After receiving her medical degree at the
University of Michigan in 1896, the Chinese medical doctor and
bible woman Shi Meiyu returned to China and practiced medicine in the
Danforth Memorial Hospital run by the
Methodist Episcopal Church beginning in 1901. However, she eventually became disillusioned by the amount of foreign control on the hospital and the
liberal theology of the mission. She later severed ties with the mission and, partnering with her sister Dr. Phebe Stone and the former American Methodist Episcopal missionary Jennie V. Hughes, established the Bethel Mission in
Shanghai in 1920. Hughes led Bethel Mission's
Bible school whereas Shi (Mary Stone) and Phebe Stone led its hospital and nursing school. While the nurse worked, the Bible woman preached, and in this way hundreds of people heard of Christianity for the first time. As Dr. Stone says, ". . .What we need now is an efficient force of trained evangelistic workers to ... follow up the seed thus sown broadcast on such receptive soil." The Bible school was the basis for small groups, known as "Bethel Bands". The original members of the Shanghai Bethel Band were students from well-known families in Shanghai. One of them was Beatrice Chung, a daughter of a prominent physician, (锺文邦) Dr Harry Chung. Mary Stone and the evangelistic Bethel Bands, reached out to many gatherings, evangelistic meetings and remained witnessing and living by faith from 1920 until the Japanese invasion in 1937. The student bands, probably modelled after the evangelistic bands used for decades in Japan, were small teams of students or alumni who would conduct revival meetings in churches. They were almost always appealing in having musical talent. Plus they were of neat and tidy appearance, articulate of speech and in preaching, indeed altogether winsome. They were quite popular in churches of all theological orientations. == Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band ==