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.
China is the church’s next big thing.
That’s what I thought–until I visited China. That is, until I visited Sam in China (pictured above).
In my mind, the biggest thing Highland could do, and any church in America could do, was to join what God was doing in China. Helping lead hundreds of thousands of Chinese to faith in Jesus.
I still believe that’s a big thing. A great thing. And something Highland is definitely going to do.
But Sam opened my eyes to something even bigger.
Sam planted a church in the Central Business District in Beijing. He came to Beijing because of its strategic importance. In America, if you wanted to reach the political leaders, you’d start a church in Washington, D. C. If you wanted to reach the intellectual elite, you’d plant in Boston. If you wanted to reach the financial leaders, you’d plant in New York City. If you wanted to reach the leaders of entertainment and media, you’d go to Hollywood. But in China, to reach all of those levels of leaders, you can go to one place–Beijing. Beijing is the political center, intellectual center, media center, and one of the financial centers of China. Reach Beijing, and you reach those who influence the rest of China.
That, in and of itself, is a huge vision. That’s part of what led Sam to Beijing. And God was turning that vision into reality. Each Sunday approximately 150 emerging leaders in Beijing were now gathering in a cinema where Sam preached about Jesus.
But God had given Sam an even larger vision. China was not merely an end. China was a means to an end. Sam’s ultimate goal was to reach Japan and North Korea. His parents were from North Korea. And though Sam had been born in Florida and raised and educated in southern California, his heart beat for North Korea. Sam was convicted that those who would have the greatest success taking the gospel into North Korea would be the Chinese. Thus Sam was in Beijing not simply to reach China, but to reach North Korea, Japan and the rest of the Asian world through China.
Highland’s going to China. There will be enough good work there to last a lifetime. Many lifetimes. But China’s not just an end. It’s also a means to an end. Those who’ve already come to faith in Jesus or who will come to faith in Jesus will be capable of reaching peoples and nations beyond China. China’s Christians may, in the end, be able to do far greater mission work than any other people on earth.
