of the Good News of Jesus Christ, calling men and women to since the sixteenth century. And the challenges are great: how to believe in him and to be gathered into worshiping, nurturing, engage in mission in the burgeoning urban centers; how to help serving bodies, which we call churches, and that these churches provide better training for the two million functional pastors in must be appropriate to their cultural contexts. Out of such Asia, Africa, and Latin America who have no formal preparation churches ministries of compassion and social transformation can for ministry; how to meet the desperate physical and social needs and should flow. of the world's poor while maintaining the focus on evangelism; Second, it is clear that mission normally comes out of re­ how to affirm the validity of every culture butalso recognize that newal, which begins with a new vision of the transcendent and each culture, including our own, needs to be transformed by the holy God, and then a new experience of his grace that both Gospel; and how can the church in the West discover how to read motivates and empowers mission. the Scriptures with new eyes as we learn from the church in the Third, I am impressed with the fact that such movements rest of the world. have nearly always begun on the periphery of the institutional Last June, at the Communion service preceding Fuller's church, whether at Antioch, Herrnhut, Moulton, a haystack, or commencement, I walked up the aisle with a Korean trustee to Azusa Street. This fact teaches us to be open to the Holy Spirit, take the bread and wine. In front of me was a woman of African who frequently does his new work through unexpected people descent, a member of the theology faculty. Around us were in unexpected places. students and faculty, men and women, from a variety of nations When we went to Brazil in 1956, the perception was wide­ and races, united as we celebrated the cross and resurrection of spread that we were nearing the end of the missionary era. How our Lord, united in our desire that the world might believe that things change! Today the missionary movement is flourishing the Father had sent him. The thought flashed through my mind, and is more multinational than ever before. We have moved into "This is the way it is supposed to be"-so that a fragmented a postdenominational, post-Christendom, post-Westernera. The world mightsee that in Jesus Christ lies reconciliation, unity, and mission boards on which I serve are multiethnic and life. That experience expresses my pilgrimage. I trust it is the multidenominational and work with a variety of churches over­ pilgrimage of the church as well. seas. Today the church is being reshaped to an extent not seen The Legacy of Timothy Richard P. Richard Bohr imothy Richard, whose namebecamesynonymouswith Believing that China's leaders lived beyond the treaty-port T the rise of modern China, was born on October 10, 1845, periphery, Richard moved, in 1875, to Qingzhou, an important into a devout Baptist farming family in Carmarthenshire, Wales. administrative and religious center 250 miles west of Yantai. As Inspired by the Second Evangelical Awakening to become a the sole BMS representative in Shandong's interior, Richard missionary, Richard left teaching to enter Haverfordwest Theo­ sought to appear less foreign by dressing in a Chinese scholar's logical College in 1865. There he dedicated himself to China, gown, shaving his head, and attaching an artificial queue to his which he considered the "most civilized of the non-Christian cap. After saving many lives by distributing quinine water nations." I In 1869 the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS)accepted during a typhus outbreak within months of his arrival, Richard Richard's application and assigned him to Yantai (Chefoo), gathered a flock of fifteen converts-baptizing some in a Bud­ Shandong Province. He arrived there in February 1870. dhist temple so as to make Christianity seem more indigenous­ and even gained entree to religious leaders, including Muslim An Emerging Strategy, 1870-76 imams and sectarian chiefs. He appealed to the latter by compos­ ing verses thatmixed biblical quotations withexcerpts from their The people's indifference to Richard's street preaching soon own sacred scrolls. Within a year, however, his proselytizing induced him to adopt a top-down approach. Applying advice efforts were cut short by a devastating drought that parched the from Edward Irving's sermon "Missionaries After the Apostolic North China plain. School" about "seeking the worthy," Richard concluded that if foreign missionaries could Christianize the Chinese elite, the Combating the Great Famine, 1876-79 entire population would follow and establish self-supporting congregations. The key to enlightening the "worthy," Richard North China's five provinces had never enjoyed abundant rain­ thought, was to "free the Chinese philosophers from the chains fall. The Great Famine of 1876-79, China's most catastrophic on of superstition ... of Yin Yang and the five elements.'? To this record, claimed up to 13 million lives.' After three successive end,he assisted the AmericanPresbyterianCalvinWilsonMateer years of drought-induced crop failures, desperate people de­ (1836-1908) in physics and chemistry experiments before Chi­ voured sorghum stalks, weeds, and tree bark. When these re­ nese audiences in Yantai. sources were exhausted, many resorted to cannibalism. Late in 1876, regents of the four-year-old Guangxu emperor P. Richard Bohr isAssociate Professor ofHistoryandDirector ofAsian Studies (r. 1875-1908) ordered traditional relief measures, including at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's Universityin Minnesota. imperial prayers for rain, diversion of tribute grain to stricken April 2000 75 areas, exemption of land taxes, reduction of grain prices, and ing many devastated areas, and government corruption at all creation of refugee centers to distribute rice-gruel, medicine, and levels had siphoned off numerous relief supplies. Moreover, clothing. The throne tapped private wealth by selling official because Confucian economic theory itself assumed that famine ranks and offices to gentry and lineage leaders. Aside from was inherent in a rural economy considered cyclical and static, raising considerable sums among coastal and overseas Chinese, the throne did no more than order such time-honored rehabilita­ the local elite did what it could to redeem women and children tion measures as relocating refugees, improving water control, sold for food. planting more durable crops, rebuilding public granaries, and Richard considered the famine a "direct leading from God outlawing opium cultivation. to open up the interior of China" to Christianity.' He seized In 1879 Richard wrote: "If famine [relief] was Christian evangelistic advantage by urging famine victims to "turn from work, education to avoid future famine was equally, or greater dead idols to the living God and pray unto Him and obey His Christian work."? The education he had in mind was based on laws and conditions of life.:" Overnight, some 2,000 Chinese in "the study of science [which] ought to be held in as much Qingzhou sought catechism from Richard. Yet Richard was reverence as religion, for it deals with the laws of Cod."!" During equally concerned about the people's material well-being, not­ the famine years, Richard sketched these "laws" in a series of ing that Christianity took "cognizance of all in this world as well articles he published in Wanguo gongbao (Review of the times), a as the next, in a word, of man-body and soul/" He quickly devised a relief plan. The same Treaties of Tianjin (1858) and Beijing (1860) that had opened China's interior to foreign trade If famine relief was also granted autonomy of missionary action. However, lest Western charity ignite antiforeignism, Richard coordinated re­ Christian work, then lief plans with Qing officials. He informed Governor-General Li education to avoid future Hongzhang (1823-1901) that the Shandong missionaries would supplement government grain assistance by giving cash contri­ famine was equal or greater butions. Christian work. Richard solicited international donations by publishing graphic accounts of famine suffering in the world press. Contri­ butions were remitted through the China Famine Relief Fund monthly magazine begun in 1874 by the American Methodist Committee in Shanghai. Richard, along with his Protestant and Young J. Allen (1836-1907) to bring Western knowledge to Catholic colleagues in Shandong, resolved to be more systematic China's leaders. than the government's seemingly haphazard relief effort. After In 1881 Richard reissued the series in a pamphlet entitled obtaining lists of victims from local officials, the missionaries PresentNeeds. In it he recommended that the Qing government investigated individual circumstances and distributed cash di­ (1) employ meteorology to forecast famine conditions; (2) ex­ rectly to sufferers. Richard also set up five orphanages to provide pand agriculture by improving water conservancy, teaching job training for young victims. agronomy, applyingchemicalfertilizer, cultivatinghardiercrops, In November 1877 Richard moved to Shanxi, the neighbor­ and developing food processing methods; (3) expand industrial ing province to the west, where famine had intensified. After wealth throughmechanization, mining, and hydroelectricpower; meetingwithGovernorZengGuoquan (1824-90), Richard began (4)expand commerce by stabilizing China's currency, standard­ coordinating