Is being a lawyer a spiritual calling?
I will never forget the time when a young Chinese man told me how he had given up studying law in order to train to become a missionary. I could relate as years before I had given up a promising career to do the same thing. However, what troubled me was the reason he gave to make this life-changing decision. It wasn’t one based on calling. Rather, it was based on an unbiblical mindset that assumed that becoming a missionary was more spiritual and important than being a lawyer.
He was intelligent and as a Christian maybe he could have made a valuable and needed contribution within the Chinese legal system. But, in his mind, law and any other secular work was considered unspiritual so he was glad to leave it behind and do ‘Christian’ work instead.
A cause for concern
Like in Africa, China has seen a tremendous growth in the number of new Christians over recent decades. Not only does China have the world’s largest population, it also boasts the fastest growing Church! From a mere one million believers in 1949, current estimates range anywhere between 75 million to 150 million. Given many believers have gone underground, it is impossible to know exact numbers. However, despite increased persecution and the government seeking to stop the continued growth, it is predicted that China, while officially atheist, could have more Christians than the U.S. by 2030.
While such news is a cause for rejoicing, I do have a concern. Merely having a large number of Christians within a nation will not automatically bring about cultural transformation, which is necessary if we are to heed Christ’s command to ‘disciple the nations’ (Matthew 28:19).
Salvation gospel or kingdom gospel?
Africa has seen the results of preaching a gospel of salvation, but not the fruit that comes from the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom (which Jesus proclaimed). Such a gospel must go beyond seeing individual souls saved in order to go to heaven, to seeing every sector of society also reformed and redeemed for Christ’s kingdom. The light of the gospel must be taken into every corner of society.
This is the gospel that led to the transformation of Western civilisation. It’s also the gospel that built modern India through the catalytic efforts of British missionary William Carey (the so-called ‘father of modern missions’).
Kingdom thinkers and workers
For China to experience a spiritual reformation it will need missionaries and nation disciplers like Carey. The Chinese themselves are best placed to evangelise their own peoples. But to see Christ’s kingdom come it will need kingdom thinkers and workers to penetrate Chinese society and culture with a biblical worldview.
This is not about destroying the uniqueness of Chinese culture which expresses a part of God no other culture can. But it is about bringing the ways of King Jesus into every area of life – into Chinese family life and marriage, into its economy, media, government and legal system, arts & entertainment, and so on. All of it belongs to Jesus and is to come under His lordship.
For this to happen though, it’s going to take a body of Christ-followers who will be the hands and feet of Jesus in these places. It’s going to take many ‘missionaries’ (Chinese and non-Chinese) who won’t vacate these vital mission fields through a lack of biblical understanding, but will recognise their gifts and callings to those very areas in which they’ve been placed.
(Photo by Bren Leslie from FreeImages)