You are nearing the end of an arduous overseas journey, feeling very much a stranger, you are running low on clean clothes, cash and stamina. Then you find your flight home has been cancelled, and there are no empty seats for another three weeks. Imagine involuntarily joining a select club of 150,000 Britons stranded around the world, part of the 7.8 million people whose travel plans have been disrupted this week. Few will have made contingency plans last Wednesday as the impact of the cloud of Icelandic volcanic ash began to impact every international airport in the world.
The invisible, tiny, razor sharp shards of glass, thrown up by the molten lava and spreading across Europe are lethal to aircraft engines, cockpit windows and sensitive instrumentation. Pilots know the consequences. At 20,000 feet there is no safe level of volcanic ash.
As I sat for three hours waiting my turn in BA's plush downtown Hong Kong office on Monday, all sorts of imaginative ways to become an intrepid world explorer, befitting my National Geographic membership, came to mind. I could get home by train via Beijing and Moscow in just 8 days or take a berth on a container ship leaving from Shenzhen in only 22 days. Alternatively I could fly to Spain or Greece, outside the exclusion zone, and hitch a lift or hire a car through Europe. Any one of these would have fulfilled all my unrealised student dreams of travelling the world, but I decided to stay put with my daughter Louise in Hong Kong and enjoy some down time processing the recent China Overture.
China is the world’s most populous country and is also the most rapidly urbanizing nation in the world. Uniquely the Chinese GDP has grown a minimum of 8% every year for 30 years. But while typically Chinese people save 30% of their income, 150 million still live below the poverty line.
With 17 million residents, and growing at a million a year, Shanghai has become the largest economic centre in China and one of the most expensive cities in the world to live. It has pioneered a market economy in a Communist country, its GDP already outstrips that of Brazil. You can dine out for anything between 30p and £300. Shanghai’s Maglev train, using magnetic levitation, will get you to Pudong international airport in speeds of up to 300 miles an hour. The city’s Expo opening next month is planning to welcome and host 70 million additional visitors. And let’s not forget China owns $200 trillion in US government bonds and counting.
I remarked more than once that the stunning nightly light show, illuminating not just every high rise block, but towers, bridges, motorways, river boats and road side trees, would be regarded as brash and ostentatious were this a European city.
The China Overture, an educational course arranged by Bakke Graduate University, introduced our group of pastors and mission partners, drawn from 12 countries, to a China undergoing radical economic, political, social and religious changes, especially the reaction to the Cultural Revolution since Mao’s death in 1976. During visits to Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen and Shanghai, we were introduced to the leaders of registered and non-registered churches, seminaries and mission agencies working in China.
Hong Kong was a former British colony. Under British rule, Hong Kong has developed into a world class city. Since the change of sovereignty back to China, the churches are searching for signs of hope. Macau was a colony of Portugal, a Catholic colony where Robert Morrison first landed and then began the modern missionary era in China. How do the Protestants witness in a Catholic society with gambling as the main source of income for the city? Shanghai is also the power center of the Christian Church. How do the Protestants witness here?
Some of the questions we grappled with were:
1. How do you effectively engage the diverse development of cities within China, and the ministries arising from that development?
2. What are the essential differences between a missiology for the city, and a theology of the city?
3. How do we celebrate the “whole church of Jesus Christ” when congregations and leaders are so incredibly different?
4. What does it mean for urban churches in China to be signs of and agents for a Kingdom agenda?
5. How do churches ministering in the context of poverty work without falling into the “charity trap,” or are they?
6. How do leaders sustain themselves as Christians when the culture is not so favorable?
7. Is the incarnation our model as well as our message? What is the difference?
8. How are churches handling pluralism in worship, leadership or other aspects of community life?
9. How are you preparing yourself for globalization? How are you accommodating to the fact that more than 80% of the world’s Christians are non-white, non-western and non-northern? How is Christianity being re-defined in China?
10. What are the real issues facing pastors in these cities?
Long before it dawned on me that I was not flying home to the UK on Monday, this had already become the most challenging and faith stretching mission trip of my life. I am processing what God is teaching me through it and look forward to sharing more on my return.
I had so very much looked forward to being home this week, preaching at Sunday’s services, and participating in the Annual Church Meeting that will follow our monthly church family lunch. I will be with you in spirit and in prayer.
On Monday, I am due to continue flying East to Seattle via Tokyo for the multi-city launch of our film With God on our Side. If the Lord wills, I plan to be in Seattle, then Los Angeles, Austin, Colorado, Washington and finally Newark. You can view the schedule and venue addresses here
One small consolation is I get to circumnavigate the world in 33 days, and to see Tokyo and the Pacific, which will also be a first. Ironically, I should eventually get home on 7th May, three days ahead of the earliest empty seat I could have got from Hong Kong and just four days ahead of that container ship leaving Shenzhen for Tilbury on Sunday.
See BBC Report: Passengers may be stranded in Hong Kong for weeks
