2 of 4

I don't think many of us have thought about the Chinese church in a missionary capacity. How do you envision its contribution?

It's more than the quantity of missionaries—it's the quality. In my opinion, the kind of Christianity that God has instilled in Chinese believers allows them to impact the Islamic and Hindu and Buddhist worlds in a way that most other Christians cannot.

I'm sure all your readers are aware of the persecution that has affected Chinese churches. There are hundreds of pastors in prison today. Yet they don't see it only as a satanic attack when they are tortured and put into prison. They see it as God's training ground, and God's furnace of affliction to purify them so they can be effective witnesses. The Chinese are in the position to send workers who have been though the furnace for so long that they're willing literally to die for the gospel.

The Chinese believers are not misinformed. They fully understand that when they go to these Islamic nations and others, they're going to have to spill their own blood for the sake of the gospel.

Then the issue of persecution, or possible martyrdom, is really very much in the front of their thinking.

One house church leader, Brother Yun, believes that in the first decade of this movement, there may be 10,000 martyrs for Christ. Some of the training for the new workers includes subjects such as how to witness for the Lord under any circumstance, and that means even if you're handcuffed and being led to the execution ground. They're training people how to pick handcuffs, and how to jump out of two-story buildings without breaking an ankle in escape. That's an interesting theological point. On one hand, the Chinese believe that sometimes God sends them to prison so they can have a prison ministry. But other times they believe the Devil wants them in prison to stop the ministry, so they need to discern every time there is an arrest just what God's will is for them.

Why choose a goal of 100,000 missionaries?

That number of 100,000 actually came when all of the top church leaders had a meeting, praying about what involvement God wanted from their particular groups. They felt that they should tithe the number of full-time workers that they already had. Out of all the groups, they had approximately 1 million full-time pastors and evangelists, and so this is how the number 100,000 began.

How many have gone out?

The vision is still in its infancy. The latest figures I've seen show that a little less than 1,500 cross-cultural missionaries have actually left China. But it's a little difficult to gauge, because many of them come and go. They'll go into neighboring countries for six months, and then they'll go back to China.

Do they have a supporting structure within the churches that send them out?

They do. Six or seven major house-church networks are fully behind this vision. There are millions of believers in each network. And so they are the ones focused on sending workers to fulfill this vision.

From what I've seen, they don't really have any structured plan how they are going to financially support these workers. They're not looking for handouts from the West, that's for sure. They're looking for the hand of the Lord. But they don't really plan and strategize financial matters like we do in the West. They just believe that if they're called by God to go somewhere then God will provide. And he does.

next page... |  2 of 4

share this page

April 2004, Vol. 48, No. 4