To mark the Chinese New Year, Disciples Today is publishing a series of articles written by our correspondent in mainland China. For the previous articles in this series, see Good News from China, What’s It Like to Be a Christian in China? and A Short History of Christianity in China.
Part IV: The International Churches of Christ in China
One question I am often asked by disciples from outside of China is, “Who in the ICOC supports the Chinese churches?”
The surprising answer is that this group of churches have been almost 100% self-supporting since 1997! All the Chinese mission plantings are funded by the missions contributions of Chinese disciples themselves. The China family of churches has also provided financial support for other churches in need, HOPE worldwide, Disciples Today, and the One Year Challenge program.
The foundations of this self-funding, church planting effort can be traced to the Spirit-led—and strategically astute—decision to plant a church in Hong Kong in 1987 by the Boston Church of Christ.
One of the peculiarities of the mission team—17 disciples in all—was that, although many were ethnically Chinese, very few spoke Chinese, much less the notoriously difficult-to-learn Cantonese of Hong Kong. Nevertheless, by faith the team began building a church and learning Cantonese.
Within a year there were over 50 disciples. From the start, the Hong Kong Church of Christ cultivated a strong sense of mission—to preach the gospel throughout China—with lead evangelist Scott Green personally taking recently-baptized campus disciples to spend a month in mainland China, building their vision for future plantings.
The Hong Kong church baptized hundreds in its first few years and by the end of 1991 sent out its first mission team to Taipei. In the same year it became financially self-supporting. Since that time, the vast majority of mission work funding for greater China has come from Chinese Christians themselves, with virtually all of it being locally raised since 1997.
That first planting started fruitful campus ministries in Taipei and began planting new churches, too. Today there are six churches throughout Taiwan as a direct result of the first mission team sent out from Hong Kong. Both churches then joined to plant numerous churches in mainland China and to provide financial and leadership support for the China mission.
Details of the scope of church planting in mainland China will have to wait for a future article, but in broad strokes we can describe a hopeful picture: several churches are now self-supporting and have sent out their own mission teams. Young men and women, themselves baptized in China, lead churches and are raising up a strong next generation of church planters and leaders.
In September, 2015, church leaders from India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and several other countries gathered in Hong Kong for the Asian Leadership Conference. It was a fitting site for such a conference, as Hong Kong sits not only on the southern coast of China, but geographically near the center of Asia’s unreached billions.
Next in this series: Is the Year of the Monkey Your Time to Take the One-Year Challenge?