The indigenization of a new Church is a complex process because it involves not only contextual, ecclesiastical, and theological considerations, but has much to do with the personalities of missionaries and mission leaders who are charged with the practical matter of readying the new Church on the field. This examination of the American Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) mission in China indicates that before the mid 1920s, even if there were an interest in indigenizing the church in China, there were more forces acting against the process than encouraging it. Among the negative forces were: the lack of any clear-cut MEC indigenization policy, the emphasis on the social gospel in which building institutions and addressing social and health problems overshadowed evangelization goals, the distrust among the leadership of the China Mission that the Chinese were ready to take over the new Church, the emphasis on self-support as the first criterion of indigenization, and a plethora of organizational and other critical ecclesiastical matters that diverted the attention of MEC leaders from the fundamental goal of its mission effort. When funding of the missions dried up beginning in the early 1920s; and anti-westernism and anti-Christianity forced missionaries out of China in the mid to late 1920s; the MEC was forced to hand over the new Church to the Chinese converts who had been seeking control for almost forty years.
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