3. What speaks most meaningfully to Asians (particularly Chinese) about Christ? For example, stories, preaching, etc. Why?

I can only answer on behalf of Chinese Malaysians, not Chinese in China or Singapore or Hong Kong. I would say that within our cultural paradigm, there is something that we call oral tradition. This tradition seeks to impart values that are transmitted from one generation to another. For example, when I was young, my caretaker used to tell me in Chinese, "When you eat your rice, ensure that your plate is clean, otherwise the wife you marry when you grow up will have lots of pimples on her face!" The whole idea beneath this oral tradition is that one should avoid the wastage of food. Because my ancestors were poor, every grain of rice was precious. And this principle has been passed on from generation to generation in my line of ancestors, without a single piece of documentation! And yet it is faithfully transmitted - until one generation above me, which was educated by the colonial educators. Even so, some values have remained.

What I'm trying to say is, deeply etched within the Asian cultural paradigm is a narratival way of communicating our values. Why should it be different for the communication of the gospel? Look at the way Jesus communicated with the Asian crowd (just so we're reminded that Christianity IS an Asian faith!) - what method of communication did he commonly use? Stories! He narrated his theological principles in the form of stories. Stories have a powerful way of impacting people, ranging from the most intellectually sophisticated to the most simple-minded people. Stories have a way of penetrating through psychological and emotional defences that people erect to guard their reluctance to change.

I think if we desire to communicate powerfully to the Chinese Malaysian today, we need to recover the art of telling parables (stories). The way that we were taught to preach by western Christianity was that of spewing a list of propositions - like a technical manual - for people to embrace and store within the recesses of their comprehension closets. At a later stage, we were taught that we should use little stories as illustrations for these propositions. Maybe it's time for us to allow the stories themselves to be the message. The stories themselves can become a means of communicating the theological principles, rather than merely being little illustrations to illuminate lengthy propositions that nobody cares to remember. This, I believe, will speak powerfully to our Asian culture.