Taiwan Church News 3263 Edition September 8 - September 14, 2014 Headline News PCT One-Leads-One Evangelical Movement Focuses On Youth Evangelicalism Reported by Simon Lin From September 1st to 3rd, leaders of every PCT presbytery are invited by evangelical center of "One-Lead-One and New Dubling Movement" to hold an annual evangelical meeting at Hsin-chu. Focusing on the bottle-neck difficulties on youth evangelicalism, PCT general assembly tries to work together with presbyteries and local congregations to find a way out and establish the evangelical ministry agenda for the visions of next year's White Paper report. Rather than recruiting only representatives from each presbytery as in the past, Rev. Tsai Nan-hsin -chief executive of PCT evangelical center - emphasized that much more young men, co-workers at college student centers, women and elderly people are also invited to attend this annual evangelical meeting. This is to make our one-leads-one evangelical movement becomes more plural and dynamic. After discussing with the pastors from the presbyteries of aboriginal Paiwan, rural Cha-yi and urban Taipei, Dai Yi-ren, a youth representative from Taichung college student center, concluded that the main cause of PCT's youth decrease are due to (1) PCT is short of characteristics of young people, and (2) local congregations do not catch the real spirit of PCT, let alone to pass it on to the youth. In addition, Dai suggests there should be a communication platform between local congregations and the church youth; otherwise, it is very liable that the youth's critical faith and praxis learned from their PCT campus co-workers or evangelists could be easily excluded by their own local congregations. Evangelist Tsai Hen-wei, campus evangelical co-worker at Taichung college student center, points out that the youth need to speak out loud their demand in the church. In the mean time, the youth should also be arranged to take part in the session to learn and understand how the church works. Accordingly, some sovereignty of ministry decision should be shared to the youth. Many issues are also discussed by different groups in this annual meeting, including how should college student center cooperate with PCT general assembly and presbytery? What are their respective responsibilities in this one-leads-one evangelical movement? Could there be any framework to integrate the existent church resources? Is there any meaning or function for the alma mater fellowship after the youth student is graduated? How to care and concern for the pastor kids on campus? How the women fellowship proceed pastoral concern for the young single woman? and etc. Translated by Peter Wolfe |