministry (Carlisle, Cumbria: Langham Global Library, an imprint of Langham Publishing, 2023), 98.
- Joset, 109.
- David C Kirkpatrick, “C. René Padilla and the Origins of Integral Mission in Post-War Latin America,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 67, no. 2 (April 2016): 368.
- Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 22-23.
- Cited in David L. Ro, “A Study of an Emerging Missions Movement in Urban China: From the Perspective of Four Beijing Pastors” (PhDDiss., Oxford Centerfor Mission Studies, 2023), 164.
- Yajie Ji and Thomas Hale, “Restoring Blessing: A Preferable Paradigm for Today’s Mission,” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 37, no. 3–4 (Fall/Winter 2020), accessed December 26, 2023, https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/37_3_4_PDFs/IJFM_37_3_4-Ji_and_Hale.pdf, 173.
- Wright, 214.
- Zi Xian Zhu (pseudonym), “History of Student Ministry in China,” ChinaSource, July 12, 2021, accessed August 31, 2023. https://chinasource.org/resource-library/articles/history-of-student-ministry-in-china/.
- Zhu.
- The text of the prayer comes from a homily written in 1979 by the late Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, Michigan. Multiple sources explain that this prayer has been widely misattributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero. For example, see http://www.romerotrust.org.uk/romero-prayer.
