China Ministries:

a) Bibles

What: The simple goal here is to help equip China's Christians with God's Word. With the Christian community numbering between 60 and 90 million and given the tremendous growth rate of the church in China (some say 30,000 new believers each day), there is serious shortage of he Scriptures. AsiaLink has for many years been serving Christians inside China who are printing Bibles. Hundreds of thousands have been distributed at great personal risk to believers who have put their skills to use in private printing presses, often working through the night in secrecy.

Why: A limited number of Bibles are now legally printed inside China but nowhere near enough to meet demand. It remains almost impossible for rural Christians to get hold of a copy of the Bible. Millions of Christians are still without God's Word.

Cost: £1.50 covers the cost of printing and distributing one Bible. £150 provides enough for 100 Bibles. 100% of funds designated for printing goes to this Bible production.

b) Training

What: The majority of China's one million Pastors and church workers will never have the opportunity to attend a Bible School. A Bible School functions to specifically train cross-cultural Chinese workers.

Cost: £25 a month helps support one worker.

c) China Church Planters

What: An exciting new project to help support Chinese evangelists ministering across this huge nation. Many have struggled with persecution but all feel the passion and burden to preach the Good News to the remaining multitudes still unreached, including among China's almost 500 minority groups.

Cost: £ 25 per month per evangelist.

d) Living Martyrs

Because of your prayers and support, our partners are currently able to support 1,087 living martyrs every month.

A 'martyr' has been defined as "a Christian who chooses to suffer death rather than deny Christ, or His work... One who sacrifices something very important to further the Kingdom of God... and endures great suffering for Christian witness." (The Voice of the Martyrs)

In the rural areas of China today Christians continue to be beaten, imprisoned and tortured because they love Jesus. House church leaders have given us details of more than 1,000 Christian leaders who have been crippled as a result of torture received at the hands of the authorities. The Living Martyrs fund assists many pastors and evangelists who are now unable to work because of their injuries or illnesses. They and their families face extreme poverty and hardship.

Cost: You can support one or more of these living martyrs with a donation of £15 per month each.

A prayer card will be sent to every regular supporter of this project, with information to help you pray.

China profile:

A republic, China is the third largest state in the world with close to 500 different languages and Mandarin as the main language. China now has a population of around 1.3 billion, including 100 million from ethnic minority people groups. The Han are the main people group with over 780 million Mandarin speakers and 600 different dialects. An estimated 20-30% unemployment depending on the region. That's around 200 million people without an adequate income. It is estimated that by 2010, half of China's population will live in urban areas as people move in search of better work.

Church/Mission activity

Tight restrictions are in place on all Christian and activity. The Chinese government acknowledges five main religions present in the country, (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism). The majority of the Han Chinese people in China today could be accurately portrayed as nonreligious. After half a century of strict Communist rule, millions of people have forsaken all outward religious beliefs. While over half of China's believers belong to unregistered and house churches, they suffer from acute shortages of Bibles, teaching materials and trained leaders. Persecution is intense, especially among recognised church leaders. There is a need for the movement to spread more from rural areas to effect change among urban intellectuals as also for the Chinese church to begin to seriously impact the rest of the world through Chinese missionaries. This is already taking place. Migration from rural to urban areas is a dramatic current social reality through which the government anticipates half of China's 1.3 billion population to be living in the megacities by 2015. Many young believers have been a part of this migration as they head to cities in search of work. Chinese believers are also making a serious impact on world mission through their own 'Back to Jerusalem' movement.

Main unreached groups

There are over 250 people groups without any known believers and about another 100 groups which are less than 1% Christian. There are 25 million Muslims scattered among smaller tribes, 60 million communist party members who are, by definition, atheists. There are 70 million adherents to the Falun Gong sect and, while Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism lack many followers among young people, they do still have many adherents among the older generations. There are over 500 million under the age of 18. It is illegal to hold Sunday School or youth groups in the official and controlled Three Self Patriotic Movement churches or to teach them Christian doctrine.

Reaching the 800 official Chinese cities is another important challenge as has been mentioned. The phenomenal church growth to date has largely been restricted to the coastal areas of the East and Southeast where the Gospel was first introduced.

Persecution Index

Every six months, Open Doors World Watch publishes an index which grades countries according to the levels of persecution religious believers, and of Christians especially.

2009 Grading for China: 12th

China

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