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A letter from John and Kim Strong
in Hong Kong |
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June 21, 2005
Dear Friends and Family,
This year we are nearing the end of our second (but not last)
term of assignment as mission co-workers in China. The first was
in Nanjing, mostly teaching, and now these last three years have
been spent mostly in our new assignment in the Amity Foundation’s
Hong Kong office, largely involved in administrative support of
the Teachers Project.
We find ourselves, in one sense, more distant from the people
we are working to serve in mainland China, but at the same time
we are in a better position to have a “finger on the pulse”
of the Chinese church, because here we are more in touch with
others who visit different parts of the country, and we are also
not tied down with full teaching loads. We sometimes get opportunities
to go to different cities ourselves and see firsthand what God
is doing. So that gives us a better position from which to interpret
things, not just from our own perspective, but from many others’
too. |
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Mochou Road Church in Nanjing. |
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In May, I traveled through Jiangsu Province with
a delegation of half a dozen people representing the Outreach Foundation
and served as their photographer. The Outreach Foundation is a validated
mission support group of the PC(USA). Their role here has been primarily
to help lay pastoral training centers in Jiangsu locate funds for
development from overseas. |
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Some training centers have been conducting
classes for some time, while other sites are under construction.
We visited one site in Xuyi County for a new worship center that
will accommodate 5,000 worshipers in addition to having lay training
facilities. During our eight-day tour, we met pastors, local religious
affairs officials, students and church members in seven cities (and
I shot twenty rolls of 36-exposure film!). |
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The main thing I got from the trip
was a renewed appreciation of the colossal task facing the Chinese
church—and specifically the challenge of training up solid,
stable leadership to shepherd a body of believers that is growing
at an enormous rate. It was typical to hear a pastor say, “We
serve around 40,000 believers in this district, and there are two
of us (theologically trained) pastors.” That means a whole
lot of commuting for the minister. This is symptomatic of the reality
that after 25 years, China is still healing wounds left by the Cultural
Revolution and its fallout. Considering this, it is amazing what
ground the Chinese church has covered thus far. It is a peculiar
predicament that the church here finds herself in. New believers
are being baptized in droves, and religious freedom policies continue
to move ahead. But the “trial by fire” that ravaged
the church—along with every other part of Chinese society—will
not be healed and made right without a lot more hard work, patience,
and prayer. On this trip, we were encountering a lot of rugged,
faithful workers in the fields of the Lord. |
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A church elder in Xuyi. |
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When we stopped in at Xuzhou, in
the far north of Jiangsu, we found a class of about 60 lay trainees
who were just finishing up a three-month course. We visited with
them for a short time and ended up singing hymns back and forth,
they in Chinese and we in English. When you hear 60 Chinese church
workers sing a hymn together in closed quarters, you can feel God’s
Spirit resonate all through your body. Your heart burns and your
eyes begin to water. And then they all say, “Now you sing
for us!” Well. I’ll just say that our group of six made
a meager offering of “Amazing Grace,” and it was very
graciously received. This was followed by prayers together before
we departed for our next destination. |
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On the Xuyi construction site. |
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Along the way, we were continually impressed
with the endurance and zeal of believers who are offering their
whole selves in God’s service to bring the life-saving Gospel
to their communities in the face of not very pleasant odds. Here
in China, God’s Spirit is moving. There are stories of healing
everywhere, and lives being turned around. It made us ponder a possible
future in which the Chinese church might someday send missionaries
around the world to revive a spiritually needy America. |
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Let us not stop praying for
the church: for her continued growth in the East and for her reawakening
in the West! Amen, so be it.
You will see that Amity has a much-improved English language
Web site when you visit www.amityfoundation.org.
You can go there and see much more information about what sort
of work we are involved in. Also, I will post my portfolio of
photographs from the Jiangsu trip online, at www.amitynewsservice.org.
Once there, navigate to “China Church” on the menu,
then find the Media Gallery.
John and Kim Strong
The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
245
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