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I came to Hong Kong's Breakthrough Youth Village expecting to find a small, creative media and publishing organization. Instead I found a sprawling enterprise seemingly without boundaries.

"People always ask me, what is Breakthrough about?" says Sookit Li, one of the veteran staff. "I've been here for a long time, and I can't say."

Physically, Breakthrough spreads across a four-story facility comprising dormitories, offices, and an extensive youth center. Over 230 Christian staff and many more young volunteers create books, movies, magazines and websites, gospel camps, a counseling center, and training institutes for teachers and youth workers. They have organized a New Year's "dance extravaganza" that attracted 30,000 people to a downtown street.

Breakthrough also created a popular action figure sold in shops known as "Mr. Match," as well as a book with extraordinary graphics that Hong Kong schools use to teach the aesthetics of public space. The creativity and variety are dizzying.

"We cannot just communicate with youth through the media," says Philemon Choi, a doctor who was instrumental in founding Breakthrough. "It has to be life touching life."

That philosophy explains the hybrid nature of Breakthrough. A media operation this large and sophisticated rarely conducts personal ministry, but Breakthrough Youth Village echoes with the shouts of the young people who live and play in the same building that houses corporate offices.

Last year's New Year's Eve "Dance Unlimited" was a stunning example of Breakthrough's cross-disciplinary approach. The idea came in response to the economic and psychological slump afflicting Hong Kong. The word dance also means encouragement in Chinese. Thus the event's name could be translated as "Encouragement Unlimited."

Breakthrough meant to provide an alternative to drug-soaked and destructive New Year's celebrations. Organization leaders also intended to nudge Hong Kong young people to express themselves creatively and to encourage one another.

To gain entrance to the extravaganza, young people had to show a "passport" demonstrating that they had done a "positive act." Breakthrough distributed a booklet at local schools suggesting good deeds that qualified. Breakthrough worked out a security arrangement with the Hong Kong government to take over a city street. University groups led a special theme dance with 80 drummers pounding out the rhythm. The number of celebrants swelled from 10,000 to 30,000 for the final midnight countdown.

The evening had no explicit Christian message. Asked whether he considers Breakthrough an evangelistic organization, Choi says, "Yes and no." Evangelistic should not be narrowly defined as converting people, he says. Breakthrough's leaders believe the cultural mandate in Genesis and the Great Commission in Matthew should be understood together.

"People come to us and they are blessed," Choi says. "We think that is what Jesus did." Leaders intended "Dance Unlimited" to bless Hong Kong young people, nothing more and nothing less. They proclaim the gospel message through other means—mainly through personal conversations and gospel camps.

Breakthrough's products, all in Chinese, show unusual visual sophistication. That traces back to the late Josephine So, a magazine editor and author who helped launch Breakthrough in the early 1970s.

"The church was in what we call the 'milk powder stage,' " Li says. Poor people received packets of milk powder at church, and the mindset of poverty limited ministry innovation. So insisted that ministry be done with beauty and creativity.

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July 2003, Vol. 47, No. 7