This month: A chink of light in the Bamboo Curtain - The benefits of the big green bag - News from Albania

Gethin Abraham-Williams, of Churches Together in Wales, provides an insight into the church in China.

A chink of light in the Bamboo Curtain

I was part of a delegation of 18 people - Anglican, Free Church and Roman Catholic; men and women, lay and ordained, three of whom were Chinese speakers - organised by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) which visited China.  We were there to express solidarity with the Church in China - both Protestant and Roman Catholic - to share experiences and to learn.
Over ten days, we visited five provinces around China’s north eastern seaboard.  We smelt the smog in Beijing, breathed the pure air of the Yellow Mountain in the Huang Shan region and paid a fleeting visit to the Forbidden City.
Apart from the value of visits like ours to those at the receiving end in terms of friendship and encouragement, there is also the challenge from churches in other parts of the world to how we live our faith in these islands.
Before we left for China, we attended a CTBI reception where we met Mr Wang Zuo An, a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party.  He is not a Christian but his department is responsible for regulating the practice of religion in China.  At the reception, Mr Wang admitted that religion will continue to exist in China when the Communist Party is no more. 
In his office in Beijing - in the palace that belonged to the last emperor’s father - I asked Mr Wang what changes in religion he had detected during his ten years in office.  He replied: “After the cultural revolution (which lasted some ten years and was brought to an end by the death of Mao Zedong in 1976) people are now allowed to practice their faith openly.
“Now the challenge is to explore how religion can contribute to the culture.  Maybe the Church needs to research this and present some proposals to be discussed with government.”
This reply reveals two things:
* the changing attitude of the Party to religion.  It is no longer seen as the ‘opiate of the people’ but as something with positive social consequences.
* it invites Christians to become more involved in their society and not to regard their faith as a purely private matter.
We were under no illusion that this meant a relaxation of government control or that it was more prepared to countenance dissent.  But it was an indication that those in power in China are interested in working more constructively with the Church and other religions than has been the case.
Another of those we met in China was Mr Ma Hong Zhi.  A Christian who is some 30 years old, married, and with a three year old son, Mr Ma was our official accompanist and translator. 
As a little boy, brought up in the old imperial capital of Nanjing, he would spend his holidays with his grandmother in the country.  When the churches were re-opened after the cultural revolution, she started going to her local church and took Hong Zhi with her.
There weren’t many Chinese Bibles around in those days - although, since then, some 50m have been printed - so Hong Zhi would copy out passages from the Bible and favourite hymns for his grandmother.  In the process, he became interested in Christianity.  And, in 1994, after graduating in economics, he was baptised into the post-denominational Protestant Church of China.
He is now an employee of his church in its national overseas relations department in Shanghai and so, since religion is regulated by the state, he works for the state as well.
The final person I want to introduce you to is the Rev Ma Jianhua, a woman in her 40s who leads a team of over ten lay leaders in Huang Shan City, in Anhui province.  In 2004, they celebrated the tenth anniversary of their 1,000 seater church.
On a Saturday evening, Pastor Ma had organised a Bible study and, in my group, there were two men in their early 20s from the local university.
I discovered that, for one of them, it was his first time in church.   He had only come because his friend had invited him. 
It was a pattern that we’d heard in numerous places throughout our visit.  In a country where you cannot prosyletise openly, or distribute leaflets, people are being drawn into the Body of Christ through the witness of a partner, parent, grandparent, child or friend.
We don’t find it natural to ask others along to a service.  In China, that’s the way the church is growing.
According to David Aikman’s book, ‘Jesus in Beijing’: ‘China is in the process of being Christianised.  At the present rate of growth in the number of Christians in the countryside, in the cities and especially within China’s social and cultural establishment, it is possible that Christians will constitute 20 to 30 per cent of China’s 1.3bn population within three decades.’
  Ma Hong Zhi shared a Chinese proverb with us: ‘Hold a stone and walk in the water’.  The proverb means that you need to have something solid to grasp if you’re to maintain your balance in rough waters.  Maybe that’s the secret of the persistence and growth of China’s Christians.

Condensed by Robert Little from an article by Gethin Abraham-Williams that first appeared in the Journal of the Baptist Ministers’ Fellowship.

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As Bryan Stonehouse approaches the age of 65 and retirement from his job with the Scripture Gift Mission in May this year, he looks back on his career.

The benefits of the Big Green Bag

As I look back on my time at the Scripture Gift Mission (SGM), I am excited at seeing the progress made in the Pavement Project throughout the world.  This project was developed over four years through extensive research with street-children in large cities in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and South America.
 The project’s resulting ‘Big Green Bag’ contains interactive picture cards, games and Bible stories, comprising a psychological tool to help restore a child’s self-worth.
Partnership organisations around the world involved in street-children ministries that give holistic care are invited to attend a four or five day training course.  There, the workers learn child-counselling techniques, as well as how to use the SGM’s Green Bag resources.
So far, well over 80 per cent of the children who have come into contact with the Green Bag’s resources have responded positively, re-discovered their sense of self-worth and experienced positive change in their lives.
Part of my role has been to evaluate the on-going effect of the Pavement Project.  The slums I have visited are unpleasant and dangerous places, yet there I have experienced the presence of God more than anywhere.

From ‘In Touch’, the magazine of Above Bar Church in Southampton, and supplied by Helen Nescalfe.

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News from Albania

Hello from the YMCA of Shkodra!

We have opened a daily centre for the Roma community, where up to 100 children of aged six to 18 are taught to read and write as well as given health education.
We also provide cultural, artistic and sporting activities for them - including, on 21st March, a 5km road run for some 2,000 young people in our city.
Every day the children ask for more from us but our resources are insufficient.  Nonetheless, we are delighted to hear of your support for our venture.

Fatmir Lugji, YMCA of Shkodra, Albania.