Building on a legacy

TAIPEI, Taiwan—On a Friday night middle and high-school students filled the wooden pews at Taipei Wesley Methodist Church for a weekend youth missions conference.

Sitting in the darkened hall, they focused on the stage where two Caucasian actors dressed in traditional Chinese garb played the famed missionary James Hudson Taylor and his wife Maria. With a minimalistic backdrop, the actors depicted vital points in the couple’s life in nearly flawless Mandarin—their decision to move to China, doubts and fears as they faced hardships on the field, and Maria’s early death.

It’s been 150 years since Taylor prayed for 24 “willing, skillful laborers” to join him in reaching the inland provinces of China, marking the start of the China Inland Mission (CIM). Known for dressing in traditional Chinese clothing “that by all means we may save some,” Taylor devoted 51 years to evangelizing China, and CIM sent 800 missionaries into the country before the Communist takeover forced them out.

Rather than returning home, CIM workers moved their headquarters to Singapore and refocused their energies to other nearby countries—Mongolia, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Today Taylor’s legacy is felt in all corners of Asia. In Taiwan, some of the older generation who immigrated from mainland China credit Taylor and CIM—its name later changed to Overseas Missionary Fellowship International (OMF)—for leading them to Christ. Taylor’s descendants (James Hudson Taylor II and III) started two of the major seminaries on the island, training many of the pastors leading Taiwan churches today. Local ministries follow practices modeled by OMF, such as faith missions, or trusting God for financial provision rather than soliciting donations. So without Taylor, it’s possible many of those students wouldn’t be attending the mission conference at all.

Yet things have shifted greatly in the last century and a half: While Taylor helped the West see China as an untapped mission field, the church in Asia has emerged as its own powerful mission-sending organization.

The makeup of OMF reflects the trend: The agency began with British missionaries, but today nonwhites make up about 40 percent of the organization, including its general director, Patrick Fung. Many of the local staff in the Taiwan office work with area churches to support and encourage missionaries. Louis Yuan, who heads the mobilization effort, believes this is the next step for OMF.

“These missionaries were willing to give up their Western culture, come into our midst, and bring us the gospel,” Yuan said. “I believe this can encourage the Taiwan church. One hundred fifty years ago so many missionaries were willing to do this, are we willing to go out and do cross-cultural missions?”

James Hudson Taylor IV, who goes by Jamie, has found that the answer within the current church in China is a resounding “yes.” The great-great-grandson of Taylor, Jamie grew up in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where his parents served as missionaries. Everyone who heard Jamie’s famous name would immediately ask whether he planned to also go into ministry. Frustrated with the constant questioning, he decided that he’d use his Mandarin skills to go into diplomacy or other secular work. But during a two-year stint with OMF in Berkeley, Calif., Jamie felt his own calling into full-time ministry. “I realized that the reason he’s calling James Hudson Taylor IV to ministry isn’t because of the IV at the back of his name, he’s just calling Jamie. Once I crossed that Rubicon, it was OK for me.”

Jamie, who now works from OMF’s office in Hong Kong, sees the group’s current role in China as “journeying with the Chinese church as it becomes more engaged in cross-cultural missions.” In the past century Chinese Christians have sent out missionaries in waves—especially with the popularity of the Back to Jerusalem movement, which aimed to send out 100,000 Chinese missionaries to reach the Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus who lived between China and Jerusalem.

Yet despite the vigor and excitement, realistically, the young Christians were unable to carry such a weight, Jamie said. Missionaries were not adequately screened, lacked preparations, and were often sent with little more than a one-way ticket in hand. In many house churches, the pastors themselves aren’t paid, as tithing is often not a regular practice, and the missionaries even less likely.

So OMF works to help Chinese missionaries learn how to deal with the same issues Western missions have long struggled with: How do you contextualize evangelism in a different culture? What does it look like to disciple and plant indigenous churches? How do you enter into a culture and discern which aspects are God-honoring and which need to be redeemed?

Jamie, who keeps a photograph of Taylor as a young man in his Hong Kong office, believes his great-great-grandfather would be excited to see how indigenous believers are now taking over much of the work. While Taylor prayed for 24 willing missionaries to reach inland China, he also prayed for 24 Chinese to partner with them: “Missionaries are but scaffoldings. We do our job, but you don’t keep a scaffolding up. You take a scaffolding down and you move somewhere else.”