As Chinese churches, particularly those in the urban areas continue to grow and mature, leaders are increasingly focusing on where the church needs to go from here. This article, published in the Christian Times, is about Pastor Zhang of the Beijing Gospel Missionary Church, and his thoughts on the issues facing the Chinese Church in the near future.
In their desire to create authentic, pastoral training materials, early on this team of foreigners resolved to work toward putting their national staff in posts of increasing influence and authority while they stepped into self-restricted roles of coaching, and eventually, cheering from the stands. The author describes this work which is still in process.
The emerging generation of younger leaders in China will require friends, partners and collaborators who will come alongside them with a servant mentality and without agendas.
BSF materials and methods are being used in China. The author looks at three influential factors for analyzing their appropriateness and value in Chinese society.
Partnership Field Guide: A Step-by-step Process for Building Ministry Partnerships, visionSynergy, 60 pages. This document was prepared by visionSynergy for the participants of The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization held in Cape Town, South Africa, October 2010 and can be found at: http://goo.gl/KkS6n
Reviewed by Mak Hon Chiu
Both foreigners serving in China and Chinese are experiencing a profound shift in roles. Chinese believers are stepping to the forefront, as it should be, but what should foreigners be passing on to them? How does vision play into this and do we want to pass it on?
The following is a suggestion made by a Chinese pastor to the rest of the attendees at the 1890 Shanghai conference of all the Protestant missionaries in China. It must have taken a lot of courage and strong convictions for him to address the room full of foreigners in this manner (there were only a handful of Chinese delegates at the 1890 Conference). Yan's purpose in speaking was to remind the missionaries that in addition to attracting new converts, there was still much work to be done to care for the believers already in the churches.
We often hear about how the church in China is looking for ways to increase its presence in the "public square;" in other words trying to be more visible in society. This article from the Gospel Times is about a family in Shenzhen that is literally doing evangelism in the public square.
This cartoon was recently posted on Kuanye, a popular Christian website. It pokes a little bit of fun at Chinese "Christianeze."
In this post on the popular Christian site Voice in the Wilderness (kuanye), the writer addresses a fundamental theological question: What does it mean to believe in Jesus?
As the environment changes and restrictions loosen, many Chinese Christians are turning their attention to the issue of how to be salt and light in their communities. This article, published on the popular Christian site Kuanye Zhi Sheng ("Voice in the Wilderness") is about a local ministry in southern China that is reaching out to care for some of China's "left-behind children," children who are left behind in villages and small towns when their parents go to the cities to work.
Amidst the rapid and relentless change taking place in China today, three dynamics in particular are profoundly affecting the role of traditional nonprofit efforts in the country. This raises the question of what sort of entities will allow for sustainable engagement in the future.