Bethel Mission, Shanghai

Did You Know?

• The Bethel Bands were likely modelled after evangelistic bands used for decades in Japan.
• The Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band, organized in 1931, held over 1,000 meetings in a single year, preaching to over 425,000 people in 13 provinces.

History

Shi Meiyu earned a medical degree at the University of Michigan in 1896, then returned to China and worked at the Methodist Episcopal Church's Danforth Memorial Hospital from 1901. She grew dissatisfied with foreign control and the mission's liberal theology, eventually leaving to co-found the Bethel Mission in Shanghai in 1920 with her sister Phebe Stone and former American Methodist Episcopal missionary Jennie V. Hughes. Hughes led the Bible school, while the Stone sisters ran the hospital and nursing school. The mission combined nursing with preaching; as Dr. Stone stated, trained evangelistic workers were needed to follow up the seed sown. The Bible school spawned small groups called Bethel Bands, whose original members included students from prominent Shanghai families, such as Beatrice Chung, daughter of Dr. Harry Chung. From 1920 until the Japanese invasion in 1937, Mary Stone and the Bethel Bands conducted evangelistic meetings, living by faith. The student bands, likely modeled after Japanese evangelistic bands, were small teams known for musical talent, neat appearance, articulate speech, and popularity across churches of all theological orientations.