In October, a delegation from the Outreach Foundation visited China, including stops in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and cities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, to meet with church leaders, seminary faculty and students, and local believers for exchanges. On October 10, China Christian Daily (CCD) interviewed Telford Work, a member of the delegation and professor of theology at Westmont College, to hear his reflections on the trip and insights on theological education.
CCD: Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?
Work: My name is Telford Work, and I've taught theology at Westmont College for 25 years. Westmont is a Christian liberal arts college, broadly evangelical, with no denominational affiliation.
We have around 1,200 students on campus, and we have off-campus programs. Students major in different fields, but all take a general education series, which includes three religious studies courses, an introduction to the Old Testament, an introduction to the New Testament, and an introduction to Christian doctrine. I teach the Christian doctrine class.
CCD: Would you share your personal conversion story?
Work: I was born into a family that went to church, but not very often. We thought of the Christian faith more in terms of being a good person, having a good character, and being helpful. I had good parents, but I did not see the need for God in my life.
Through friends who showed me a more living faith in Jesus than I had encountered, I began taking religion and God more seriously in high school, and I became a believer in Jesus after reading the Gospel of Luke.
I committed to Jesus in college. Over the next few years, I learned that the Christian faith was intellectually sound and historically solid and that God was active and the holy spirit was powerful. It was not just an idea to think so that I could have a happy future. It was a living reality.
CCD: In your view, what does it mean to be a true Christian?
Work: I would say, to be a real Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus. When you follow him, you come to love him and know that you are loved.
CCD: Could you talk with us about your trip to China?
Work: The leader of this trip from the Outreach Foundation invited me to come and see what God is doing in China and to express support for believers in China from America. We know that America and China are more distant than we were. Believers in China can feel like we outsiders don't care as much as we did. This trip is to demonstrate that we do. My students are praying for us and praying for you.
I’ve learned that believers in China are facing many similar challenges to believers in America. Young people are less enthusiastic about the forms of church and worship, both in China and in America. I found that I have courageous brothers and sisters, and that is making me more courageous.
It’s not my first time to visit China. I was in China in 1979 as a teenager with my parents. China has changed in many ways, but the deep culture and the character of Chinese people have not changed. I visited Hong Kong in 1983. It was a bustling, busy city, with a lot of traffic, and it still is.
I've been to many Asian countries with my family, so Asia is not a shock to me. My family grew up in Los Angeles Area in California, there are neighborhoods in Southern California that are very Asian.
CCD: For all the Asian countries you’ve been to, how would you describe Christianity across different countries in the region?
Work: Philippines, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries, I've been in Christian fellowships in all those places. Asian Christianity is so diverse.
Some expressions of Asian Christianity feel very European—by European, I mean Western and formal, with robes, Western songs, and hymns. Other churches, especially Pentecostal churches, seem more contextual. I think Pentecostal churches are especially good at adapting to youth culture in a way that is both global and local.
I visited a booming church in Tokyo. In America, we learned that the Japanese church is very small and isolated. But that church had 1000 people in each service, probably 80% Japanese and 20% other, kind of an international church. The worship was like J-pop. I also visited a Chinese church in Baguio, Philippines, and it was very Chinese, exuberant, and Pentecostal. They're jumping up and down in the band. It felt like Asian pop faith, and it was wonderful.
Insider movement in Indonesia, much of it is culturally Muslim. I met very culturally Muslim brothers and sisters who follow the same lord as us.
CCD: How about the worship experience in the Chinese churches you visited?
Work: We attended a Three-Self church service in Shanghai, which felt to me very European, culturally. The forms that Chinese Christians learned from missionaries 100 or 200 years ago are the same as that Americans learned from Europeans. The message was powerful and a number of our group members were impressed.
CCD: Some Chinese students who studied theology in the U.S. feel that seminaries can be too academic, leading to a loss of faith and interest. How would you respond to this?
Work: I agree it's easy for academics to just talk among ourselves and be isolated from the broader church.
Our way of training often takes an emerging leader who's a follower of Jesus and say, sends them away to school for years to learn a bunch of information, and then places them in charge of a community. That's not the best way to raise leaders. It's the way scholars think, but not the way Jesus did it. Jesus was more of a coach than a professor.
So I think that's a Western inheritance that is causing the church worldwide to suffer, including the church in the West.
I worry about academic theology, biblical studies, and other disciplines that aren’t fruitful enough. Jesus said the Father cuts off what isn’t fruitful and prunes what is. I’m working hard as a teacher to teach more fruitfully—not just following my academic training but teaching in a way that makes disciples.
CCD: Theology has traditionally been framed in Western contexts, while voices from other parts of the world are often underrepresented. What are your thoughts on this?
Work: I think the further problem is that voices from these regions are often only heard after they’ve gone through a Western-style education. The voices representing global perspectives are also products of an academic system, so just including more voices from that academic system is not going to solve the problem. It will give the world more Westernized voices from all over the world.
A theologian who I think is doing better than that is Simon Chan from Singapore. He wrote a book called Grassroots Asian Theology. He complains about that overly academic, westernized Asian voice. Grassroots Asian theology focuses on better things than what a Western theological agenda is convinced matters the most. He's one example of a kind of Asian voice that I much appreciate.
The voices that I want to hear are not so much academically trained theological voices. I want to hear from disciple makers who are living in the Book of Acts all over the world. They are seeing what God has always done for 2000 years. They understand God's heart better. I learned more from them than from fellow academics. Those are the voices I want to bring to my students.
CCD: Is there a current trend in American theology?
Work: There is not just one trend. American society is polarizing ideologically, and much of that polarization is actually driven by social class. Sociology, biblical studies, and other fields are caught up in that.
Progressives are getting more progressive. Conservatives are finding one another and remaining conservative. Other people wish we would be more moderate and inclusive across those. I don't think there's one trend, it's fragmenting. We don’t have the prominent voices in theology or academics that we had 50 years ago.
As an evangelical, I think our churches were better at forming the next generation 50 years ago. Young people in those traditions today don't know the Bible and talk about faith as much as they used to. Our need is not so much sophisticated theology and biblical studies. Our need is basic skills and training, training new people as well as experienced believers to hear from scripture, read it well, appreciate the insights of scholarship, and put it to work.
