WAKE-UP CALL IN CHINA

So, then, who am I to call for change in Christian missions? Many times I have felt unworthy to wipe the dust from the feet of traditional missionaries whom I have known. I have not suffered or sacrificed nearly as much for the cause of Christ as have some of them. Generally, foreign missionaries have been the most committed Christians that American churches have produced. Most of us, therefore, feel hopelessly inadequate to say one word that might be considered as criticism of those who are in so many ways more zealous for the faith than we are.

But almost every reformer has come from within the system he seeks to change, even though he himself may be unworthy. So I call for reform out of my own experience as a traditional missionary.

As a child in a Presbyterian home 75 years ago I was taught to say my prayers before going to bed. The same thing every night. Then we had a missionary visit our Sunday school and a new petition was added: “Bless the missionaries and help them in their hardships.”

That missionary told us what a terrible time he was having in China, and no doubt he was. Compared to us, he was making unbelievable sacrifices. Then he frightened us with some long needles he pulled out of his packet of curios. He told how ignorant Chinese medicine men had no better sense than to stick those needles into people to drive out their sickness. Among other things, his mission was to save the victims of “this heathen practice.” As children, we could well agree. We had no knowledge of the science of acupuncture, and that missionary had obviously dismissed it as primitive ignorance. Years later, I would learn that it was he who was ignorant and the Chinese who were smart. And not only he but hundreds of others who have foolishly looked upon the natives of Asia and Africa as being ignorant and inferior.

My home church was so dead that it was unlikely I would ever find salvation there. So when at the age of 16 I began to secretly read the Bible day and night, the Holy Spirit led me to go seek employment a thousand miles away where He had people prepared (many of them Presbyterians) to explain the gospel and lead me on in spiritual growth. Perhaps that’s one reason why I am so convinced that it’s best to reach people while they are away from home. My inhibitions were so great that I could not bear to tell anyone in my family or home community that I was seeking God through prayer and the reading of His Word. But once away from those constraints I could talk freely to anyone abut my personal faith.

Simultaneously with my born again experience came a call to apostleship. While my friends urged me to go to a Bible institute or Christian college, God led me to return to my home state and enroll in the University of Virginia as a missionary to unbelievers. It was a wonderful experience and I had the joy of seeing many of my classmates come to Christ out of agnosticism.

Two new movements were taking off about the time I graduated: Youth for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I went to work with both of them simultaneously as an evangelist among high school and university students. Billy Graham and I worked together as the first two field evangelists for YFC. We traveled all over the U.S. and Canada speaking in super rallies in big stadiums, and in many of the largest churches in each city. I had the privilege of attending classes at many different Bible institutes, Christian colleges and seminaries as well as meeting outstanding pastors and teachers. Some whom I got to know and whose ministry blessed me especially were Torrey Johnson, Harry Ironside, A. W. Tozer and Wilbur Smith of Chicago; Donald Grey Barnhouse and Carl McIntyre in Philadelphia; Jack Wyrtzen in New York; Harold Ockenga in Boston; Oswald Smith in Toronto; W. B. Riley in Minneapolis; Bob Jones in South Carolina; Lewis Sperry Chafer in Dallas; R. G. Lee in Memphis; and Charles E. Fuller of Los Angeles.

Everywhere I went I sought out men of God so I could sit at their feet and ask them questions, seeking to learn as much as I could of what God had given them. But the chief burden of my heart was foreign missions. I was greatly influenced by personal association with Robert McQuilkin of Columbia Bible College. By David Adeney, recently returned from China. Margaret Haines from India. Samuel Zwemer from Iraq. And Hubert Mitchell, back from Indonesia. They planted within my heart a burning zeal to carry the gospel to those who had never heard it. At almost every meeting where I was the principal speaker I would urge young people to volunteer to go out as foreign missionaries. Hundreds, possibly thousands, did volunteer. I have no idea how many actually went overseas. But I did go myself.

The overseas arm of InterVarsity was the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. In 1948 the head man, C. Stacey Woods, commissioned me to go out as “InterVarsity’s Ambassador to the Orient.” My job was to find Christian fellowship groups in universities and line them up with IVCF. But things didn’t turn out as I had expected.

In China I spoke in evangelistic meetings among university students arranged by David Adeney, who had by then returned to China. He was one of the dearest and most precious Christian brothers I had ever known. As an undergraduate in Cambridge University he had been involved in one of the first of all university Christian fellowships. Inspired by Hudson Taylor he had left England and gone to serve with the China Inland Mission. I idealized him as the model missionary.

By the time I arrived in China, Christian student fellowship groups were coming together in almost every university. The driving force behind this movement was a Chinese apostle who invited me to participate in a student conference in Canton.

After all the meetings were over one night, this leader asked me to go for a walk with him. He told me how God was greatly blessing the student fellowship groups. Then he shared with me one of his greatest problems. He said it was David Adeney.

I was dumbfounded. To me, my precious brother David was a man who could do no wrong. Never had I known a more consecrated Christian. Or more zealous for the kingdom of God. I spoke up quickly in his defense, but that was not necessary. My Chinese brother also spoke highly of David as a person. The problem was something different.

It had nothing to do with dear David personally or his walk with the Lord. He tried so hard to be like the Chinese, as Hudson Taylor had before him. The problem was simply his being there. He had a passionate concern to see the InterVarsity movement established in China, so he eagerly attended student meetings everywhere he could to lend his encouragement. Little did he realize that the students preferred he not be there. And in keeping with Chinese manners, they were too polite to tell him.

His presence as a European at student gatherings in China cast a shadow which could be exploited by the Communists and used against the Christians. The same could be said concerning nearly all of the other 6000 foreign missionaries then in China, including me.

Communists were everywhere. They operated as Marxist missionaries. All were Chinese. No foreigners. Most of their leaders had been converted to the movement as foreign students in Europe and America. While living abroad, hundreds of these Chinese scholars were challenged by the camaraderie they found in Communist cells. The idealism of utopian socialism gave them something to live for, and a cause for which many were willing to die.

In fact, Lenin is said to have defined a true Communist as “a dead man on furlough.” Those who joined the movement considered themselves to have died. Then they were granted a furlough from death to serve the Party. Possibly only for a few weeks. A few months. A few years. It didn’t matter. The individual sacrificed himself for the whole of humanity (or so they believed at that time). Men and women with graduate degrees from foreign universities went back to China willing to live as simply as the poorest peasant. Any income they earned above the national average (about $20 a month at that time) they contributed to the Party for the furtherance of their cause.

Before I went to Asia it was impossible for me to imagine how the average person had to live there at that time. In small towns and villages, the whole family including relatives would likely be living in one or two rooms. Usually they had no furniture, but would all sleep on the floor in one or both rooms. There would be no running water, hence no bathrooms or separate kitchens. No electricity or telephones. In cities the buildings were larger, but still most families were crowded together into one or two rooms. Of course there would be no clothes closets or even a change of clothing for many. They wore the same thing all the time. At night they would lie down on the floor and sleep in what they had worn all day.

Although many Communist leaders had lived abroad as students, they understood the psychology of their people. They knew that the way to win followers was to live on the same economic level as the average person whom they wished to reach (as Gandhi did in India) even though with their higher education they could easily have found employment earning income well above the national average. But like zealous missionaries for their newly found political religion, they would live without running water or bathrooms and sleep on the floor in their single outfit of clothing. And they took China.

Such dedication sounds remarkably similar to the New Testament. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me.” Our Lord sent forth His apostles without money, or two coats, or extra shoes. The Apostle Paul spoke of being poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things. Believers in the early church were of one heart and one soul, neither said any of them that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common (Acts 4:32). The Chinese Communists developed (temporarily) a counterfeit copy of the original Christian community (although it quickly vanished once they seized power).

But what of foreign missionaries in China?

We had always slept in beds, so we took our beds and bedding with us. Together with kerosene stoves, washing machines, refrigerators, movie cameras, sewing machines, typewriters, tape recorders, even automobiles. And several steel drums packed with canned food, dry cereal, summer and winter clothing, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, paper products, toys for the kids, everything.

To protect it all from thieves we would construct a two story, six room brick house with cheap labor. Then put a high stone wall around the area with iron spikes or broken glass bottles sticking out the top to stop intruders from climbing over. A small hut by the gate housed the security guard, on duty 24 hours a day in exchange for food and lodging, plus an occasional ten cent tip. The adjoining garage housed the missionary’s car and provided padlocked storage for barrels not yet empty.

The whole complex was fondly called the "mission compound," and there were hundreds of them all over China, as well as in Korea, India and elsewhere.

In larger cities missionaries could buy private homes in more upscale suburban communities. In Shanghai I was invited to visit the new home of my dear friend David Morken who was there as a missionary for Youth for Christ. I had shared meetings with him in the USA two years earlier. His house might well have been transplanted from a neighborhood in suburban Chicago.

It was located in an exclusive section of the city reserved for ambassadors, news correspondents and foreign business men. I still remember the "Williamsburg blue" walls of the long living room, the nice carpeting and the fireplace at the end where I'm sure his kids would hang their stockings at Christmas time. There was a modern kitchen and spacious, separate dining room. Upstairs there were ample bedrooms and bath for his large family. The house was beautifully decorated with hand crafted (in China) cherry wood furniture which the Morkens would later ship to their new station in Japan when they had to leave China.

So why shouldn't the Morkens live as well in Shanghai as they did in California? Think of the great sacrifice they had made, leaving home and family to go work among people who couldn't even speak English. Unless they maintained minimum comforts their children might end up being maladjusted, as had the children of many other American missionaries. That was my thinking at the time, because I didn't fully realize the dynamic revolutionary forces of the new Marxist religion that was soon to force all foreign missionaries out of China.

Now let me say that not all foreign missionaries had modern houses like the Morkens did. Some single workers lived quite simply. But nine out of ten married missionaries with children tended to have the finest homes in the towns or villages where their mission station was located.

I thought for sure I would find one that was different when I was invited to visit a family who had gone to work among the boat people in Hong Kong harbor. I knew that thousands of Chinese families lived in tiny boats with no rooms, just an arched covering about four feet high and six feet in length, open on both ends. The whole family would sleep on the floor of the boat under the covering at night, then paddle around during the day trying to find sources of food. Were the foreign missionaries any different? Their motor driven boat was many times larger than any other, with private rooms and most of the comforts of home. It even had a separate kitchen, and a bathroom with running water coming from a large storage tank mounted above the kitchen. They refilled it on shore daily. How generous of their supporting churches back in America to provide them with these basic necessities so they could live among the people to whom they wanted to preach the gospel. But how could these poor boat people possibly receive a message from foreigners who appeared to be millionaires living in their midst?

As Christian missionaries we appeared fabulously rich in comparison with the average Chinese. No way could we honestly represent our Lord, “who though He was rich yet for our sakes became poor?” We could only misrepresent Him. No way could we teach, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” when we were rich foreigners living among the poor natives.

Never could we challenge a Chinese, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow our Lord to the top of Calvary to be crucified with Him.” But the Communists could make comparable challenges. So it was easy to see why foreign missionaries were often looked upon as hypocrites, while the Communist missionaries (at that time) were seen as heroes.

To say I was shocked is to put it mildly. All my life I had considered foreign missionaries to be the best Christians in the world. Their sacrifices inspired many in our churches to follow their example. Now we were being castigated as hypocrites.

Gradually I came to realize that as traditional missionaries we had blind spots in our thinking. While operating “cross culturally” we had adopted ways of doing things which hindered more than helped the cause of Christ. Foreign missionaries from wealthy countries have found it necessary to take their standard of living with them when they have gone to live in poorer countries. In most cases that I have observed these comparatively wealthy missionaries appear oblivious to the fact that their affluence is a stumbling block to people who are forced to live in poverty.

A former missionary to Korea, Dr. T. Stanley Soltau, had me speak in the church of which he was pastor in Memphis soon after I returned from service overseas. He gave me a copy of a book he wrote in 1954 titled Missions at the Crossroads. In Chapter 12, Page 88 I found this paragraph: "In most mission fields the homes of missionaries are much more comfortable and their scale of living is far higher than that of the common people among whom they work. This is not said in any spirit of criticism of the missionaries, for their health and the effectiveness of their work depends in a large measure upon the maintenance of those standards of living. Often when I was in Korea, people would come in and ask to look over our house, and as they saw the rugs and the pictures and the books, they would say, ‘Will heaven be any nicer than this?’”

In 1937 Rosalind Goforth published a biography of her husband Jonathan in which she tells how when they first arrived in China they rented "a small native house" owned by a Dr. Williamson who was away at that time. "It consisted of a row of rooms, all with doors and windows facing an open court." Included was "a study, dining room, bedroom, and two rooms filled with Dr. Williamson's things." To a foreign missionary this seemed like a small house, even though at that time 90% of the families in China were living in two rooms or less. The Goforth's second house was more spacious: "a two-story semi-detached foreign built house within a minute's walk of the seashore."

I have been told that one of the questions most frequently asked by natives regarding foreign missionaries is what do they do with all those rooms. And probably a billion people have never seen stairsteps, only ladders. So they can't imagine what use there would be for two story houses. Why would anyone want to climb a ladder up to a higher floor? Was it the place where they stored all their money?

Missionaries' houses served to assist the Communist cause in China. Zealous young Marxists would point out the mission compounds and ask, "Where do these rich foreigners get all their wealth? They don't work at any job or profession. They are not engaged in business. There is only one answer. They are spies sent here by the CIA." And most people would believe these allegations. To follow the Communists (at that time) was considered patriotic because they were exposing these foreigners as enemies of China.

In countries that are not industrialized, what limited wealth that exists is to a large extent held by the government, or by “blood-sucker” landlords. Individuals who have above average property and power are assumed to be working with the government (even more so after World War II when so much foreign aid was doled out to socialistic government bureaucrats by industrialized countries) unless they are land-owners who rent to sharecroppers. They are universally envied and despised by the poor. So when foreign missionaries build spacious houses, drive around in cars, and seem to have abundant money for food, clothing, special schools for their children, medical care and plane tickets, it is assumed that they have been sent there by their governments or are absentee landlords. This assumption hurts the cause of Christ in many nations because it identifies the Christian faith with the wealthy class of people who are usually hated.

For these and other reasons I believe that our Sovereign Lord Himself wanted all foreign missionaries out of China. Just as surely as there appears to have been a time when He wanted us to be working there, the time came when He wanted all of us to leave. Had we stayed, I believe, the multiplication of churches and individual Christians would have been greatly retarded. We were in China building our respective denominational churches. By moving us out of the way our Lord could begin building His church, and all the gates of hell have not been able to stop Him.

After we left, most foreign missionaries I knew assumed that Christianity would gradually disappear in China until we returned. It was generally agreed that the presence of the foreign missionary was essential to the preservation of the faith. But God proved that the opposite was true. The presence of the foreign missionaries was the primary hindrance to church growth. Why? Because the foreigners identified Christianity with personal wealth and foreign governments. Their denominational branches were looked upon as "institutional colonialism."

When I asked one Chinese man about his faith he replied, "I am a Lutheran of the Missouri synod." Why should Missouri be transplanted into China? Another told me he was "Chinese American Dutch Reformed." There were also Canadian Presbyterians, Australian Presbyterians and (at that time) Presbyterians U.S. as well as their competitors, Presbyterians U.S.A. The United Presbyterians were a separate body then, as were the Bible Presbyterians and several others. There were United Methodists and Free Methodists and Wesleyan Methodists and other Methodists. Every independent non-denominational mission became a denomination as soon as their agents were able to win a few followers in China. And at least a dozen different kinds of Baptists each had their separate followers. I asked my good friend and fellow Baptist, Baker James Cauthen, if the reason he worked in southern China was so his followers could be called "Southern Baptists," after our parent body in America.

Altogether there must have been about 300 different (often competing) foreign denominations (or otherwise distinctive foreign groupings) of Christians in China when I arrived there in 1948. It was the "free enterprise" business model applied to religion. The laissez-faire economy is more successful than socialism because it gives business firms freedom to compete. Human beings are competitive by nature, and are spurred on by an incentive for profit. Communist economies failed because collectivism destroys the profit motive. It does not exploit personal ambition. Socialists have mistakenly tried to apply altruistic principles to men and women who by nature are prone to be selfishly ambitious. In its early revolutionary stages the Communist movement copied the New Testament concept of the "body of Christ," which is that all true believers are "one body in Christ and every one members one of another." I remember reading one writer, a former Communist, who said 50 years ago that there was something diabolically supernatural about "the tie that binds Communists together in comradeship."

Of course it didn't take long for history to reveal that such a concept can never last among sinful men (and all are sinners by nature) unless they have first been to the cross of Christ, reconciled to God, and regenerated by His Holy Spirit. Free enterprise works well among sinners because every man is trying to advance his own business. Socialism will never work unless all are saints, which they never are.

So a major offense of the contemporary foreign missionary enterprise is that it operates on the same principles of ambition and expansionism that businesses do. The motivation is not profit but power expansion to new territories. It is of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. Independent and denominational missions in China were all setting up branches and extending their territory, just like Ford and GM or Coke and Pepsi have done all over the world. So when the Communists came on the scene with their altruistic message of "love your neighbor as yourself" (at that time – once they gained control they became just as selfish as any before them) it exposed the colonial, carnal aspects of foreign missionary operations.

Is it any wonder then that God allowed the Communists to wield a big political broom and sweep out all the foreign missionaries and our 300 denominations. He cleaned house and started over. True to free enterprise methodology, we had all gone to China to plant branches of our respective businesses (although we called them churches). Our Lord must have wanted us all out of the way so He could build HIS church in China. About which I have much to say later.