Aikman David - Christian china and the light of the world : miraculous stories from chinas great awakening

PRAISE FOR

CHRISTIAN CHINA

AND THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

For more than four decades, David Wang has been a pioneer in telling the world the inspiring yet sobering story of the Church in China. In his latest book, Christian China and the Light of the World, he focuses on the lives of the leaders of Chinas fast-growing urban churches. We come to know doctors, entrepreneurs, surgeons and sales executives who have given up lives of prominence and prosperity to follow Christ as pastors, evangelists and even missionaries abroad. Through his detailed, personal narratives of the lives of Chinese who we only know by their Christian names, Wang offers insights into the challenges and struggles of Chinas urban Christians and suggests lessons that their experiences may provide for the worldwide body of Christ. This book is both informative and brilliantly relevant.

David Aikman

Author of Jesus in Beijing and former TIME magazine correspondent

When you talk with David Wang about the urban church in China, as I have many times, you cannot help but be infected with his enthusiasm for this new expression of Christs Body in China. I know of no greater apostle and mentor to Chinas urban church than David. He has challenged urban church leaders to work hand in hand with Chinas government to address the needs of Chinese society, and through his efforts a much higher level of training in pastoral leadership has been made available. As you read this book you will experience a firsthand report of what God is doing in this new day of openness in the Peoples Republic of China. If you are wanting to understand how modern missions can best impact the future of Chinas church, you need to read this book.

Jon Davis

Lead Pastor, Beijing International Christian Fellowship

We live in an exciting new season. The center of gravity of world Christianity, which began in Jerusalem and through the centuries reached North America, has now shifted to the Asian Pacific Rim. China is the dominant nation there and China is destined to assume leadership for the Christian movement for the foreseeable future. My friend David Wangs title reflects what I have just said: Christian China. This is a book that will enlighten your mind and warm your heart. As you read it, you will fall in love with China and you will begin to move into Gods new stream for the future.

C. Peter Wagner

Vice-President, Global Spheres, Inc.

One of the amazing happenings in the worlds history of church growth has to be the so-called Third Church in China! Encouraged by the modernization movement in the 1970s and 1980s, huge numbers of rural youth have rushed into the cities for education, jobs and a new life. This avalanche of young and eager hearts gathered in a new environment has created tremendous yearning and spiritual hungerhence the marvelous growth of the urban church in China. A veteran missionary and researcher of church growth, Dr. David Wang has served us with another well-written book in Christian China and the Light of the World. His succinct descriptions provide us with inspiring pictures of the joy, glory, pain and grief among the urban church members in China. It is indeed a book to be read by anyone who is interested in China, her church and her people!

Rev. Thomas Wang

Former General Secretary, Chinese Coordination, Centre of World Evangelism Founder, Great Commission Center International

2013 David Wang with Georgina Sam

Published by Chosen Books
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
chosenbooks.com

Chosen Books is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Chosen edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-4412-6905-8

Previously published by Regal Books

Ebook edition originally created 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Other version used is: NIVScripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Summary: China...a Christian movement numbering in the tens of millions. The rapidly expanding economic power of the most populous nation on earth puts China front and center in any discussion about the future of the globe. But is there more to Chinas story than money? Christians in North America have many questions about the Peoples Republic of China and what is rumored to be a Christian movement numbering in the tens of millions. Christian China is the essential guidebook for North American Christians to understand and pray for their sisters and brothers in Chinas cities. Readers will find not only facts and data, but also true accounts of Chinese believers great exploits as they follow the Holy Spirit into the future. Provided by publisher.

This work is dedicated to the memory of Wang Mingdao and Allen Yuan Xiangchen. It is also dedicated to Samuel Lamb and Miao Zhitong, both of whom passed away as this book was going to print. They are the original inspirations and trailblazers for the urban house churches in China.

I first came across David Wang four decades ago not long after I had arrived as a reporter for TIME Magazine in Hong Kong. I was a young foreign correspondent and this was my first assignment overseas. The bailiwick or beat of the handful of reporters based in the Hong Kong Bureau was to cover South-East Asia, China and Taiwan. I had been sent to the bureau because I had studied China and Chinese in graduate school and knew more about the country than many reporters covering the country. What most of my superiors at TIME hadnt known was that I was a committed Christian. In addition to wanting to understand political, economic and social issues in China, I was fascinated by Chinas religious scene.

Of course, to most observers of China, there was no religious scene at the time. China was still in the throes of the disastrous and cruel Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a political movement initiated by Mao Zedong in 1966 that had torn like a tornado through Chinas religious landscape. Temples, mosques, churches and cathedrals were closed down throughout the country and sometimes were pillaged or destroyed altogether. Christians had been arrested, publicly humiliated, sentenced to long prison terms and sometimes executed. Ownership of a Bible could get you thrown in prison, or sometimes persecuted to death by Maos Red Guards. The general consensus of China-watchers was that the Christian faith had seemingly vanished from China as completely as if it had never existed. Jiang Qing, Maos wife, had even told foreigners visiting China in 1975 that Christianity in China belonged only in a museum.

How wrong she was. But I would not have known this unless I had made the acquaintance, and then gained the friendship, of David Wang, then the director of the Hong Kong office of Asian Outreach. Associates of Wang, and other Chinese from Hong Kong with whom he had talked, had stories of mini-revivals starting up in towns like Fuzhou, on the coast of Fujian province. Then refugees from China who trickled out of China to Hong Kong by swimming the dangerous, shark-infested waters separating Hong Kongs islands from the Mainland, began to speak to reporters about interesting religious developments in southern China. In one instance, I was able to triangulate Asian Outreachs stories of revivals by interviewing a Public Security official who had defected from Fuzhou. He had been tasked with cracking down on the revival, but had been converted to Christ after witnessing the character of the Christians he had observed.