Covenant News

Hope for Ministry in China is Rekindled

WUHAN, CHINA (September 18, 2000) - Some five decades ago, Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) missionaries were serving in China. It is hoped that another mission work can be organized there some day.

That day may come sooner than expected, says Jim Gustafson, executive director of the Department of World Mission. Gustafson traveled 10 days throughout China with ECC coordinator for Chinese ministries David Dolan and a contingent representing the 33 member churches of the International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches (IFFEC). The group visited cities where Evangelical Covenant Church missionaries served. Although no return trips have been scheduled, Gustafson said he hopes to work with the Taiwanese Covenant Church (3,200 members and 30 churches) that is making regular trips into the country.

"It was a cooperative mission," said Gustafson, IFFEC treasurer. "Some of the denominations in the IFFEC had supported mission work in China before 1950 and they and others hoped that some of the current work being done in China could be supplemented by IFFEC support," Gustafson continued. "There are churches around the world - a lot of them in Europe – that . . . basically have the ability to reach out and touch other countries in a way that would be phenomenally good. It helps to be together because it gives you perspective and ideas."

Gustafson said the IFFEC contingent traveled to four sites in China, including Kunming in Yunnan province in southern China. Ministry in Kunming is considered an underground movement involving unregistered church groups.

The second visit was in the city of Wuhan in Hoo Bae province, where ECC missionaries served from 1892 until 1949. Christians comprise about one percent of the province's 500 million inhabitants. The passion for Jesus Christ in Wuhan greatly encouraged Gustafson. The unique partnership with the government proved a pleasant surprise as well.

The government church is called the Three Cell (Self) Church, Gustafson explained. It is divided into two segments - a government/political entity, and a spiritual entity, the China Christian Council. Gustafson said that unlike other countries, Christians wishing to coordinate mission works must register with the government.

"In China, if you are going to work with the organized church, that means working through them (the government)," Gustafson said. "It's an organized way of doing things - you jump through hoops. In large parts of the world, there are no hoops because there is no organization. But we (IFFEC member churches) were able to speak about who we are and what we were doing. It was above board - government officials met with us," he continued.

"At one point, they even tried to help convince us that we needed to help this one church grow in a certain part of the city," Gustafson continued. "They were very much appropriately involved with the church, very much dynamically saying 'yes' to Christianity. In one sense you could say this is a highly politicized group and movement. But in fact, the part that's probably politicized are the church offices that deal with the government constantly," Gustafson noted. "And even though they are, at the province level you've got this tremendously vibrant and evangelical church that's just bursting at the seams."

The power of Christ in China was most evident to Gustafson on Easter Sunday, where 600 stuffed themselves into a church that usually accommodates 500. "There were people sitting around the pulpit, sitting in the front, and you couldn't walk (inside the church)," he recalled. "There were 600 to 700 people outside the church worshipping on the banks because you couldn't get inside. They celebrated the Lord's Supper and baptized 180 new Christians. It was marvelous, fantastic."

In Wuhan, a Christian seminary has been particularly helpful to its neighbors. When the nearby Yangzi River flooded the area, the local Christian council organized a work party that aided the relief effort. As a result, the government relaxed enrollment limits at the seminary. Eighty students was the maximum limit allowed. Some 260 students now attend classes.

"They're working with the government, but they're challenging the government, too," Gustafson said of the Christian groups in China. "They're always testing it, always at the rim, pushing just a little bit further. They're pushing the envelope - it's moving five inches, ten inches, twelve inches, a foot, and then you go for a yard. It is constantly doing that and it's a model example of how to do that given that kind of context," he continued.

"I think they're exhilarated by it," Gustafson observed. "I think they are energized by it because as they see God working in so many cases - people coming to know Christ - government officials (are) touched and giving it (the church) their land. One of the churches is building another church because the government is giving back the land that belonged to the churches in the past. And they're able to either rent it out or they can get subsidized by the government . . . the government is basically funding those churches."

Gustafson was further encouraged by the fact that Bibles, once difficult to find in China, are now quite accessible, thanks to a non-profit organization in Nanjing, the center for the China Christian Council. The Amity Foundation, a Chinese non-government entity, has overseen the production of more than 20 million Bibles (including three million in 1999) and 16 million hymnals through Amity Press.

"I sat there watching the Bibles run off the press at one per second and thinking this is fantastic," Gustafson said as he opened the Chinese Bible he bought in Nanjing. "You're thinking, 'Why are we smuggling Bibles?' They sell them at a reduced rate. They're able to produce them because they are subsidized by the United Bible Society."

Is there any remnant of Covenant influence in the three areas where missionaries served? According to people at the seminary, the work of the ECC is remembered. Gustafson hopes the denomination's good relations in the past can aid the ECC as it considers future ministry in China. In fact, they already are, via Taiwan.

"David Dolan has already been here (Wuhan City) four times with the Taiwanese Covenant Church," Gustafson said. "And they had gone the last time to reach out and touch that area where we (the ECC) had previously worked, to touch school children and bring funds to help them in studying and getting on-going education. It was a positive time," he continued.

"We've got to move slowly," he observed. "There is tremendous potential to link back to some of the roots where the Covenant has had tremendous ministry," he said. "In China, we have a marvelous opportunity to do that now and to move forward in that power - not only to do it (cooperate) with the Chinese, but with the Finns, with the Swedes, with the Norwegians and with the Germans."

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