After a ten-year gap, prolonged by postponements during the pandemic, the 10th Chinese Congress on World Evangelization (CCOWE) convened under the theme “Listening to Our Times, Co-creating with God,” organized around three major topics: Kingdom Gospel, Holistic Mission, and Chinese Churches. In recent years, I have attended several CCOWE gatherings focused on specific missions-related topics, but this was my first time attending the main congress. The gathering brought not only an enormous amount of content, but also an unusually high level of personal connection—from reuniting with friends I had not seen for years to meeting new ministry partners. I came away richly rewarded.
The CCOWE movement was born fifty years ago under the inspiration of the Lausanne Movement. In its program design, this congress also bore some resemblance to the Lausanne Congress held two years earlier. Each major theme, for example, featured multiple speakers offering different perspectives, with each message kept brief—no more than thirty minutes. The organizers also sought, as much as possible, to balance speakers across geography, age, gender, ministry field, and theological spectrum. Lausanne devoted one evening to a dramatic presentation of Korean church history; CCOWE likewise devoted an evening to a musical presenting the life and testimony of missionary Doris Brougham. Even some of the administrative and logistical arrangements, such as lodging and shuttle transportation, were quite similar.
The workshop format, however, was more flexible at CCOWE. Lausanne offered four days of workshops, but participants had to rank their choices in advance and then remain in the same workshop throughout the congress, which limited opportunities to learn and interact across different areas. CCOWE offered workshops on only two days (Xplore 360), but participants were free to choose different workshops. One drawback was that the Gospel Forum and Youth Forum were scheduled at the same time as the workshops, forcing those interested in both to choose one or the other. Because I was serving in workshops on both days, I missed both forums. That was one of my few regrets from this congress.
Whenever a high-level global Christian networking gathering is held, criticism from various quarters is almost inevitable. This was true of Lausanne in the past, and it is true of CCOWE as well. As I was writing these reflections, I read comments and critiques from both participants and nonparticipants on social media and in Christian media, including Hong Kong’s Christian Times. Some critiques from participants deserve serious thought. One person, for example, asked whether the giant video introductions shown on the large screens as speakers walked onstage made them look like celebrities—and whether this amounted to elevating people too highly.
Unfortunately, some criticisms from a small number of people who did not attend seemed to generalize from partial information, chase rumors, or reflect ideological bias. For example, someone criticized the congress for failing to pray for Chinese brothers and sisters in a particular region, when this was simply not true. In another case, the mere attendance of a leader known for a particular political position was interpreted as evidence that the congress endorsed that position. These are not constructive criticisms. They often amount to little more than emotional venting and, I fear, do little to help either the CCOWE movement or Chinese churches.
The 10th CCOWE was certainly not perfect. Yet I observed three dimensions that, in Chinese, all revolve around the character quan (全): zhengquan (整全, holistic), chengquan (成全, empowering or enabling others), and wanquan (完全, complete). These three “quans” form the framework for my reflections on this congress.
Holistic
Holistic mission, sometimes translated in Chinese as “holistic missions,” is an important development in modern evangelical missiology. It emphasizes that the church’s mission is not only to proclaim the gospel message so that people may be saved, but also to respond concretely to the whole range of human needs, so that relationships with God, with other people, and with the created world may be restored and reconciled. The widespread acceptance of holistic mission in the evangelical world owes much to the 1974 Lausanne Congress. The Lausanne Covenant states that both evangelism and social responsibility are responsibilities Christians cannot evade.
Yet even after more than fifty years of advocacy through the Lausanne Movement, my own previous research1 suggests that the missions practice of Chinese churches has continued to place greater emphasis on proclaiming the gospel message itself, or on what are often called “spiritual” ministries. In the present climate, messages emphasizing social justice and humanitarian relief are even more likely to be casually labeled “progressive” or “woke.” Against that backdrop, the fact that CCOWE placed the message of Winnie Fung, whose ministry is devoted to charity and poverty relief, on the main stage can already be seen as a breakthrough.
The three speakers invited to address holistic mission at CCOWE could be said to represent three different points along its spectrum. Winnie Fung, Chief Executive of CEDAR Fund, argued that holistic mission is not simply evangelism plus social concern, but participation in God’s work of reconciling all things to himself; she called the church to draw near to those who suffer. Patrick Fung, who has served as a missionary in South Asia, argued that holistic mission is not an optional ministry added onto the church, but expresses God’s intention for the whole created world; he called the church to enter the world. Wayne Chen, who has served as a missionary in Papua New Guinea, stressed that social concern is fruit produced by the gospel, but social concern itself is not the gospel; he warned that when everything becomes mission, the church loses its direction.
At the same time, I appreciated Wayne Chen’s repeated insistence that “Just because I like McDonald’s hamburgers does not mean I hate KFC chicken.” His point pushed back against a Western, black-and-white “either/or” binary in favor of a more inclusive “both/and.” The three speakers’ messages contained real tensions, yet the panel discussion that followed showed that Winnie Fung and Wayne Chen still reached a fairly high degree of agreement. Taken together, the cautions and emphases of all three speakers actually produced the most complete balance on holistic mission at this congress.
Empowering
Three years ago, I attended an international missions conference focused on Muslim unreached peoples. Afterward, an American colleague and friend of ours—a mid-career missiologist around my age who had also spent many years serving as a missionary in the Middle East—wrote on his private blog: “Twenty years ago, I was the youngest in the room. I’m still one of the youngest in the room.”2 He was tactfully pointing to a widespread phenomenon: Baby Boomers who are reluctant to pass the baton. His comment sparked a lively response among friends and a broader discussion about generational issues.
I had previously heard stories of CCOWE inviting highly respected senior pastors to preach, only to have them remain onstage far beyond their allotted time and cause serious delays. In fact, even in recent years, I have attended Chinese Christian gatherings where older speakers went on for twice their assigned time and still did not want to leave the stage. Could this be one characteristic of Boomer leaders? Yet this did not happen at all in the main-stage messages at this CCOWE! Nor was there any so-called “head table” in the seating arrangement. People were deliberately mixed together without regard to seniority or credentials. That, I would say, is progress.
Generational questions and issues concerning younger generations were among the major emphases of this congress. A number of speakers addressed them, including Albert Chuang, Senior Pastor of Tam Kang Church, and Allen Yeh, an American missiologist who is himself second-generation Chinese American. But if Millennials and Gen Z are to be convinced, verbal teaching alone is not enough. There must be concrete action.
For this congress, CCOWE general secretary David Doong deliberately reserved registration spaces for Christian leaders under the age of thirty-five. During the gathering, he reported that younger Christian leaders made up 15 percent of the participants, and he gave them the freedom to organize their own gathering. These were encouraging changes. Doong also told the story of a church pastor who very much wanted to attend the congress himself, but after careful thought chose to give the spot to a younger person from his church. That kind of empowering and sacrifice was deeply moving.
The way the previous CCOWE general secretary, Joshua Ting, empowered David Doong and made room for him during the leadership transition is itself an example. It breaks the stereotype of Baby Boomers being unwilling to relinquish power. This is, without question, a model the CCOWE movement is now setting. I hope this ethos of empowering others will influence Chinese churches as well.
Complete
When my husband was explaining CCOWE to other colleagues in our organization, he described it as “a Chinese mission conference.” At the time, I heard him say this and simply thought he had misunderstood what CCOWE was. But during the congress, I suddenly noticed that the English name of the CCOWE movement and congress actually includes the words “World Evangelism.” Taken literally, then, the CCOWE movement can indeed be described as a global missions movement, and the congress itself as a missions conference.
The movement’s motto is “Chinese churches, one in heart throughout the world; spread the gospel far and wide until the Lord returns.” Taken at face value, its original vision should be to connect Chinese churches around the world for the sake of global mission. Yet my own impression of CCOWE in the past had always stopped at the “Chinese” part. I thought of it mainly as a global network in which Chinese churches fellowshipped with one another—that is, as embodying only the first half of the motto.
I am not sure why CCOWE gave me that impression. Was it because its past activities were less directly related to global mission? Or because fewer missionaries were invited to participate? If a congress with “World Evangelism” in its name has only a small number of missionaries present, is there not some mismatch between its name and its reality? If a movement has existed for fifty years but has displayed only half of its stated purpose, is that not a kind of incompleteness?
This time, however, I heard people from missions organizations mention that CCOWE had specifically set aside places for missionaries outside the quotas allotted to its various regions around the world. I found that deeply encouraging. I was also delighted to see plenary messages, workshops, and speakers addressing holistic mission, peoples at the ends of the earth, and diaspora missions, while inviting brothers and sisters with experience in global missions to share.
In the closing message on the final day, John Wang, International General Director of Gospel Operation International (GO International), further widened the horizons of Chinese Christians by challenging us through the missionary testimonies of non-Chinese brothers and sisters from Latin America. For me, this brought the message of the congress to a sense of completion. I hope future CCOWE congresses will continue to let us see and hear Chinese brothers and sisters serving on the front lines of “World Evangelism,” and will more fully embody the goal of “spreading the gospel far and wide,” making the CCOWE movement more complete.
Seen from another angle, if Chinese churches were to focus less on themselves—the first half of CCOWE’s motto—and more on outward-facing global mission—the second half—perhaps that, in turn, would actually make greater unity possible.
Conclusion: A Beautiful Thing
The long-awaited CCOWE Congress has now come to a successful close. In time, we may forget many of the speakers’ excellent messages. But the real stories that moved us, and the genuine connections formed between people, may remain deeply etched in our hearts. At this congress, I saw what was holistic, what empowered others, and what moved toward completeness.
Some brothers and sisters in Christ may question whether it is necessary for CCOWE to stage such a high-level gathering with so much fanfare. But I hope that when our Lord sees what this congress has accomplished, he too will say, as he said of the woman who broke the alabaster jar of perfume: “She has done a beautiful thing to me.”
