Christian groups who flouted a Chinese ban on foreign missionaries are calling their underground evangelizing during the Olympic Games a success.
Drawn to a nation of 1.3 billion people under atheist rule, the groups prepared for years for what the Southern Baptists once called “a spiritual harvest unlike any other.” “We did see some conversions,” said missionary Mark Taylor of Pensacola, Florida.
For Taylor, planning began four years ago with a lunch at the Athens Games among his Florida-based Awaken Generation ministry and ones from other countries. In the ensuing years, they came to China as tourists, making contacts among local Chinese.
Taylor said 115 people from 12 countries gathered in Thailand for orientation before scattering throughout China, from Tibet through the far northeast. Two groups worked in Beijing, he said, though he would not give details.
Other larger efforts were carried out by the US-based Southern Baptist Convention and the international ministry Youth With A Mission, Christian groups said. Neither ministry could say how many people were sent in.
China tried to keep out foreign missionaries before the Olympics.
It kicked out more than 100 suspected missionaries last summer, said the China Aid Association, a US monitoring group,.
China’s intelligence services made lists of potentially troublesome evangelical Christians and authorities tightened visa measures ahead of the games.
Taylor and other groups knew the risks.
“It’s very difficult,” said the 27-year-old Taylor, who on Wednesday explored the Olympic Green with six other team members, one as young as 15, after finishing their mission.
“It’s got to be through relationships. Handing out [religious] tracts would not go over well at all. That would be like me walking around with a ‘Free Tibet’ flag.”
Instead, the Christians came in on tourist visas and said they were involved in sports or cultural activities, which China allows.
The topic of Olympics outreach was touchy for some groups.
“No comment,” said a woman who answered the phone at Athletes in Action, the sports ministry of the Campus Crusade for Christ.
She then hung up.
However, a spokesman for the Missouri-based Fellowship of Christian Athletes was happy to talk about outreach efforts within the Olympic Village by its athletes.
Athletes stepped up to lead their own prayer groups or bible studies after the Chinese said they would assign chaplains to the village’s religious services center instead of allowing teams to bring in their own, said Dan Britton, the fellowship’s senior vice president of ministries.
“It’s a very unique situation,” he said. “When you assign a chaplain, it’s almost like saying, ‘We’re bringing a team to China and assigning the coach.’ Well, the coach doesn’t know the players and only knows the sport. We feel the spiritual realm is the same way.”
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