World Evangelical Alliance Leaders Visit China’s Churches and Ministries

By Joshua Cheng

Members of the World Evangelical Alliance leadership team visited the churches and ministries in China on a ten-day trip from November 11-21.

Along with WEA International Director Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe were Dr. Gordon Showe- Rogers, vice international director of WEA, and Rev. Godfrey Yogarajah, director of WEA religious liberty commission.

They’ve traveled to Beijing, Nanjing, Southwest China minority people areas, and Shanghai.

In the afternoon of November 11, they’ve paid a visit to China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs and met with the director Zuoan Wang, during which they’ve dialogued on the construction of harmony of society and religion.

Their second stop was the Miao people churches in Southwest Church. The first church was established by British missionary Samuel Pollard in the early 1900s; he has established center for thousands of new believers, itinerated widely, planted churches, trained leaders, obtained justice for Miao Christians from officials and landlords, developed a unique script, known as Pollard script, and used it when he translated the New Testament into the Miao language.

Then, the entourage traveled to Nanjing, where they’ve visited the Amity Printing Company, which has reached a milestone of printing their 80 millionth Bible earlier this month.

In the afternoon, Nanjing Union Theological Seminary invited Dr. Tunnicliffe to speak on the developing history of the evangelical’s journey of faith at their school, and afterwards the speakers and the seminary students had a time for questions and answers.

[Editor's note: reporter Titus Lee contributed to the report.]