Evangelize China Fellowship

Infobox Non-profit
Non-profit_name = Evangelize China Fellowship
Non-profit_
Non-profit_type =
founded_date = 1947
founder = Ji Zhiwen (计志文), aka Andrew Gih
location = Monterey Park, California
origins = Shanghai, China
key_people =
area_served =
focus =
method =
revenue =
endowment =
num_volunteers =
num_employees =
num_members =
owner =
Non-profit_slogan =
homepage = http://www.ecfusa.org
dissolved =
footnotes = Christianity in China Portal

The Evangelize China Fellowship (ECF) _zh. 基督教中國佈道會 is a non-profit 501(c) organization, originally founded in 1947 by 20th-Century Chinese revivalist Andrew Gih. The fellowship is comprised of churches, missionaries, and affiliated organizations that attempt to bring Christian beliefs to China and persons of Chinese descent.

ECF carries out programs of evangelism, education, and relief work in Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Burma, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, the United States, and China. Programs are primarily conducted in schools, orphanages, and churches; with the educational programs focused on providing middle- and high-school English teachers training. [cite web | url=http://www.allbusiness.com/social-services/individual-family-social/4047381-1.html
title=Allbusiness.com profile of ECF| accessdate=2007-08-12]

History

The ECF founder, Dr. Ji Zhiwen (计志文, anglicized as Andrew Gih), was born in Shanghai and became a Christian while a student at Bethel School in Shanghai. Moved by the preaching of Paget Wilkes, he became an evangelist at the age of 25. In 1928 he joined the Worldwide Evangelistic Band, led by George Rideout of Asbury College, Wilmore, Kentucky. While on a preaching tour in south China, he met the famed evanglist John Sung (Song Shangjie). They formed the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band in 1931. After Sung left this work in 1933, Gih continued it under the name of Bethel Mission until July 1947. [cite web | url=http://www.ebaomonthly.com/ebao/readebao.php?eID=e00618
title=計志文 (chinese)| accessdate=2008-08-17] , when he founded the Evangelize China Fellowship (ECF) as a Mandarin Church in Shanghai. After Shanghai fell to the Communists, Gih moved his work to Hong Kong, and appointed Paul Shen to open ECF work in Taiwan, resulting eleven years later in seven churches and an orphanage.

In addition to the building of churches, orphanages, and schools; ECF was credited with creating a vast network of Chinese Christians in the Diaspora, and helping Gih attain a level of "notoriety [that] placed him in the company of fellow revivalist J. Edwin Orr and Billy Graham." [Paul Spickard , "Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America" p. 259, ed. Jane Iwamura (Routledge, 2003) (ISBN 0-4159-3808-2).]

In the first 31 years of ECF, the organization opened 375 churches, seven schools, and two seminaries. [Donald E MacInnis,, "Biographical Directory of Christian Missions", ed. Gerald Harry Anderson (Wm. B. EerdmansPublishing, 1999) (ISBN 0-8028-4680-7).] As of 2007, ECF comprises one-half of the global organization ECF International which conducts charitable and evangelical activities in 18 countries.

References

[Andrew Gih, "HIS FAITHFULNESS THE STORY OF THE "EVANGELIZE CHINA" FELLOWSHIP", (Pamphlet, Marshall, Morgan & Scott 1955)]

External links

* [http://www.ecfinternational.org/ ECF International]
* [http://www.ecfusa.org/ Evangelize China Fellowship website]
* [http://ricci.rt.usfca.edu/biography/view.aspx?biographyID=1640 Synopsis of bio of founder]
* Christianity in China