“One girl wants to study the Bible with me, but I am just too busy. All my colleagues are also busy,” related the Christian worker. She appealed for more Christians to work in her city to reach out to Mongolians. The harvest is plentiful ...

Seven million Mongolians live in China and yet have few opportunities to hear the gospel. Christians working in the area have appealed for more believers to reach out to them.

History and Culture

The Mongolians look back to Genghis Khan (1162-1227) as their revered patriarch. Born Temujin, he was proclaimed Chinggis Khaan (Genghis Khan) in 1206, uniting warring tribes. The Mongolians went on to conquer the largest land mass empire in history, roughly from the Pacific to Poland, and are remnants of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), the Mongolian Dynasty founded by Kublai Khan.

The Mongolians (or Mongols) are one of the 55 officially recognized minority people groups of Mainland China. According to the 2000 census, there were 5.8 million Mongols in China, mainly in the north-western provinces, especially in Inner Mongolia, which has about 3.5 million Mongols. Mongolians also live in Gansu, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Yunnan.

Surprisingly, there are far more Mongolians in China than in the independent country of Mongolia to the north, which used to be called ‘Outer Mongolia,’ where about 2.7 million Mongols live and where, unlike Inner Mongolia, the church has seen significant growth in recent years.

Arguably, Mongolian peoples also include the Daur, Monguor, Bonan and Dongxiang minorities, as they speak Mongolian-based languages. The Dongxiang of northwest China used to be called ‘Mongolian Hui,, the ‘Hui’ being a Chinese Muslim people group.

The total population of Mongols worldwide probably numbers 10 million.

Language

The Mongolian language belongs to the Ural-Altaic group and there are 12 main dialects. Different Mongolian groups are distinguished primarily by their dialects. Many Mongolians still use their traditional downward Mongolian script, which Genghis Khan had borrowed and modified from the Uyghurs. The Uyghurs derived this script from Syriac, which was brought to Central and East Asia by Nestorian Christian missionaries. The dialects of western and central Inner Mongolia are similar to what is spoken in Mongolia. Many large city Mongols speak better Chinese than Mongolian.

Livelihood

In former times the Mongolians were a pastoral, nomadic people, but in modern times many have settled into agriculture. Much of Inner Mongolia is grassland where the Mongolians still herd cattle, horses and sheep. However,
open-range herding, widely practiced in Mongolia, is in decline in Inner Mongolia in favor of raising livestock on farms. Hohhot, Inner Mongolia’s bustling capital, has about 1.5 million people in the urban center, mostly Han Chinese. “Hohhot” means “Blue City” in Mongolian. Mongolians traditionally revere the sky which is regarded as divine. Baotou is another major city where Mongolians live.

Religion

Mongols believe in tengerism, that the sky is divine. There are a total of 99 tengers (sky-spirits) or heavenly creatures in the lower and upper world, of which Khukh Tengri (Eternal Blue Heaven), the creator of the visible and invisible world, is the highest.

Genghis Khan, who respected other religions, followed shamanism, which believes there must be balance between earth and sky. Genghis believed that he was appointed to the position of highest khan on earth to rule the nations, so that the world would be in harmony with the sky.

Most Mongolians today are Lamaistic Buddhists, with similar beliefs to Tibetans. Instant enlightenment can be brought about by ritual gestures, mantras and meditations on mandalas (Buddhist icons) and other Tantric practices which were borrowed from Hinduism.

For the average Mongolian Tibetan Buddhist, the practice of religion might be paying money to a lama to chant a Tibetan scripture to bring good fortune.

Christianity

The most well known China Inland Mission (CIM) worker to minister extensively among the Mongols was Percy Mather , who worked in Urumchi, Chinese Turkestan, which was renamed Xinjiang.

Mather mastered the language, worked tirelessly and was sensitive to the culture but efforts by the CIM (now OMF International) and other missions seeking to reach in China’s Mongolians didn’t result in any permanent Church.

The New Testament was translated in 1952 but a revision into contemporary language, along with a new translation of the Old Testament, have been very much needed. These were completed in December 2007 by the Mongolian Bible Society (in partnership with Wycliffe Bible Translators), and the first full Bibles in the traditional Mongolian script are to be printed in 2008.

FEBC (The Far East Broadcasting Company) began broadcasting in Mongolian in 1990 and a version of the Jesus film, dubbed into Mongolian, is in progress.

In every church the number of Han Chinese Believers is growing but, despite this growth, Mongolian Christians are very few. While estimates vary widely, it is thought that there are between 3,000 and 30,000 Mongolian Christians in Inner Mongolia.

Today, apart from a small number of believers from ‘Outer’ Mongolia’s 40,000-strong church, there are still very few Christians – expatriate or local Chinese – working to reach China’s Mongolians. More are desperately needed.

Urban Mongolians who speak good Chinese may fit in with Chinese speaking churches, while Mongolians from smaller towns who have limited Chinese need meetings held in their own language. Christian workers report that Mongolians, once resistant to the gospel, are now open to hearing about Christ – if they are given the chance to do so.

Praise God for …

• The workers currently bringing the gospel to Mongolians.
• Further opportunities to reach Mongolians now settling in towns like Hohhot.
• The completion of the translation of the Bible into Mongolian and further work on other materials in this language.

Pray …

• Pray that Mongols would worship the one true God, the creator of nature.
• Pray for the new translation of the Bible into Mongolian to be widely accepted.
• Pray that God would encourage the Mongolian Christians and expatriates to witness to those around them.
• Pray that Christians bringing their professional skills to China can work alongside the Mongolian people.
• Pray for Mongolian Christians to find the support, growth and discipleship that they need.