Both the Old and New Testament lay a foundation for the role of migrants in God's mission,
Sowel die Ou as die Nuwe Testament lê ’n fondament vir die rol van nomades (rondtrekkendes) in God se missie (
This is an article in the field of biblical evangelical theological missiology. The method of research will be firstly a biblical investigation into migratory missions. Examples will be investigated followed by trends of doing missionary work whilst people were migrating. The second method will be an investigation into a particular group of Nestorian Christian missionaries in history. Though not agreeing with their ‘brand’ of Christology (Artemi
Throughout history, there is much evidence that migrant believers, exemplified for instance in the Moravians of the 18th century and also various Dutch, Methodist, Moravian and Baptist groups who came to Southern Africa under various denominational umbrella's after 1652, and others who travelled to other parts of the world and were used to take the message of God's love across the globe. This article will focus in particular on the migrant Nestorian Christians of the past, who could provide some elements of a model for Chinese migrant Christians today. Owens (
Future study based on recognition of the similarities between the two situations will facilitate a better understanding of the scriptural mandate of missions on one hand, and a more realistic understanding of the history of the expansion of Christianity on the other. (p. 12)
It is this very point that this article wishes to use as a
A new phenomenon has developed whereby it is estimated that there are now Chinese Christians living in possibly over 140 countries outside of China. By the very mass of people involved, they have the potential to reach cross-culturally to the local people of every host country. The historical example is the Nestorian ‘merchant missionaries’, who spread the gospel eastward and by the end of the second century they had reached Northern Afghanistan. By the seventh century, these Persian missionaries had reached the ‘end of the world’, viz.
The Nestorian mission enterprise of sharing the gospel ‘as they went’ seems to have contributed largely to the presence of Christianity in China by the 6th century. We suggest that this model might help Christian businessmen and women to spread the gospel more effectively, not only with other Chinese people, but also cross-culturally, and across racial, ethnic, and social barriers. This follows from Owens’ (
The Scriptures are replete with examples of how God used migrants
Crucially, the interface between human mobility and divine purpose in the biblical story is unmistakable and compelling. The inextricable link between migrant movement and the
God's global mandate for mankind, ‘to be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth’ was stated on two separate occasions – to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 and to Noah and his sons after the flood in Genesis 9:1. Though there are differences of opinion regarding the historical value of Genesis 1–11 within biblical studies, we agree with Blauw (
The point for this section within this article is that mankind was to take all the knowledge that they possessed about God and all the blessings they had received from God's hand, and spread this knowledge, as they migrate to fill the earth. Henry (
Migration played a key role in God's plan for the nations
Parthians, Medes, and Elamites: residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia: Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, and parts of Libya near Cyrene, visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs. (Ac 2:9–11)
Hengel (
While Philo speaks about Jewish colonists, who are sent from the mother city, Jerusalem, to all parts of the civilized world, Luke exhibits a contrary tendency: he talks about pious Jews (and pagan converts to Judaism), who have returned from all over the world to Jerusalem. Here they hear in their native language (i.e. in the language of their country of origin) the new message, addressed to the entire world, concerning the ‘great deeds of God’ (Acts 2:11), as a first step toward a worldwide mission. The linguistic miracle is symbolically to prepare this worldwide mission. (p. 166)
Persecution could have been another method (Ac 8:1) used by God to move out the Jerusalem-bound followers toward the next phase of reaching the ends of the earth. Their group was ‘scattered’,
In all three cases,
Whilst the scattering was not intentional on the part of the believers, it was clearly missional in effect and instrumental in God's overruling plan. Wherever they fled, they were witnesses used by God to plant his church beyond Jerusalem and Judea. Phillip took the gospel to Samaria (Ac 8:5), and others took the gospel to Phoenicia, Cypress and Antioch (Ac 11:19). In Antioch, those who had been scattered were ‘telling the message only to Jews, but some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Ac 11:19–20). The persecuted, scattered believers had crossed geographic, cultural, language, racial, and historical barriers in fulfilment of the four phases of Jesus’ Acts 1:8 missionary Commission. Henry (
Although African nations face very serious problems such as poverty and disease, ethnic hostilities, non-democratic governments and religious persecution, African people are still turning to Jesus by the scores every day. (p. 103)
There seems to be something similar in all groups of effective Christians who share their faith within the daily context of life, no matter how difficult life is.
David Bosch (
Currently, Chinese Christian migrants are located in many countries of the world, mostly as merchants, small shop owners, and factory owners. In Botswana alone, the evidence of Chinese people is a recent phenomenon. The International Airport building outside the city of Gabarone was built almost entirely by Chinese migrant workers. Many converted Chinese are involved in Christian ministries, reaching out to other Chinese in their neighbourhoods or towns. There is a great need for them to also reach out across racial, ethnic, language, and religious barriers, to share the good news of the gospel with their host countrymen, in order for them to fulfil their role in God's plan for the nations. Wan (
Diaspora Christian individuals and congregations have the potential to reach not only their kinsmen in the Diaspora, they also have the potential to expand their mission efforts to participate in cross-cultural missions to reach out to members of the host society. (p. 139)
Jesus himself took the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea, then to Samaria and to Gentile regions north of Israel. Jesus then commissions the Church to do the same in their own way (Ac 1:8). The key is that we should be
Chan (
Cao (
… new rich businessmen, locally called ‘boss Christians’, spearhead the revival. Wenzhou's recent Christian revival has benefited from the city's political marginality and a mission-driven local faith tradition as well as a vibrant household economy. It is the most Christianized Chinese city with a Christian population estimated to be as many as one million. This upwardly mobile class of Christian, usually with rural origins, has a separate identity from the official TSPM church, rural house church groups, and Beijing's intellectual house churches. Many Wenzhou churches are headed by boss Christians and are informally recognized by, but not officially registered with the local state. Although not affiliated with the TSPM or any other official organization, they operate above ground and develop activities and programs outside the boundaries of the traditional house church. (p. 29)
Within this affluence Wenzhou Christian businessmen share a generally common goal, ‘God's China Vision’ – the firm conviction that now, because of China's rising political economic power and global influence, it is the Chinese’ turn to undertake the Great Mission of returning the gospel to Jerusalem. They believe that China will be the anchor leg in completing the Great Commission. They also believe they have a debt to pay the western missionaries, who sacrificed their lives to bring the gospel to the Chinese (Cao 2012:36–44).
In addition, Wenzhou, with a possible enthusiastic estimate of one million Christians – which is about 11% of its population, has the highest percentage of Christians amongst all the cities in China. However, if the ‘unregistered’ Christians are included in the statistics, there could be about 1.5 million believers, or about 20% of the city's population. Also, 20% of the 100 000 Wenzhou international merchants, who live outside China, are rumored to be Christians. Chan (
These congregations are more ethnocentric than ecumenical in spirit, as Wenzhou Christians would gather together whilst Chinese Christians of other dialects worship in separate groups;
these congregations provide social functions along with spiritual care for Chinese communities and often serve as the only means of social support for merchants who are far away from home;
these congregations experience diaspora growth rather than cross-cultural growth, as almost all new converts are of similar ethnic origin, if not dialect;
most of these Chinese merchants are struggling to survive socially, spiritually, and financially;
because of difficulties in establishing long-term business and residency, these congregations are unstable with a high rate of membership turnover; and
these congregations are ambivalent to the local host community. (pp. 186–187)
We suggest that the Wenzhou Christian businessmen, in addition to reaching out to the Chinese diaspora, also reach out to their host countrymen, through sharing the gospel cross-culturally. According to Nyiri (
This view reverberates in official speeches, but its circulation goes far beyond state-endorsed narratives. In a rapidly growing global Chinese evangelical movement, there is in the words of Reverent Edward Wei of the British – based Chinese Overseas Christian Mission (COCM) – a ‘worldwide sentiment that the responsibility for or instrument of mission has moved over to the Chinese’ (p. 105).
This takes the challenge presented by Howard D. Owens in his lecture presented at the National Meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society in 2005, to a different level and specific application. This mission mandate is a challenge given to every Christian of all times in all places according to Matthew 28:19. It is not a burden for these migrant Chinese alone. The point is that every Christian of any time should have a mission vision for the nations of the world. One thing has to be recognised by every Christian today, as Henry (
Early Christianity outside the Roman Empire spread down the Euphrates valley until the majority of the population of Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, had embraced the Christian faith – at least in principle. The expansion continued to move down through Yemen and it is rumoured to have been adopted as the official religion of the royal house. It then moved down into Iran and northward to the Caspian Sea. The first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion was not the Roman Empire, but the Kingdom of Armenia. There is evidence that Christianity ‘gained support from the State’ in
Eastern Christianity continued to spread through the Persian Empire and beyond, moving along the trade routes by land and sea until it made its presence known in India, Sri Lanka, and China. Kramer (
That Eastern Christianity reached China is also recognized; those interested in synchronous parallels might note that the missionary whose Chinese name was Alopen was putting Christianity before the Chinese Emperor in 635, much the same time as the faith was put before the king and council of Northumbria in northern England. Indeed, if we are thinking in terms of geographic extent, the eastward spread of the Christian faith across Asia is still more remarkable than the western spread across Europe … If we look at the eastward as well as the westward Christian movement, and look at it on the grids of the Persian and Chinese Empires as well as on that of the Roman Empire, it is evident that there was almost a millennium and a half of Christian history in Asia before even Western Christian mission in Asia began. It is equally evident that the early Christian history of Asia is not a marginal or ephemeral one, but substantial. The ancestors of modern Asian Christianity exist, but their names are not being called. And both Western and Asian Christians will remain impoverished by this omission until the work of reconception of the syllabus progresses. (p. 110)
The Christianity that spread to these Eastern regions was assigned various names like the Syrian Church, or the Nestorian Church, or the Church of the East (Owens
According to Jenkins (
This Asian Christianity for a thousand years spread faster and farther than either of the Western sects, Roman Catholicism or Greek Orthodoxy. It is further distinguished by intense missionary activity, excessive asceticism, theological orthodoxy (for the most part), and a quickness to indigenize, all of which help to explain its rapid cross-cultural expansion. Its first characteristic was missionary compulsion. From the very beginning, Nestorian, or ‘Syrian’ Christianity as it is better called in this period, was a spreading, evangelizing faith, growing so fast that within a century and half it has broken out of its first bastions in the little semi-independent border principalities of Osrhoene (Edessa) and Adiabene (Arbela) and had permeated the Persian Empire from ‘the mountains of Kurdistan to the Persian Gulf’. (p. 419)
Owens (
These Christians had the character to persevere through difficulty, the training to transmit the Gospel message, and the social networks to encounter the men and women who had not yet heard of the Savior from Nazareth. These missionaries took the Gospel to the extremities of Asia. (p. 137)
The Nestorians had two primary schools where they received biblical theological training, one in Edessa and the other in Arbel. Edessa is described as the headquarters of the Nestorian missionary expansion in the 3rd century, and as Moffett (
Edessa is undoubtedly one of the oldest centers of the Christian faith in the world. It had the earliest known Christian church building; it produced the first New Testament translation, the first Christian king, the first Christian state, perhaps the first Christian poet, even the first Christian hermits. (p. 418)
Nestorians were trained for three years in these two schools, and then departed to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Some of the missionaries established new monasteries in the lands of their sojourn and those became in themselves new training centers. ‘Future merchant missionaries were among the students in such schools. Aspiring merchants “were expected to study the Psalms, the New Testament, and attend courses of lectures before entering on a business career”’ (Owens
There are at least seven key missiological principles presented below that should be considered by the Wenzhou and other Chinese Christian migrants, to help them fulfil their apostolic mission calling. The same would apply to anyone else who felt the same but were different ethnically or economically. Paula Harris (
Nestorian merchant missionaries were missionaries first, who then did business for a living, and not the other way round. As mentioned, this was already practiced by the ‘tent-making’ apostle Paul of the New Testament. Chinese merchant traders should re-assess this value and adopt it.
Nestorian merchant missionaries were not ethnocentric, rather they took the gospel across culture, language, ethnic, geographical, political, economic, social, and racial barriers to reach the ends of the earth. A parallel can be seen in the Moravian movement. They were mostly German, yet they are known to have had a profound influence on the English Reverent John Wesley. Especially as Chinese merchant Christians travel to Africa and do business in Africa, they will have to make deliberate effort to reach out across cultures with people and share their faith indiscriminately.
Nestorian merchant missionaries underwent three years of training that included an intense study of the Scriptures, before they departed on their mission. Most mission training colleges do the same for candidates. The question is how busy merchant people can be trained in the Bible and theology today. No doubt, the effort needs to be made and time sacrificed, however the method of instruction could be different. There are many more ways to access training today through distance learning, for example by using the Internet and other social network outlets.
Nestorian merchant missionaries established training schools in places they sojourned in as a means to multiply other trained merchant missionaries. Perhaps short courses and speedier learning methods could be adopted by merchants today.
Nestorian merchant missionaries were able to identify ‘cultural bridges’ to share the gospel in a local culture, so that the work planted was indigenous. Eugene Nida (
Nestorian merchant missionaries had a vision and a passion for taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, to reach the unreached people groups. The focus was on going the extra geographical mile if need. This should be pre-eminent in all of us (Ac 1:8).
Nestorian merchant missionaries used their networks to facilitate other missionaries being deployed to multiply their mission efforts. Networking is the language of today. From business customers to social media, there is almost no limit to networking.
Henry (
The author wishes to acknowledge with gratitude, the help and support he has received from his promoter, Dr M. Pohlmann and co-promoter, Dr J. Kommers. He also wishes to thank Dr D. Henry for his help and guidance in this article.
Dr Martin Pohlmann, Principal of the Baptist Theological College of Southern Africa, is serving as my PhD promoter. During the second and third revisions, he and Dr D. Henry provided some answers, references and clarification to the referees’ enquiries. They helped me with information related to the following references (1) E. Artemi, (2) P. Harris, (3) D. Henry, (4) H.D. Owens, (5) P. M. Steyne, (6) G. Thompson, (7) welcome.armenia. website.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.