fbpx
×

Log into your account

We have changed software providers for our subscription database. Old login credentials will no longer work. Please click the "Register" link below to create a new account. If you do not know your new account number you can contact [email protected]
Beijing’s masses keen for relationships
Elaine Gaston, Baptist Press
December 12, 2012
6 MIN READ TIME

Beijing’s masses keen for relationships

Beijing’s masses keen for relationships
Elaine Gaston, Baptist Press
December 12, 2012

(EDITOR’S NOTE – This year’s theme for International Missions in the Southern Baptist Convention is “BE His heart, His hands, His voice” from Matthew 16:24-25. Each year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions supplements Cooperative Program giving to support Southern Baptists’ 5,000 international missionaries’ initiatives in sharing the gospel. This year’s offering goal is $175 million. To find resources about the offering, go to www.imb.org/offering. Beijing is the focus of the 2012 International Mission Study (www.wmu.com/Beijing).)

BEIJING – Beijing is an urban center peopled by the rich, politically privileged – and utterly poor.

Outwardly, it’s strikingly modern with its Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium and rapidly expanding state-of-the-art subway system. It’s ancient, too, with the Forbidden City of Imperial China at its heart. It’s blatantly communist with the Soviet-styled Great Hall of the People set in the city center – yet capitalist with posh shopping areas shimmering with luxury designer goods nearby.

It’s also a magnet, drawing people from throughout the country as they flow in from provinces seeking employment and a better life. Thomas*, a Christian worker in Beijing, sees the drawing power of the capital city as a strategic place for reaching into China’s provinces with the gospel message.

“Beijing is a city that breathes people,” Thomas reflects. “Every day hundreds of thousands of people travel in and out of the city. At peak times there are more than a million travelers per day. Some stay only a few days, yet others stay much longer.

12-12-12beijing1.jpg

BP photo

This Beijing train station is the entryway to the capital city for many. Fully one-third of the 20 million residents are from somewhere else, drawn here hoping for employment, education and a better life. Christian workers look for outreach opportunities in various facets of their lives. View the photo gallery.

“A few who come are already Christians from two strong Christian areas of China – Henan and Anhui. Most are not and know more about Coca-Cola than Christ,” Thomas continues. “Whether they come as tourists, on business or looking for some kind of employment, we want all who enter the capital of the Middle Kingdom to learn of the eternal Kingdom and the Emperor who died on a cross for them,” Thomas says.

Unprecedented growth

When Beijing’s population hit 19 million in late 2009, it had already surpassed the government’s target to keep the capital’s population below 18 million until the year 2020. Government officials are searching for ways to slow the city’s growth, as infrastructure can’t keep up with the surging population, which has now reached more than 20 million.

“The size of Beijing doesn’t intimidate me,” Thomas says. “It’s not a mass of humanity. You learn to read it socio-demographically … once you get above a million, it doesn’t really make a difference. You look at where you have the relationships.”

China is riding the same wave of urbanization as the rest of the globe. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 nearly 70 percent of the world’s 10 billion people will be living in cities, up from only 30 percent living in cities in 1950. A similar scenario is occurring in China but – as in its economic and industrial development – at a much more rapid pace.

As recently as 1980, less than 20 percent of China’s population lived in cities. In the ’80s, Chinese citizens were generally assigned to “work units” and the central government largely restricted their movements. Opportunities for work in cities nevertheless beckoned and even in the mid-’80s a significant percentage of temporary workers ventured to cities such as Beijing. With China’s meteoric economic development of recent decades, that “floating population” has increased in the capital and in other cities in China. By the end of 2011, half of China’s population was living in cities.

“You have a lot of advantages [as a Christian worker] in the city,” Thomas says, noting that relationships in urban environments are built through mutual interests rather than proximity.

Effective witnesses

“In some ways it is very natural,” Thomas says. “In some ways, the bigger the city, the better your odds of finding somebody with similar interests. In the city you can’t share with everybody. It’s not practical and not effective. You find points of common interest. You build relationships. The gospel spreads along relational lines.

“So when I look at the city I don’t see the masses of people,” he says. “It’s easy to start seeing the pockets. Where do you start in a city? Wherever your relationships take you.”

For Thomas, this occurs through training others to be effective witnesses. For others it may be connecting with subcultures of artists or musicians.

Change has come to China at such a blistering pace that it is hard to know what is next. Thomas points out that in the Book of Acts, God used persecution to scatter the church. Likewise, he suggests, “God is using economic migration to bring the lost to the church [in the city].

“Napoleon Bonaparte said ‘when China awakes, the world will tremble.’ In the sovereignty of God, as countries rise and fall, God is bringing China to the center stage of world history,” Thomas says. “It’s not a question of ‘Will China rise?’ It’s a question of ‘What kind of China will it be?’

“Those fields of harvest are rice paddies. They’re longing for the gospel. And they’re coming to us, even here in the city.”

*Name changed.

(EDITOR’S NOTE – Contributing writer Elaine Gaston provided this story for the International Mission Board. Download related videos at www.imb.org/lmcovideo.)

Related story

Beijing’s young adults become U.S. couple’s focus of outreach