An Overview of the Center’s Projects and Initiatives.

Our purpose is to build the Chinese church and to reach non-Christian intellectuals and other “influencers” in China to see and embrace the positive role that Christians have played, and can play, in their society.

To achieve that purpose, we rely on two strategies: Personal relationships with scholars and intellectuals, and persuasive written and oral presentations.

1. Our initial set of projects and publications are part of the “Christian Heritage Initiative,” which intends to show how Christians have made a significant, and positive, contribution to Chinese society over the past two hundred years and more. Recently, a Chinese friend told one of our associates that “History is China’s God. Since there is no general acknowledgment of a higher supernatural authority to sort right from wrong, History is our judge.” And the state, as the highest earthly authority, tends to control and distort history to suit its purposes.

• The Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity is our flagship project. This Web-based repository of accounts of Christians – both Chinese and foreign – who have made a contribution to Chinese church and society is meant to be a major resource for all who are interested in this wonderful story. (www.bdcconline.net)

  We have over 430 stories in English, and another 200 in both traditional and simplified Chinese already added to our Chinese pages. We have already seen very encouraging response to this strategic initiative.

  Supporting, and augmenting, the BDCC are a number of other endeavors that join hands towards a common goal: Telling the story of God’s work among the Chinese. These include:

• The “Salt and Light” project, which will offer in-depth portraits of Chinese Christians who have made a significant contribution to their society. The BDCC aims for breadth; articles in the BDCC are necessarily brief. “Salt and Light” will achieve depth by longer mini-biographies of the career and impact of a few major personages.

  The first volume has just been published by Wipf- & Stock. We anticipate that this book (and its projected successors) will extend the impact of the BDCC and also draw others to it.

• “Builders of the Chinese Church”

  We hope to begin another series of volumes on Chinese Christianity, this one offering critical biographies of influential Protestant Chinese church leaders over the past two hundred years. Two, perhaps three, volumes, will provide information about their lives, thought, and impact in a way that will help current leaders assess their own efforts to contribute to church growth in China.

• John Barwick’s dissertation on Chinese Protestant elites in the early 20th century. A Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, John is writing about the role of a few Christians in the search for China’s modernization during that period of relative freedom and great intellectual ferment. We hope this thesis will be published later as a major scholarly contribution in a growing conversation about Christianity in China.

2. In the future, we plan to do more to address urgent questions of Theology in addition to the above projects on History. Already, however, we engage in a variety of efforts to bring the Gospel to bear upon Chinese culture and society, and to lay a solid foundation for the future. These include:

• Book reviews about the church in China.
• Articles which discuss the Chinese church in its historical and current context.

  The GCC Web site has been regularly featured as the lead story by the widely-read China news bulletin ZGBriefs (ZG stands for “China”).

Other aspects of the same strategy include:

• Developing the next generation of serious students of Chinese language and culture.

  Jason and Kristie Truell completed three years of intensive Mandarin language study at Tunghai University in Taiwan, and Jason is now enrolled in the M.Div. program at China Evangelical Seminary, Taipei, Taiwan.

  Cole Carnesecca joined us in September, 2009, and is pursuing a Ph.D. at Notre Dame University in the sociology of China, focusing on the growth of Christianity.