Chinese disciple South Asian church
In a conference center in South Asia, a small group of believers watches tears fill a woman’s eyes. She stands before them in a tunic and baggy pants—their own traditional clothing—and her voice quivers when she speaks.
“You can pastor yourselves without foreigners,” she says. “You can evangelize.”
Although Huan Tan* resembles her listeners, she must use an interpreter to encourage them in their spiritual growth. Through the voice of another, she speaks with conviction. She tells the people in jeans, khakis, polos, and button-up shirts that they can live lives mature in faith and spread the Gospel to their friends and families. Asians, she says, can sustain a successful church and spread the message of Christ. She has seen it happen.
She looks at the handful of people sitting in desk chairs. Tan and her husband, Pastor Feng Tan,* met the group this morning. They don’t share the same heritage or the same language with their listeners, but God led them across the Asian continent to share their spiritual knowledge with this tiny band of inexperienced Christians.
The Tans traveled from their home in Southeast Asia with five other members of their Chinese church. The group encourages spiritual growth by teaching leadership and discipleship at three locations in South Asia. In this cement room, Tan feels her country’s Christian history might inspire her listeners more than her prepared lesson. She wants them to know how God matured her own family of Southeast Asian believers.
Taking Action
Thirty years ago, Tan says, the Asian Christians in her country struggled. The government deported all of the American missionaries who had discipled them, leaving a leadership gap in congregations and seminaries. However, as time passed, the local believers took action. They appointed and trained their own pastors and carried on their own evangelism. With the help of God, the church flourished.
“We feel for you because we know that you may face a situation where you may not have outside help,” Tan tells her listeners. “You will be alone. Do not think God has abandoned you. He will be there for you because He has been there for [us].”
This scenario of success, Tan says, could happen in South Asia. With a voice full of emotion, she warns the gathering that their government could also deport foreign workers. But, Tan comforts them, God can prepare the South Asian church to grow on its own.
Tan’s story illustrates one of the reasons why American Christian worker Burt Galvin* helped orchestrate the Tans’ leadership training and their extensive travel from Southeast Asia to this white room. He recognized a connection between Asian peoples that foreigners cannot replicate.
Asian Connection
Galvin started planning the trip after meeting the Tans and their church members a year ago. At the time, he had just moved to their city after living among poverty-stricken communities in South Asia for 16 years. He saw their church’s passion for sharing the Gospel, and, when he learned that members ministered once a week to South Asian migrant workers near their homes, he offered to serve as a translator.
As Galvin sat on tile floors and negotiated language barriers between the Chinese church and their South Asian friends, he witnessed a change in the dynamics of the mission field. He saw the Asian church begin to take charge of spreading the Gospel.
“In some ways, I think the baton is being passed to the Asian church,” he says. “China is going to [produce] the next big wave of missionaries. … Not that Americans don’t have a place anymore—we have training, we have experience—but part of that needs to be to mobilize [the Asian] church to go.”
Shortly after he became a translator for the Tans’ church, Galvin suggested that the group visit the country their migrant friends call home to help facilitate their ministry to the workers. The church agreed, and seven people including the Tans soon committed to the mission.
Galvin saw an opportunity. This Chinese church in Southeast Asia, the Christian worker decided, had something South Asian believers definitely lacked—discipleship training. During the trip, the church members could not only experience South Asian culture, but they could also teach South Asian believers the basics of Christian belief and behavior.
“These new [South Asian] believers very quickly become leaders because there is a leadership void,” Galvin says. “They don’t feel confident. They aren’t exactly sure how to lead a house church, and so on. So, when they have more mature Christians come like these [Southeast Asians] who know how to do it well, it’s a big boost for them, and they need that kind of training to pass on to their people.”
Teaching Basics
Consequently, as the Tans conduct their leadership training, they realize that their audience has very little understanding of basic Christianity. The couple teach rudimentary lessons dealing with Christian marriage, Christian parenting and basic evangelism through Bible storytelling. The five other Chinese congregation members take turns giving their testimonies and demonstrating storytelling techniques with felt board characters.
However, toward the end of the seminar, as the South Asian believers ask their final questions, the Chinese Christians address a common ground all of their participant groups encounter: persecution. Coming from an environment where conversion means familial disownment, they understand this challenge like no Westerner could.
As well, Tan makes sure her listeners know she prays for them. She says, “I think that when a church or a people group is suffering, they need to know that others empathize with them—that there are other Christians in other parts of the world who have gone through and understand.”
These similarities make a difference to the believers in South Asia. Although the Chinese team wears nicer clothes and speaks a different language, at least one woman feels encouraged by their presence. After the training, she stops a Western worker to show her pleasure that the trainers look like her.
Galvin hopes that the South Asian believers will become inspired when they see other Asian people develop mature walks with Christ. He wants the South Asians to understand that they can train their own pastors, develop their own churches and devise strategies for sharing the Gospel.
The Tans and Galvin hope that the South Asian church will run powerful and effective ministries based on the example of their fellow Asian Christians.
Prayer Requests:
- Pray for the work among Christians who have left the Islamic faith. Their families often ostracize them and their lives can become difficult and lonely.
- Pray for the Asian Church to continue meeting the challenge and becoming the next great force in spreading the Gospel to the "ends of the earth."
- Pray for thousands of migrant workers all over the world to come to Christ, undergo discipleship and form churches before returning to share with others in their South Asian home countries.
