Unlike the Dutch Mission in West Java (cf. Gereja Kristen Pasundan, no. 15) the 19th-century mission in East Java did not work among people of Chinese descent. Christianity among the Chinese in East Java has its origins in mission work by the Chinese themselves (cf. Gereja Kristen Indonesia, no. 7) and, in the first decades of the 20th century, by the mission of American Methodists (1905-1928).In 1928 this mission was taken over by a small Calvinist church in the Netherlands. At the time there was only one Chinese congregation, in Surabaya, which was divided into three sections according to the Chinese dialects spoken. The mission started working among the Malay-speaking Chinese, and on August 9, 1934, eight congr were united into one General Assembly. In 1940 the combined membership was 900, of whom half were Malay-speaking, the total Chinese population of East Java being a little more than 150,000. However, this small church split over the language issue. Part of the Chinese-speaking Christians founded a separate Church, Gereja Kristus Tuhan, which now considers itself as Calvinist Evangelical. The church has a theological school, Institut Theologia Aletheia, a publishing house, Gandum Mas, and a small number of schools. The GKT considers December 7, 1939, as its date of birth.
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