Study On The Missionary Work Of The China Inland Mission In Yunnan Province

China Inland Mission was the most main Protestantism mission that evangelized to people lived in Yunnan province during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. From 1877 when they arrived in Yunnan to 1950 when they left, they spent three quarters of a century letting many nationalities believe in Jesus Christ, especially many tribes. This paper summarizes the detailed missionary history with some analysis and summary from the perspective of preachers.This paper can be divided into five characters. The first character mainly introduces the missionary concept and the organization of China Inland Mission. The theology and missionary thoughts of James Hudson Taylor himself laid the foundation of China Inland Mission created by him. He put forward of ideas of the mainland-directed missionary direction, the sermon-dominated Christian ministry, the practice of the faith to God during these real missionary work, and all these made China Inland Mission become the most in-depth Protestantism mission in China and provided the background of the mission in Yunnan. Chapter two to four are the main point of this paper. Based on the time line, the author analyzes the detailed missionary work in Yunnan and divided it into three stages, including the beginning, the development, the resistance of the war and the retreat. These three stages have their own characteristics but they also link with each other. These three stages record the ups and downs when China Inland Mission did their work in Yunnan in detail, especially the work in tribes. The first stage was given priority to setting up regional centers to do missionary job, and the object were mainly Han nationality. In the second stage, the range was extended to many other nationalities and there were more people believe in Jesus Christ. At the same time, the overage was also extended. The pattern in the third stage was as same as the second stage:Churches’ localization was improved and there were some specialized missionaries contact with Muslim community. However, affected by political situation, missionaries in Yunnan suffered the development and the forced-evacuation. The fifth chapter mainly analyzes the missionary ideas and missionary practices from two aspects, one is the missionary, and the other is the people who receive the Gospel. The ideal of passing over the Gospel to all nationalities made them do missionary work in more and more nationalities continually. However, the results they received are quite different. The tribes could accept most easily, followed by the Han nationality, and the last was the Hui nationality. Thus, these phenomena reflected the collision between the foreign missionary and the local different groups who had different faith and this collision could lead to the differences of missionary work.