Shanghai and Bust China Bible College

Chiang Mai, Thailand

It is the understatement of the year to assert that China is changing! In Shanghai the house church (so called “underground church”) is bold and confident and not afraid of the authorities. In spirit the city of Shanghai is a cousin to Hong Kong, they do not easily bow to Beijing’s cultural restrictions, if at all. Joshua, the adopted name of the founder and head of this missionary training college, China Bible College, is a professor from one of Shanghai’s many universities along with his wife, also a professor. Joshua’s horizons for training missionaries are nothing short of amazing. In America I would view such plans as suspect – seduced by visions of grandeur – but right now in China anything seems possible! If the Chinese decide to build ten high speed rails crisscrossing the nation hundreds if not thousands of miles they just do it! The current speed and breadth of development in China is mind-boggling. This same can do belief has penetrated the house church movement. Joshua is open about their aim to train and send out 10,000 missionaries within a few years and half of these he says will go to the Middle East. At present he has about 450 students after five years of laboring. If the Lord blesses next year the school will likely approach 1000 students.

This teaching opportunity had presented itself in September, after I finished teaching outside of Hangzhou, as I headed for the Shanghai Pudong Airport, my cell rang. It was the head of a new bible college. He introduced himself as Joshua. Through the grapevine he had heard of my work in Hangzhou and Beijing and wanted me to come and teach at his school. I had commitments at the Thai-Burma border and in India but after these were completed I agreed to phone him and try and work something out. After Christmas I flew from Bangkok to Shanghai.

On Sunday, January 2 my contact picked me up and we headed to church. But I was not prepared for what I was to encounter in this church meeting. The ‘church’ was inside a gated high-end condominium located in an upper crust neighborhood in south Shanghai. A spacious room on the lower level of a fine large apartment served as the meeting room for a hundred or so well dressed progressive, mostly thirty something young professionals. And many of these were new Christians or non-Christians seeking spiritual roots.

After my Sunday preach we drove to the ‘school’. I was expecting a school building. There was none! Again we entered a gated condominium. One of the well-to-do the believers, presently traveling abroad, handed Joshua the keys to his condo and his large living room became the classroom. Some students came and went but many brought their quilts and hot water bottles and camped out at the end of each day in the living room and bedrooms upstairs. Hot Chinese fast food was ordered in three times a day. I lectured from morning to night in this beautiful high-rise apartment with cherry wood floors. But there is one catch – the owner turned off the heat before leaving and so we did school in 37° F, bundled in big coats hats and gloves.

The students were young, many 17 and 18 years lacking intellectual experience and development needed to handle simple concepts. They were great at linear knowledge –gathering unambiguous information and memorizing but weak in elementary conceptual thinking. When I realized this I started telling stories. For every abstract theological idea I put out to them I invented a story to open up the meaning. My story telling penchant experienced a renaissance. I became intoxicated with stories but only as instruments to open up conceptual meanings. This made the time more fun and because it was so cold I juiced the stories building the aesthetic detail and pace often creating a little dramas that took considerable time to spin. My translators were pretty good and perhaps because they were so very young they threw all their energy into the task with zeal.

My lecture sessions, 20 in total, all 2 hours each, were all on The Seminal Evangelical Insight of Martin Luther and its Implications for the Reformation of the Church: Then and There, Here and Now. I simplified, simplified, simplified. I attempted to do what Luther himself commanded his ministerial preachers in training in Wittenberg to do “bare your breasts and give them milk” (this a direct quote). My hope and prayer is that many students connected with these evangelical insights of a bygone era in a new simplier, clearer way and this I believe occurred but “the just shall live by faith” in this world we cannot often see or rightly judge the fruit of our labors.

Now my Theologians Without Borders venture is over and I am returning to New York in a couple weeks. In all toll ,in the approximately 6 months doing this teaching I stayed in about 70 hotels and traveled on 30 flights as well as buses and trains. To say the least, this has been a rewarding endeavor and an epic journey. I would like to continue this work year after year if possible, (the Lord willing as James reminds us) but it is very expensive. Again and again I experienced what Thomas Friedman observed – the world is quickly flattening. Plus Asia can smell Yankee dollars a mile away and are astutely prepared upon your arrival to relieve you from the burden of carrying too many around with you. Under my breath I often muttered “if they only knew I was a lowly poor Baptist preacher not a foot loose and fancy free New York businessman I might catch a break”.

Thank you for your prayers and help when and where these were forth coming. Especially I thank my sisters and brother but a few others as well!

In closing I want to share one need with you. I promised a young seminarian named Jenny, that I would try and find some help for her. Jenny Bagh is a senior Masters of Divinity student in Kolkata (Calcutta) at the Calcutta Bible College that resides on the William Carey Church campus.

Jenny, a fine academic spirited cannot graduate this April 9 unless she pays her tuition now – 900 dollars overdue. She has been a brave, hard working student who has refused to let poverty and the absence of family support deter her. Since I left campus she has written to me five times for help confident that because I am from America I am sure to have access to money and can help her. Considering her need she is not much different than many I have encountered and wanted to help but in spirit she is different because she is so tenacious and persistent and she has great faith and courage refusing to consider the thought that she will not graduate even though she has nothing and the school has no way to help her. If anyone reading this is moved to respond on my honor I will expedite your gift to the treasure of CBC -Calcutta Bible College Mary who I know and correspond with regularly. In this appeal send your gift to Daniel Age, 154 Grand St., Suite 5-10, New York, New York 10013 (Mark it Jenny Bagh).

Sincerely,

Dr. Daniel

Under the Shadow of Prayer Mountain: Kawthoolei Karen Baptist Bible School and College 

To the students: “Remember this one thing if you get through Bible College and forget everything else in your journey through life, especially in time when the grit and grind of survival over takes you “religion is grace and ethics is gratitude”.

God’s grace freely given in Christ is the unconditional, invisible, often unfelt foundation of your life – temporal and eternal. Gratitude proceeds from resting on this unseen foundation of grace.”

Along Thailand’s border with Myanmar(formerly Burma), a couple miles or so inside Thailand there are a number of refugee camps for Burmese fleeing the ruling military junta. As is well known, the military regime have inflicted great violence against resident minority peoples in Myanmar. Among these are the Karen – a distinct ethnic group living in sections of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. I was invited to the Mae La camp 37 kilometers outside the border town of Mae Sot in northern Thailand to teach my course in the Kawthoolei Baptist Bible School and College. The camp has been in existence for over twenty years and currently over 50,000 people live there, predominantly Karen all who have fled there from Myanmar. KKBBSC is the vision and work of Dr. Saw Simon who came to the camp shortly after it was opened. In the beginning it was a fledging endeavor. But now 20 years past it is a thriving educational mission serving over 400 students. Even though the school exists without official status or any permanent structures according to the Thai government rules that regulate the camps it has, by all measurements, flourished.

Layered into nature like a great spider web the camp neatly sprawls for several miles. It is literally out in nowhere. No town or village surrounds the camp only a road passes and when visiting one only begins to be aware of Mae La when she comes upon road blocks and armed guards checking all coming and going. The school is built in section C of the camp directly under the shadow of a great mountain – “Prayer Mountain” with a stream flowing through it. It is idyllic and tragic in the same breath. It is the place of sublime beauty but the bosom of great sorrows and tears yet not without even greater hope and praise. And there are children, many children and youth energizing the camp with spirit and play. Hope springs eternal and nowhere more than in the hearts of the young. Each day they emerge from their humble abodes to set about their work and studies brilliant, clean and well-dressed for the day as if they had bathrooms, showers, laundries and all the creature comforts western depend on to groom and beautify themselves. Some, a few live with family and attend the Bible School or College but most of the young people live in group thatch cabins or a dormitory like structure made from the trees and resources nature supplies.

The structures, all of them are far more open to nature and the outdoors than in the West. This means seeing, smelling and hearing the activities of others is normal. Everything and everybody is far more permeable so when morning breaks just before the light dawns one is awakened with song. Seventy orphans gather and begin to sing in low soft tones on the second floor of their dwelling. This is the way the day opens – before the first crack of dawn the scent of praise fills the crisp mountain air. Singing is a big deal in the camp. From my dwelling the upper level of a garage with a meeting room with a curtained off sleeping section I could walk to an open deck and look out over the main hub of the school. At any given time during the day or evening until 9 pm there would be 6 to 8 different groups singing. And the college age youth sung beautifully in four-part harmony. One of the most talented groups among them was a group of handicapped who live and eat together. One day at chapel time nine of these men, blinded and dismembered by land mines, made their way to the front and made the pillars tremble with their chorus – truly a wonder to behold and hear.

My class consisted of about 65 to 70 Junior and Senior college students. I taught without a translator and had to simplify, then simplify even more my language and concepts. The student’s first language is Karen [pronounced Ka(u) Ren], then Burmese and then a little English. I was forced to continually create stories to carry the concepts I wanted to communicate. Where a story was employed to communicate the idea the uptake ratio was ten times greater. Because I refused to sacrifice the sharp edge of the idea I was trying to get across I had to work much harder and become more imaginative. I lectured morning and afternoon preaching at chapel and weekend youth meetings. Like the previous engagements my experience at the camp was very good. Many of the students had a rethink about the foundation of their faith. I said at the end of my class “remember this one thing if you get through Bible College and forget everything else in your journey through life, especially in time when the grit and grind of survival over takes you “religion is grace and ethics is gratitude”. God’s grace freely given in Christ is the unconditional, invisible, often unfelt foundation of your life – temporal and eternal. Gratitude proceeds from resting on this unseen foundation of grace. Above, before and aside from all the business of religion resting on this foundation is the primary thing and if when this occurs, if only a little, one inner wheel is meant to turn if none other – gratitude. Grace and gratitude are linked like a horse and carriage, like the light of the moon to its source in the sun. Beside these two spirited intangibles everything else preached and taught and done in the name of God and religion is extra and often superfluous. This succinct reduction is a direct quote from T.W. Mansion, the great British New Testament Scholar of bygone years. By the time I took my exit not a few students began to get a new understanding and appreciation for this center.

In hindsight I renamed the course – “The Seminal Theological Insight of the Protestant Reformation: Considered Within Its Original Historical Setting, Reflected on and Applied to Contemporary Times and Issues ”.

I was asked by Malaysia Theological Seminary to teach the History of Protestant Thought but the limits of time led me to this redefinition of the course; one which I believe better serves my own passion and interests and the needs of these fledgling students and ministers. Following this approach, the historical curiosity continually gave way to discussions and applications wedded to the present lived situation. I have yet to translate these from my pencil and paper lecture notes onto my hard drive and make them available but this will happen soon for those of you wanting a sample of my work. At the completion of my course I was given a Karen dress shirt and asked to don it before the assembly – a gift signing their acceptance of me and their appreciation of my work.

Even though the plight of the Karen people is submerged in a 200-year struggle, one that precedes and exceeds the present talks and hopes for the revival of human rights in Burma/Myanmar the destiny of this minority is not in doubt. They have attended to their education and to developing their faith and the practice of the Christian way with great order and discipline and enlightened missionary zeal. Their ways and belief are potent and deep. I have now seen and emerged from this short experience in the Mae La Camp to assure all who ask “the Karen People are no helter skelter people driven and dying out. Their customs, language and culture are alive and well. Their spirit is strong and although subjected to great sufferings they are neither hard nor bitter because they are rooted in and fed by those eternal springs of faith, hope and love found in the Gospel. Indeed these people are among the richest in spirit of God’s people on this earth. Their children fulfill the proverb “daughters polished after the similitude of a palace, sons grown up in their youth”.

If any one reading this wants to make a little or big contribution to this venture I can only encourage you to do so [send to Aprile Age, 154 Grand St, Ste 5-10, NY,NY 10013]. This teaching extravaganza has been under taken on a gratuitous basis to the colleges and seminaries served and has been voluntarily under written by family and a very few friends. To say the least crisscrossing Asia eating, sleeping and traveling has not been cheap. But this report is not an appeal, regardless of any financial response I appreciate your taking an interest in my work and I hope you stay tuned. On my part, I will keep you posted of my travels and sooner than later provide you samples of my lectures should you like to read them.

From Grace to Gratitude – from The Gift received to Giving this Advent Season and Beyond

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Daniel

William Carey Chapel and Calcutta Bible College

Calcutta, India

I was invited to deliver my course, The History of Protestant Thought, at Calcutta Bible College at the site of the William Carrey Chapel founded in 1809. I’d never been to India and was looking forward to this opportunity. But really I had only faint ideas of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). This city is like no other and caught me completely by surprise. I was not prepared for what I was to encounter.

Everywhere I turned in the five-to-ten mile circumference of the heart of the city where I was staying, I beheld a level of poverty I had never seen before. Everything happens in open view on the street, save female life and male-female mingling. Everywhere I looked I saw bodies loosely and barely clothed, men and boys sleeping, bathing, shaving, playing Caroms, slaughtering and butchering animals – in short, all the duties and details of personal life occur in the open on the street. The shops were for the most part very tiny. Many were cubicles, hole-in- the-wall artifices the size of a medium kitchen stove. Inside these a man sat in the lotus position and a man sold his wears – eight or ten things. These little shops were everywhere.

To be sure modernity is coming to India fast and furious but Kolkata is not in the lead. It has 18 million people squashed together in its urban center. To me urban Kolkata was like a giant open infected sore. But rather than nauseating me, it enchanted me. It is repulsive and exotic at the same time. While so many of the men on the street were a sore sight, the police were dressed to the nines in well-pressed uniforms, handsome young stalwarts. And the women are all dressed in their native saris of brilliant exotic colors. Everywhere there are shrines to one or more of the 37 million Hindu gods. I was fortunate to arrive on a very important four day Hindu holiday where once every year certain deities retire from their ease, come near to humans and through a frenetic dance hold communion with mortals. But to realize and enter this communion one must enter an ecstatic state through dance and ritual and song.

Inside the small campus of the William Carey Calcutta Bible College life is different. One complex houses everything – library, administration, dining and food preparation, dorm rooms and the principal living quarters. The 200 year old Carey Chapel stands separate and beside it a fine old manse for the pastor.

But it is the 100+ students that make this place special. Equally divided between male and female they come from all over India to get their education. With all seriousness, struggling to get good marks -most unsure how they are going to pay their tuition and where they are going to serve- they devote years to their Masters and Bachelors programs. When they finish, some become pastors or work in ministries connected to the church but many focus their energy on mission work.

India is a Hindu dominated culture and mission work is paramount. The church lives for the most part on the fringe of culture often unwelcome and in some areas sorely persecuted without hindrance from the government. Similar to the house church movement in China, mission work is the wheel that turns every other wheel in ministry and ministry training. But in secular China there is great increase these days in the church where as in Indian Hindu culture, mission efforts labor long and hard for a few against great odds. Hinduism holds a stupor on the minds of the masses.

One student, Bikram Jena, a senior MDiv student who attended to my daily domestic needs devotes several months a year doing mission work to hill people in the far north. Once a year after the academic term ends, he loads up his backpack and takes the train to the far north and when transportation ends he strikes out and hikes two weeks into a remote area where he lives with tribal people. Unable to speak their language he uses pictures and a very few basic words to communicate. He also brings medicine and his knowledge of basic health and sanitation to help them. The challenge he faces with these primitive tribes is not Hinduism. It is language and it is the need to find and train leaders who can carry on his work after he leaves.

My teaching experience with the students was good. The senior students discussed my approach and returned a thumbs-up verdict. Unfortunately the school, whose historic roots are deep in the American Baptist and English Baptist mission outreach societies of bygone years has, of late, been forced to look for new support. And as Dr. Dunn often quipped “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” The absence of American Baptist’s support threatens to lower their educational standards and place this historic work into the hands of very conservative foreign Christian groups.

Calcutta Bible College as I found it, is a school in need of new leadership, new vision and funds. The students are there hungry to learn and serve at great sacrifice and zeal, but in my estimation they deserve more and better. Most of the students need financial help in an economy where a little from Europe or America goes a long long way. Many are there on a wing and a prayer. As in China, my class did not withhold their affection. The guys and the ladies were warm and hospitable and very interested in sharing and learning and hard put to let me go. Their spirit energized me and encouraged me.

My work with Theologians Without Borders is on a volunteer basis and underwritten by friends and family. If you are so moved, please support this work. Contributions can be sent to me at 154 Grand Street, Suite 5- 10, New York, NY 11201. If you would like to receive the History of Protestant Thought lectures please contact me via email.

In friendship and warm regard,

Dr. Daniel

Hangzhou, China

What follows is my reflections on teaching the History of Protestant Thought in my second engagement in China, outside Hangzhou. My students are working on their bachelors and masters degrees in Theology.

On the bullet train from Beijing to Hangzhou we sped along at 220 mph. Standard fare was sold out so I bought a first class ticket and lounged in a large red easy chair sipping tea and snacking on munchies. The trip was a pure delight. I reached Hangzhou early and decided to lay low and rest for a couple days before checking with the school. Hangzhou is huge, one of the many giant cities, population: umpteen million, bursting-its-seams in China. I didn’t know where to stay, so I blindfolded myself and threw a dart at a city map. I landed right smack dab in the middle of the garment district. There isn’t 5 square miles in all of China where more buying and selling of garments and fabrics occurs. From my room on the 6th floor I looked out the window. On the streets below, going and coming in every direction, were carts hauling bundles of every size — from that of a nap sack to a Volkswagen. The bundles were awkward, clumpy burlap and nylon wraps being carried and conveyed by every means imaginable. Homemakers traveling to Hangzhou from other cities of China could be seen lugging their bargains in the same streets where corporate tycoons where wheeling and dealing. (I thought my brother-in-law Geevy probably had his man somewhere here working deals).

On Sunday, I set out for the school located in a church an hour out of the city, with my guide and interpreter. Getting a taxi to take us one hour into the countryside was no small feat. And here was my first clarification about Chinese culture. All dealing between parties in China works on the same principle of the internal combustion engine. Heat is generated, an explosion occurs, the energy released from the explosion is channeled so as to motivate – move the process forward and then this process is repeated over and over until the deal is sealed. And women are equal players in this method with men. The demur Chinese damsel is a myth! “Hell hath no furry” better describes this species in this context. Chinese street ethics is one of controlled conflict. Nothing is gained by reason and easy agreement or consensus. Conflict and opposition with burst of fury and anger, real or imitated, are necessary to get the job done. (I think Hillary Clinton would do well to take a page from my observation). A few times I thought my young female interpreter, in order to bring the cabi to submission, was going to box him up around the ears but then I realized this was business as usual. I don’t smoke, but I was thinking as I road along in the back seat a bit anxious by the furry of retorts exchanged, that I could use a smoke to relax.

The countryside village where the school met for classes it was nothing like the situation outside of Beijing. Zhejiang province is the richest of all China. Inside the adjunct teaching building of a large beautiful church on the edge of Dragon’s Gate (the birth Place of an Ancient King some 1700 years past) the school enjoyed spacious modern classrooms, living quarters and dining facilities. But none of these belong to the housechurch seminary group I had come to serve. They were merely granted the use of the space by the local church group. Local believers in the village called Dragon’s Gate had aligned with a wider movement spreading through China roughly translated as The Truth Church and built the large beautiful church you see in the picture.

When the authorities discovered they were building a church in this famous mountain retreat town, home to not a few elite tourists, they showed up at the site and forbade them from continuing to build. But when they left, the church proceeded to lay the bricks. When the authorities showed up again they were angry and fined the church 70,000 rmb and forbade them again. The believers paid the fine and proceeded. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The full story detailing the reversals and challenges these believers met along the way toward bringing their vision to completion is amazing. Now the pastor’s dream is to build a formal full- fledged seminary in the facility adjoining the church.

My teaching experience in Hangzhou/ Dragon’s Gate was equal to my Beijing experience. As the week progressed, the confidence of the students strengthened. Here again I encountered a zeal and devotion the likes of which can scarcely be found in the church of Christ anywhere at this time. In my class of about 27 students there were 8 from the far Northwest near the Mongolian border. In this area Islam remains very strong and also the authorities continue to repress Christianity except for the very few Government churches that exist. One student spoke of her mother, who for 25 years has been visited by the authorities in her home and many times arrested and a few times suffered beatings. A young man in the class residing 20 miles from Mongolia who graduated with honors from the best university in the northwest turned down a job to be the superintendent of the middle school district in his city so as to spend all his energy building and pasturing house churches. His father’s brother is the most prominent Inman in the district and the family has turned against him and cursed him. His uncle, the head Imam in the area is known as possessing magical gifts and powers reputedly similar to those Pharaoh exhibited when he turned Moses staff’s into a snake. Using his magic he placed a hex/curse on his nephew and his marriage so that they would remain childless which seemed to be succeeding for last 6 years until this year the couple succeeded in conceiving and then to the jubilation of the believers in the area the couple gave birth to a beautiful baby boy shortly before I arrived. All the students had stories and not a few had collided with the authorities either they themselves or their parents. All who were studying, equally divided between male and female, were studying to be effective missionaries.

The entire house church movement is driven by a mission ethic. Going into the ministry means becoming a missionary, learning leadership skills, organizational skills as well as gaining a Biblical and theological understanding of the church’s message. One woman pastor I heard about has 4000 members under her care in umpteen housechurches, each with 15 to 20 members meeting in homes scattered along the China – Mongolian border. The lay base of this church movement, cradled in homes and explicitly shaped as a missionary endeavor, is the secret of its success. “Jeannie” [the church once trapped inside a government controlled and supervised organizational structure] has escaped from its captivity and cannot be put back into the bottle and the leaders of the housechurch movement know this and are becoming increasingly free and bold in the face of the political leaders.

China is changing! The emerging greatness of the nation is being met with an emerging church also great in zeal, spiritual strength and potency- a rapidly growing church. I could not help thinking “China’s emerging power and greatness is being paralleled by the emerging power and growth of the church and this phenomenon has occurred in history before. Our own American climb to greatness as a nation in the 18th, 19th century was accompanied by Great Christian Awakenings that swept across the land. But in this setting great ostentatious evangelical revivals are not possible nor perhaps fitting and advantageous. The subtle development of the church inside small home settings, diversified, decentralized, nondenominational befits the political situation and is I believe truer to the primitive impulses of the Christian way. Where are the heroes, the great charismatic personalities, the dazzling movers and shakers effecting Christian religious change? At the risk of sounding sacra religious inverting the meaning of the demoniac’s godless retort “my name is legend and we are many” describes this godly phenomena. The few authorities still true believers, the one’s who still brew and drink the ideological monopolistic kool aid are saying in frustration to themselves, Where is the head of this thing,? Where is its heart? feet and hands? that we may take possession of it and bind it?

This second session, my lectures were better. I found the students hungry to understand the Church’s historical truths in a way which transcended the passing on and memorization of information – their typical mode of learning. I taught them ideas and insights and connected the dots between the truths that gave birth to the Reformation and the changes that came along in the wake of the 16th century. I showed that Luther was a radical thinker and his grasp of the Gospel was revolutionary.

One fellow in the class, the senior alpha male among his peers who sat on the very corner in the back row, daily challenged me. His nickname was Socrates. Each class he brokered questions regarding my teaching. In good humor I consistently took him on, but with restraint. On the last day he held nothing back feeling that my interpretation of Luther was giving away the store and failing to do justice to the law and the Bible – quoting Matthew 5:17. I was ready for him as those of you who know my religious exodus of past times might guess and I began working through his complaint ultimately ending my response with John 5:39, Galatians 4:1-7 but not without opening the meaning of Romans 3 – where it asserts that faith establishes the law.

On Sunday, two days later, when I was about to leave he sought me out and said he needed time to talk. With considerable humility he proceeded to confess that the organizing matrix for his understanding of Christian truth was now undergoing serious revision. He went on to state that Luther’s insights had got inside his thinking and things were not coming back together as they once had. I could see he was standing in a new discriminating relation to his faith and Scripture. Socrates, the man with rhetorical questions seeking to foil me, was caught in the grip of a new insight and in the end he couldn’t quite get the old wine back in his original wine skin. I love this experience and have a special feeling for this man. Before leaving both of us agreed we needed to take a picture together. (Which unfortunately was taken on Sunday before I left when many of the students were missing away for the weekend.)

By the time I had completed the course I was utterly exhausted lecturing 6 hours a day and working mornings and evening besides preparing my work and engaging students one on one. Assured of no responsibilities for Saturday and Sunday I was preparing my mind for a little repose before traveling on. As it turned out I was pulled into a full schedule of events on Saturday and Sunday. Speaking before the church congregation on Sunday morning, a surprise invitation/demand, a last minute SOS was sent for my interpreter who showed up to take her place along side me on the platform in an old sweat shirt, tired, not too happy to be summoned, but proceeding to deliver flawlessly, although I fear by then sick and tired of hearing my voice and unraveling my strange use of words. My Sunday homily “By the Providence of God Dragon’s Gate [the name of the town] Becomes the Door of Grace [the formal name of their Church] – the victories of the past are but the Prologue to the future.

Stay tuned for my next Report # 3 coming out of Calcutta [Kolkata] India – Calcutta Bible College on the campus of the William Carry Chapel established by him in 1804.

And if you are so moved do not hesitate to send a little donation to the address below. My entire fall Asian endeavor is my free will offering underwritten by family and friends as much as possible. Soon several of my History of Protestant Thought lectures will be available online.

In friendship and warm regard,

Dr. Daniel

Beijing, China

Dear friends and family,

In this report I want to share with you my first experiences teaching the History of Protestant Thought outside Beijing, China. Over a year ago Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary contacted me and asked me go to China and teach students who are working on their bachelors and masters degrees with MBTS through an extension program. Pastor/ Ph D’s are still a little hard to come by in the East. I will be teaching in various locations from September to December. The students I taught in China are in the China Gospel Fellowship, a particular strand of the widespread house church movement now growing quickly all over China.

On September 3, my interpreter took me meet the pastor of a house church outside of Beijing, with about 300+ active members. His name is pastor Zhang, he is also the founder and principal of a college he created to train teachers, pastors and missionaries. Zang has been preaching and building congregations all over China for over 30 years and more importantly everywhere he goes, before he leaves, a new house congregation emerges.

To sit and talk with him one doesn’t get it. He is a low-key, fussless, matter- of-fact guy, by all appearances average in gifts. He doesn’t come across as a powerhouse, smiles freely and is not overly verbal. It is clear that experience and faith has taught him to work, suffer the authorities, and keep building and organizing. God has blessed this man’s work and maybe its partly because he naturally down sizes himself. Outside Beijing he and his co-workers purchased land and built the little facility you see below.

The entire structure complex is shaped into a court with a open yard in the middle with the bordering structures on each side housing the dorm rooms, kitchen, dinning room, class rooms shower stalls and toilets. The entire length doesn’t exceed 120 feet long and maybe 80 feet wide. Everything happens in close quarters. Women’s lodging on one-side men on the other (no hot water so showers are very cold).

When I arrived and took possession of a guest room on Sunday 4th I didn’t realize exactly what I was in for. The entire week unfolded with a fussless order beginning at 6 am worship. I looked for visible leadership but really couldn’t find any. The principal was not there. Everything just happens, meals, worship, classes, leisure time (where among other activities washing clothes by hand occurs in the large row of facets along a trough bordering one end of the quad.) During the time I was there, I scarcely encountered any “staff” around.

I lectured 6 hours a day and the students exercising their destiny to become leaders made everything happen on time with as little leadership fanfare as can be imagined. In class when I referred to a passage in the Bible they would find it and read in unison with perfect cadence. It sounded like a well drilled regiment of soldiers marching in order. They started the classes with prayer one student would say the prayer and as s/he prayed there was a very slight pause between each phrase during which the entire group responded with a resounding Amen. They pray with gusto without pretense of piety and sang with spirit and power. Most of all they were about their studies, 110% present and accounted for! On God’s earth these are truly some of the most devout, non fanatical, mature and graceful Christians I have ever encountered! Most of the students are the sons and daughters (about 50 – 50 male female all in their 20’s) of believing parents – house church pioneers who have truly suffered not a little for their faith. The students are different then their parents – China and the house church has changed and is changing but their devotion is of the same sterling quality of their mothers and fathers.

From the beginning of the week they began to extend their confidence to me and opened up to learn to the historical and Gospel centered ideas things I was teaching them. As the week proceeded they sought me out to work through all kinds of questions some theological, some about the church’s relation to the government and how I thought they should relate to the authorities when they collide, others sought me out to talk with me as a pastor. By the time the end of the week came I was using every waking hour talking with them or buried away reworking and fine tuning my material for the next lecture discussion. When Friday night came they went out and bought a big fish and cooked it up and presented it to me because they finally figured out I was not a pork, chicken and beef guy. After the meal most of them wanted to humble me at ping pong – their national sport. Even so I almost held my own against their medium players which pleased some of the ladies. When Saturday morning came and I was to leave a group came to my room and wanted to talk before I left and we kept going tell my driver’s wife’s became a little discouraged about the prospects of her shopping plans so we ended and they sent me off with an out poring of gratitude and love.

The following are a few of my lecture topics which I worked on with them.

1. The Collision of Two Kinds of Authority: Struggling With The Dual Challenge Exchanged between Luther and Charles the 5th at The Diet of Worms in 1521 -Then and There and Here and Now. Luther said something important to Luther but Charles also said something to Luther both have taken on a history]

2. Luther’s Breakthrough and Its Ramification for the re formation of the Christian Religion

3.Luther’s Theology of Glory vs. The Theology of the Cross: The Weighty Seeds of Thought and Insight Given to the Church at The Heidelberg Disputation in 1518

4. What Luther and Calvin Joined Together Later Generations Have Put Asunder – well Sort of, Kind of, Sometimes, More or Less, all to often! [When Spirit and Spirituality Take on a Life of Their Own -What then?].

5. “The Children Ate Sour Grapes and It Set the Children’s Teeth on Edge”: Three Reformation Models of Church – State Relations Time Travel From the 16th Century to Barmen, Germany 1934.

If you would like any of these lecture/discussions simply email me and make your request. Within a few weeks they will be available. For the few who do not have access to email let me know by sending a letter to me at 154 Grand St. New York, New York 10013 USA. Some one is checking my mail and will send you the material.

Because the seminaries & colleges I am serving this Fall 2011 are fledgling under financed endeavors I have given my services, travel expenses and all and opted to attempt to raise my own backing. If you are so moved to help just send something to my office in New York [the above address] But do not conclude this letter is a fundraiser. This is just me keeping you my friends and family abreast with my work. Some how this is coming and will come together. As I write this I am off to Calcutta, India for another hitch. My second China report should reach you in about one more week.

In friendship and warm regard,

Dr. Daniel