December 26, 2022
My old church was mid-to-large in size and located on the campus of a major state university. Like every church of its size, they sent people on mission trips. Of the people they sent, they primarily encouraged the youth group kids to go—you know, so they could learn the importance of evangelizing God to the masses.
They had a couple of regular locations where they’d send people, but the destination I think they were the most proud of was Ch!na. The brother of the college pastor had recently moved to Ch!na to start a full-time ministry. So every summer, our youth group would put a bunch of the kids on a plane and fly them across the world to meet up with that team and do some mission work.
I suspect they were particularly proud of their Ch!na ministry because it’s illegal to proselytize Christianity in Ch!na. That one fact alone makes Christians sit up straight in righteous indignation, pull out their passports, and immediately fly over to convert as many people as they can.
As always, when the youth kids returned from Ch!na, they’d stand in front of the congregation and give their testimonies about what they experienced over there.
Since proselytizing is illegal, they really impressed upon us the need for secrecy. We were told that if you were going to email someone on the team, then you had to write “Ch!na.” They talked about how if they were going to post about what they were doing on Facebook, then they also had to refer to it as “Ch!na” and use a handful of other code words that were, admittedly, extremely easy to figure out.
Now, back when I was a Christian, I was totally supportive of the youth kids flying over to Ch!na for a mission trip. But when they talked about this secrecy and code word stuff, I immediately checked out. I couldn’t help but think one thing:
Do they really, truly, honestly believe that the Ch!nese government has literally no clue that they’re there and what they’re up to?
No. That’s impossible.
First of all, have you ever seen a youth group in an airport? Even if they’re not wearing t-shirts with Bible verses on them (and they usually are) they still have a certain vibe oozing off of them. Imagine five clean cut white dudes walking up to the passport control desk in the Shanghai airport with twenty-five high schoolers behind them talking about how they’re there for “tourism.”
Second, despite the need for secrecy, as per usual the missionaries just can’t stop themselves from going on social media and boasting about what they’re doing. They’d post updates on Facebook and think they were in the clear because they were writing “Ch!na.” This was back in 2009 or so when Facebook was still relatively cool. But as we know now, Facebook was never not gathering data. These very primitive secrecy protocols that the missionaries thought they were adhering to demonstrate a severe lack of knowledge of how ISPs work and how easy it is for the government to tap into those kinds of things and figure out exactly what is going on—especially for a communist government like Ch!na has.
Now, in 2022, we have TikTok, which is essentially spyware for the Ch!nese government. These guys were internet data geniuses going back a long time before now. You mean to tell me that these guys have literally no clue that southern Baptist youth groups are evangelizing in their country? Come on.
I suppose it’s a moot point these days. I doubt any church will be sending their youth to Ch!na anytime soon. Although I don’t keep up with people from my old church anymore, I’m willing to bet that the college pastor’s brother who set up the Ch!na ministry over there has pulled out completely and is no longer operating.
All in all, the secret code that these mission groups used in regards to Ch!na always struck me as very illogical, self important, and melodramatic. Listening to their stories made me feel a little bit embarrassed for them, and this was back when I was a Christian and was proud of seeing youth kids travel internationally to evangelize.