In a city on a small island in the Indian Ocean, BTJ had a secret meeting with top mission leaders from the Chinese underground house church currently living in the 10/40 Window. Each of the leaders had a wealth of experience on the mission field, having been living decades in the most unreached areas of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
“This is the first time we have ever had a meeting like this,” the senior Chinese pastor said before the meeting convened. “Our goal is to create a China Mission Board that will help all the top underground house churches in China train up, send out, and care for their missionaries on the ground.”
BTJ has been working with this senior pastor for more than two decades. Because of recent events in China, it is not safe to share his name or the name of his network in China, but he is currently the senior mission pastor for two underground house churches with over 20 million believers between the two of them.
When BTJ asked who would be on the new China Mission Board, the pastor responded, “The new China Mission Board will be made up of nine leaders that live on the field – not in China. The China Mission Board will also have Chinese mission advisors and they too will be made up of missionaries that are currently living on the field.”
When asked why this change was important, the pastor responded, “This is done for three reasons. First practicality. Most of the senior underground house church in China do not have passports. They cannot travel to joint meeting sessions like this one. Second is for security. There are important issues missionaries cannot discuss on the phone with the leadership in China. Third is for wisdom. Just like the early western missionaries like Hudson Taylor understood, it is not the wisest plan to have leaders from the sending country making all the decisions in nations they do not fully understand. What do the underground house church pastors in China know of the situation in Syria or Lebanon? How can they wisely tell the missionaries what they should do or not do in those nations? After many years on the mission field, China needs a new approach.”
When asked what the goal of the new China Mission Board would be, the pastor answered that the challenges are many, but there are four primary goals.
The pastor pulled out a Powerpoint Presentation and introduced the four goals to BTJ. The four following goals of the China Mission Board were exclusively shared with BTJ:
- Multiply Mission Leadership and Indigenous Fund Raising Efforts
Chinese missionaries will be trained and supported to start their own independent efforts to best help their needs. The China Mission Board believes that the best way to reach the unreached is not growth, but multiplication.
Unreached people groups currently live in the most volatile areas. These regions of the world are not conducive to large organizational structures. The Chinese Mission Board wants to help create many small, independent, efforts, believing they are harder to stop than large centrally coordinated efforts.
- Generational Investment
The China Mission Board is supporting the children of missionaries to attend university and will provide Christian dorm parents to conduct Bible and mission training. The Chinese underground house church has secured an agreement with one of the top international universities in the world for the children of missionaries.
“We believe God calls the generations, not just the parents,” the pastor noted. “We want to commit to investing into the lives of the children to also be missionaries.”
One of the leaders on the China Mission Board has already seen the results. His son went to university and is now serving as a missionary in the Middle East.
- Business as Mission
Business as Mission is the primary platform that the China Mission Board is using to support their missionaries on the ground. With thousands of missionaries lined up and ready to go out, there is a current need for thousands of businesses.
For many practical reasons, the traditional process of missionaries raising funds from churches and mission organizations simply does not work in the regions between China and Jerusalem today.
This is why BTJ is supporting the China Mission Board with a Business as Mission conference in August of this year, to help strengthen and multiply their current efforts.
- Publishing
The current leadership on the China Mission Board have been through multiple schools and utilized many different training strategies and have seen what works and does not work in their context.
“We need training materials written and published by the underground house church,” the pastor shared. “Chinese missionaries have been studying materials written by mission organizations in Europe and America that do not apply to the situation for Chinese living in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Though there are many things we have learned from these schools and their materials, there are some serious weaknesses. Our background and experiences are completely different and our training materials need to reflect that.”
The China Mission Board will start publishing their own mission training materials for Chinese missionaries.
These four bullet points gave exclusive insight into the thinking and planning of the underground house church as they continue to send missionaries to the mission field.
BTJ is committed to stand beside them during this effort and help them accomplish the vision that God has set before them.
Wow… I think this kind of strategy should have been adopted a long time ago… by those in the West, who brought many teachings to the East but weren’t ready to give up their material possessions and comforts the way those in the East did… Now we’ve reached the point where those in the East are coming to present us with the true gospel, through their actions… It makes sense, because the new world order will put every Christian in a difficult situation… But our hope is that one day Jesus will come and destroy the man of lawlessness, and He will take us with Him… Maranatha!