Members of the Highland China Missions Team recently spent two weeks in three cities in China: Beijing, Qingdao and Wuhan. We visited church leaders and Christians in house-churches, Three Self Patriotic Churches (the government approved church) and in other types of Christian churches. In this series I explore how the trip shattered myths I (and others) once held about China, its people and its faith.
On a Monday night in March, eight of us from Highland gathered with Christians in a house-church in Wuhan, China (NPR ran a very helpful piece on Wuhan in 2012). More than ten million people call this city home. It’s massive and dense. U.S. companies in Wuhan include Cummins, General Electric and TRW Automotive. The French automaker Peugeot-Citroen has two factories here. Pfizer has a research and development facility located in Wuhan as well. It’s one of China’s fastest growing cities. A perfect place for ministry.
On Sunday my friend and co-worker Eric Gentry had preached for this house-church. Tonight, Monday night, we were gathered once again with the small church to share a word of encouragement and to answer questions they might have of our American team. After I spoke, we urged everyone who was a first-generation Christian to raise their hands. The majority of those present lifted a hand. What a joy it was to see first-time believers!
Then it was time for them to ask their questions. A hand near the back quickly went up. It belonged to a young twenty-something. He was a first-generation Christian. And he asked a question that broke our hearts:
“My question is this: I have a friend who says he is a Christian, and he tells me that I am not a Christian. He tells me that I did not believe enough of the right things before I was baptized. Do you think he’s right?”
The more we talked, the more depressed I became. It was clear that the issue raised by this Christian’s friend had nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with traditions and practices imported from an American church. This young adult lives in a country where 93% of the 1.3 billion population does not follow Jesus, and he was having to deal with another Christ-follower who was telling him that Jesus was not enough.
This, sadly, was a theme we noticed more than once. In fact, on the way to the house-church gathering that night, I walked with a Chinese woman named Gloria. She’s also a first generation Christian. Her husband does not believe in Jesus. Thus, she’s single-handedly raising her two children in the faith. She told me about a coworker in the English school where she works. Gloria’s coworker said she wanted to be baptized and become a follower of Jesus, but the church she had reached out to would not baptize her. They said she would have to complete a six month course before she could be baptized. Gloria asked me, “Do you think that’s right?” I was so surprised that, at first, I didn’t know what to say. Here was a woman swimming against the faith-current of more than one billion of her peers. A woman who believed in Jesus and wanted to be baptized. And a church was telling her that wasn’t enough.
The day before, an American missionary in the same city told us how the house-church he attended had become embroiled in division over traditions like whether or not people should stand or sit during communion. He tried to help them see that there were far more important things for the church to focus on. But they would not listen. Someone long before this missionary had woven a spirit of sectarianism into that house-church’s DNA.
This same spirit arose one night when we shared a dinner with Chinese Christians and American missionaries in one city. One of the American missionaries warned us soberly: “It’s important for you to know that not everyone in China is teaching ‘the truth.'” And when we pressed him for more details, he spoke of the sinfulness of instrumental worship in some Chinese churches.
The saddest thing we found in China was that some are demanding something in addition to Jesus. Some are calling the Chinese people not simply to Jesus, but to their version of “the truth.” A truth that is legalistic. A truth that is divisive. A truth that is sectarian. A truth that says to the Chinese people, “You need Jesus AND _____” (fill in the blank with your favorite Western tradition, preference or practice).
Happily, in the majority of places we found Chinese church leaders and American missionaries unapologetically committed to sharing Jesus above all else. One of our most encouraging times came when our team visited with an American missionary named Bob. He led us to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement church building from which his ministry flowed (see previous post). Though he is not a part of the TSPM, the church allowed Bob to use his building for ministry purposes. We sat with Bob and several Chinese whom he was discipling. One was a project manager in a large kitchen appliance company. Another was a chemical engineer. A third was a software engineer. One worked in quality control in a large washing machine manufacturing plant. Each had committed to a strikingly simple goal–read the words of Jesus and put those words into practice for an entire year. Each week they gathered to share successes and failures and to share conversation about more of the words of Christ. Bob told us “My goal is simply to help the Chinese live out the way of Jesus and share that way with others. I believe if I can simply get them to live out the way of Jesus, it will transform China and the world.”
Early in our trip, we visited with Chinese church leaders in Beijing. We asked if they would share their faith-stories with us. One by one, these grown men cried as they recounted how they had finally and fully come to believe in Jesus. One particularly endearing man shared how he grew up in a Muslim home, trained to become a Buddhist monk, joined and rose up the ranks of the Communist Party, but finally found (or was found by) Jesus. Tears streamed down his face as he shared how, six years ago, “In Jesus, I finally found the answer to life!” And with a huge smile on his face, he told of how he’d been praying for four years for his adult daughter to know Jesus. Recently, she had travelled from New York, where she is a model, to Beijing where he baptized her into Christ.
One thing above all else was bringing joy to the Chinese people and fruit to the Chinese church: Jesus. Only Jesus.
These experiences have led to us a deep conviction that as we join God’s great work in China, we will do all that we can to not bring the Chinese “the truth” in any Western or American sense. But to simply bring the Chinese Jesus. He is, after all, “the” Truth.
