Friendship sparks creativity, and this book is yet another lively example of that truth.
The idea was initially born out of friendly but impassioned conversations first held at the International Association for Mission Studies in South Korea in 2016. Several friends, and soon-to-be friends, gathered in hallways and over meals to discuss the rise of Chinese Christianity from a missiological lens. The traditional organization of the conference made it otherwise impossible as Chinese missiology was divided across pre-set study groups. Because attendees were to stay with their assigned study group, it was impossible to hear the multiple ways that Chinese Christians imagined and practiced missions. A proposal was made to the executives: at the next IAMS meeting, could there be a track focused on Chinese missiology, a place where the effervescent, diverse, unpredictable, and even contradictory forms of Chinese Christian mission could be named and explored?
Although those conversations were postponed by COVID, when IAMS reconvened in 2022, space was granted to explore specifically the various ways Chinese Christian witness takes shape, both historically and in the present. Thanks to the editors of Mission Studies, many of those presentations were published in a special issue on Chinese Missiology in 2022. It became clear that Chinese Christians, not just in the mainland but around the world, were developing explicit and implicit theologies of mission that needed further attention and deeper reflection. We are grateful to the series editors of TMWC for their support of a full volume on Chinese insiders’ perspectives on mission that includes eighteen scholarly chapters, plus seven prominent artists’ reflections and their artworks.
Obviously, this has not been a task done alone but completed by friends around the globe who have valued relationships and scholarly collaborations. We are grateful to each of the authors for their timely work, patience, and flexibility. We are thankful to a team working alongside Xiaoli Yang for finding ways to express the creative process and the descriptions of the artworks of seven artists from Chinese into English in Chapter 18—a “trans-creative” process that demands a high level of cultural insight and linguistic creativity. We also appreciate the peer reviewers who made the effort to strengthen each essay and the work as a whole. We are particularly grateful to Jeanette Lee for her services as the copyeditor, as she lovingly cleaned, unified, and streamlined the entire volume. We are truly appreciative of the funding support provided by the institutions mentioned on the copyright page.
Xiaoli Yang and Daryl R. Ireland