Story number 3 for 14 Mar 2000

Twleve Chinese Christian leaders were in the United States recently to talk about ways the church in the west can help the church in China. Erik Burklin of China Partners says the symposium saw a new openness from members of the China Christian council. “In the past we’ve always felt like it was a closed door, or at least there was careful scrutiny of who could go to China and do work over there. At this symposium is was very evident that the China Christian Council is more and more trying to open its doors to the west to seek help from their western counter parts.” Burklin says evangelism is successful in China, but they need assistance in discipleship and leadership training. “There is, on the average now, one ordained pastor for every 10,000 Christians and that’s just those that they can count with in the registered church. So, you can see there’s this huge need right now for training emerging Christian leaders and pastors.”