I loved Murray Robertson’s comments (NZ Baptist, October) on Keith Newman’s new book, Bible and Treaty. The appallingly foolish non-recognition of Maori leaders due to Bishop Selwyn’s over-ruling missionary Henry Williams had a counterpart in China. Watchman Nee writes in The Normal Christian Church Life of the English missionaries leaving their calling as evangelists to instead become pastors, thus precluding Chinese believers from leading their own churches.

Nee concludes that if only they had followed Barnabas and Paul’s example in Acts 13-14, China could have had a very different outcome.

I wholeheartedly agree with Murray and Mr Nee as it seems it took God in his sovereignty to liberate the Chinese church from our colonialist ideas. In 1948, Mao Zedong expelled all Westerners, allowing the church there to grow from 1.5 million to 130 million, completely in the hands of indigenous leaders!

– Graeme Carle
St Johns/Glen Innes, Auckland