EMQ » July–September 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 3
By Julie Ma
I left China suddenly and unexpectedly. As I hoped, prayed, grieved, made contingency plans, and started to hope again, I knew I was not alone. Thousands of ex-pats have made unplanned exits from China in the past three years, many of them Christian missionaries. Visa denials, detentions, evictions, depression, and stress affected us all.[1] It matters little whether we were kicked out or fled. Then came COVID-19. We still can’t go home from the short vacations we took a year ago. If you have been locked out of a country you love, I hope you will find strength in knowing that you are not alone.
As I process what happened to me, I am asking dozens of missionaries to share their stories of being locked out of China. Some have moved to new fields and even started learning new languages. Others have accepted roles in the secular workforce or as pastors in their home countries. Some, like me, refuse to let go of God’s calling to serve China and the unreached peoples who live there.
The five missionaries I interviewed for this article worked in four different cities throughout northwest and central China, with three different sending agencies. Every experience has been unique; but with common threads. Lucy,[2] one of the missionaries I spoke with, said it this way: “One of the hard things inside China, from 2018 onward, and also when COVID happened, was that everybody was in these hard situations at the exact same time.”
How Did We Get Here?
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.
(Acts 4:25–26; quoting Psalm 2:1–2, NIV)
Soon after assuming power in 2012, President Xi Jinping pledged to rid China of all foreign missionaries. WeChat buzzed with a 2018 deadline, but none of us thought it was a serious threat. There would be a purge of pseudo-Christian cults, a few over-zealous street evangelists would have their visas revoked, perpetual language students would be reminded to get jobs. The next few years saw closer monitoring of some house churches, fewer crosses atop church buildings, a steady stream of visas denied, but nothing alarming. China couldn’t guarantee all missionaries were gone unless all foreigners were gone. They would not do that. They needed English teachers and foreign businesses.
However, 2017 was a big year. First, we heard whispers of trouble in Xinjiang, then in other ethnic minority regions, and then in Wenzhou of all places. In June, two Chinese Christian missionaries, who belonged to a South Korean agency, were murdered in Pakistan.[3] Simmering tensions with South Korea burst into flame. Mass evictions of South Koreans ensued. We learned to keep our distance from the few Korean-American and Korean-Australian friends we still had.
Then 2018 brought newly revised Regulations on Religious Affairs. From February 1, our Chinese Christian friends and we pored over the documents and discussed how we might need to change if these rules were enforced. Well, they were enforced. Churches demolished, congregations combined, children’s ministry bans applied, foreign-owned businesses investigated. Even Christmas decorations were outlawed in some cities. In December 2018, Early Rain Covenant Church hit the news as Pastor Wang Yi was arrested along with one hundred congregants. Many less famous Christians suffered similar fates.[4]
The now-famous human rights violations again the Uighur people of Xinjiang were ramping up and, along with them, investigations into any expatriates who spoke Uighur, owned Uighur books, or spent time with Uighur people. Chinese people from other Muslim groups, including the Hui, became afraid that what was happening to the Uighurs would happen to them next. Uighur-focused missionaries had always lived under tight restrictions, but the times were changing quickly for the rest of us.
Early Departures
For years, Colin had been meeting locals for tea after work. Now they kept canceling. He realized his friends were too afraid to meet. Then he noticed that one by one, his coworkers were being denied visa renewals. He started preparing for the possibility that if his own visa didn’t get renewed in three months, he may need to help his children say goodbye to their home, school, and friends. He became more intentional about “what is it that we want to leave behind if we have to leave somewhat suddenly.” He would stay put, however, until he was forced to move. He was ready and willing to fulfill the prophecy of Matthew 10:18 to “be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.”[5]
Then the police descended on a family close to him. While under house arrest, they managed to send someone to Colin with a message. “They are asking us about you a lot … Honestly, your presence here is not really helpful for us right now. It would be better if you could go ahead and leave so that we could answer some questions because right now, we’re trying to protect you. And we can’t do that very well if you’re sitting there in your apartment.”
Colin still did not want to leave his work, the people he loved, or the brothers and sisters under his pastoral care. But late that night, his wife gently guided him to consider the effect his staying would have on the loved ones he so desperately wanted to stay and support, as well as own his family. Reluctantly, Colin let go of his desire to witness boldly before the authorities by laying it at the feet of Jesus. He woke his children and gave them an hour and a half to pack their favorite things. “When are we coming back?” asked the kids. “We’re probably not.’
What happened on their journey reads like a chapter from Acts: sleeping guards, gates unexpectedly open, being passed over in crowds even though Colin’s physical features are rather conspicuous, a quiet departure in the early hours.
Rebecca and her husband lived in a different province from Colin. They heard whispers of detentions further west. Would it come to her city? Surely not yet. After all, the international church was still meeting. One day she and her husband thought they were being followed. Just to be safe, they postponed a few meetings. By the time they got a chance to follow up about rebooking, Rebecca and her family were already out of the country. More than two years later, she told me through tears about the last time she saw the city she loves through the aircraft window.
Moving Online
Shane knew bits and pieces of what was happening around that time but felt far enough removed to be safe. His organization advised him to avoid overt evangelism and group gatherings. Much of his ministry involved media – posting content online directing netizens to read the Bible and replying to online messages from spiritual seekers. He stayed in China through the threats against his sending organization, “It was a very stressful summer. Very, very tough. You know, we’ve been followed before, and we were followed during that time.”
Shane got a call from his mission leader warning him to leave within 24 hours. He describes the emotional struggle of just trying to buy tickets to fly out. “It was stressful. I couldn’t make the decision. I honestly just froze up, and my wife said, ‘You’ve just got to buy a ticket.’”
When Shane arrived in the United States, he still couldn’t think straight. “That whole fall was very tough. What are we supposed to do now, you know? We’ve spent nearly a decade. It’s our home. Our family, our friends; it’s never going to be the same.”
Soon afterward, he attended a stateside retreat for evacuees like himself to get closure. “It was like a funeral,” he recalls. There was a lot of crying. “I was already doing media ministry, even when we were in China. So I was really pushing it hard, saying ‘you don’t have to stop [ministry to China],’ but not many people were ready [to hear that].” One person was ready. “I did get one key person, Colin, and that’s what saved it for our team.”
“In a period of about four weeks, I got four calls,” says Colin, “and each of these four people said some variation of the same thing, which was, ‘we need somebody who will stay engaged remotely in what’s going on in the Northwest.’” Each time he responded with, “Sure, I’ll pray for that.” He thought they were looking for IT people, and Colin is not in IT. The fourth caller told it straight. He was not asking Colin to help recruit IT workers. Their team had those. What they needed was an experienced field worker, fluent in the language, who cared about unreached peoples and knew how to raise funds. He was asking Colin to step up.
Colin made a few of his own calls, prayed a lot, and boarded a plane to meet Shane at the “funeral” retreat. He joined Shane’s team and became their leader. Shane is a reliable, faithful worker whose media ministry team got the boost they needed. “Thank God we got Colin. He’s the leader the team needs. He’s given it a vision, really pushed it forward,” says Shane. Colin is also a networker and a gifted speaker, who, despite the difficulties of 2020, has visited churches in person and online, raising enough financial support for the coming year.
Ben is another who moved his ministry online. His work is different, though, and he went virtual for an entirely different reason.
Then Came COVID-19
Lucy and Ben’s stories begin the same way. They both left with their families for their respective conferences and short vacations in Southeast Asia. Then COVID-19 hit, and the borders closed. “Our flights back to China were canceled, we rebooked, and they were canceled again,” says Lucy. Ben initially thought they’d only be locked out for a few weeks. He kept up with his teaching job in China by giving classes online from Southeast Asia. Everyone had to teach online anyway. It made sense to stay in a similar time zone as his students. Eventually, though, he decided to settle back in the United States and flip his schedule. He now works online at night and spends the day with his family.
Lucy is still in Southeast Asia, where her husband has found a temporary role training Asian missionaries for service in China and elsewhere. They are thankful to be away from the COVID-19 crisis in America, and they understand why so many borders have to stay closed. “If I were China, I wouldn’t want to let us in either.”
Going Back to China
Ben decided to settle his family in America. But Lucy’s family is still very much in transition. On returning to China, she says, “We don’t even feel like we know how to make that decision.”
One voice has weighed on Lucy’s heart as she has sought God’s will. “Can’t you see what God’s doing in your life? He’s not directing you back to China,” said a supporter who prays regularly for Lucy and her family, “Look at all the fruitful things you’re doing in [Southeast Asia]! But China was so hard for you.”
“We would be doing all these [fruitful] things in any open country!” says Lucy. She is frustrated by people who equate easy with blessing as if it shows God’s direction. “It’s people who don’t understand that anytime you are engaged in least-reached work, it’s just hard. Our visas are hard to get … sometimes you are going to be stuck not being with them … sometimes the police are going to be asking about you. Those are actually the normal things within the realm of least-reached work.”
After leaving, Rebecca learned she’s “on a list,” meaning it’s unsafe to return to China. She and her husband have moved into training new missionaries to work with Chinese UPGs. Until COVID-19 stranded them, they lived in a Mandarin-speaking community in Southeast Asia, leading a multicultural team of people preparing to be sent into China. They hope to recruit new missionaries and continue their program as soon as international travel becomes possible again.
“It’s not going to get any easier for foreign workers inside China,” says Lucy. “It’s not going to get any easier for anybody who is … at all out-of-the-box in any way. That includes all foreigners, regardless of whether they are there for our purposes or totally secular purposes. And so COVID is actually this great opportunity to prep your heart and count the cost. A lot of us weren’t ready. It wasn’t that we were all blindsided because we were all talking about, ‘it’s coming, it’s coming,’ but when it came … there’s something in you that can’t truly prepare for that. But … if we are faithful in the middle of COVID, training and preparing ourselves for other really hard things, then we will go in equipped and prepared in a new way.”
Our Collective Advice to You
- Stay in God’s Word, regardless of whether you feel like you’re in God’s will. Like Colin, some of us have received wise counsel from our spouses, mission leaders, and supporters. Others, like Lucy, have been given advice that contradicts God’s word. The only way to know the difference is to know what God’s word says and remind ourselves of it daily.
- Take care of yourself and your family. Your supporters will forgive you for a few unproductive months. If you share your needs with them, they may even pay for counseling, send you on holiday, or find you an office space.
- Serve from where you are. God has placed you in an age when physical distance need not mean giving up a life-long calling to a particular place or people group. When you have the capacity, look for ways to serve through technology, or seek out diaspora communities you can physically access.
- Teach and prepare others to carry the work forward, and if your desire is to return to your field, teach yourself too. God may be leading you to set aside the language you studied, give up the relationships you built, and follow him into the unknown. But it is also possible he wants to use you to cultivate your old field in a new way.
If like us, you have been locked out of your mission field, we pray you will take our stories into your own story and know that you are not alone. In these COVID-19 times, the media keeps telling us, “We are all in this together.” For Christians, this is true, but it is not new. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:26–27 that we are the body of Christ, and “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (ESV).
Our Lord Jesus understands. He spent forty days in isolation (the word quarantine derives from the Italian for forty days.) He, too, went through the trauma of being detained by the authorities. At their hands, Jesus suffered a fate far worse than any of ours. He spent his last forty days in his “field” preparing his local coworkers for the hard times ahead. When he returned to his heavenly home, he left them in a place of transition, danger, and uncertainty. His final words: “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20, NLT).
Julie Ma (pseudonym) previously lived in China. She still serves as a missionary in a Creative Access Community in Asia. She is a graduate of Sydney Missionary and Bible College and a member of the Angelina Noble Centre for women in cross-cultural missions research.
EMQ, Volume 57, Issue 3. Copyright © 2021 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
[1] https://www.thenanjinger.com/news/expats-in-the-news/expat-depression-significant-driver-in-departure-from-china/.
[2] All interviewees are identified in this article using pseudonyms.
[3] “Risky road: China’s missionaries follow Beijing west,” BBC News, September 3, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41116480.
[4] A summary of China’s crackdowns on various religious groups in 2018 can be seen at https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/2018-report-on-international-religious-freedom-china/
[5] Colin quoted Luke 21:12–13. He emphasizes the link between the verses, “… for the purpose …”
