Christian professionals have been instrumental in the tremendous church growth China has experienced the past decades. But now many expatriate workers are forced to leave the populous,Asian nation.
Brent Fulton, the founder of the ChinaSource news agency, has followed the church in China closely since the mid-1980s. In an interview with World Magazine done in October, he underlines the important role Christian professionals from other nations have played in the Chinese church growth.
You can find many Chinese Christians today who trace their faith journeys back to the witness of foreign Christians who came to teach on university campuses and start businesses, says the ChinaSource founder.
Difficult times
Tentmaking Today (TMT) has previously written about the new and more difficult situation for foreign workers in China. The past month TMT has received several reports on expatriate professionals who have had to leave the nation on short notice. This picture is confirmed by Fulton.
Foreigners used to be a real novelty in China, so if you went to teach, you would be considered an attraction. That´s changed. A Chinese church with foreign connections is becoming more of a liability as China continues to become more anti-foreign, says Fulton. He believes that foreign Christians who want to reach people in China with the gospel, need to redefine their role.
Instead of asking “How do we serve the church in China?” we need to ask, “How do we serve with the church in China?”. Today, it’s the believers in China who are on the cutting edge of new ministry initiatives, as they should be. There’s a role for foreigners to serve as mentors to Christians who are doing things that the Chinese church hasn’t done in the past, such as journalism, counseling and education.
New opportunities
Fulton warns against painting a too dark picture of the situation for Christians in China.
Certainly there are restrictions on the church, and the last couple of years we´ve seen the potential for even greater restrictions. But when I talk to believers in China about their challenges, that’s usually not the first thing they talk about. I think that by homing in on that one narrative, we miss a lot of complexity of what’s going on with the church in China, says Fulton to World Magazine.
He believes that the new restrictions on the churches in China,may change the way the Christians operate. The megachurch model that has been applied in the cities, may no longer be viable.
They may need to go back to the home church model, says Fulton.
Communist-led multiplication
His views are supported by Joann Pittman who is a senior associate with ChinaSource. She also thinks that the bigger churches may have to divide into smaller units.
Dividing into smaller congregations, distributed over a wider geographical area, may actually provide opportunities to affect more communities. Or, as I like to call it, “Communist-Party-led church multiplication, writes Pittmann in an article published by The Gospel Coalition.
By Steinar Opheim