Taiwan Church News

3240 Edition

March 31 - April 6, 2014

Editorial

Editorial: Let The Spirit Of Voluntary Commitment Becomes Our Energy and Power

Over five hundreds thousands black shirt citizens flooded into the Katagalan Boulevard on March 30, protesting against Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement(CSSTA) and demonstrating their will to protect Taiwan's democracy, with a sincere wish that President Ma Ying-jeou could humbly down to listen the voice of the people.

Since the students occupied the congress meeting hall from March 18, lots of students from around the the country poured into the streets around the congress to protect the students inside the congress building. Many college teachers and university professors, moving their classrooms within the safe campus onto the streets around the occupied parliament, lectured openly to the students and citizens about the citizen society. And the students inside the congress also voluntarily organized themselves to maintain the traffics, sanitary cleaning and material supplies. No body commands and no body mobilize anyone to maintain all these miscellaneous stuffs. But the students would show up to help, once there is demand heard.

Except the voluntary maintenance of the order by the students and teachers, during the period of occupying the congress, many pickup trucks owned by the ordinary citizens also appeared voluntarily to transport the daily supplies, like food, water, blankets, electric facilities and etc, to the temporarily established material resources booths. These goods and supplies are charities donated from the citizens to support the students. Maybe these citizens could not stage a long stay to protest inside the congress, but they do their best efforts to join this student movement. In the meantime, many activity groups with different social concerns also staged their booth around the congress, exchanging their thoughts and ideas with the students and the rallied citizens.

In addition to the charity from the crowd, a group of Christians demonstrated their calling to comfort the agitated temper and disquiet mind during this contentious student protest. So, prayer meeting and vigil were held every night in the Chi-nan Presbyterian Church. Some PCT youth even organised the "Sunflower Choir" to sing the hymns, expecting these peaceful lyrics could comfort and encourage the students in stress and challenge. Especially, Chi-nan Presbyterian Church, which is just located beside the congress, does a very good service to the students and citizens: their church spaces and facilities were maximally utilized and offered to accommodate the students and the citizens. The most impressive thing about these service and charities is that all done in a spirit of voluntary commitment!

There are many differences between this Sunflower Student Movement and ordinary activists campaign. One of the most distinguishing characteristics is her voluntary commitment. Such voluntary committed action does not mean to act arbitrarily, but to hear the call of demand and voluntarily to respond in order to make the operation more smooth and fluent. Though there were many communications and negotiations required, with a vision to defend our democracy in Taiwan, students, teachers, citizens and Christians could stand united to work together. No matter what the results would be, the passionate welding of these social forces has lead Taiwan society jumping into a brand new world!

Back to the issues discussed within our beloved church, what we can learn from this Sunflower Student Movement? Would we give more chance and freedom to our church youth, like the social activist campaign movements, let our church youth to do their own ministries and learn to be voluntarily committed and responsible? Whether we could persuasively empower our PCT members to voluntarily commit themselves into kinds of ministries, instead of crowd mobilization? If we could really grasp the true spirit - voluntary commitment - from this Sunflower Student Movement, practicing more energetically in the gospel preaching and social concern, it is not far to make our church to become the sign of hope!