As George Santayana famously said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Foreign Christian who wish to have a positive impact on the growth of the faith in China should reflect soberly on a few major themes that recur in the articles of the Handbook to Christianity in China, volume 2. (See the review posted at Global China Center.)
1. Hard work pays off. Reading the stories of those early missionaries, one cannot help but be impressed with just how hard they worked. They were in a hurry to preach the gospel to Chinese, yes, but that did not stop them from investing a great deal of time and effort into learning the language and immersing themselves in the culture. Then they labored day and night for decades on end to share the truth as they understood it in every possible way and through every possible means and medium.
2. In other words, they didn’t have a “one size fits all” approach to evangelism and church planting, but adopted a variety of ways to disseminate the Word of God and build solid churches. In particular, they tried to provide solid Christian literature, including the Bible, of course, but also a wide array of other “tracts” and books, most of them composed by the missionaries with the help of Chinese converts.
3. Some methods bore more fruit than others, of course. Superficial preaching of a simple message brought in “converts,” but these people all too often fell away at the first wind of difficulty. In time, virtually all the missionaries learned to expect the process to take a while, while they patiently explained the essential truths of Scripture and their implications for daily life. Although Christian compassion moved them to provide both medical treatment and education for Chinese around them, these costly endeavors seem to have issued in very few genuine conversions, though of course there were exceptions. In particular, higher education, though it nurtured a cadre of talented modernizers who had been influenced by some Christian concepts, did not fulfill the original hopes of those who believed that a Christian college would be the incubus for the formation of Christian faith and character.
(That is not to deny the profound impression that the character and compassion of Christian teachers and medical people had, and still have, on Chinese who have the opportunity to watch them. Indeed, some believe that university teaching and medical work in China are perhaps the best ways for foreigners to bear witness to Christ in China even today. Doing business “by the Book” should be added to this list.)
4. On the other hand, careful training of Chinese Christians to share the gospel and to take leadership in the church did pay off. The locals made not only better evangelists among their own people but also more effective pastors and teachers. Increasingly, missionaries poured their energies into training up Chinese who could do the work much more better than they could. Of course, it took years both for the missionaries to gain the ability in Chinese and earn the right to teach others, as well as for God to raise up mature Chinese Christians.
5. Then as now, a major impediment to the growth of Christianity in China lay in the perception, sometimes warranted, that it was a tool for the infiltration of foreign influence and even a weapon in the hands of foreign governments. Even today, when Western Christians call loudly for political change in China and render open support for high-profile dissidents, they reinforce that impression.
6. Finally, the generally meticulous scholarship of the articles in this book challenges all of us to do our homework well, in order to understand the past as well as we can. The only exception I noted involved the repetition of common misconceptions of J. Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission. Contrary to popular belief, Taylor and his mission did not neglect in-depth Bible teaching and training of Chinese adherents. But this is a relatively small, though significant, blemish in an otherwise marvelous volume, and only reminds us how difficult it is to obtain an accurate picture of a crucial period in Chinese history.