计志文 · 1901 – 1985 · Chinese / American
Andrew Gih was born in 1901 in Suzhou, Jiangsu. Because his family was poor, he was sent as a child to Shanghai as an apprentice. In 1924, in Shanghai, he was converted at meetings held by Jennie V. Hughes and Dr. Mary Stone of the Bethel church. From 1925 he trained at Bethel Bible Seminary (伯特利圣经学院), and after graduating he stayed on to serve there.
In 1931 he formed the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band with John Sung, Lin Jingkang (林景康), Nie Ziying (聂子英) and Li Daorong (李道荣), supported and sent out by Jennie Hughes and Mary Stone. From 1931 to 1933 the five-man itinerant team held evangelistic meetings across the country, leading many to make decisions for Christ; it became a landmark event of the Chinese gospel movement of the 1930s.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, he moved to Chongqing, Kunming, Xi'an and other parts of the wartime interior to continue preaching, and took part in church relief work. In 1947 he founded the China Evangelistic Mission in Shanghai, independently sending Chinese preachers into the interior and to overseas Chinese communities. After 1949 he moved the mission's headquarters to Hong Kong, and then to Jakarta in Indonesia, Singapore, Penang in Malaya and other places, and for many years travelled among the Chinese churches of Indonesia, Malaya, the Philippines and Thailand to lead revival meetings.
He had a lasting influence on Chinese evangelical churches in Indonesia. In the 1950s he held large revival meetings in Jakarta that led great numbers of Chinese to Christ. In 1965 he moved to Los Angeles in the United States, where he continued to lead the North American branch of the China Evangelistic Mission and ran theological training for Chinese. He died of illness in 1985 in Monterey Park, California, and was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park. His books Huishou Sishi Nian [Looking Back on Forty Years] and Fuxing de Huoyan [Flames of Revival] have long circulated among Chinese evangelicals.