President's Corner

Dear friends,

    Greetings from rainy Belfast, Northern Ireland. I am honored to be a keynote speaker during the annual Bangor Worldwide Mission convention celebrating its 80th year. 

    I met a missionary, brother George Verwer who founded Operation Mobilization (OM) nearly 60 years ago. Over 5,000 churches have been planted and served through OM’s worldwide ministries in the past 50 years. 

    Listening to George’s passion for mission, he again and again mentioned the term “Messiology.” He explained that “whenever two or three pray together, there will always be human messiness,” but God always wins out. He encourages us not to fix our eyes on human mess, but instead look with confidence upon how God's church will triumph.

    George's “Messiology” applies to China, too. Indeed, we have seen lots of messiness happening recently in China. 

    Just this month police took Christians in charge of a summer camp in Xinjiang into custody. Zhou Yuanhua and Gao Ming were sentenced to 10 and 15 days in administrative detention. Gao and Zhou were accused of organizing children for religious superstition classes. 

    Gao, a student at a government seminary, proves that Christian persecution is spreading to even official churches.

    Chinese central government released a propaganda video among all schools on “religion according to Marxism” in which Christianity was mentioned as superstitious and contrary to science. It denounces “foreign missionary efforts” as “religious infiltration.”

    Brother George famously quoted, “if only we could see the value of one soul like God does,” we would not be discouraged. This month we are distributing nearly 15,000 children’s Bibles to the poorest and most persecuted Christian families. Instead of being brainwashed “Marxist successors,” we pray hundreds of thousands of young Chinese souls will be liberated and transformed by the light of Truth.

    Are you willing to join hands and be part of this transforming effort?

    Your fellow coworker for the persecuted faithful, 

        Bob Fu