First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: A Friend From China

A knowledgeable guest, familiar with the church in China, joins us on First Person this week. Teaching at a seminary in Hong Kong gives him the opportunity to help equip the church in mainland China by training young leaders. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 25 Feb 2011
Audio Format:: other

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

There is so much we can learn from the Chinese church about persecution, about balance in our view of discipleship and what evangelism is, what the church is about patience and all these things. We can learn a lot from the Chinese church. Welcome to First Person. I'm Wayne Shepard, and this week we'll meet Dr. Thane Yuri, who's following God's call to teach at a seminary in Hong Kong, preparing students for life in China. First Person is a weekly program where we meet people who tell their story of God at work in their life, and some of the names you may recognize from week to week, but others you may not, but all are testimonies of God's faithfulness and the direction and purpose He offers to all of us. You can learn more about First Person and each week's guest when you visit our website, firstpersoninterview.com, we've placed links for additional information, and there's an archive of past interviews, also a calendar of upcoming guests. You can even click on the Facebook icon to connect to our Facebook page at firstpersoninterview.com. A mutual friend introduced me via telephone a couple of years ago to Dr. Thane Yuri. It was by phone because he makes his home in Hong Kong. However recently, he's been on furlough back home in America, and when we found ourselves together in Franklin, Tennessee for a meeting, it was time to sit down and talk. My dad was a United Methodist pastor for over 30 years, but started in Willoughby Hills, Cleveland area, and somewhere along the mid-50s, about 55 or so, he put the tug of the Lord toward Asia. Ultimately, China, wanting to go to China, but of course, the doors were closed pretty strongly in those days, and buddy heard about an opening, the Methodist church had in Northern Taiwan, where about two million Chinese had escaped from Mao's China, and the refugees there, and my dad thought, "Well, that's the next closest thing to getting to China," so he answered that call back in 1960. How old were you, and did you go willingly or a little reticent about going? I was at two years old, so I wasn't able to do any choice. I didn't have a voice at the table, but didn't know anything else. I grew up all my friends were Chinese. I spoke Chinese as a second language, and had no American friends growing up, at least until about age seven, and so that was just the only word I really knew. That was my home. I didn't have a Western background at that point, because I only left at age two, so Taiwan was my home, my culture, my people. What was the best thing for you about growing up in that place? If I wanted to speak philosophically, I'd say way after the fact that I didn't get encumbered by maybe some of the Western expressances that so oftentimes just we'd take for granted the McDonald's, the shopping, the goods, the Western, you know, impingements, and sometimes you don't recognize when you're there, or even here, but after the fact, you realize hey, what a great thing to have had a chance to grow up in a culture like that, to learn another language, especially now, in retrospect, thinking about as China is now becoming the dominant superpower in so many areas, how important it is to know the Chinese language. Well, that was part of my early upbringing. You had it almost automatically, didn't you? Yes, and now it's usefulness, it's utility in Hong Kong and in places like Taiwan and China itself where I've taught, so it's very useful. When did you spend your first significant time in the States then? That was first grade, coming back when I was seven years old, so we did what dad did, the Methodist Church, five years there, one year back in the States, then five years back, one years, we did that three times. Do you remember anything about that transition? Was it confusing for you? I was a little bit confused, not radically so, but it was a little disorienting to be back just the States for a year, to really not have any chance to build deep roots or deep friendships, but then to have to go back to Taiwan, which is where my roots were. So again, you don't really process that as a kid, as it's happening, you kind of process it years later. So high school college, you came back to the States, high school in Taiwan, in Taipei, and then came back the day after graduation, came back to the States, back to Kentucky. And how was that transition then? I mean, did you go through any teenage rebellion years or anything like that? We'll talk about that some other day, right? No culture shock. I think that's what you're asking about, big shift in cultures back and forth. Sure. Never experienced that. I don't know why I hear people talk about it. I've heard of other missionary kids that had radical problems readjusting, but for whatever reason, I just didn't have that. My sisters who all born in Taiwan didn't have it. My brother didn't experience at least that we're aware of. So just I don't know how we circumvented that right of passage, which most missionary kids go through. But we just didn't have that. Does the credit you think go to your mom and dad in any way? I mean, obviously it does in many ways, but what would you say about what they did that made a difference? I think that would be a lion's share of their credit going to them, of course, but the way they brought us up, we were never homeschooled, but I would say we had kind of a homeschool atmosphere in our home where we went to public school. I went to Chinese school when I was very young, but at home it was kind of an atmosphere of learning, of camaraderie, of deep fellowship, of safety, and an atmosphere of learning. When you came back to go to college then, did you stay here a long time? Because you live in Hong Kong now. Yeah. How long have you been there as an adult? Well, I've been back to Hong Kong just four years, but after college, after Asbury, then I went to seminary a year off, then went to seminary, so those were basically ten years of education, and then passed through to Chinese church in New York City, a Methodist church there. I didn't know that. Yeah, well that's a secret. I've got out of the secrets you're not in. That's why I wanted to talk to you today, New York City, a Chinese church, an English-speaking congregation, so that was the key there, that I could speak Chinese much better than many of them, because they grew up in the states. Mostly from Taiwan. Mostly from their parents, mostly from Hong Kong, so they spoke Cantonese, some spoke Mandarin, but then did a two-year stint there, and this had this urge, this pull to get back to studies and PhD, and through a series of some providential meetings, opening, came available at Bethel College, Indiana, and so spent 15 years of my life there, teaching in philosophy, teaching in apologetics, teaching harmonics, evangelism, discipleship, the whole gamut. Your wife's name is Laura, and where did you meet Laura? I met her at Aspiri University. Okay. Yeah. Like most of us. I met my wife at college. In the art department. She was an art major. I was an art minor, and so we met in literally New York. Did you decide to become an art minor when you saw that she was an art major? God decided that, but that was, she was a, won my heart over in the art building literally, and so it's, did you also know that I taught ceramics at Bethel College for 11 years? See? I told you I wanted to learn some things about you today. Yeah, that's another secret that had my own pottery business between college and seminary, called the master's hands. No, you told me previously your wife is still painting today. Are you still doing any pottery or anything? No, she's the artist. She's the artist. I'm the doodler. She, she's a, she's an incredible artist, but I cartoon, and I do graphic arts and stuff like that, but she is the, the true artist, the consummate artist in the family. Okay. And she paints mostly oils and acrylics, but she's been published and she's working on a book right now. So she's really takes her craft to her gift seriously. So your kids were born here, of course, in the States and spent most of their life in the States. At what point did you go back to Hong Kong and you took your kids with you, right? That's right. We've got four kids, but when we went, called about six years ago to leave Bethel and the opening opened up with OMS, One Mission Society, One Lord, One Life, One Calling, they needed a seminary professor in Hong Kong who was willing to come and teach courses on some of the wide variety of disciplines I mentioned before on apologetics and things like that. But with the real key being, listen, since half of our graduates in this seminary are called to China, if you come teach here, you can have an impact in China by teaching them as they're preparing to go to teach themselves, work at the underground church to work in universities to work in all kind of different venues. But the real blessing, the real icing on the cake was, as we got over there, we realized we actually had openings ourselves to actually do stuff in China personally, not just with the house church, but with above ground and the universities, all kind of openings there. If you've got a degree, I'm not saying this guarantees it, but if you've got a PhD, which we labor through to get here in the States, they've got to open up some doors after that. If you have a PhD in the Chinese university system, it is an amazing opening that God has orchestrated, that the Chinese government, if you've got that kind of background, says, "Listen, we could use you to come into our system and to teach things like church history, theology, philosophy, religion, Christianity, and culture. We're open to you teaching those things as long as you don't proselytize, as long as you don't teach them with your evangelical proclivities strongly on your sleeve." But you're there to freely answer questions that come up, right? My dad and I were teaching in Beedah, which is in Beijing, the largest university in China, the Harvard of China. And dad and I were freely able to talk about things like philosophy, of Darwinism, to critique evolutionary theory, all kind of things. And the students were just, I still got the questions with me to this day that they wrote down, to this very day, the questions that you couldn't dare ask or at least very rarely ask in today's typical secular university environment. So it's an amazing dichotomy of what they're open to over there versus what we're open to here in the States. Now growing up in Taiwan and living these years in Hong Kong and spending some time in mainland China, give us some generalities about the Chinese people that we need to know. Is it possible to do that? It's possible. I'll probably stick my foot in my mouth. Let me just start with the students here because you've got this generational gap here. Those that are post tenement square versus pre tenement square. If you're talking about generalities in the students, like in the university setting here, very open, not calloused. I think some of those individuals, what I would characterize as ones who haven't gone deep enough into the communist philosophy to be disillusioned by it. They somehow, this current generation has missed that kind of bitterness, that kind of disillusionment. That's a pretty sweeping generalization, but that's what I've at least seen in my own assessment. What was your restate your question against? Just give us a general understanding of how to look at Chinese people. I mean, it's still sort of a mystery culture to many of us. They're very open, very curious. Not all of them are suspicious of Western culture. I think I would say that the vast majority of university students would have their dream to study abroad, even study in America, where you get the promise like most post-Cold War superpowers like Russia and even China, even lesser luminaries like Romania, is that with the older folks, you still have the deep suspicion, the paranoia that's there. Not with everybody, but that still is, I think, pretty evident where it's very hard for them to trust someone with a face like ours, not always, but sometimes just because of the collective suspicions that have been in those countries for many decades, but some very good friendships that I've established, very good in a short amount of time. Some observations on the growing church in China from Thanyuri will continue this conversation in just a moment here on First Person. This time on First Person, you'll meet a medical doctor who found healing for a soul. When I thought of the way that I had hurt my wife, I had been unfaithful to her. When I thought of how horrendous that was, I just wanted to get rid of my life and I was looking for a hiding place and I found it in the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll hear the testimony of Dr. Chuck McGowan when you join us next time here on First Person. There's lots of talk about China these days, but we're getting a firsthand perspective from Thanyuri. I ask him to tell me from his heart of his love for the Chinese people. It's a land of great opportunity as far as just, for a secular mindset, just a secular person looking at China. It's the land of great opportunity because if you can corner one-tenth of that market, you can forget any market the rest of the world, it's giant, it's a huge. We as Christians, look at it as one-fifth, the great commission, it is a land of great opportunity. There are 22,000 new converts to the Christian faith every single day in 22,000 a day. The opportunity is incredible. They are very open. The problem with that is you've got that huge incredible growth, that many new converts, but you don't have near as many disciples who can kind of grow them up in the maturity of the faith. So the problem is that you've got the cults that come along, the indigenous cults like the Eastern Lightning, and the Falun Gong famous well-known cults in China that come along and pick up these young folks with great spiritual awakening to hunger, just pick them right off. That's why it comes to no surprise. The greatest request, the cry, the screaming, the cry of the house church, the real church in China is to the West, send us teachers, send us those who are trained, how to disciple new Christians, help us with materials, help us with translations. That's without a doubt, that's the number one request of the house church, send us teachers. You've given us the the bigness of China. Now bring it down to the personal levels. Tell us a story, someone that you've gotten to know, someone you love, someone who has a heart for the gospel in China. Tell us their story. Speaking of a little bit of code here, which is called Dave, it's not his name, met Dave many times. He's in a very strategic part in China. He's been in prison nine times. He refers to every prison time where he's either beaten or tortured or interrogated. He refers to those as his seminary experience, his training, where he just gets to be a part with the Lord, where he's either recuperating from his beatings or whatever in his solitary confinement. One time, just praying, the thinking. His mindset is really quite different from ours because he's not bitter, he's not angry, he doesn't fester, he just allows us a Lord, what's the next step? When you talk with individuals, house church leaders, those who've been through this kind of persecution, where there's old guards, they call them uncles like Moses, shea and others, and along we dial, these are famous names now off the scene who have either died or at least in their twilight years. When they are talking about their experiences, they don't talk about it like we talk about it. They say this is part of the fellowship of the suffering of Christ. They won't detail it. They won't. They don't want to. That's the point is, they're like, when you say could you kind of, you know, expedite the scars in your back for us. So what are these about? They'll turn it to Jesus. Exactly. They'll say, can't we just talk about Jesus? It's a waste of time to talk about. We have so much to learn from them. Exactly. We took a group of 12 people, there was 12 total people this last March to kind of go to the trip to China to see what the Lord is doing. I'm going to be careful how I share things here, but generally, the consensus of the group was that we have just exactly that, so much to learn from the church in China. We go sometimes thinking we've got the Western ideas or we've got $100,000, our church give a million dollars to change things and we go to China, we can change it always. If you go there with the right heart set, it always changes you. There is so much we can learn from the Chinese church about persecution, about the proper balance in our view of discipleship and what evangelism is, what the church is about patience and all these things. And I think it's we can learn a lot from the Chinese church. I've only made one brief trip into China as we've talked and I feel like I learned a few things, but I have so much more to learn. But isn't it true that yes, there is persecution in China, but it's widely different in different parts of the country? What's the saying that everything is true somewhere in China when it comes to persecution? You went to Anhui Province, which is the most Christian province of all 32 provinces. And there you have a lot of manifestations, the problem there is you have great manifestations of great works of the Lord, but also you have some of the more wilder manifestations that sometimes give the Christian thing. I think I heard a few of those stories, right? Right, exactly, right. Didn't fit my theological system. Right. So it just depends on what my friend Lowell, Uncle Lowell, who's been in China for over 50 years, has said just what you just said. He said, "Every single thing you've heard about China is true somewhere." So with provinces, some provinces, and I've got to be again careful what I say here, but some provinces because there's just a certain government in place or a certain mayor who may have a Christian leaning or some kind of a patience because of a family member who's a Christian who just chooses to maybe look the other way when these things are going on. Many Chinese officials are aware that Christianity is a good thing, a good and healthy and wholesome influence. Not all people have this perspective, but many in fact do. Now let me come back to this thing about 22,000 a day. Marvin Alasky, former president of King's College, has said in World Magazine that if current trends continue, the great footnote of our lifetime will be how Christianity became one of the greatest Christian superpowers in all of history. China became that superpower. Yeah. Now don't worry about how that fits in with Lohan Jenkins or some kind of grand eschatological picture. Yes, sure. We understand there's a balance there. There's an unbelievable change in the battlefield, if you will, spiritually in our lifetime. How people back in the '50s and '60s just referred to China. It's closed. What happened behind the bamboo current is just it's an unbelievable locked box. We can't get in. We've kind of given up on China. While the Koreans during those years were constantly pleading with themselves and the whole Pacific Rim and with the West, don't forget China. Don't forget. Forget not. But in Hong Kong, which was then under, you know, Hong Kong under British rule, was you had into the, into the Victoria Harbor, you had the Pearl River Delta, you had the Pearl River. And what people described there for, you know, months and years is out of China, down the river, the bodies would flow down and then not sure, you know, they were, you know, martyrs for the faith or their, you know, dissidents politically or whatever. But what a loud picture that would send to people, you couldn't get up into China, but as you saw coming out of China, that steady flow of dead bodies down into the Victoria Harbor and people just thought that China is closed. But now it's, Wayne, it's pretty open. Now you can't just go and do whatever you want. You've got to be very careful, very strategic, very wise, very wise. That's why you can't get into certain positions, whether you're businessmen that do the mission is business, business, business, mission. Let me, before our time is going, let me ask you two brief questions. Number one, I have to ask you about back to Jerusalem. I get different answers from different people about back to Jerusalem. What is back to Jerusalem and have you seen that it is indeed a valid description of what's happening in part of the church in China anyway? Yeah. There's a wide discrepancy within the Chinese church itself, the official church, so there's those that sided with it wholeheartedly and those that have some tremendous reservations, some of them theological, some of them more personality oriented. The larger picture is valid back in the 1920s, there was a group of very serious, very evangelical, very biblical group that had the idea, well, the gospel came to us, came out to all the rest of the world from Jerusalem and ultimately through the Silk Road ended up in China. By the way, did you know that Christianity first had its beachhead in China in the year 635 AD? No, I did not. The historians had established us many, many, many churches for decades in China. When Chinese hear about that nowadays, they kind of, the first response is that you've got to be kidding me. But you find the research, the inscription, you see the stone inscription, you find people realize what, wow, Christianity really was here 1700 years ago. Then their next response is what else have we not been told? What else has been kept from me? Back to back to Jerusalem. Yeah. So the idea is to return on that same route to back through the Muslim world. Yeah, we have an obligation spiritually. Let's go ahead and just follow this mythologically backwards and let's take it all the way back to Jerusalem. So their idea is not, we have to get to Jerusalem, their idea is, well, yeah, we'll head that direction and try and... It's metaphorical in a sense. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Hit every Islamic country in between. The thing I got to ask you this, you undoubtedly have God's call to do what you're doing. How have you felt God's call? Describe that to me. The orientation, the oriented point of my compass seems to be pointing toward China. I can't get it off my radar. It's there. The reason is, and I think there's other opportunities in the world, but because it does represent one-fifth, the Great Commission, because I do speak the Chinese language, because there is a great openness, because the universities are an incredible mission field today. What's ironic here, Wayne, I think you know this, is there are openings there, yes. But the Chinese church is now cashing up with the Korean church and the African church and the Indian church, sending church, sending people to our country. Great irony there. Great pain. I think we would defer to the USA as one of the most ironic mission fields in history, because of our great spiritual heritage, now squandering our birthright, and now other nations are looking at us as we are a target in their spiritual crosshairs to send people to share the gospel. We have much to learn from our Chinese brethren. I admire Dr. Thane Urey in the ministry that God has given him, serving the church in China at a seminary in Hong Kong. My one brief trip to China only whetted my appetite for going back some day and for praying more effectively for Chinese believers, and I hope you'll join me in that. We've placed additional information about Dr. Urey on our website, firstpersoninterview.com, and I hope you'll pray for him as he and his family serve Christ in that culture. Also on the website, there's a complete archive of past interviews, including last week's conversation with actor Michael Joyner of The Grace Card Movie. There's also a calendar of a coming broadcast found at firstpersoninterview.com. And then if you have a suggestion for a guest you'd like to see interviewed, contact us using the email address you'll find at firstpersoninterview.com. I'd be very happy to hear from you via email. When you join us next time, our guest will be a medical doctor who tells his story of being in church but not in Christ until one day when his wife became very ill and he was desperate for God. Since that day, Dr. Chuck McGowan has followed and served Christ faithfully and you'll meet him next week here on First Person. Now with my thanks to friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Thanks for listening. Join us online at firstpersoninterview.com and we'll see you next week at the same time. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]