History can repeat itself. In a ChinaSource blog I wrote in 2022, I compare the recent ending of a “golden age” in China missions with the “China Debacle” after 1949 and ask: “whether any valuable missiological reflection will be done, and valuable lessons drawn such as what happened in the 1950s and afterwards?”
In my recent research at a missionary archival center, I bumped into a fruit of the soul-searching of the western missionary communities in the wake of the sudden collapse of the missionary enterprise: an unpublished report entitled “Lessons to be Learned from the Experiences of Christian Missions in China,” compiled by a group of former China mission leaders on behalf of several US-based foreign mission research committees in the summer of 1951. This group sent out three questions to many missionaries who recently returned from China and eventually received 152 replies from the missionaries working for 22 different mission boards. Based on this rich data, a 33-page report was produced and shared with many mission boards and consultant agencies afterwards.
Touching on an incredibly wide spectrum of topics ranging from mission organizations and workers to local churches, the report aims to help the missionary communities to “arrive at more effective policies and strategy” in China and other fields (p. i).
Three Questions
As I read through this lengthy report, I could not help nodding my head and saying to myself: “This sounds amazingly familiar!” Just look at these questions:
1. What lessons have you learned from missionary experience in China which would be suggestive of what should not be repeated in other mission fields?
2. What lessons have you learned which, in your opinion, should be incorporated in mission work in other fields?
3. Were you to get back into China soon for missionary work, what changes would you want to effect in your life and work? (p. iii)
I am so intrigued by these questions that I keep asking myself: Are they still relevant to us today?
The Responses from Missionaries
Another highlight of the report is a long list of anonymous remarks made by numerous missionaries in response to these three questions.
While all the major problems of the old mission enterprise such as foreign missionaries’ control and over-building of schools and hospitals are identified and criticized without reservation, many missionaries’ responses to the second question or “positive lessons” are rather affirmative, constructive, and prophetic. For example, one missionary stated: “persistent loyalty to Christian ideas and ideals through all sorts of opposition and persecution is a worthy result of long years of patient effort” (p. 18). Another missionary suggests: “person-to-person work with individuals or small groups is more effective than work with large groups” (p. 10).
In responding to the third question, one missionary declared:
I would like to be more of a scholar than I am in the field of Chinese culture. I would like to be more skillful in helping Chinese in places of Christian leadership develop to their fullest capacity in leadership. I would like to be wiser in knowing what the hopes and fears in the minds of the Chinese are with whom I deal and wiser and more diligent to bring Christ to them. I would like to continue to take the attitude that executive direction of the work of the church should be in the hands of the Chinese and would avoid all exercise of power depending rather upon the wisdom I have to enrich the program of the church through the friendships I have with the workers, both professional and non-professional, in the church. I would try even more to realize that my influence depends upon my devotion to Christ, my wisdom in interpreting him, and my friendships on the basis of equality with the Chinese with whom I come in contact (p. 9).
I found these words still quite touching, powerful, and stimulating today, especially as we are preparing to return to China or Chinese ministry. Fully aware of that generation of missionaries’ context and limitations, I do not agree with everything that is said in the report. However, I am very much impressed by two aspects of the report.
First, the overall tone of the report points to a missionary community that was profoundly shaken by what happened in China but refused to fall into defeatism and cynicism. On the contrary, they remained hopeful, committed, and forward-looking.
Second, this report is marked by a combination of profound self-criticism and eager searching for new paths. This is clearly an act of courage, humility, and wisdom. The lessons this report draws are overwhelmingly practical. But they constitute the initial steps of a long journey of global missionary “soul-searching” leading to an overhaul of entire missiology.
In some ways, the challenge the older generation faced is the same as ours. If you are asked the three questions this report raises, what would be your answers in the twenty-first century?
