Lisu Church

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Lisu Church is a Christian church of an ethnic minority of southern China, Myanmar, Thailand and a part of India.

Missionaries had been working in the Lisu area since the early 20th century. The first to work among the Lisu, in the Yunnan province in China, was James O. Fraser, who also developed the written Lisu language and the Fraser Alphabet, which today is officially adopted by the Chinese government. Writing and reading in Lisu has been mainly developed by the church. Today there are an estimated 300,000 Lisu believers. In China, Christianity is the only religion in Nujiang prefecture,^{[citation needed]} which is situated among the Nujiang river. In quite some villages the membership of the Christian church comprises far more than half the population, as is told by local and provincial church leaders as well as published by Bin et al. in Chinese Theological Review 19 (2004). The Lisu Church has both the Bible and a hymn book in their own language.

The Chinese Lisu Church has training centers, training evangelists, in Fugong and Lushui. Lisu pastors are trained at the Theological University of Kunming. There is a great shortage of pastors in the Lisu churches. The church is part of the official Protestant Church of China, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Sunday service in church is mainly in Lisu.

[edit] External links and references

• Lisu Bible Institute in northern Thailand, teaching in Lisu
• You Bin, Wang Aiguo and Gong Yukuan: Christianity in a Culture of Ethnic Pluralism: Report on Christianity among the Minorities of Yunnan, Chinese Theological Review 19 (2004)
• Mountain Rain, by Eileen Crossman, OMF 1982. A biography of Fraser with much details on the early mission among the Lisu in China.