Whether you are new to the China Partnership or have been partners for a while, we invite you to attend our annual conference. The title for our conference this year is “The Church in a Global-Local World,” and we have structured it differently than past years. This year, our totally new conference structure will include:
1) A one-day conference, rather than two days
2) A conference setting as opposed to a “meeting”
3) Talks, panels, and discussion times rather than ministry reports
4) Speakers addressing both global and local topics in missions
Why should you come? In the US, we have typically discussed missions with a perspective of “us-going-to-them.” This basic assumption has effected missions in numerous ways, one of which is our inability to notice the demographic shifts in the United States and the increasing numbers of immigrants from all around the world coming to our country.
The world has changed dramatically in the last century and is continuing to change, and this is why you should attend or tell someone to come. We always need to be re-thinking and re-imagining how best to reach the lost with Christ according to the changing realities around us. It may not always be a case of “us” going to the rest of the world. Now is the time for the West to consider how we participate in missions – how do we share our knowledgeable without failing to truly listen to those we are trying to help? The current realities of the global church demand that we work towards stronger and and more independent partners in the majority world.
At our conference, we hope to inspire you personally, along with your local church and ministries, to think about partnership in different terms. We believe that our missions vocabulary and terminology are vitally important and there is much we can do to reshape how we think about the church’s call to share the gospel among the nations. We hope to inspire you to think about global partnership through the lens of local service first, finding ways to love and welcome the stranger next door, serving and loving Chinese international students in the United States.
Join us on January 19th in Atlanta, GA, for a one-day conference that will help us think about missions in new ways. Learn about changes in missions, why we should reach international students in the United States, what it looks like to reflect the diversity of our communities in our churches, and how to love and serve the immigrant and refugee population. We will also hear about the state of the Chinese church, how the Gospel meets Chinese culture and people, and how we in the West can become better partners with our Chinese brothers and sisters.
The China Partnership conference will include time to interact and ask questions of our speakers, experienced church leaders and practitioners. You can also participate in breakout discussion with representatives from your church or other churches. In order to maximize your time at the conference, try and invite others from your church or ministry to enable mutual learning and facilitation of discussion and planning.
We have an incredible opportunity to share the love of Christ with different ethnic groups globally and locally. Our missions paradigms should no longer be separate: global strategies and local outreach are no longer mutually exclusive. The global America we find today beckons us to creatively and boldly adjust our strategies to better engage our changing times with the timeless and unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jeff Kyle first went to China in the summer of 2004 and has been working with the China Partnership since graduating from Covenant College in 2006. He is passionate about US churches developing a global-local missions strategy. Jeff and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, live in New York City.
