Why are People Registering with Fake Names?
By Eric Thurston
I’ve run a lot of MTS Info Nights, but this was probably the most unusual.
On the 23rd November 2019, we ran a Mandarin MTS Info Night, at Moore Theological College in Newtown, an inner city suburb of Sydney
What was unusual about it?
Well, for starters, people registered with fake names.
Why? It isn’t immediately clear but it may be related to the marginalisation and persecution of Christians in some part of China.
Other distinctive elements of the info night were:
- Seating: I set up the chairs in rows, like a good middle class westerner. When Jason Chang arrived, he looked around the room and said, “Mmm. I may need to make some changes”. He then rearranged the chairs into a great big circle. 28 people came to the event, so the circle was REALLY big.
- The food: No club sandwiches at this event! Amazing, home-cooked, Chinese cuisine was delivered to the door steaming hot. The program had a good amount of time devoted to “Dinner”. Food was not a peripheral feature of this info night.
- The Language: hardly one word of English was spoken all night. It was amazing. These apprentices are trained completely in Mandarin. Most of the resources being used to train them are in Mandarin. We are in the process of translating more, it is a huge undertaking.
Mandarin MTS kicked off in 2019 with 2 x 1st year apprentices. By God’s grace, it looks like 2 people will sign up for 1st year in 2020, as the other 3 x 2019 apprentices enter 2nd year. That means there’ll be 5 in total.
We are so grateful to God.
May the Lord raise up many more attendees who register with fake names for future Mandarin MTS Info Nights.