Analysis of the Back To Jerusalem Movement
by Kim-kwong Chang
(ckk@hkcc.org.hk)
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For those of us who have worked among the house church movement in China and
the BTJ movement we know that it is a very unorganized, vague and lacks clear vision
and direction and missiological and eschatological basis to equip and mobilize the
Chinese Church to this mission endeavor. It is my personal conviction that this vision
is given of the Lord Himself and that the ultimate end of preaching the gospel from the
four corners of the world will be in Jerusalem. The process and organizational end of
the global missions movement varies from nation to nation and among missions
groups or organizations and of all theological and eschatological backgrounds.
It is also my conviction that the true apostolic and prophetic ministries will be able to
help "sort out" and provide the banks of a river (theological, eschatological and
relational frameworks) for the BTJM to be successful.
May the Lord grant us wisdom in this hour! Shalom, Clint
MISSION MOVEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
IN MAINLAND CHINA:
THE BACK TO JERUSALEM MOVEMENT
(DRAFT)
Kim-kwong Chan
(ckk@hkcc.org.hk)
I. Introduction
Christianity first appeared in China in the 7th Century through the efforts of Nestorian
missionaries from Central Asia, followed by Catholic Missionaries. The Protestant branch of
Christianity arrived in China in the early 19th Century along with the colonial expansion of
Western countries in Asia.1 The Christians or Christian community in China (hereafter in this
paper referred to the Protestant Community in China) grew from a humble beginning of just a
handful of converts in the early 1850s, to almost a million in 1949 after a century of labor by
tens of thousands of missionaries sent from the West. These almost million Chinese
Christians were an insignificant group in the midst of a Chinese population of 450 million at
the time when the People's Republic of China was formed in October 1949. The majority of
Christian-operated social institutions, such as schools and hospitals, still heavily relied on
financial support from Western mission board and agencies. The Christian community in
China, like all other religious groups, went through harsh periods of political suppression
under the Communist Regime of the People's Republic and eventually ceased to exist in
public. It was not until 1979 when the Chinese Government began to allow sanctioned
religions to operate in the open, albeit with many restrictions, that Christian activities began to
reappear. Since then Christians in China2 recorded a phenomenal growth, from a mere 3
million in 19823, estimated by the Government, to anywhere between 18 million4 to 80
million5 to the extremely high figure of 130 million.6 A reliable working figure is 35 to 40
million, including both the registered and unregistered Christian groups.7 The estimate of 35
to 40 million Protestants may err on the conservative side.
The growth of Christianity in China since the last two decades in the 20th Century till the
first decade in this Century coincides with the global shift of Christianity from its traditional
locations (particularly Europe and North America) of the Northern hemisphere to former
Third World countries primarily located in the Southern hemisphere, such countries as South
Korea, Nigeria, China and Brazil. It is in the latter countries where the fastest growing, and
sometimes the largest Christian churches are to be found.8 Some authors now consider that, in
absolute numbers, China may well become one of the major centers of Christianity in the 21st
century by the sheer number of new converts, standing alongside Nigeria, Brazil and Korea.9
During the same period of time when the Chinese Christian community enjoyed the
fastest growth, China as a nation emerged from economic obscurity with virtually no
engagement with world trade and a large segment of population living under the absolute
poverty line. It transformed itself into the world's third largest import-and-export entity since
200410, and by February 2009 the largest holder of foreign reserve in the world with almost 2
trillion dollars holding.11 During the past 25 years, the economic growth of China generated
some astonishing figures: GDP went through a 15-fold increase, exports increased 55-fold,
and foreign reserves multiplied by almost 5,000.12 The rise of China generates global
awareness, the Made-in-China goods flood the world market, and China's economic tentacles
reach into virtually every country. With the recent global Financial Tsunami, China is in the
limelight, as China seems to be the only major economic entity that could have sufficient
financial capability to jump-start the global economy.
If we look at China's economic development and Chinese Christians' growth, we cannot
ignore the possible ramifications on global mission as we compare the experience of Korea in
Church growth and economic growth since the 1970s. Is it possible that the Korean
experience in mission development-backed by strong economic and ecclesial growth during
the 1970s, iconized by the Seoul Olympics in 1988, resulting in Korea becoming one of the
largest missionary-sending countries in the world in recent years-can be applied to China?
Some already speculate that the Christian community in China may one day become the
world's largest exporter of missionaries, and that this mission force may be the one that will
finally Christianize the 'last frontier' in missions.13 This last frontier is popularly known in
evangelical Christian circles as the "10/40 window",14 an area which embraces the
predominantly non-Christian region stretching from East Asia to the Middle East and North
Africa.
The missiological notion that Chinese Christians will be the key player in the final hurdle
of global evangelization runs parallel with the socio-political notion that China will be the
ascending nation of the 21st Century dominating global affairs as USA had been in the 20th
Century. As China exports shoes, refrigerators, television sets, language schools and
construction laborers all over the globe, so it seems that the Chinese Christian communities
will send missionaries to spread the Good News to every frontier in this world! Is this wishful
missiological thinking based on the Korean paradigm of mission development vis-à-vis its
contemporary national and ecclesial growth? Or could this missiological vision be merely a
nationalistic desire of Chinese Christians fueled by nationalistic aspiration of a strong China
reclaiming her former glory as the center of the world, hence paralleling a Chinese Church
that would fulfill the Great Commission as the catalytic element ushering in the Eschaton for
Christendom?
This paper intends to examine a current mission movement, originated in the Chinese
Church and advocated by overseas mission agencies, which seems to promote such
missiological vision. It is called the "Back To Jerusalem" (BTJ) Movement. The 'Back to
Jerusalem Movement' is advocated by unregistered church networks in China, and promoted
by Western Christian advocators in overseas, with the original aim of sending 200,000
Chinese missionaries to the Muslim world within 10 years.15 It has attracted attention among
mission agencies worldwide, some of whom support this immensely ambitious project and
regard it as the final leg in the global evangelistic relay of missionaries beginning with
Occidental missionaries and now by Oriental missionaries before the End Time. It is the first
major mission initative among the Chinese Christian community in China to do cross-cultural
and overseas mission work. This BTJ has already captured the imagination of mission leaders
and has now become a growing movement with dozens of training centers and scores of
students in various stages of training with many already serving in the mission field. Further,
what fascinates missiologists is that the whole movement is a totally clandestine operation
under the radar of the Chinese Government authority.16 It is involved primarily with
non-registered Christian communities in China, hence technically all illegal and underground,
and with field operations in countries that ban all missionary activities.
Given the difficult political and social context of Christian existence in China, namely the
high degree of Governmental control on Christian activities and a highly regulated media that
is allowed to publish only politically correct material (even those Christian materials available
in the officially-sanctioned Christian communities), many sources used are from oral
interviews and from personal observations with little or no "printed" record for security
reasons as all of the activities of this BJM are technically illegal in the eyes of the authorities.
There are some published materials but details such as names and places are omitted or are
altered to protect the current operations. For ethical and political reasons, it is often necessary
to respect the confidentiality of some sources. Despite the high degree of secrecy surrounding
BJM, this writer believes that there are sufficient materials to do a preliminary analysis on the
mission discipleship of this movement, and to assess the missiological implications of this
mission movement of the Chinese Christian community in the context of Global mission. It
is hoped that this sensitive fieldwork can shed valuable light on the contributions of Chinese
Christian communities--often living under severe restrictions--to the global mission endeavor,
contributions which tend to be either totally ignored or grossly exaggerated in Western
literature.
II. The Origin and the Background of the 'Back to Jerusalem Movement'
Chinese from the more developed central and coastal areas seldom traveled to the poorer
western border areas until the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 when millions of Chinese,
especially students, were displaced to the hinterlands as the Chinese Nationalist Government
retreated into interior provinces from the advancing Japanese Army. As many Chinese
began to realize the underdevelopment of these regions, they organized programs to help
develop the 'backyard' of the country as the base to build up defense capacity against the
invading Japanese forces. It was also perhaps the first time that many Chinese Christians had
the first hand experience on the living situation of the Northwestern border regions of
China-which once had been a prosperous region of the Silk Road but desolated due to
desertification. This region includes the contemporary Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner
Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang, mostly inhabited by national minorities such as Tibetans,
Mongolians, Kazaks and Uygurs. Few Han Chinese would live there as this region was
regarded as a frontier area, a wilderness for exiles, bandits and minorities, and ruled by local
warlords. The largest among all these administrative regions is Xinjiang, with more than 1.6
million square Km bordering Tibet, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Russia and Central Asia
countries.17 There were a few brave foreign missionaries living in these regions and a few
Gospel outposts dotting the Silk Road.
About the same time in the 1940s, several Chinese Christian mission groups who, without
knowing each other, all began to organize evangelistic team heading towards the
Northwestern part of China. Some were targeting the Western Region or bordering regions in
general, others were focusing on the Northwestern part in particular. These people were
mostly from either the coastal areas like Shanghai or Shangdong Province, or from the
Central areas like Henan or Jiangsu Provinces where Christianity was rather prospering in
those areas. This paper will mention the few major ones, and study the last one in detail for
the last one is critical to the missiological vision, though, not exclusive, of "Back To
Jerusalem" which later became the legendary basis for the current BTJ Movement.
The Northwest Spiritual Band (Xibei Ninggong Tuan) was established by Revd Zheng
Guquan form Shangdong Province who called upon people to dedicate their life to serve God
living by faith, sharing all things in common, and with a vision to share the Gospel in the
frontier of China, namely the Northwestern region.18 They relied on no formal support from
any church or organization but solely on what God provided as they traveled towards the
Northwestern direction. They did not require any formal training from their members, but just
a dedicated spirit. This mission endeavourer in form of a Spiritual Band or spiritual
fellowship was rather popular at that time as Chinese Christians generally thought that a
Spiritual Band was spiritually superior to conventional mission groups since conventional
mission groups often relied on regular church or denominational support. Further, it was also
a reaction against foreign missionaries by the Chinese Christians as most of the missionaries
got rather generous financial support from their home Board or Churches, and they lived
usually in luxury compared to ordinary Chinese church workers who got a very meager salary
from their missionary bosses.
The Northwest Spiritual Band would stop at towns and villages along the route and hold
evangelistic meetings for a few days before moving on. They have no fixed itinerary, but
rather a general sense of going to Northwestern areas, and they claimed to rely on the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. Most of them experienced many hardships yet, from their hymns,
they regarded these sufferings and hardships as something that they were proud of, and a
necessary cost to pay in order to save souls for God.19 There was no specific goal or direction
except a vague sense of evangelizing the whole world by pressing westward. In fact, few, if
any member, knew what lay beyond the next town, much less beyond the border of China, as
none of them carried any map!20 They eventually arrived at Xinjiang in the late 1940s, the vast
frontier areas of China inhabited mostly by Muslims of the Uygur people who speak a
Turkish dialect. The team members then scattered to different parts of Xinjiang to spread the
Gospel if no church was established, or to help out the local church if there was already a
church there. They worked among the Han Chinese and with virtually no work among the
local Uygurs as none spoke the Uygur language. Almost all of the perhaps few dozen
members were arrested by the new Chinese government in the early 1950s, and many spend
long jail sentences as "anti-revolutionary elements" and some died in jail. A few are still alive
and in their 80s. Some of their descendants carried on this evangelistic zeal, continuing the
work of their parents despite the cost, often in life that their parents had paid.21
The Christian Native Evangelistic Crusade, CNEC, (later changed the name to Christian
National Evangelistic Crusade) was established in 1942 at the then Provisional Capital of
China, Chungking, with financial support from Christians in US and mission work operated
by Chinese Evangelists. Two of their members, Li Kaiwan and his wife Ze Mingxia,
originally serving in Yunnan Province, had requested to transfer to Xinjiang in 1945, just at
the end of the Second World War. They felt the call to serve in Northwest China. They
joined the CNEC but raised their own support, as Li was a senior official of the Postal Service
in Yunnan, a tentmaker in those days. Later Li became the Commissioner for Postal Service
of the Xinjiang Province. With the donation from then Governor of Xinjiang, General Zhang
Zizhong, also a Christian, they established the first Christian Church in Urumuqi (then called
Dihua), the capital of Xinjiang. Eventually the CNEC sent in more people, all were well
trained in theology, and established at least 7 churches in Xinjiang by end of 195022. They
became the largest Christian group in the Province, giving shelter to other mission groups. All
these Churches were mainly composed of Han Chinese with very few Uygurs. The CNEC
was described in a prayer letter published by an American missionary in late 1950 as follows:
"They are very closely associated with Mr and Mrs Li, whose ministry at Tihwa (or Dihua,
now Urumuqi) will, we believe, if ever it is published, prove to be one of the most glorious
chapters in the history of the Chinese Church....they are a group of fine consecrated men and
women, most of whom have been trained in Bible school."23 Paul Li was ordained in 1946,
the first Chinese ordained pastor of this Province. Before the Lis were arrested in the mid
1950s, they managed to run a small theological institute and many of the students were later
arrested by the Government and sent as internal exiles to remote parts of the Province as
factory laborers. Some managed to establish Christian community at places hitherto there
had been no Christian presence, and eventually developed these communities into a Church,
such as the Church in Altay just bordering Russia.24 Paul Li spent some years in jail, like
most of his colleagues, and later died in the 1960s. All of the churches established by the
CNEC in the 1940s are still flourishing today.
The Chinese Christian Mission is a mission group, started just after the Second World
War, based in Shanghai. By 1949, they had about a hundred missionaries all over China. A
substantially large bloc of their missionaries was from Shangdong Province. They published a
nationwide magazine promoting their work. Since 1947, they began sending workers to the
Northwest and worked alongside with CNEC and The Spiritual Band. By the end of 1950,
they had affirmed their mission goal in Xinjiang as mainly to target the Uygurs, not Han
Chinese, as they observed that many other mission groups, such as The Spiritual Band and the
later mentioned BTJ group, were evangelizing primarily among the Chinese, not those ethnic
minority Muslims.25 They made several expositional evangelistic trips into the remote part of
Xinjiang. They began strategic planning, such language studies, methods to evangelize the
Uygurs such as medical mission, and recruitment of suitable candidates. Their work was
terminated in the early 1950s as the Communist regime put a halt to all mission work in China.
Nevertheless, this group was perhaps the only one that made practical plans as well as
focusing on the local population as mission target.
One of the smallest, certainly not the least important, was started by Revd Mark Ma in
1943 at a Bible School in Shaanxi after he received a series of visions with the following
messages: The Chinese Church should assume responsibility to take the Gospel to Xinjiang
and, in order to complete the Great Commission, to the rest of the world. The pathway of the
Gospel has spread in a westward direction, from Jerusalem to Antioch to all Europe, to
America, then to the East, from Southeast China to Northwest China, and should carry on
from Northwest China all the way back to Jerusalem. The remaining section of the territory is
under the power of Islam and the hardest place to embrace the Gospel. This place kept for the
Chinese Church as a portion of inheritance, so that the Chinese Church can claim it when the
Lord returns. As the Chinese missionaries take the Gospel back to Jerusalem, they will stand
at Mount Zion witnessing the return of Jesus Christ. Based on his vision, Revd Ma
challenged the students at the Bible school to join and they formed a small Gospel Band
called 'The Band that Spreads the Gospel all Over The Place' (Pinzhuan Fuyin Tuan). The
Constitution noted Matthew 24:14 as the Band's motto, and the sphere of works was to spread
the Gospel first to the seven provinces in the Northwestern region of China, then to the "seven
countries on the borders of Asia: Afghanistan, Iran, Arabia, Irak, Syria, and Palestine."26 At
the last stanza of their Band's hymn, it was stated as: "The Gospel will be proclaimed back to
Jerusalem with triumphal hymns. As we look upon from Mount Zion, we praise the Second
Coming of Christ."27 Soon, an American missionary in China, Ms Helen Bailey, who heard
of Revd Ma's groups, began to promote this group in USA and UK by circulation newsletters
via her friends with news of this group translated into English. It is in her first newsletter for
this group that she called this Band the "Back to Jerusalem Band." Since then it has been
known by this name in the English Speaking world, but not in the Chinese church.
Out of the perhaps few dozen who joined this Band, only three made any mention of
Jerusalem on record as their mission desire or calling: Revd Mark Ma Ke (Ma Ke is Mark in
Chinese), Ms Grace Ho (or He Enzhen), and Mr Mecca Zhao Maijia (Maijia is Mecca in
Chinese). Revd Mark Ma Ke started briefly in Xinjiang and later settled in the interior part of
China, Sichuan, for several decades. He never traveled anywhere further west than Urumuqi.
Both Zhao and Ma noted in their testimonies that they had visions from God for reaching
Jerusalem and desired to meet the Lord there.28 Zhao went to Kashgar in 194929 and Ho
joined him later. Zhao and Ho later married and felt the call to travel further west than other
Band members, although still without a clear destination in mind in the late 1940s. In
1949-1950, they planned to go to Afghanistan because the local people had told them that that
was the nation just west of China. However, the furthest they reached was Kashgar, still
within China and several hundred kilometers from the Afghan border.30 They both died a few
years ago without ever leaving China. When this author interviewed Grace Ho in 2002, she
had no idea that the Band's name was translated as "Back To Jerusalem Band" in English,
much less the current BTJ Movement which claimed to be a continuation of the vision of this
Band! However, after this writer's interview with Ho, a month later several BTJ Movement
advocators visited Ho and they published a book in 2003 describing Zaho and Ho's
experience in Xinjiang trying to realized their dream of preaching the Gospel back to
Jerusalem.31
One of the original members of this group who was interviewed by the author in detail
suggests that the Band had no particular destination in mind to begin with. They simply
moved in a generally westward direction as they 'felt the call', without maps, travel plans or
information on the region. He suggested that the reference made on preaching the Gospel
back to Jerusalem in Band's Hymn was merely a slogan (c.f. Mt. 24:11) than a strategic
objective of the Band. Despite their geographical and political naivety, more than half of them
managed to reach and stay in various parts of Xinjiang. However, none of them had studied
the local language since they had no particular ethnic 'target' group in mind.32 The exception
perhaps was Mecca Zhao as he later studied Uygur not for so much for evangelization but for
something more practical in mind, he was re-trained as a seal carver and Kashgar is a
bi-lingual city: Chinese and Uygur.33 Eventually all mission activity came to a halt in early
1950s in Xinjiang. Some of the Band members stayed in Xinjiang, merging members from
other mission groups, and some other members left Xinjiang, such as the team leaders Revd
Mark Ma.
III. Back To Jerusalem Movement and Current Status
One Member of the Northwest Spiritual Band, Simon Zhao, spent almost 20 years in jail
in Xinjiang. He might have come across BTJ members during his brief work in the early
1950s. When he was released, he became somewhat of a legend among the Christian circle in
Xinjiang because of the hymns and poems he wrote reflecting his many years of suffering for
his faith which became a great source of comfort and encouragement for other believers.34
Many came to him for spi
ritual advice. In the late 1990s at one of the church meetings by
unregistered church groups in the Province (as some Christian groups were willing to take
care of Zhao and they re-located him to Henen), Simon Zhao claimed he had a vision from
God that the Chinese Church should preach the Gospel to the Islamic world eventually back
to Jerusalem with similar theological justifications as what Revd Mark Ma had claimed in his
vision almost half a century ago. In the mid 1990s, the Chinese Church was experiencing a
rapid growing phase and at the same time was under extreme Government restriction. No one
would have thought of doing mission outside of China as almost all efforts were for the
survival for the Chinese Christian community in an atheistic regime hostile to Christianity. It
seems to be the first major cross-cultural and cross-border mission initiated by the Christian
community in China, a significant development especially in light of the fact that initiating
bodies are all clandestine Christian groups operating in an underground manner.
These leaders of the unregistered churches made contact with Chinese churches abroad
and, eventually with the mission agencies of evangelical circles, such as the Great
Commission Center International.35 A significant figure in this movement was Liu Zhenying,
a.k.a. Brother Yun or the Heavenly Man,36 who claimed to have united several unregistered
church networks and to spread the 'Back to Jerusalem' vision. Following his escape from
prison in China and escape to Germany in 1997, his vision has been popularized in
evangelical circles outside of China through the writings of New Zealand missionary Paul
Hattaway,37 and was promoted by some independent mission agencies, such as the Open
Door. In addition, the BTJ vision has been disseminated through hymns, books, websites, and
enthusiastic discussions at mission conferences. In the process, the original idea of
evangelizing the Muslim world has been transformed into a call for Chinese Christians to
evangelize not only the Muslims but also all the undetached people-groups between China
and Jerusalem, such as the Hindus and Buddhists.
Many North American Chinese church leaders act as brokers, linking the leaders from
unregistered Christian groups in China with Western mission agencies eager to promote the
BTJ vision. This BTJ vision called for massive mobilization of Chinese Christians, as many
as 200,000, in 10 years time to be sent to evangelize the Muslim world as the last hurdle of
the Great Commission. At the same time, the western mission agencies will provide financial
support and training resources; a joint-venture outsourcing model began to emerge.
Captivated by this fascinating idea, some groups have organized 'secret' international
conferences to promote as well as to co-ordinate this movement. The fact that it would be
held in secret reflects the clandestine nature of those groups from un-registered churches in
China, as well as the often-illicit nature of evangelization work in most of the targeted
Muslim nations. Therefore most of the discussions of these conferences are not available
other than what remains circulated among the core players of this movement. But it would
be correct to say that BTJ is a movement with a plurality of individual and institutional agents
and a certain unifying ideology. There is no real center of this movement as no one single
group can, although many tried to, exclusively to claim this movement.
Currently there are at least a couple dozen mission agencies who are actively involved in
this movement, with more than a dozen training centers in China and at least another ten
abroad, training potential BTJ missionaries; most of these training centers are funded by
Western-based mission agencies. Many BTJ Chinese missionaries are already in Middle
Eastern countries, and some 'vanguard teams' are in the Middle East establishing support
bases and so-called 'caravan stations'. By 2009, Chinese BTJ missionaries could be found in
at least 12 countries mostly in Islamic nations, with many more graduates from various
training centers ready to be sent out. Their status in the host countries includes that of student,
tourist, business people, agriculture worker, beautician, shopkeeper, and contract worker. This
Movement is gaining momentum as the numbers are growing and their presence is being felt
in the mission field as more of these missionary candidates are sent out.
IV. The Assumptions for the Current BTJ Movement
The enthusiasm for the BTJ vision outside China seems to be a confluence of the
centrality of Israel as a motif in evangelical millenarianism, especially in the United States,
and Western fascination with the rise of China and its huge population especially with the
reported high number of Christian converts ready to be deployed for mission fields. With the
post 9/11 event, Christendom has also placed much more attention on the Islamic world, thus
mission efforts to Moslems. The BTJ implicitly regards this Chinese movement as the 'last
change of the baton' of global missions; the Gospel that traveled from the Middle East to
Europe, and on to North America and thence (via Western missionaries) to East Asia, will
now be returned to its starting-point at Jerusalem by the Chinese missionaries. In so doing, it
will literally complete the mission-mandate of preaching the Gospel to the whole world, or
circle around the world. This is not exactly a new idea for the Chinese Christians because
some Chinese church leaders in the diaspora had promoted a similar ethnocentric missionary
theme as early as the 1970s.38 However it is a fresh idea for Christians in the unregistered
churches in China which has hitherto no exposure to such theme on global mission.
The advocators, represented by Hattaway's book and website for this movement, put
forward several arguments to justify this Chinese BTJ Movement regarding the Chinese
missionaries as the last baton-carriers of global mission.39 They are summarized as follows.
Politically, China has no major political adversaries and is on good terms with virtually every
nation. China does not label any other country as part of an axis of evil, and does not engage
in name-calling towards any other nation. It can do business simultaneously with Cuba and
USA, Iraq and Iran, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Libya and the UK, North Korea and
South Korea. Chinese nationals can go to countries where westerners have difficulty gaining
access, especially Islamic and other nations which Christian missionaries would usually find
hard to enter.
Experientially, Chinese Christians (especially those from the unregistered sector) have
long endured harsh Government suppression and developed a sophisticated form of ecclesial
existence to conduct clandestine activities. Such form of ecclesial existence would be rather
suitable for new Christian converts in Islamic countries as most of these countries would
regard such conversion as illegal and such religious activities to be suppressed by civil
authorities. Therefore, the Chinese Christians can offer their experience to the Christian
community in Islamic countries of how to avoid detection by the civil authorities.
Ecclesiastically, it is suggested since Christians in China practice a simple form of
Christianity devoid of elaborate liturgical, diaconal and institutional structures, such an
ecclesial form would therefore be simple to operate, flexible, and cost-effective. Such model
of church operation would be suitable for planning new churches in an environment which is
hostile to Christianity, such as Islamic countries. Therefore, by having Chinese missionaries,
the mission field can operate a stripped down form of Church life ideal for the field situation.
Human resources wise, the Chinese Church also has an ample supply of experienced
'church-planters', as witnessed by the rapid growth of churches even in the hostile
environment of Communist China. In addition, even though Christians are still a small
percentage of the Chinese population, the absolute numbers are huge, creating a vast virtually
endless supply of potential missionary candidates. This huge pool of missionary "laborers"
can be easily tapped into and will continue to supply the demand from the field.
Economically, these Chinese missionaries are used to living frugally as most of them are
living in the rural areas in China with rather low standard of living. They have also
experienced economic hardship and can still manage to survive and to serve. Lifestyle and
living standards of Western missionaries in the field are often at par with Western expatriates
in general. Such living standard may become a heavy financial burden for the
mission-sending agency. With the same amount of money, a mission agency can easily
employ a far greater numbers of Chinese missionaries to serve in the field, an ideal way to
maximize the money.
Spiritually, Chinese Christians have also long accepted suffering as a part of Christian
reality and are ready to be martyred without hesitation. In fact, one of the advocators, Brother
Yun (a.k.a. the 'Heavenly Man') has even suggested that he is prepared to accept 10,000
Chinese martyrs in the first decade of the BTJ operation in order to crack open the Muslim
world to the Gospel.40 One thing that fuels this disposition for martyrdom is the Adventist
belief; there is an eschatological assumption that Jesus will return once the gospel has been
preached around the world ending in Jerusalem.
Missiologically, the idea of tens of thousands of Chinese missionaries roaming in the
Middle East North Africa (MENA) region evangelizing in secret is extremely attractive to
many Western Christians who are frustrated perhaps by the relative fruitlessness of Western
mission endeavors among Muslims. As one veteran missionary in a Middle Eastern country
told the author, "We have been so lonely laboring for many years with little result. We are so
frustrated that we are tempted to jump at any idea, however berserk it may seem."41 Is it not
the time to turn over the mission field from the hands of the missionaries of the Older Church
to the missionaries from the younger churches, such as the Chinese missionaries? Is it not that
the missionaries from the Older Church already had their chance for more than a Century with
little result, and that they should allow others to have a hand in this field? Among the
mission agencies, BTJ has been getting an increasing amount of international attention and
financial support, especially from pro-Israel, Christian Zionist evangelical and charismatic
mission groups.42
Finally, the BTJ movement also draws some geopolitical attention, especially in the
post-9/11 geopolitical context. In a hypothetical 'clash of civilizations' scenario between the
West and the Islamic world, China would become a highly important 'third player' with
which the United States wishes to be allied. David Aikman in his book entitled: Jesus in
Beijing suggests that the BTJ Movement could be instrumental to ally USA and China to
counter the global expansion of Islamic influence if a) Christians in China will increase to a
point that China becomes a Christian-influenced or even a Christianized nation, like USA,
and b) China would send out tens of thousand of missionaries to Christianize the current
Islamic region from Central Asia to the Middle East. Since the rapid increase of Christian
population is not an idea so far from reality, Aikman would therefore advocate the BTJ idea
so that the geopolitical pattern in future would be the opposite of Samuel Huntington's
original formulation of the 'clash of civilizations' thesis: instead of Western (Christian)
culture confronting an alliance of Middle Eastern (Islamic) and Eastern (Confucian) cultures,
the Muslim world might have to confront an alliance of East and West, both outside and
within its own borders.43 US would team up with China to check the growth of Islamic
influence using Christianity as the force to change the global balance of power.
V. Reflections on these Assumptions
The BTJ movement has drawn divided opinion. Some regard it as a hoax44 while others
see it as a new mission mandate for 'Christendom'. In spite of the many accusations and
refutations45 (BTJ, 2005), mainly regarding the handling of finances and claims of authority
over the movement, it has drawn endorsements from a growing number of mission agencies
worldwide.46 With the increasing attention paid to evangelization of the Muslim world, the
BTJ movement has gained momentum, especially among overseas Chinese and in the
unregistered churches in China. There are also international conferences - often held
somewhat confidentially due to the sensitive nature of the content - to promote and coordinate
efforts among agencies within the movement.47 It is our intention to analyze the theological
roots and arguments of this movement and to ponder the possible implications, should the
movement achieve a fraction of what it intends, for world Christianity and international
relations.
It is valid that the Chinese churches have a vast supply of potential missionaries.
Furthermore, the increasing surplus of Chinese farm workers, perhaps the largest bloc of
unemployed or under-employed laborers in the world (numbering 150 million in 2008 and
may well be around 250 million in 2009 due to the global economic downturn), may facilitate
recruitment of missionaries among rural Christians. But church leaders in the Middle East
have stressed that future missionaries to that part of the world should acquire some sort of
professional status and have in-depth understanding of Islamic culture.48 There are few
Chinese Christians who meet those two criteria, especially with regard to quality training in
cross-cultural issues.
This writer's personal observation with many BTJ trainees was that they are mostly
young people from 20 to 25 years of age with an average education of junior school to senior
high school. Only a few have some college education. Most of them come from rural areas
with little experience in city life, and almost none had any cross-culture experience outside of
China prior their joining the program for training. Almost all lack any professional skill. Also
almost all of them, though rich in church ministry experience, had virtually no experience in
the secular work place. When this author asked them what they would do in the field, most
replied that God would provide them with a suitable status. Some suggested that they like to
be a vendor because most of the Chinese in the Islamic world, if they have some money,
would open small business such as shops and restaurant. If they lack professional
qualification and money, they would become vendors, or cheap laborers-usually illegal--for
small business or sweatshops. A missionary recently communicated with this author that he
had encountered in Iraq a group of BTJ missionaries from rural China. To his surprise, they
had no knowledge of Iraq and certainly none of Arabic. Furthermore, they were pig farmers,
not the best profession for gaining acceptance in the Muslim world!49 Finding it difficult to
get work in their only profession, they subsequently left for another Middle Eastern country.
Some of those involved in training BTJ candidates have echoed such doubts about the
suitability of many of their charges.50 Other highly optimistic movements to mobilize huge
numbers of global southern missionaries (such as the Overseas Filipino Workers) have simply
not achieved the expected results.51 The long history of mission agencies reminds us that
candidate selection is crucial in the success of any mission endeavor. Quality, not quantity,
seems to count for more in the success of cross-cultural mission work. The potential impact of
the BTJ on the Islamic world, at least in the immediate future, will be severely restricted by
the limited availability of qualified candidates, rather than by the sheer quantity of
missionaries sent.
There are also political and commercial repercussions. If thousands of Chinese BTJ
missionaries, perhaps posing as vendors, do in fact flood the bazaars of MENA countries
selling Chinese goods, giving testimonies, having home-based worship meetings and passing
out tracts, would the local authorities turn a blind eye? Such an influx of missionaries would
probably lead them to tighten restrictions on foreign activities in general, on Chinese in
particular. The result could be intra-Chinese tension in those countries between those who are
genuine merchants and those who are really missionaries. The negative impact on Chinese
commercial activities, and the Chinese presence in general, in the profitable Middle Eastern
market might prompt the Chinese authorities to take steps not to lose that lucrative market,
which might in turn curb the flow of BTJ missionaries from the China side.
The spirit of missionary martyrdom emphasized by the BTJ, accustomed to persecution in
China, might make them fearless in the face of the local authorities. But if any Islamic nation
took severe measures against apprehended Chinese missionaries, such as execution, the result
would be an international outcry, as well as international media coverage that would
embarrass the Chinese government. Muslim fundamentalist groups might take some of those
missionaries hostage, as in the recent case of Korean missionaries in Afghanistan, leaving the
Chinese government no alternative but to use all diplomatic means available to rescue them,
like the Korean Government had done. Should several such scenarios occur, China would
have to deal with these issues affecting its relations with the Islamic nations, upon which
China depends for oil. The Chinese authority would certainly not trade the loss of Middle
Eastern oil in exchange for Chinese Christian missionaries' right to evangelize in those
countries. After all, China does not encourage religious development and would highly
endorse economic development. The Chinese government might than find excuses to clamp
down Christian activities to which they are currently turning a blind eye, and resort to shutting
down BTJ training facilities in China as well as restricting the exit of potential missionaries
from China. All these measures would have endorsement from the general public, just like the
condemnation from the public at large towards those missionary-sending churches in Korea as
the Korean Government had to bail out the captured missionaries from Afghanistan.
The BTJ is also subtly ethnocentric, if not racist. It claims the right for the Chinese to own
the God-given honor of carrying the baton in the final leg of the round-the-world evangelistic
relay marathon. Some Korean Protestants have claimed similar right, based on their high
number of missionaries (probably one of the largest mission forces per capita in world
Protestantism). Such ethnocentric visions of missionary 'chosenness' lack a sound foundation
in Christian theology, for the mission mandate is given in the New Testament to all races of
all nations in a co-operative manner. By interpreting divine calling as an exclusive
Sino-centric privilege, or the so-called inheritance from God, there is a danger of repeating
the racial superiority complex of the White Man's Burden which influenced nineteenth
century Western missions.52 Would this BTJ Movement be a form of a 'Yellow Man's
Burden,'53 likely to generate similar tensions on the mission field as what the "White Man's
Burden" had in the past? Currently, some mission leaders are trying to modify the BTJ
movement into a general call for the Chinese unregistered churches to do foreign mission.
They also try to downplay the Sino-centric element by stressing cooperation between East and
West on this final leg of the global mission mandate.54 However, such Sino-centric tone is
still a strong favor of this movement.
The BTJ seems to emerge as a Christian analogue to the figure of China rising in the
global international order. Domestically, the rising of Chinese nationalism, enhanced by the
Beijing Olympiad, empowers the Chinese with a sense of confidence to encounter the world,
such as more involvement in global affairs and more responsibility to global challenges in
contrast to the closed-door policy in the past. The sending of Chinese Naval forces to protect
the merchant fleet near the Somalia coast, and the Chinese peace keeping forces in Sudan, are
current examples. Such nationalistic aspiration with global concern and global responsibility
may easily translate into the evangelistic concern of Global Mission among the Christians in
China, a form of nationalism in the Christian context. Internationally, the increasing influence
of China in the world market share, and the idea of China as a politically neutral nation55
suitable for global involvement, may also facilitate Chinese Christians to position themselves
in global mission to co-work, if not to replace, the western missionaries currently in the field.
However such assumption would be valid if China is perceived as a non-treating international
force and China's national interests in global involvement would not be in conflict with local
interests. Unfortunately, the increase of China's commercial presence in Islamic countries
from Afghanistan to Mauritania, sometimes involving practices conflicting with Islamic
tradition,56 has already an generated increasing amount of Sino-phobic sentiments out of fear
of Chinese market dominance and of a deterioration of socio-religious values.57 The Chinese
Government's support to some of the regimes, such as Sudan and Zimbabwe, may cause
resentment from the local population against the Chinese as well. Such fears will work
against the Chinese BTJ missionaries, making it harder for them to be welcomed by local
populations. It seems that mission work hitching on seemingly favorable political condition
may easily backfire once the political tide has turned.
The argument of endless supply of missionary candidates seems to be based on the
China's economic advantage of a massive pool of cheap labor translated into the mission
context. This functions as a 'push' factor for the BTJ: in the job market tens of millions of
Chinese peasants, with insufficient land to till at home and unable to settle in urban China, are
'available' for any kind of job available to make a better living than idling in the village. So
Christians among this rural population would go any place so long as there is a chance for a
better livelihood like their non-Christian peasants. Currently already several millions of
Chinese legally or otherwise have left China to seek a better living in more than 150 countries
since the mid 1990s as China relaxed its exit requirement for its citizens. The Chinese
peasants may have paid up to USD 20,000 for various middle men and bribes to get to a
MENA country as contract labor, and he or she would have to pay back the loan with high
interest through the first few years of hard labor before this worker can save any money.
Should an opportunity arise for these rural Christian to serve overseas, as "missionaries" and
all are paid for by mission agencies, there would certainly not be any shortage of applicants.
In fact, most of these trainees whom this author had encountered experienced such
opportunity to be selected for overseas mission as intensely competitive among applicants.
How can the selection process be able to check the motive of the mission candidates to screen
off those who just want a free ticket out of China?
From the economic perspective, the BTJ movement talks of a highly cost-effective
scheme which is attractive to hard-pressed Western mission agencies eager for quick and
sensational results which might elicit donor support. The financial cost of supporting one
western missionary (plus family) can easily hire at least half a dozen Chinese BTJ workers!
Outsourcing cheap labor-intensive jobs to labor pools of developing countries is a commercial
trend to cut cost. Can this commercial method be employed in the mission field? In fact this
outsourcing method has been in practice since 1943 in the mission field of China58 as US
donors contributed money, and the Chinese Church provided mission labor to reduce the cost
of sending US missionaries to China. The debate was more rhetoric than administrative,
whether those locally hired native staff are considered missionaries or not. However the BTJ
Movement goes beyond the practice of hiring local labor to do the ground job, but hiring
foreign (hence cheaper) labor for local work, a mercenary model indeed. Should that be the
case, and it is already happening in the mission field, is it a new form of international
co-operation in mission modeling after the commercial world? This "cost-effectiveness"
idea has two problems: first, is it another form of racism as if Chinese BTJ missionaries could
not have the same standard of living as the western missionary are currently enjoying? Are
not all Christians created equal and should be treated equally? Second, would the mission
agency replace those Chinese BTJ workers if cheaper source were available, say, from
Vietnam or Nigeria? If one just takes this "cost-effectiveness division of labor" idea a step
further, would it not develop into a contract bidding system for a mission project and the job
would go to whichever Church group that can provide the best mission service with the
lowest cost...say 10 missionaries for 10 years in A country with 10 churches built with at
least 100 converts per church for x amount of money, with penalty cost lists? And the Church
group that won such bid could sub-contract it to various groups? Who really owns the
mission?
There is also the issue of legality. The writer has observed some of these BTJ
missionaries enter a field illegally and remain so; others remain illegally after gaining their
legal entrance. Some even use counterfeit travel documents to exit China and to enter other
countries. Their good conscience about breaking or bending the laws is an extension of the
legally dubious status of their churches within China itself. They often justify their dismissal
of the legal system to the New Testament injunction to 'obey God rather than men' as many
of them disregard the need to respect the law if such law hinders the spreading of the Gospel.
How would this ethical issue be treated as these BTJ missionaries are operating illegally,
trying to build up a clandestine group of converts who would be themselves be arrested as
criminals if known by the authority and prosecuted under the law? Where would we draw
the line?
VI. Conclusion
China is undoubtedly emerging as a major economic and political power in the
international community. The Christians in China together with others from the Younger,
hence mostly non-Western, Churches may in the future write the next Chapter of world
Christianity. However, the Christian community in China is but a minority group among 1.3
billion in the diverse Chinese population, and, unlike Korea, still far from being an influential
social group even within the Chinese social milieu as most of them comes from the rural areas
with limited education and professional skills. Although some may wish for a high figure of
Christians in China, such high figure may easily translate into a community high in quantity
but not necessary in quality such as spirituality. It takes time to develop spiritual maturity of a
community.
The global mission initiative of the Chinese Church is still in its infancy beginning with
this BTJ movement originated more than a half a Century ago by a handful of enthusiastic
Chinese evangelistic with the misnomer of "Back To Jerusalem" slogan by an American lady.
This legacy, almost forgotten, recycled by current Chinese Church leaders perhaps
anachronistically, becomes the historical justification that God had long intended Chinese to
take up such honorable task at the End Time. There are a few similarities which link the
past and the current BTJ Movement: a Sino-centric wish, a vague strain of Christian Zionism,
a proactive millenarianism, and perhaps a hint of Apostolic Catholic Movement, and an
undefined mission objective other than the idea of ending up eventually in Jerusalem without
the specific objectives, i.e. what does it mean to evangelize people along the route all the way
from China to Jerusalem?
The current BTJ Movement differs from the previous one by incorporating the current
global marketing trend, business model, political ascension of China, and the shifting of
centrality of Christendom to the Younger Churches into the picture favoring this Movement.
Further, this Movement is further fueled by enthusiastic promotions, personal visions, and a
secular business model rather than on serious theological reflections and critical missiological
and spiritual considerations.
There are many serious issues yet to be tackled. For example, the increasing presence of
large numbers of missionaries from Mainland China in Muslim- dominated areas may cast a
different picture for such proselytizing activity is currently regarded as illegal within the
context of these nations. Eventually there will be conflicts between these missionaries and
civil authorities, and with local religious communities. These conflicts involving Chinese
citizens would probably force Chinese authorities to face a political dilemma: to protect its
citizen as a responsible nation, or to keep strategic political relationships with these nations.
These types of seemingly religious incidents, such as trial or execution of such missionaries
may lead to legal matters and end in political and diplomatic crisis. It would also lead to some
embarrassing questions: Would China defend religious liberty by protecting its citizens as
they conduct proselytizing activities in other countries, like most developed nations do? Yet at
the same time, China's record on religious liberty is far from ideal! It appears that the
consequence of this BTJ Movement may easily go beyond the religious, and enters into the
complex realm of international politics, a situation that the original advocators might not have
considered.
The severe lack of qualified pastoral workers within China due to the rapid growth of
Christianity in the past twenty years compounded with the strong Governmental control on
normal development of the Church also hinders the availability hence of recruiting of
qualified BTJ candidates. The dubious motives of many of these mission candidates within
the current Chinese social trend of migration to overseas, the clandestine style of operation
lacking accountability and transparency on financial and administrative matters, and the
ethical issues with the law both in China and in the mission field, all these factors further cast
doubt on the idea that the BTJ will bear strong influence on the development of global
Christianity. It appears that the current BTJ Movement are founded more on enthusiastic
desires of Western mission groups, nationalistic aspirations of the Chinese, opportunistic
mission leaders, the threat from the global expanding Islamic influence, and the mythologized
Christian community in China, with the political hedge on the rising of China as the new
global power. It will require a lot more serious missiological and spiritual groundwork before
it can become a credible and sustainable mission movement bearing impact on global
Christianity.
Endnotes
1 There was a Christian presence in China for centuries prior to the coming of the Protestant
missionaries. Nestorian Christians first arrived in the seventh century (see Li Tang, A Study of the
History of Nestorian Christianity in China and its Literature in Chinese, Frankfurt am Main; New
York: Peter Lang, 2004), followed by Franciscans in the fourteenth century. The Jesuit missions began
in the late sixteenth Century, see Michela Fontana, Matteo Ricci: Un Gesuita alla Corte dei Ming,
Milano: Mondadori, 2005) and Russian Orthodoxy in the eighteenth century. Finally, Protestant
missionaries appeared on the scene with the arrival of Robert Morrison in 1807.
2 This paper deals only with the Protestant community in China. The smaller Catholic community is,
like the Protestants, split into recognized and unrecognized sectors, which in the Catholic case are
dominated by the complicated issue of the diplomatic tension between the Chinese state and the
Vatican.
3 Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Document # 19. The Basic Viewpoint on the
Religious Question During Our Country's Socialist Period, 31 March 1982, at Donald MacInnis,
Religion In China Today: Policy and Practice (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989).
4 Amity Foundation, "Church Statistics" Section in Amity News Service at
http://www.amitynewsservice.org/page.php?page=1230
5 D. B.Barrett, and T. Johnston, World Christian Trends (Pasadena, California: William Carey
International University, 2001).
6 Qwei Ya, "The Equivocal Relations Between the Chinese House Churches and Chinese
Government," in Voice of America, January 28, 2009, as quoted by China Aid Association, 27 February
2009, see www.chinaaid.org.
7 From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, the China Christian Council and the Chinese Protestant
Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee also known as the Three-Self Church, Official Church, or
Registered Church, see Kim-kwong, Chan, entry of "Chinese Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement
Committee" in J. G. Melton and M. Baumann edited, Religions of the World: A Comprehensive
Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices, Vol. 1: A-C (Oxford: ABC-CLIO), pp. 251-252, printed 30
million copies of the Bible and overseas Christian groups brought in at least another 10 million copies.
There is also an unknown number of Bibles which are printed privately in the country. This suggests
that the estimate of 35 million Protestants may err on the conservative side. See also A. Hunter and
K.K. Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
pp. 66-71.
8 The largest congregation in the world is generally regarded as the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul,
South Korea. It has 860,000 member in 2008, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoido_Full_Gospel_Church.
9 P. Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 90.
10 W. Gong, 'Our Country's Exports has, the first time, exceeded USD 1,000 billion,' in Remin Ribao
[People's Daily] (15 November 2004), see http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2004-11-15/04444237319s.shtml.
11 X. Wang "Imports to Get Forex Fund Boost," in China Daily, 19 February 2009, see
http://www.cdeclips.com/en/nation/fullstory.html/?id=15655.
12 China President Hu Jintao's speech at Yale University on 22 April 2006, see
http://www.peacehall.com/news/gb/intl/2006/04/200604220826.shtm1.
13 D. Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global
Balance of Power (Washington, D.C.: Regency Publishing Inc., 2003), pp. 285-292.
14 The 10/40 Window extends from 10 degrees to 40 degrees north of the equator, and stretches from
North Africa across to China, containing the bulk of the non-Christian population of the world, see
http://1040window.org/main/whatis.htm.
15 P. Hattaway, Back To Jerusalem: Called to Complete the Great Commission (Carlisle: Piquant,
2003). This book, along with the www.backtojerusalem.com. Website, becomes the main advocator
of this movement. In 2003, this BTJ website suggested to mobilize 200,000 Chinese missionaries
within 10 years and this figure has reduced to 100,000 since 2006.
16 For Chinese Government's policy and regulations on religion, see K.K. Chan and E. Carlson,
Religious Freedom In China: Policy, Administration, and Regulation-A Research Handbook (Santa
Barbara, California: Institute for the Study of America Religion/Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute for
Culture,CommerceandReligion2005)
17 This region has undergone tremendous political changes along with rising and falling of nations,
changes of names of places and cities, and re-drawing of administrative boundaries. For the sake of
convenience, this paper uses the current name and political boundaries with parenthesis to include the
former name of a particular location known in the historical period as mentioned in this paper. For
example, Urumuqi, the current capital of Xinjiang (Dihua), as it was called before 1950.
18 Personal interview with Cu Hongbao, the surviving co-worker of Revd Zhang Guquan, Urumiqi, July
2002, and later personal letter from Cu dated 15 July 2002.
19 K.K. Chan and A. Hunter, Prayers and Thoughts of Chinese Christian (London: Mowbray, 1990),
pp. 71-72.
20 Personal Interview of a surviving member of the Band, Elder Zheng Jinting, at Hami, Xinjiang, July
2004.
21 T. Yamamori and K.K. Chan, Witnesses to Power: Stories of God's Quiet Work in a Changing China
(Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), pp. 1-7.
22 Li Kaiwan, "Church Report of Xinjiang," in Zengdao (True Way) Magazine, 30 November, 1950,
back inner cover. Liu Songsan of Chinese Christian Mission also reported the work of CNEC in 1950,
confirming Li's report of continuous church development in that Province, see Liu Songsan,
"Evangelistic Journey in Xinjiang," in Evangelism Quarterly , No. 14, pp. 23-26.
23 H. R. Thompson, Chinese Back To Jerusalem Band News Letter No. 11 (April, 1950), p. 7.
24 For example the Church in Altay was established by a lady, a student of Paul Li, who were arrested
as Christians and sent to the then remote town at the Sino-Soviet border. She worked at the local shoe
factory and spread the Gospel in secret. She is now the head of the Altay Church, personal interview,
name withhold for security reason, July 2004.
25 Liu Songsan, "Who will save the descendants of Ishmael?" in Evangelism Quarterly No. 13
(October 1950),
p. 25.
26 H. Bailey, The Chinese Back To Jerusalem Evangelistic Band, A Prayer Call, mimeograph, no date,
no place, (cira, 1950), p. 6.
27 A. J. C. Wang, Silk Route Mission: Story of a Heroic Couple (Taipei: Campus Evangelical
Fellowship, 2003), pp. 184-185.
28 Bailey, pp. 6-7. Also Mecca Zhao had claimed to have three Divine revelations on the fate of the
Band and of some of their colleagues including Ms Helen Bailey, recoded on p. 11. All of his
prophecies were wrong!
29 H. R. Thompson, Chinese Back To Jerusalem Band News Letter No. 10 (December 1949), p. 3.
30 Personal interview with, Grace He Enzhen, in Kashgar, Xinjiang, August 2002.
31 Wang, Silk Route Mission: Story of a Heroic Couple.
32 Interviews by the author with Revd Huang Ziqing, an original member of the BTJ Band, in Xinjiang
in August 2002, August 2003 and August 2006, and in Liaoling in April 2004.
33 Personal interview with Grace Ho Enzhen, 2002.
34 Chan and Hunter, pp. 18-19, 26-27.
35 See www.gcciusa.org.
36 This Brother was name known to the Christian circle by this book: Brother Yun and P. Hattaway,
The Heavenly Man (London, Monarch, 2002).
37 Hattaway, Back to Jerusalem: Called to Complete the Great Commission.
38 The last stanza of CCCOWE theme song (Chinese Coordination Center of World Evangelism
founded in 1976 by Disaporic Chinese Christians) suggests that the Chinese Christian would carry the
last baton of this Global Evangelism task from the western missionaries before the final triumph of the
Lord, see www.cccowe.org. The Great Commission Center International (www.GCCUISA.org) also
advocates such a theme by portraying the global missions movement as encircling the world, with the
last leg being directed by Asians from the Far East, Front Cover, Great Commission Bi-Monthly, No.
48, February 2004.
39 Hattaway, Back to Jerusalem, pp. 94-134.
40 Editor, "Interview with Paul Hattaway - A Captive Vision," in Christianity Today, April 2004, p. 84.
41 Interviewed in April 2004 (name and place withheld for security reasons).
42 For security reasons, identity of organization, individual and places are not mentioned except those
with consent from the individual or those had already appeared in open publications.
43 D. Aikman, Jesus in Beijing pp. 194-206.
44 The word used spontaneously by a leading historian of Chinese Christianity, name withheld, upon
hearing mention of the BTJ during an academic conference in 2006.
45 BTJ, Foundation UK, The Back To Jerusalem Foundation: Statement, mimeograph, (December 2005),pp.1-4.
46 For example, China Source (a mission bulletin on missions and China) devotes an entire issue to
the BTJ (vol 7, No. 1, Spring 2006).
47 Participants of these conferences agree not to divulge information about the content of the sessions
or the identity of the other participants, because of the sensitive nature of mission work in Islamic nations.
Therefore the author, who has attended some of these conferences, is unable to enter into sensitive
details beyond the generic information given in the text.
48 Anonymous, "Interview from the Land of the Pharaohs," Back To Jerusalem Bulletin No 2
(December, 2004), pp. 7-8.
49 Personal communication, 31 January 2005 (identity withheld).
50 For example, there have been many trainers of BTJ candidates in a Southeast Asian country (names
withheld). In addition, in 2006, 2007 and 2008 the writer author interviewed many trainers studying in
various BTJ training centers. Most of them commented that candidates from rural areas lack the basic
skills for living in urban environments. While many have rich ministerial experience, few are able to
acquire the professional skills which would enable them to get secular jobs in foreign cities. In 2007
and 2008, this writer has also visited many BTJ mission candidates in the mission field.
51 The writer author has noticed the high level of missionary activity among Filipino workers in Hong
Kong, with at least 80 churches, but little if any has gone beyond the Filipino community.
52 S. L. Duffy, "19th Century Colonial World,", see http://www.loyno.edu/~seduffy/ imperialism.html.
2006.
53 P. Nyiri, "The Yellow Man's Burden: Chinese Migrants on a Civilizing Mission," in China Journal
Vol. 56 (2006), pp. 83-106.
54 In an international BTJ conference held in August 2006, participants (both Chinese and non-Chinese)
from various mission agencies and church networks agreed that the BTJ is more a challenge to Chinese
Christians to do cross-cultural mission rather than just to preach along the route from China to Jerusalem.
55 This French author advocated such popular view, E. Izraelewicz, E. Quand La Chine Change Le
Monde (Paris: Editions Grassel et Fasquelle, 2005.
56 Many Chinese restaurants in the Middle East sell alcoholic drinks and some, like those in Kabul, also
operate brothels using the restaurant as a front. Most of the patrons are expatriate workers with the UN or
with relief and development agencies. For example, see J. Huggler, 'Chinese Prostitutes arrested in Kabul
Restaurant Raids,'' in The Independent (On Line) 10 February 2006.
57 D. Tao 'Afghan expels 'Chinese Restaurant-Brothel,' Phoenix Weekly Vol. 24, no. 229 (25 August)
pp. 44-46, reported anti-Chinese sentiment in Muslim countries such as Mauritania, Mali and Niger,
where Chinese operate brothels under the façade of restaurants.
58 In the early 1940s, a group of business people in Seattle set up a mission agency (the Christian
Native Evangelism Crusade, mentioned earlier in this paper) with a similar idea of hiring nationals to
do mission work paid by a foreign mission agency. The main argument was a pragmatic business one:
the cost of supporting a foreign missionary in China was the same as that of hiring at least 10 local
mission workers. It was a controversial mission practice at that time. The agency later changed its name
to Partners International, while maintaining the same policy. See
http://ww.partnersintl.org/about/history.php.
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