This article is the continuation of my previous post, “Two Critical Lessons from the Arrowtown Chinese Settlement We Can Apply to our Multicultural Ministry.”
In my previous post, we learned that the Chinese kept to themselves as they worked the gold mines in 1860 because the European settlers who invited them didn’t welcome them into their society.
I also wrote in the previous post that to avoid repeating what happened in the 1860s, we need to:
- get rid of all our prejudices,
- establish genuine friendly relationships with people from different cultures,
- welcome people from other cultures in our church community, and
- be a dependable support in times of need.
As I’ve mentioned, it is essential to note that the 1860s was a very different era. The world’s people weren’t as informed and educated as we are now due to the advent of digital technology.
My purpose in sharing these historical lessons is to illustrate how beneficial the faith-wisdom tool is in one’s ministry. “Faith-wisdom” is the term I coined for the wonderful and amazing things that the Almighty God has done, which the church or a believer search, discover, learn, and apply.
While you might find the story of the Chinese gold miners in Arrowtown harsh and disturbing, it is also essential to know that their story didn’t end there.
In this post, I will share the second lesson that I discovered from the Arrowtown Chinese Settlement when we visited the site in October.
2. The 1880s mission to the Chinese gold miners is still relevant today
Yes, I am convinced that the ministry with the Chinese gold miners 140 years ago is very much relevant today.
One of the information boards mentioned that a missionary named Alexander Don ministered with the Chinese gold miners.
Alexander Don – more than a missionary
Between 1886 and 1906, the Reverend Don trudged throughout Otago Southland, visiting Chinese miners on the most isolated goldfields. Thanks to his fluent Cantonese, detailed observations, and photography, we know much about these men.
That statement on the information board caught my attention, and I searched about the Reverend Alexander Don and the mission with the Chinese.
In applying the faith-wisdom tool, we can develop vital historical mission lessons that we can use in our present ministry. For brevity, I will only mention some segments.
Who is Alexander Don?
Alexander Don (22 January 1857 – 2 November 1934) was a New Zealand Presbyterian minister, missionary, and writer (Wikipedia).
Alexander Don was born in a tent at Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, on 22 January 1857, the eldest of the ten children of John Don, a gold miner, and his wife, Janet Nicol. Both parents came from Scotland, where his father was a stonemason who contracted for bridges and culverts.
Don expressed a wish to become a missionary and was advised to seek the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) post offered by the Presbyterian Church of Otago and Southland. Arriving in Dunedin, New Zealand, in January 1879, Don found the post filled but accepted the alternative position of Presbyterian missionary to the region’s Chinese gold-seekers. He was sent to Canton (Guangzhou), where he learnt Cantonese in close co-operation with the American Presbyterian mission.
James Ng, 1993
A brief account of the Presbyterian Mission to the Chinese Gold Miners
I delved into the Presbyterian Research Centre archives to know more about their mission to the Chinese gold miners.
Here are what I learned:
- The Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland had aimed to start a Christian Mission to the local Chinese in 1867.
- The Synod appointed Paul Ah Chin, a Chinese evangelist, to share the Gospel to the Chinese in 1871. Between 1872 and 1873, 11 Chinese were baptised. Later, Mr. Chin resigned.
- In 1879, the Presbyterian Synod appointed the Rev. Alexander Don as Missionary to the NZ Chinese, numbering around 900.
- Rev. Don went to Canton for 18 months to study the language. He started work in 1881 at Round Hill in Southland with a Chinese settlement of 150 huts covering five acres.
- Later in 1886, he started the well-publicized but grueling “Annual Tour” of the Chinese communities in Otago and Southland. He travelled on foot as far as 2000 miles over half done roads.
- He visited large and small settlements, even going out of his way for only one or two men. He offered the hand of Christian fellowship and preached the Gospel in Cantonese.
- Rev. Don used religious tracts. He used coloured posters illustrating Scripture stories with relevant Cantonese text in large characters when he preached. In later years, he had a box camera that he carried to document his ministry.
- In 1896, the Synod of Otago in Southland sent Rev. Don to Canton to investigate opening a Chinese Mission in South China because of the trust fostered with the NZ Chinese and gaining new Christian converts.
- Rev. Don used the relationship he established with the Chinese in Otago and Southland to introduce himself to their families back in China. He noted that four out of every five NZ Chinese came from villages near Canton.
- He created a “Roll of the Chinese,” which he used in remembering the names, faces, and other information of the Chinese he met and ministered to.
The University of Otago created an electronic version of Alexander Don’s ‘Roll’ of the Chinese, based on James Ng’s Windows on a Chinese Past (Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1993).
The University of Otago (n.d.) introduces:
The Roll consists of entries for some 3,682 Chinese present within New Zealand between 1896 and 1913. In it, Don recorded the person’s name (in Chinese characters), their age in 1896, the number of years they had been away from China, the number of times they had returned, and the number of years of schooling they had received. This information is followed by columns listing the district (or county) in China that the person came from, the nearest market town to their family home, and the town or village in which that home was located.
University of Otago
The opposing page of the Roll was divided into two. The first column listed the location in New Zealand where the person was living in 1896, then the final column, by far the largest, was used to add a range of miscellaneous information that Don was able to collect about each individual. Here, we find details about the person’s movements, about Poll Tax requirements, family relationships, personal health, debts, run-ins with the law, bequests and remittances.
I see Rev. Don’s “Roll” as akin to the census and resource mapping tools I have included in the MAP Toolkit.
What makes the 1880s Chinese Mission relevant today?
As mentioned earlier in the article, the 1880s mission to the Chinese gold miners and other Chinese settlements is still relevant today.
I see this relevance as essential learning that we can apply to our multicultural ministry as we welcome people of many different nationalities in New Zealand.
Based on the historical accounts that I have read, which some snippets I shared earlier, I illustrated Rev. Don’s work through the diagram below.
The 2018 Multicultural Church Missions Model NZ
In 2018, I wrote a series of blog posts on New Zealand missions based on my experience, learning, and outlook as a tentmaking missionary in Timaru.
At that time, we had the Multicultural Response ministry for five years. In one of the posts, I created a multicultural church mission diagram based on my observations of the local Baptist church, missionary work in South Canterbury, and previous pastoral ministry experiences.
Because I published the blog post series in August 2018, I labelled the diagram below as the “2018 Multicultural Church Mission Model”.
I first published the diagram above in the article “Multicultural Church Doing Missions Together Local and Abroad. ” I mentioned that I based it on the history of the Convention of Philippine Baptist Churches.
In 1898, the Baptist mission in the Philippines started through a Swedish missionary (Eric Lund) doing the mission with a Filipino (Braulio Manikan) in Spain.
Dr. Elmo Familiaran, co-author of the book, “No Greater Love; Triumph and Sacrifice of American Baptist Missionaries During WW II Philippines, and the Martyrdom in Hopevale” shared with me that in his research through the International Ministry archives, he learned that it was not until the turn of the 20th Century, the beginning of the American colonial period, that Protestant missionaries came to the Philippines.
“Eric Lund was the first missionary the ABFMS (American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society) sent to the country in 1900. In 1894, Eric Lund met in Barcelona a young Visayan native of Panay Island named Braulio Manikan. Manikan had gone to Spain to study civil engineering. He was raised a Roman Catholic and became a Baptist under Eric Lund’s tutelage. Together, they went to the Philippines and established the first Baptist mission on Panay Island in 1900. In February 1901, the first Baptist church in Jaro, Iloilo City (Philippines) was organized.”
Elmo Familiaran
The list below corresponds with the 2018 Multicultural Church Missions Model NZ diagram.
- Multicultural Church – Sweddish Eric Lund and Filipino Braulio Manikan joining a local Baptist church in Spain.
- Local International Communities – Braulio Manikan (a migrant in Spain)
- Overseas – While in Spain, Eric Lund and Braulio Manikan planned and executed bringing the Gospel to Iloilo, Philippines, in 1900.
When I created the diagram above, I didn’t know about Rev. Alexander Don and his ministry with the Chinese settlements in the Otago and Southland area in the 1880s.
I only learned about Rev. Don through the historical site’s information board when we visited in October 2021.
Please look at the two ministry diagrams I placed side-by-side to compare and see the similarities.
The ministry strategy developed around 140 years ago through Rev. Don and the Presbyterian Mission is relevant today because I made the same observation in 2018.
Since then, I have advocated and followed the same strategy because I believe the diagram has far-reaching implications for local church growth.
Whenever possible, I also share the “2018 Multicultural Church Mission Model diagram” with local and national Baptist church leaders.
Afterthoughts
Nevertheless, he left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food, and gladness.
Acts 14:17 (GNV)
As the Biblical historical narratives have taught us and from what we have learned from the Arrowtown Chinese Settlement (or other Christian mission narratives), the Lord God has never left us without a witness. His handiwork is written and shown everywhere, regardless of how unpleasant or tragic the situation was.
Rather than neglecting and ignoring the unpleasant realities of history, we can also look back and “ask, seek, and knock” (Matthew7:7-8).
In our query, we can use some tools (e.g. faith-wisdom tool) to see what God teaches us. Once we discover history’s lessons, we also need humility and a servant heart to follow God’s clear guidance.
I am pleased to know about the Presbyterian Mission amongst the Chinese gold miners, particularly Rev. Alexander Don’s ministry in the 1880s because it affirms what I discovered in 2018.
Now, I can say that the 2018 multicultural mission model that I created and presented on many occasions to the local and national Baptist church leaders isn’t something that a Filipino-Kiwi pastor had solely made up.
A Scottish-Australian missionary named Alexander Don implemented the same idea 140 years ago in Otago, Southland, and other New Zealand regions.
Was the mission to the Chinese settlers successful? Let me leave you with this excerpt from Susan Chiver’s thesis:
Despite all the obstacles and failures, the Mission exerted a profound effect. At least its primary aim was accomplished – the Christian gospel had reached Chinese ears. The converts may have been few but they were genuine. Timothy Fae Loie compared the work to that of the miners they were trying to convert: – they would sift through hundreds and hundres of tons of mud, sand and stones and when the work was over all they had to show for it was a handful of yellow dust – but that dust was gold.
Chivers, S. L. (1992)
I’m thankful for the Holy Spirit who guided me in picking up faith-wisdom nuggets from the lives of the Chinese gold miners of the distant past.
It is my prayer and hopes that our local churches will share these golden Arrowtown Chinese Settlement lessons with our present and ever-growing multicultural environment in the church and community.
References
James Ng. ‘Don, Alexander,’ Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1993. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/biographies/2d13/don-alexander (accessed 24 November 2021)
Chinese gold miners and Reverend Alexander Don at the Kyeburn diggings, Otago. McNeur Collection: Photographs of Chinese gold miners who worked in Otago and Southland goldfields. Ref: 1/2-019156-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22883508
Presbyterian Research Centre, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand. Mission to the Chinese Gold-miners. https://pcanzarchives.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/8056
University of Otago (n.d.). Alexander Don’s ‘Roll’ of the Chinese. https://www.otago.ac.nz/history/don/index.php
Chivers, S. L. (1992). Religion, ethnicity and race : the mission of the Otago Church to the Chinese 1860-1950 (Thesis, Master of Arts). University of Otago. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10523/336
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