Brent Fulton is the founder of ChinaSource.
Dr. Fulton served as the first president of ChinaSource until 2019. Prior to his service with ChinaSource, he served from 1995 to 2000 as the managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College. From 1987 to 1995 he served as founding US director of China Ministries International, and from 1985 to 1986 as the English publications editor for the Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong.
Dr. Fulton holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of Southern California and a BA in radio-TV-film from Messiah College.
An avid China watcher, Dr. Fulton has written and taught extensively on the church in China and on Chinese social and political phenomena. He is the author of China's Urban Christians: A Light That Cannot Be Hidden and co-authored China's Next Generation: New China, New Church, New World with Luis Bush.
Dr. Fulton and his wife, Jasmine, previously lived in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2017. They currently reside in northern California.
He is currently facilitating a network of member care professionals serving missionaries sent out from China. He also consults with other organizations on the impact of China's religious policy.
The journey from mythmaking to mission entails putting aside our chosen metanarratives, seeing with fresh eyes and listening with fresh ears, not only to the facts as we perceive them but also to the narratives of those in the stories as they interpret their own reality.
As the experience of China’s church demonstrates, the gifts of Advent seem to come strangely wrapped. The gifts of hope, peace, joy, and love are received through suffering and sacrifice.
Advancing the Gospel in this generation requires that God’s people around the globe join hands and work together. ChinaSource helps enable the church in China to be part of this process, ensuring that the voice of our Chinese brothers and sisters is included in the global conversation.
Understanding China today requires a sense of where China has been.
We bring to China our view of the world and our place in it, our sense of “the way things ought to be,” our values and priorities. Through this lens, we try to make sense of a culture and people very different from ourselves.
Surveying the fraught relationship between church and state in China, the late Chinese church historian Daniel Bays asserted that government control of religion has been a constant feature from Imperial times to the present.
While honestly embracing their own evangelical legacy, with its imperative for gospel witness, the Mennonites also found in their heritage values of “hosting, listening, waiting, learning, inquiring, affirming.”
Beyond the story of suffering lies the sacred narrative of how the church continues to be the church.
She lifted others, not for recognition, but for the sake of God’s kingdom.
The persecution story may be unending, but neither is persecution the end of the story.
Metaphors have the power to expand our imaginations or limit our thinking. May the lived experience of China’s Christians, both inside and outside China, inspire new images of what is possible in Christ’s kingdom.
The role of China’s church in world evangelization has more to do with intentionality of heart than with getting to any one particular destination, whether Jerusalem or someplace else.