A monthly update sharing stories and reflections from the ChinaSource team on God’s work in and through China.
It's hard to learn a skill if you've never seen an experienced person do it.Instructions are great but watching a video on Youtube is better. Better yet, however, is having an experienced person—a mentor—walk alongside you, make suggestions, and give good feedback as you learn. If that is true of simpler tasks like pruning roses or learning tai chi, it is certainly true for learning the far more complex skills and attitudes needed in godly, fruitful church leaders.
Last week, word started circulating in the western press of a church in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province that was surrounded by parishioners protecting it from a demolition crew.
In 1997 when China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong and the people of Hong Kong were grappling with what it meant to be Chinese of China, conversations often referred to Asian values. For over a hundred years, Hong Kong had been ruled and influenced by Western values, some referred to them as Christian values. Now that Hong Kong was no longer part of the United Kingdom, the question was how do the people of Hong Kong identify themselves? What values do they hold? Frequently the answer involved articulating Asian values in some way. Often Buddhism was highlighted; other times Confucianism was mentioned as a source for moral guidance.
February 14 marks the official end of the two-week holiday season in China known as Spring Festival, which coincides with the first 15 days of the lunar New Year. According to the Chinese zodiac, the year that began two weeks ago is the Year of the Horse.
One of the questions frequently asked about China concerns the degree to which Christians in China face persecution, the default assumption being that China has a specific policy of repressing Christianity.
Now that the spacecraft Chang'e 3 has successfully touched down on the moon's surface, China can add a lunar landing to its list of stunning achievements in the past three decades. These achievements among them the most spectacular Olympic Games opening ceremony in history, the lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and the migration of hundreds more millions from the countryside to the cities stand out as exclamation points in the fast-paced narrative of China's transformation. At once breathtaking and disorienting, the making of what TIME magazine decades ago called "The New, New China" has transformed not only a nation but also its place in the world at large.
A remarkable article appeared in the Global Times (the English-language mouthpiece of the authoritative People's Daily) on October 10 that openly acknowledged the division between China's official Three Self Church and the unofficial church and suggested that the authorities are trying to bridge the gap between official and underground believers that has seemed irreconcilable for a generation.
Last summer's crash of an Asiana jetliner in San Francisco shocked and saddened many in China. More than a hundred of the passengers were Chinese high school students enroute to a summer camp in California. The unfortunate tragedy also shone a spotlight on a growing trend of Chinese youth studying in US high schools. By one estimate 25,000 Chinese high schoolers are currently in private schools in the United States.
At the beginning of the new academic year, two news items related to education in China caught our attention, one negative, the other positive.
In an historic gathering at the end of June, some 100 church leaders from China joined with their counterparts from around Asia and beyond for the Asian Church Leaders Forum, held in Seoul, Korea. This conference was particularly meaningful in that most of these leaders had planned to attend the 2010 Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, South Africa, but at the last minute were prevented from leaving China. Nearly three years later, their vision of being able to take their "seat at the table" with other leaders from around the globe became a reality.
Anyone who has been involved in China over the past 30 years can complete the sentence "When I first came to China " with a vividperhaps even harrowingaccount of what China was like in the past. The readily observable changes in day-to-day living that have come about from rapid development and economic growth are phenomenal and at times unsettling. Those newly arrived in China are often surprised at what they find and realize that the reading they have done or the orientation classes they have taken in preparation for living and working in China have not kept up with the pace of development in China.
On June 4, ChinaSource conducted an online webinar entitled "Socially Speaking," in which we gave participants a behind the scenes look at how ChinaSource is utilizing the internet and social media to engage the Christian community around critical issues facing China. In this edition of the Lantern, we would like to share some of that content with you.