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.
It is our prayer that the articles in this issue will raise the profile of this vital service to God’s servants, prompting deeper discussion and sparking new practical efforts to prepare and to come alongside those being sent.
May the stories we tell in this new era be stories of God’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of his people. The gospel is still unique and true, even when it is not clothed in the outward signs of success.
Everyone who has been to China, or met a Christian from China, or read or heard something about Christians in China, has a story to tell. But no one has the whole story.
Each... aspect of the Christian witness speaks to one facet of the totality of Christ’s kingdom reign. Each provides a complimentary narrative in the overall plot, which is the story of Christ at work in and through his witnesses on earth.
Serving China’s missionary church will require seeing “success” through a new lens, defined not by big-budget projects and exotic stories, but by the faithfulness of those who are willing to labor in obscurity on the margins, often unannounced and unnoticed, with perhaps few visible results.
Brent Fulton comments on the diversity of approaches in Reformed churches in China in this adaptation of his ChinaSource Perspective article from the winter issue of CSQ.
Here we have a multi-faceted picture of churches that may identify with one another confessionally, but which differ on questions of where and how to worship, the role of women in the church, and how to relate to government authorities. Far from representing a rigid, cookie-cutter approach to church life, the Reformed tradition as it is currently lived out in China is dynamic and adaptable, reflecting the resourcefulness that has enabled the church to thrive amidst all kinds of adversity.
Leaders in the policy arena face the difficult task of taking constructive action while at the same time being intentional participants in a larger conversation that could directly impact their options. In a similar way, Christians engaged in China are called to expand the larger conversation beyond the currently acknowledged reality, exposing their fellow believers to new possibilities through a deeper relationship with China and its church.
Embedded in today’s evangelical China narratives, particularly the narrative of the persecuted church, is the assumption that regime change will inevitably bring about greater openness for the gospel in China. But is that what Chinese history tells us?
While Walls identified strongly with the church in Africa, where he served as a missionary from 1957 to 1966, his scope was global. His reframing of Christian history brings a much-needed perspective to the stories we often tell about God’s mission in the world, including in China.
It has been said that for the person who has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
For foreigners who go to China, it is often the case that what they find depends on what they’ve come looking for.
Western narratives about China and its church are built on a fundamental, but often unspoken, assumption about the relationship between law and society.