2010s Tibetan Work

Kham ཁམས་

Part of the town of Larung Ga in the Kham region. More than 40,000 Tibetans were crammed into this remote town, literally stacked on top of one another, until the Chinese authorities bulldozed most of the unique structures in 2016.

The southernmost Tibetan subgroup in China lives in and around the city of Shangri-La (formerly Zhongdian) in northern Yunnan Province. 1

A Han evangelist moved to Shangri-La to reach out to Tibetans with the gospel in the 2000s. After experiencing many setbacks, his ministry finally broke through, and by the mid-2010s he had established between eight and ten Tibetan fellowships in the area.

Although most Christian ministries were tight-lipped about their activities in the sensitive region, a few were quite open, updating supporters with progress on their Tibetan work in their newsletters. One mission reported in December 2011:

"For the past nine years, two teams of workers have preached to Tibetans and slowly raised up some churches numbering a few dozen believers in total. In February that number doubled. In April it doubled again. Through the summer a steady stream of Tibetans has continued to come to Christ. There are now hundreds of Christian Tibetans where ten years ago there were none." 2

A young Tibetan woman named Naomi had fallen from a tree and lost one of her legs when she was a child. Her family took the accident as a bad omen, and sent her to become a Buddhist nun. The longer she studied in the nunnery, however, the more she felt her gods were powerless to help her. Then, Naomi heard about Jesus Christ for the first time. She knew she had found the truth, and dedicated her life to Him.

When her family discovered she had become a Christian, Naomi's life was threatened, and she was ostracized from her relatives and friends. Despite these painful experiences, she was able to say through her tears, "I will never leave God, because He is so good and real to me." 3

The members of another covert mission group saw a Tibetan monk come to faith in Christ in the early stages of their work. He became a solid believer, left the monastery and married, and he and his wife planted at least five churches among the Tibetan people. In the early years of the decade, the ministry's newsletter reported the following snippets of progress from their Tibetan work:

"Our Tibetan church leaders held a Christmas party for the first time and 130 Tibetans showed up. All had fun, all heard the gospel (some for the very first time), and eight Tibetans gave their lives to Christ. Praise the Lord!" 4

"I was talking to our main Tibetan leader the other day, and he shared with me that another monk has come to Christ. He befriended the man on a bus, shared the gospel with him, and the man made Jesus Christ his personal Savior. Glory to God! This fellow was a monk for 13 years. He spent eight of those years in India learning under the Dalai Lama, and the rest in China wasting his life in a monastery. We are believing God will multiply our efforts by raising this man up to proclaim the gospel among his own people." 5

"I just got back from our Tibetan work where we trained 25 Tibetans. There the Holy Spirit was poured out in a great way. Among our students was a new brother in the Lord who had suffered with sickness in his body for the last six years. After receiving prayer God healed him and made an everlasting impression on his life." 6

In 2012, the same ministry later revealed: "We have sent 50 Tibetan evangelists out to preach the gospel. They have so far seen 38 Tibetans give their lives to Christ." 7

False Reports

Reports of breakthroughs among Tibetans are always received as welcome news in the Christian world, but false or exaggerated claims can damage the cause of Christ. In 2016, a report by an organization called Asian Access spread throughout the world, claiming that 200,000 Tibetans, including 62 Buddhist monks, had decided to follow Jesus Christ. 8

While the wildly-optimistic numbers cited in the report no doubt reflect an inflated view of good things that were taking place at the time—especially in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquakes—no credible field workers believed the account or could locate the supposed 200,000 Tibetan converts. Nevertheless, the story was circulated by high-profile television preachers in the United States, and many believers rejoiced at what they thought was a massive breakthrough for the gospel in Tibet. 9

Christians long for the day when Tibetans will be saved by the tens of thousands, but the kingdom of God does not benefit from exaggerated and misleading claims that have little or no basis in truth.

Footnotes:
1. The Chinese government changed the name of the town in 2001, in a bid to attract tourists by promoting it as the location of the fictional Shangri-La depicted in James Hilton's famous 1933 novel.
2. On Target (December 2011).
3. On Target (December 2011).
4. Frontier Harvest Ministries (January 2011).
5. Frontier Harvest Ministries (May 2011).
6. Frontier Harvest Ministries (December 2011).
7. Frontier Harvest Ministries (December 2012).
8. Hazel Torres, "What Showing God's Love can Do: 200,000 Tibetans, including 62 Buddhist Monks, decide to Follow Jesus," Christian Today (June 21, 2016).
9. While the basis for the report was that Christian outreach to earthquake victims had resulted in this supposed mass turning to Christ, it should be noted that most of the people affected by the Sichuan quakes were not Tibetans, but members of the Han Chinese, Qiang, and other ethnic groups.

© This article is an extract from Paul Hattaway's book 'Tibet: The Roof of the World'. You can order this or any of The China Chronicles books and e-books from our online bookstore.