While there is an
increasing number of seminaries and Bible schools in China,
much of the work of theological training is still shouldered
by local training centers that prepare lay pastors and church
leaders. One such center is Fu Gong Christian Training Center,
a small school in the Nu River Valley of Yunnan province, a
remote region in western China inhabited mainly by the Lisu
ethnic group. The center, which opened in 1988, offers several
three-month courses each year for lay church leaders. At any
given time there are approximately forty to fifty students at
the center, ranging from mid-teens to middle age. While many
students come from the locally numerous Lisu ethnic group, there
are also students from neighboring groups such as the Nu and
Bai minorities.
Life in the mountain valleys is often difficult, and natural
calamities are fairly common, such as earthquakes or the heavy
snowfall that collapsed the training center’s dormitory
last winter. “Even at the best of times, life is fairly
simple; for example, a typical lunch at the center consists
of cabbage soup, spicy rice noodles, and rice,” writes
mission co-worker Don Snow. “However, the other side of
the story is incarnated in the joy of a local music worship
team—dancers, singers, musicians equipped, even in this
mountain valley, with guitars and drums—leading the students
and local believers as they praise God.”
The Fu Gong Center is only one of many lay-leader training
centers operated throughout China by local and provincial branches
of the Hong Kong Council of the Church of Christ in China. Support
for such lay training efforts is one focus of Presbyterian efforts
to serve through partnership in China. |
