Home Is the Bridge to Our Hearts

I remember as a young child attending religious services with my parents. It always felt “out there,” not something that really related to me. At the same time, I also remember attending sporting events with my parents. As an active boy who loved to play and hit, kick, and throw any kind of ball, sports connected with me. I remember the silly reality that I chose the university I went to simply because it was the home of the sports teams I followed as a kid. Even now, as a more mature follower of Jesus, I will still follow teams from my alma mater. There is something about home, about the things we dreamed about as kids, that opens our heart to connect in a deeper way.

The first time I remember something really going deep with me was related to sports. My parents introduced me to the movie Chariots of Fire. The hero of the movie, Eric Liddell, was shown as a bold and strong person and yet humble and God honoring. He was the kind of person I wanted to be. That connection point was a bridge to my heart. All of the world is God’s, and there are so many bridges in what he has made and in the things that we, his creations, have made that point people to him. The brilliant French scientist Blaise Pascal famously said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” Each person and each culture has a bridge between them and God. Only he truly satisfies us.

In my seventeen-plus years of doing ministry in China, I often researched topics Chinese people brought up with me and learned what possible bridges could be made from any topic to Jesus. Many topics come up daily with Chinese friends: food, traffic, money, education, and family are just a few of them.

One of the typical ways to greet someone and even show interest in the other person is to ask, “What’s your hometown?” Home and family are very vital topics to a Chinese person, often providing bridges to their heart’s desires and offering a way to present Christ as the way to give a perfect home and family—the home and family found in knowing him.

A few years back, the missionary group I work with took on a project, which aims to engage the average Chinese person on that plane. The project is underway and has developed short, three-minute films for eight larger cities, with a goal of 145 cities total. The plan is to field-test the first eight and then move to a more active production stage.

Each film introduces the city and talks about some well-known special aspects of the city. The film then moves into a discussion of the typical dreams of a person living there (or from there) and discusses the reality that often these cannot be achieved or if they can be, it comes at a high price, which only few can achieve. The building of a connection to a deep part of their heart with a simultaneous challenge of the heart’s idolatry of home and the “China dream” serves to help believers bring up spiritual matters. Our team has created a short training that asks questions to connect personally with the person and bring up spiritual topics. Depending on the person’s openness, the one who introduced the video can transition to sharing how they came to know Christ or even to a gospel tract or video that tells the other person how they can know Christ.

We are offering these videos and trainings free of charge and would love to help equip you and networks of believers you work with in China. It’s our prayer that we who serve the church of China in the mission of God, in this era of the government making materials with religious content illegal to post or circulate, could help provide “bridge materials and training” that can be sent and posted without detection.

Just as seeing Chariots of Fire was a catalyst for me to live for Christ and eventually was part of what called me to missions in China, we pray that we can help you and others you know to introduce others to the Lord through something that is near and dear to their hearts—their hometown or the place where they live.

Please contact ChinaSource for my personal information.

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