Contemporary China: Responding to Realities

Do we need Reminding that China today is really very different from the nation the early China Inland Mission pioneers entered 116 years ago? I am not referring particularly to China’s greatly increased population, its industrial development, or even its more significant role in world affairs.

Rather, I am thinking of the fact that in China today there is a large, strong, and growing church.

It is a different picture from what we were getting even a mere three years ago, when China was just reopening after the unprecedented trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Christian visitors reported finding “no trace of Christian survival.” The impression was that China was “a spiritual desert without any oasis.” If this were a true description of the facts—and we know now that it was not and is not—it would provide an explanation for the general Christian response to China. Obviously if there were no church to speak of in that great and populous land, then Christians in other lands would have no alternative but to approach China in much the same way those early CIM pioneers did 116 years ago.

If, on the other hand, the Word of the Lord has not returned to him void—and we know it has not; if Christ is building his church, which the gates of hell have not overcome; if through trial and tribulation a purified body of Christian brothers and sisters stand and serve in China today; then ought not our attitude and response clearly reflect the fact?

As Christians our response should express: consideration that seeks to grasp the complexity and sensitivity of the situation; confidence that sees our sovereign Lord working out his purposes; and concern that issues from love in prayer and prudent action.

Responding With Consideration

For us to respond with consideration will demand a deeper understanding of our brothers and sisters in China. This means not only hearing what they are saying, but understanding what they mean. A colleague who worked closely with my father for many years, for instance, recently asked a visiting professor to inform me that he had gratefully received the commentaries I had sent; he did not, however, wish to write at this time. I thought of the traditional value the Chinese people have always placed on interpersonal relationships and of how much my father’s colleague would normally have enjoyed reestablishing ties of friendship. Then it came to me: I suddenly realized that, like the apostle Paul, this dear friend was prepared to deny himself personal rights and joys in order that he should “cause no hindrance to the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:12).

Paul often expressed concern about how he and fellow Christians used their liberty. Many of us pride ourselves that we belong to a society that gives us a constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Yet, for the sake of the gospel, are we prepared to deny ourselves that liberty? Has the time not come for those in missions to articulate a biblical theology of publicity? It is significant that six times in Mark’s Gospel Jesus admonished people to say nothing about what he had just done or said. With modern society’s mania for a Madison Avenue approach to publicity, does the Christian not need to remember that “there is a time for every event under heaven … a time to be silent, and a time to speak”? With totalitarian states making increasing use of “clipping services,” information released in Christian papers and magazines is no longer limited to a concerned Christian readership. Names carelessly dropped may place Christian brothers and sisters in jeopardy or even instantly terminate a fruitful ministry (Mark 1:44–45).

Responding With Confidence

Our response to the church in China should be one of deep and genuine confidence—confidence in God’s sovereign rule in the realm of human history and in his unchanging faithfulness to his own. I well remember the pathetic hand wringing in the early fifties that characterized much of the evaluation (some called it the “post mortem”) of missions in China. To be sure, God’s judgment had fallen, and in the testing, wood, hay, and stubble were consumed. But in awesome process there also emerged, upon that sure foundation that was laid, a building of gold, silver, and precious stones.

God’s purposes in China did not depend on the continued presence of missionaries or on the large and small institutions they had established. For 150 years they had been servants and instruments to do his bidding. When God no longer needed them in China, missionaries were expelled and their institutions demolished. His church remained, and so did he.

Is it not humbling to see what God has been doing in China these 30 years without a single foreign missionary? Even by conservative estimates, his church has grown thirtyfold. Our brothers and sisters there have suffered for Christ as few of us have. They certainly know their own people and environment as none of us can.

Yet what an ironic spectacle to see so many foreign organizations jockeying for position and eager to go galloping in to tell mainland Christians how to do things! Christians in China won’t, of course, be up on the latest church-growth terminology or the “four spiritual laws.” But they do know the two spiritual laws: “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit” and “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” And bearing fruit is something Christians are doing in China. Perhaps the Lord in his goodness will open the way for us to learn from them. What a privilege that would be!

Responding With Concern

Finally, our response must move from consideration and confidence to continuing concern. Surely this is best expressed through prayer. The struggle we are engaged in is not with earthly powers, but with the spiritual forces of darkness and wickedness in heavenly places. From personal experience Paul affirms that the Christian’s spiritual weapon is divinely powerful “to demolish strongholds … arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4–5, NIV). How often members of our fellowship have found this to be true! Men are still moved through prayer alone, and the people of China are no exception.

This call to prayer, however, should never be construed to mean that those who pray are somehow high and mighty, while those prayed for are poor and to be pitied. That is a misunderstanding of the Christian fellowship of intercession. Listen to the apostle Paul: After admonishing the Christians in Ephesus to pray for all the saints, he then asks them to pray also for him. Earlier in the letter he had described how he did not stop giving thanks for the Ephesian Christians while making mention of them in his prayers. That is not condescending. It is at once both the beauty and strength of our fellowship as concerned believers.

Consideration, confidence, and concern—such should be our response to the Lord’s church in China.

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