Recently, the traditional Chinese church advocated evangelism after two Chinese preachers were killed in Pakistan. However, a large percentage of Chinese Christians oppose blind evangelization.
Rev. Zhang Yuanlai shared three qualities for missionaries in the 21st century in his WeChat post published on March 25, 2017:
1. Have a global perspective.
Rev. Zhang states that there is a different requirement for the global landscape of evangelism. It is obvious that missionaries who receive traditional training fail to meet the demands of a new age. In the 21st century, traditional evangelism is evidently inappropriate for the complicated situation because most of the unreached places lie in the Islamic world with extremely complex politics and cultures or special countries like North Korea.
For this reason, the church needs missionaries with global visions, who know the world, get into it, and share the Gospel by using universality and local tools in real life.
2. Be grounded in theology and have life.
Zhang says that traditional evangelism offers professional preaching grounded in fundamental truth, while the method struggles to adapt to a complicated setting. Missionaries in the new century should be well theologically educated, which is to say they should be rooted in theology and apply their faith to life.
3. Have life skills.
Zhang says that modern missionaries should support themselves rather than be hired workers depending on regular salaries. Besides living out faith in life by osmosis, they are required to have life skills as a platform to communicate with local communities.
He explains that evangelism should be based in the workplace and carried out in daily life. Therefore, a missionary should receive training on both theological and work skills.
He believes that God has been molding China into a large mission country for a long time. By the Golden Mean, Chinese Christians are likely suitable to different cultures and can establish good relationships with others. The nurturing task in the 21st century should aim to cultivate a global vision in the Chinese congregation grounded in theology with Christ's life and life skills so that anyone can become a missionary.
Translated by Karen Luo
