The Alliance Movement In Hong Kong-the Historical Development Of The Hong Kong Christian And Missionary Alliance(1949-1999)

In 1887,Albert Benjamin Simpson established the Christian and Missionary Alliance("C&MA")in the United States.Its mission was to unite disciples from all nations to aspire to grow spiritually and to push along universal mission movement.During the same year,the Headquarter of the C&MA has sent missionaries to China.These missionaries have entered China to work for almost 60 years.They have set up four missionary fields in China.During 1949,missionaries have left Mainland China and moved south to Hong Kong to await for further instructions from the Headquarter.Most of them were eventually sent to other countries for missionary work,but a few of them insisted to stay,hoping to continue the Chinese missionary work on this British colony,which is connected to China.As such,the C&MA rooted in Hong Kong,and since then grew healthily.This paper is to investigate the work of C&MA in Hong Kong and there are three goals it aims to achieve.Firstly,it is to organize and restore the historical development of the C&MA during the second half of the last century.Secondly,it is to explore how the administration of the Church was passed along from the western missionaries to the Chinese.This involved the cooperation of the Hong Kong Mission and the local churches as well as indigenization of the Church.Finally,it analyses how the C&MA started from scratch and evolved to be the second largest denomination in Hong Kong within just fifty years.There are eight chapters in this paper.The first Chapter is in relation to the C&MA,the contents and connotation of its movement.This brought along the strategy with the fastest and most direct way of bringing the Gospel to places where there is not yet a Church.This is followed by the 60 years of development of the C&MA in Mainland China as well as the four missionary fields it has built and the associated work.The second Chapter details the history concerning the withdrawal from Mainland China to Hong Kong and the decision on whether to leave or stay by the western missionaries.Starting from Chapter 3,the discussion has turned to the history and development of the HK C&MA.Firstly,C&MA started its work at the refugee centre at Rennie's Mill.It built the first lot of church members amongst the miserable refugees.Despite the lack of resources,it continues to describe how C&MA reached the outskirts and villages with the gospel.It is followed by the period of 1960s,whereby C&MA took advantage of establishing local churches at the resettlement estates/areas and started up numerous roof top primary schools and one annex school.This further reached a large amount of general public.From 1970s onwards,the population of Hong Kong grew enormously.As such,the Hong Kong Government established a few satellite cities and newly developed towns.HK C&MA referred to the Government's housing and welfare policies and set up community centres and local churches in the newly built public housing complexes.From then on,HK C&MA also started its work at the Temporary Housing Areas to serve the underprivileged.As from 1980s onwards,the local churches became more mature and began to instigated 10 year church planting and growth programs.The Local Church Union not only put its efforts in local church planting,but also formed local missionary bodies to send Chinese missionaries to overseas for missionary work so as to evangelize offshore.Up till the end of the century,HK C&MA has become the second largest Protestant denomination and has been quite influential in the Christian community.The last two chapters of the dissertation discussed the indigenization process of HK C&MA.At the 2nd alniversary of the establishment of the China-Hong Kong Field,western missionaries have followed the instructions from the Headquarter and gradually fiulfilled the goal of "self-support,self-governance and self-propagation"-the three goals of independence.In the early days,HK C&MA's indigenization process was led by the Hong Kong Mission and carried out by the local Christians.Starting from 1960s,the Church Union was established by the local churches.The western missionaries gradually handed their administrative responsibility over to the local churches.At the turn of the decade,the statuses of Hong Kong Mission and the Church Union are equal.Both parties also started up a 20-year partnership and promoted evangelism hand in hand.Up to the 1980-1990s,the local churches have become very mature.The Church Union not only could plan its overall direction,but also could organized the local mission organizations to promote overseas evangelism work.At this point of time,the Hong Kong Mission gladly saw the local church independence,slowly and gradually exited the local work and withdrew eventually.The management and administration of HK C&MA were passed over from Hong Kong Mission to the Church Union in a harmonious and smooth way.This was indeed a partnership model of Chinese-Western cooporation.Lastly,the conclusion session explained the reason of how HK C&MA started from scratch and became the second largest Protestant denomination in the last century.Based on the history portrayed in the contents section,this part analyzed its outstanding acceleration and evolution,from the angles of C&MA's Chinese experience,its connotation of establishment,interactions between people,society,relationship between politics and religion as well as Chinese-Western cooporation.