I was met with shouts as I stepped off the old travel bus into an even older town. I don’t think Wuxi, China had ever seen a white person before, let alone, a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. I was carried away into an old building that in America would have been considered a country club. I was greeted with hugs and hellos in a language I didn’t speak, but I still understood that I was being welcomed with kindness.
This is a memory from last December. I had the pleasure of attending a Christmas service in a small town in China. I have never really experienced anything like it before. I was amazed that while we were separated by the culture, we were still united with Christ.
Being a Christian in China is a unique experience that most Americans will never understand. Eric and Katie, Union University’s current missionaries-in-residence, gave me a better glimpse of what this experience is like. Since 2006, their family has lived abroad in different parts of China with the task of sharing the gospel.
At the beginning of their ministry, Eric and Katie were obviously nervous about sharing their faith in a country where they didn’t even know the language. However, now they can see that God still used them even when they didn’t feel fully equipped for the task He had given them. Eric recounted an example of God’s faithfulness during one of their earliest experiences in China.
“One day, I was at an English corner, and a young student came up to me. He asked me one of those questions that could get you in trouble or could go really well,” Eric said. “He asked, ‘Are you a Christian?’”
Eric went on to say that he had only been there for about three weeks, and he didn’t know how to answer. Finally, he told the student yes. The young man looked around the room nervously before telling Eric that he was a Christian, too! The student went on to ask if Eric would meet him later to talk and study God’s word. Eric agreed.
When they were meeting with each other, the student began to pray. It wasn’t until he was done praying that Eric realized that not a single word of the prayer had been in English, but he had still understood every bit of the student’s praise to God!
Because of the cultural divide, Eric and Katie were reliant on God to open up opportunities to share the gospel.
There was a season of time where Eric went door to door in order to share the gospel. He would walk into a shop, pick up an item, ask the shop owner everything he could think of about that item and pray God would open up the opportunity to share the gospel.
But as time went on, Eric and Katie realized that building relationships was the key to seeing fruit come from their efforts.
As Eric said, “In China, and most of the world, people come to faith through friendships.”
Eric and Katie said that during discussions, they would try to point everything back to Christ. Katie shared that when people would ask about her children’s names, she would tell them the Biblical reasoning behind the name. She also said that when people would ask about America being their home, she would talk about her eternal home in Christ.
Katie shared that when she would take her kids grocery shopping, they would sing praise songs. So that when people asked about it, they could share the meaning.
Eric and Katie tried to have a purpose behind every interaction.
Katie said, “We can’t just be kind to people, and that’s the gospel. They have to hear the Word.”
Eric and Katie discussed how their friends in America would ask them how they shared the gospel. Their American friends claimed they didn’t know how to do what Eric and Katie were doing in China. In a way, Eric and Katie’s friends diminished the impact that Americans could have in the states doing ministry. They made Eric and Katie out as heroes for going all the way to China to do ministry and made it seem like sharing the gospel in America isn’t as valuable.
Eric responded to this by saying, “The commission is to make disciples. Not to go. So wherever you are, just make disciples.”
While not all of us will be called to go to China, we can still ask God to give us opportunities to turn everyday situations into opportunities to share the gospel.
