CCOWE: Much More than Starwatching

My fellow countryman, Robert Louis Stevenson, once declared: “For my own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs.”

Another world visionary, W. Stanley Mooneyham, reminds us that “a solidly entrenched sense of place has given the Chinese a deep-seated personal identity”—of being each a member of the “Middle Kingdom,” and not of some vague region dismissed airily by us Westerners as “the Far East.”

If such a cultured people developed xenophobic tendencies, these are partly attributable in modern times to the frightful treatment they suffered at the hands of the British and other Europeans. And this, in turn, might lead us to ask, Who then were the barbarians?

In a different context, T. E. Lawrence suggests that youth is “pitiably weak against age.” I tell myself that China’s 5,000-year history covers a period 10 times the age of my own “ancient” university.

I hope that high-flown opener will be regarded neither as offputting nor irrelevant to what follows about the Chinese of the Dispersion. Some of the latter I met last summer in Singapore during the second Chinese Congress on World Evangelization (CCOWE). There were about 1,200 participants plus 300 mostly young helpers who, with incredible efficiency, greeted, processed, fed, guided, informed, and generally helped us during those eight days in the island republic. I have vivid memories of the first such congress, held five years ago in Hong Kong amid torrential rainstorms. Just as memorable was the statement issued on behalf of a group that had never met together before.

That document identified the need for four bridges to be built: (1) between the generations, with old and young learning from each other; (2) between old and new thinking, so that although basic faith does not change, the strategy and method of gospel proclamation can be adapted to present needs; (3) between East and West, so that the strengths of both may serve a common aim (“the Oriental church tends to stress the deepening of spiritual life, while the Western church emphasizes results”); (4) between denominations, “so that Chinese churches may pool manpower and physical resources to realize their full potential and bring glory to God and benefit to mankind.”

Pooling of resources was coupled with a recommendation to “borrow the technical expertise and experience of Western missions to launch missionary work among other races in order to satisfy the hunger of the world for the gospel.” (I was intrigued to find that not only the secular Chinese had rehabilitated an ancient slogan: “Make foreign things serve China.”)

Now here we were five years later in Singapore, where the 1.7 million Chinese majority includes 75,000 Protestants and 90,000 baptized Roman Catholics—and where long-haired callers at public offices are still liable to be sent to the end of the line (so warns a tourist handbook). Venue of the CCOWE working meetings was the Anglo-Chinese Junior College, a Methodist institution in the corridors of which are prominently displayed exhortations such as: “Be Considerate—Let Them Study in Peace,” and, “Cultivate Good Habits—Talk Softly.” Most thought-provoking of all was a freestanding notice which, evidently brought in after target practice, had been left outside the auditorium, so that latecomers to CCOWE sessions were confronted by the words: “Danger—Firing in Progress.”

There was a lot of eminently sensible stuff at this congress. It was to be no mere talking-shop (“ideas must be turned into solid strategies and actions”). Watching the stars was not discouraged, but it was evidently not going to make participants less aware of the need to negotiate potholes. There was, moreover, acknowledgment that a church which traditionally evinces strong pietistic tendencies has responsibility toward the non-Chinese unevangelized, and toward a suffering as well as a dying world.

While they thus see their mandate as global, their ministry will understandably major on their own race, whose numbers increase annually by some 12.6 million—or as one of them put it to me, “Within the immediate vicinity there is a lot of work still to be done.”

Nonetheless, I was fascinated to find that a favorite CCOWE hymn was James McGranahan’s “Far, far away, in heathen darkness dwelling,” a concept that has fallen into disfavor in some circles today. Genuinely curious, I asked four of my friendly Chinese in turn what “heathen darkness” meant to them. Their respective responses: Africa, Communist countries, Greenland and other cold Atlantic islands, and Papua New Guinea.

My grasp of what went on in working sessions was fitful, for most workshop groups used only Mandarin, and in plenaries I was dependent on simultaneous translations of uneven quality. But some general impressions came through.

First, there was a notably harmonious spirit throughout (and more than a little fun), but I did rather miss the cut-and-thrust of plenary discussion. Then, too, there was confirmation of something said by general secretary Thomas Wang: “God is giving the Chinese churches today a bigger heart.” Not least was this seen in expressed indebtedness to missionaries past and present.

Some of the other points I jotted down at the time seem patronizing, naive, or simplistic, and I make myself vulnerable by even mentioning them, but here they are.

Chinese are not dittoes; tike us, they come in all shapes, sizes, and outlooks. Their problems are our problems, even if some of these were for us more burning issues 50 years ago. Linked with this is the need (and this is recognized) to develop and articulate a theology directed to a Chinese context.

One might add that the declaration on church and state from which they drew back at Hong Kong in 1976 is still not forthcoming. Perhaps it was remembered that the Singapore participants came out of, and some have to return to, some delicate political situations. Or it may have been thought that obtrusions of such a topic into official CCOWE proceedings would have nullified the spiritual impact of the gathering. I was going to make something of the almost complete absence of women in the higher CCOWE echelons, but much the same could be said of the Lausanne Committee.

CCOWE was a Chinese project. There was no Western presence in the wings, keeping a benevolent but watchful eye on the stage, ready to prompt or to take over should things go wrong. That thought was more irrational than my usual. They coped superbly, and did all on a modest $200,000 budget, suggesting that their simpler lifestyle meant more than the difference between a four-and a five-star hotel.

J. D. DOUGLASDr. Douglas is a writer living in St. Andrews, Scotland, and editor at large for Christianity Today.

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