discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 41
At about the same time, the fruits of Patrick’s missionary ministry in Ireland
began multiplying. The Celts, the people group evangelized by Patrick,
launched out as missionaries themselves. One such endeavor came in 563,
when Columba took a large group on a mission to the Picts in Scotland. That
resulted in the establishment of a missionary training center on Iona, an island
off Scotland’s west coast. By 633, Iona had spawned a mission led by Aidan to
England’s northeast coast. Both of these group missions demonstrated what
Craig Sheppard, missionary to Kosovo, has called “the power of the critical
mass.” 4 Within 100 years, the majority of the Picts of Scotland had become
Christian and thousands of pagan Angles and Saxons had been converted.
These people groups were soon sending missionaries to northern Europe.
By the 7th century A.D., Christianity had been taken across Asia to China.
A 10-foot tall limestone stele discovered in China in 1625 tells of the arrival
around A.D. 635 of Alopen, a Christian missionary. Among other things, that
monument, which archaeologists think was erected in A.D. 781, says, “Bishop
Alopen of the Kingdom of Ta-Ch’in (Syria) . . . has come from afar. . . . Having
examined the scope of his teaching . . . having observed its principal and
most essential points, we reached the conclusion that they cover all that is most
important in life.” 5 By 638 a church building had been constructed in China
with imperial financial support. Alopen and his Chinese coworkers had also
completed the first Christian book in Chinese: The Sutra of Jesus the Messiah.
400-Year Epochs
One way of visualizing the spread of Christianity is to use Ralph
Winter’s 400-year Christian history epochs where each supercentury
has a cultural basin into which Christianity flowed during that time:
• 0-400—Romans
• 400-800—Central Europe (Goths, Visigoths, Slavs, and Vandals)
• 800-1200—Vikings
• 1200-1600—Muslim world and global coastlands
• 1600 to present—Ends of the earth
Winter’s list can seem simplistic and too Western in focus.
There are things it does not account for, such as the missionary
thrust into China in the 600s. It does, however, give a good idea of
the timing and direction of Christianity’s flow into several key cultural
groups.
Christian Mission 41
Even with such advances, the years from 500 to 1500 held some disheartening
periods for the Christian Church. In 845 government-sponsored persecution
against Christians broke out in China. Within a few decades, all traces