The Rise of Chinese Missionaries

Qi (pseudonym) is a university graduate who heard God’s call to cross-cultural mission. As Qi was preparing to go and serve, the story of James Outram Fraser inspired her. Fraser was a missionary with China Inland Mission (CIM) who served among the Lisu people from 1909 until his death in 1938. A biography written only six years after his death includes a letter to home written by Fraser in 1916, which reads in part:

I was very severely disappointed about the attitude of the Lisu of that district to the Gospel. They received the Word with joy at first, as they so often do. Several announced that they were going to turn Christian, one old man and his son seeming specially earnest. Then the spirit of fear seemed to possess them, and one by one they dropped off, until no one would take a stand at all. We had to leave them as heathen as I first found them. It was a very painful experience and seemed almost to stun me for a while.¹

我对那一区的傈僳人对福音的态度感到极度失望。他们一开始欢喜地接受神的话语，这在他们当中其实很常见。有几个人宣称自己要成为基督徒，其中一位老人与他的儿子看起来特别认真。但随后，一种惧怕的灵似乎临到他们，一个接一个退缩，最后竟无人愿意表明立场。我们离开时，他们仍和我初到时一样，是未信的异教徒。那是一段极其痛苦的经历，甚至让我一时之间近乎麻木。¹

Though Fraser’s work was difficult, it ultimately bore great fruit. By 2010, among the estimated 600,000 Lisu living within China alone, about half of them were Christian.²

Reflecting on Fraser’s story, Qi says, “I have read several books, but one is [about] James Outram Fraser. I read this book, and that just influenced me a lot, because he…went through lots of struggles. And I read it again when I first went to [my cross-cultural context] because it was very challenging for me as well.” Fraser’s suffering and sacrifice for the sake of the Lisu people in China inspired Qi as she herself experienced difficulties on the mission field.

Qi is just one of many Chinese university graduates who are joining God’s global mission.

I recently completed a ThM thesis that examines this growing phenomenon within the Chinese mission movement. As part of my research, I conducted interviews with twelve Chinese university graduates who have served the Lord in cross-cultural locations. Their involvement with God’s global mission is just one example of how the Chinese Church has moved from being a receiver to being a sender of missionaries. This blog post is the first of a series that will discuss the rise of the Chinese mission movement, particularly through the lens of university graduates. Today’s post will consider the historical background of this movement.

House Church Movement Emerges in Twentieth Century China

During the 1920s and 1930s, after several decades of Protestant missionary activity within the country, liberal and fundamentalist streams developed within the church in China. On the liberal end of the spectrum, a number of churches and denominations established the Church of Christ in China (CCC) in 1927. Led by Cheng Jingyi, the CCC sought to form a unified and indigenous national church in China.³

However, the CCC continued to be dependent on foreign missionaries and their financial resources, limiting its ability to become fully independent and indigenous.⁴ Also, many conservative churches and denominations, including the China Inland Mission (CIM), refused to join the CCC.⁵ The Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) also severely curtailed the CCC’s development.⁶ But after 1949, those same liberal impulses that had led to the formation of the CCC were channeled by the Chinese Communist Party to establish the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).

Unlike these more liberal churches, evangelical believers in China focused almost exclusively on evangelism, with little emphasis on social engagement.⁷ Compelling preachers including Song Shangjie (John Song), Wang Mingdao, and Ni Tuosheng (Watchman Nee) attracted large audiences to hear messages that called for repentance from sin and belief in Jesus. Through their preaching, a wave of revivalism fueled the growing fundamentalist stream of Chinese churches.

These revivalist churches laid the foundation for what later became the house church movement in China.

One significant ministry of many house churches has been with university students. Campus ministry began to flourish through preachers like Zhao Junying, who evangelized throughout inland China during the Sino-Japanese War. The war forced universities from eastern China to move inland, and many displaced students came to faith through Zhao’s preaching.⁸

With the help of CIM missionary David Adeney and a team of Chinese church leaders, Zhao established China Inter-Varsity with a national student gathering in Chongqing in July 1945.⁹

Chinese Revivalist Churches Send Out Missionaries

Alongside the growth of fundamentalist churches in China, a mission movement from those churches began to emerge. The first Chinese missionary to leave China was a Methodist minister named Huang Nai Tang. He and about 1,000 of his followers left Fuzhou to establish a church and a mission in Sarawak (now East Malaysia) in 1901.¹⁰

Perhaps the most famous Chinese missionary effort of the early twentieth century was the Preaching the Gospel to All Places Band that came from the CIM Bible School in Shaanxi Province led by Reverend Mark Ma.¹¹

Chan Kim-Kwong describes Ma’s vision in this way: “The Chinese church should assume responsibility to take the gospel to Xinjiang and, in order to complete the Great Commission, to the rest of the world… This area was kept for the Chinese church as a portion of inheritance, so that the Chinese church can claim it when the Lord returns.”¹²

Students initially traveled to Urumqi and partnered with an established church there. Two team members eventually made it to Kashgar, but they never went further.¹³

In any case, an American missionary to China (Helen Bailey) promoted this group in the US and the UK, referring to them as “Back to Jerusalem Band.”¹⁴

At least two modern mission movements have taken up the vision expressed by these early Chinese missionaries. The first of these movements revived the name, “Back to Jerusalem” in the 1990s, mobilizing many rural house church Christians into cross-cultural mission work.¹⁵

Chan notes that the main focus of the modern “Back to Jerusalem” movement has been to take the “baton of global missions” and return the gospel “to its starting point at Jerusalem.”¹⁶

More recently, the Mission China movement was launched in 2015 by a group of leaders mainly from urban house churches.¹⁷

University Graduates: A New Mission Force

Since the launch of Mission China, Chinese house church networks involved with campus ministry have begun sending university graduates and others to join God’s global mission.¹⁸

In 2017, these networks organized a mission conference for more than 1,000 Chinese university students and recent graduates. More than 250 of them publicly committed to join God’s mission on their campuses, in their workplaces, in their churches, and in cross-cultural contexts.

Online versions of this conference were also organized in 2020 and 2023, each with more than 1,000 participants. Several of the university graduates I met during my research were among those who responded to God’s call to mission at these conferences.

As more university graduates join God’s global mission, they will likely alter the demographic of Christians leaving mainland China to do cross-cultural mission work.

Zhu Zi Xian (pseudonym) says, “For the foreseeable future, university graduates and young professionals will continue to be the main force of the Chinese church in world missions.”¹⁹

If the number of university graduates involved in mission continues to grow as Zhu expects, the Chinese mission movement as a whole may become more equipped to meet the changing needs of mission work in cross-cultural contexts, particularly in places that are hostile to Christianity.

University graduates are likely to have better opportunities to live and work in such countries because of their training and skills.

This movement of university graduates into cross-cultural missions is part of a much larger story—one rooted in both spiritual passion and historical legacy. In the next post, we’ll look at the values that shape these young missionaries, particularly their views on piety and suffering.

Editor’s note: This article was originally written in English and was translated into Chinese by the ChinaSource team with permission.

1. Mrs. Howard Taylor, Behind the Ranges: Fraser of Lisuland, S. W. China (London: Lutterworth Press and the China Inland Mission, 1944), 122.
2. Aminta Arrington, Songs of the Lisu Hills: Practicing Christianity in Southwest China, World Christianity (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020), 5.
3. Marina Xiaojing Wang, “The Evolution of the Ecumenical Vision in the Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Context: A Case Study of the Church of Christ in China (1927–1937),” Studies in World Christianity 23, no. 1 (April 2017), 24–25.
4. Wang, 28.
5. Kevin Xiyi Yao, The Fundamentalist Movement among Protestant Missionaries in China, 1920-1937 (Dallas, TX: University Press of America, 2003), 216.
6. Wang, 25–26.
7. Kevin Xiyi Yao, “Chinese Evangelicals and Social Concerns: A Historical and Comparative Review,”  in After Imperialism: Christian Identity in China and the Global Evangelical Movement, ed. Richard R. Cook and David W. Pao, Studies in Chinese Christianity (Eugene, Or: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 51.
8. Xi Lian, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 190.
9. Daniel H. Bays, A New History of Christianity in China (Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 148.
10. Kim-Kwong Chan, “The Indigenous Mission Movement from China [2]: A Historical Review,” ChinaSource, April 11, 2013, accessed June 6, 2023. https://chinasource.org/resource-library/articles/the-indigenous-mission-movement-from-china-a-historical-review/.
11. Chan, “The Indigenous Mission Movement from China [2]: A Historical Review.”
12. Kim-Kwong Chan, “The Back to Jerusalem Movement: Mission Movement of the Christian Community in Mainland China,” in Mission Spirituality and Authentic Discipleship, ed. Wonsuk Ma and Kenneth R. Ross, Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series 14 (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013), 179.
13. Chan, 180.
14. Chan, 179–80.
15. Chan, 181.
16. Chan, 182.
17. David L. Ro, “A Study of an Emerging Missions Movement in Urban China: From the Perspective of Four Beijing Pastors,” PhD Diss., Oxford Center for Mission Studies, 2023, 15.
18. Jia Qian (pseudonym), “Students Joining in God’s Global Mission: Opportunities and Challenges,” accessed December 8, 2022. https://chinasource.org/resource-library/articles/students-joining-in-gods-global-mission/.
19. Zi Xian Zhu (pseudonym), “History of Student Ministry in China,” accessed December 8, 2022. https://chinasource.org/resource-library/articles/history-of-student-ministry-in-china/.