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Handling Family Relationships at Holiday Time

One of the challenges facing those who come to faith in China is how to handle family relationships during the traditional holidays when they return home to be with family members who do not share their faith and may not accept it. In this article, published in the Christian Times just prior to the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, a believer shares some thoughts on how Christians can handle the tensions that naturally arise during holiday visits.

Healthy Partnering

A recent and still ongoing ChinaSource survey of Chinese Christians, who have experience in working together with foreign partners, provides insight for those seeking to partner with and serve the church in China.

Four Issues for the Chinese Church

As Chinese churches, particularly those in the urban areas continue to grow and mature, leaders are increasingly focusing on where the church needs to go from here. This article, published in the Christian Times, is about Pastor Zhang of the Beijing Gospel Missionary Church, and his thoughts on the issues facing the Chinese Church in the near future.

Chinese Creating Pastoral Training Tools for China’s Churches: A Case Study

In their desire to create authentic, pastoral training materials, early on this team of foreigners resolved to work toward putting their national staff in posts of increasing influence and authority while they stepped into self-restricted roles of coaching, and eventually, cheering from the stands. The author describes this work which is still in process.

Engaging a New Generation

The emerging generation of younger leaders in China will require friends, partners and collaborators who will come alongside them with a servant mentality and without agendas.

Partnership Field Guide

Partnership Field Guide: A Step-by-step Process for Building Ministry Partnerships, visionSynergy, 60 pages. This document was prepared by visionSynergy for the participants of The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization held in Cape Town, South Africa, October 2010 and can be found at: http://goo.gl/KkS6n

Reviewed by Mak Hon Chiu

Vision or Vanity? What Are We Passing On?

Both foreigners serving in China and Chinese are experiencing a profound shift in roles. Chinese believers are stepping to the forefront, as it should be, but what should foreigners be passing on to them? How does vision play into this and do we want to pass it on?

A Chinese Voice from 120 Years Ago

The following is a suggestion made by a Chinese pastor to the rest of the attendees at the 1890 Shanghai conference of all the Protestant missionaries in China. It must have taken a lot of courage and strong convictions for him to address the room full of foreigners in this manner (there were only a handful of Chinese delegates at the 1890 Conference). Yan's purpose in speaking was to remind the missionaries that in addition to attracting new converts, there was still much work to be done to care for the believers already in the churches.

A Young Christian “Soldier” in Shenzhen

We often hear about how the church in China is looking for ways to increase its presence in the "public square;" in other words trying to be more visible in society. This article from the Gospel Times is about a family in Shenzhen that is literally doing evangelism in the public square.

Chinese “Christianeze”

This cartoon was recently posted on Kuanye, a popular Christian website. It pokes a little bit of fun at Chinese "Christianeze."