By Mallory Schlabach, Editor in Chief
Dr. Royce Money, president of the university, traveled to China this summer and met with Chinese government officials along with nine other Christian leaders from the United States to engage Chinese officials in informal dialogue about Christianity.
"A delegation of 10 conservative evangelical Christian leaders went to China on a mission of goodwill," Money said. "We went to convince the Chinese leaders that they had nothing to fear from followers of Jesus."
On July 31, this group along with members from their families left the United States for Beijing, China, for an eight-day trip filled with meetings with senior Chinese government officials, members of the Chinese Communist Party, the director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs and several others.
"We were unsure of what to expect when we boarded the plane for China," said Dr. Wayne Barnard, dean of spiritual formation and a member of the delegation. "The day before we left we had heard from our contact in China that all of our meetings with the Chinese government had been canceled."
By the time the group had arrived, though, the meetings had been set up again, and the group began discussing Christianity and how it coincided with Chinese laws, Barnard said.
The group, put together by John Bentley, founder of Harmony Outreach, a foster home for physically handicapped children in China, and his wife Lisa, ACU alumnus, consisted of Money and Barnard; Rick Gregory, vice president of Dallas Baptist University; John Bethany of Focus on the Family; Gary Smith, senior pastor at Fielder Road Baptist Church in Arlington; Rick Atchley, senior minister at Richland Hills Church of Christ in Fort Worth; David Llewellyn, legal scholar from Sacramento, Calif.; Bob Russell, former senior pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., Steve Green, literary agent and executive director of UpWords Ministries; and Max Lucado, author and senior minister at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio.
Barnard said the discussions centered around the delegation’s wish to share the message of Jesus in a lawful and acceptable way.
Much of the discussion was led by Lucado, who spoke of shared values like family, marriage, leadership, personal integrity and character.
While Christianity is not technically prohibited in China, it is subject to regulation. Christians are required to register their religion with the government, but many Christians opt to be unregistered, Barnard said.
"We realized that the world is very, very big and that God is working mightily there in ways we don’t think about," Barnard said.
He said the group is working on possibly meeting in the summer of 2007 in China again to discuss more topics with the Chinese government such as leadership and working with the AIDS population.
