The ECF founder, Dr.
Ji Zhiwen (anglicized as Andrew Gih), was born in
Shanghai and became a Christian while a student at
Bethel Mission in Shanghai. Moved by the preaching of
Paget Wilkes, he became an evangelist at the age of 25. In 1928 he joined the
Worldwide Evangelistic Band, led by
George Rideout of Asbury College, Wilmore, Kentucky. While on a preaching tour in south China, he met the famed evangelist
John Sung (Song Shangjie). They formed the
Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band in 1931. After Sung left this work in 1933, Gih continued it under the name of Bethel Mission until July 1947, when he founded the Evangelize China Fellowship (ECF) as a Mandarin Church in Shanghai. After Shanghai fell to the Communists, Gih moved his work to Hong Kong, and appointed Paul Shen to open ECF work in
Taiwan, resulting eleven years later in seven churches and an orphanage. In addition to the building of churches, orphanages, and schools; ECF was credited with creating a vast network of Chinese Christians in the
Diaspora, and helping Gih attain a level of "notoriety [that] placed him in the company of fellow
revivalist J. Edwin Orr and
Billy Graham." In the first 31 years of ECF, the organization opened 375 churches, seven schools, and two seminaries. As of 2007, ECF comprises one-half of the global organization ECF International which conducts charitable and evangelical activities in 18 countries. ==See also==