Learning Chinese is a big task, but learning how to use the language to accomplish simple, everyday tasks is not. You may never, like Matteo Ricci, translate Chinese classics or write books in Chinese yourself. But even Ricci had to start with the basics, learning the sounds, the tones, and the simple vocabulary to accomplish the stuff of everyday life.
When a Catholic Chinese-American journalist discovers that her grandfather was a prominent Anglican church leader in China in the 1940s and that her granduncle was none other than the famous house church leader, Watchman Nee, she did what every good journalist does—she set out to tell the story.
Following a rather chaotic start, the process of registering foreign entities under the Overseas NGO (ONGO) Law is getting underway, albeit slowly.
Christians in China today are able to share relatively easily about ministry on social media. Pastors’ personal blogs are one unique vantage point into church life in China. In this article, Chen Fengsheng, a Three-Self pastor in Wenzhou, provides budding pastors with timely advice on how to prepare for a healthy pastoral ministry. He gives “twenty realities” of ministry life that will help set up fresh seminary graduates for the pastorate.
Tones matter!
The same difficulties that local churches in the west have had in sending out workers cross-culturally are being seen in Chinese churches as they send missionaries beyond their borders. Are mission-sending organiszations needed to minimize those difficulties?
The Chinese church passionately desires participation in missionary sending. In China, there are problems with current church-based mission-sending models. Mission-sending organizations can deal with many of the unmet needs of the Chinese missionary and facilitate missionary sending.
A genuine "must-read" for those seeking to understand the complexities of religious life in China today.
In this short video profile, China Christian Daily sketches the work of Home of Hope, a Christian orphanage in Hebei province. The video gives a touching peek into one of the ways Chinese Christians impact society.
Pinyin is a system of writing the sounds of Chinese using English letters—an indispensable tool for learning to speak Chinese.
In China, the study of religion as an academic discipline has been gaining momentum in recent years. Centers and institutes for the study of religion have been established at numerous top-tier Chinese universities. As research on religion in China grows, indigenous theories regarding the role of religion in Chinese society and culture are also being constructed and debated. One theoretical framework of note is the “religious ecology” model.
A recent Chinese Church Voices post featured one Chinese believer’s reflections on several related decisions she had made in her struggle to live out an authentic faith. Each decision involved saying “no” to the prevailing social norms, putting the author, Wei Chen, at odds with the expectations of co-workers, family, and even her fellow Christians. While Wei posed her decisions in the negative, they together represent a positive affirmation of the counter-cultural values to which many Christians in China aspire.