Taiwan Church News

3281 Edition

January 12 -18, 2015

Editorial

Editorial: A Threefold Cord Of Evangelical Ministry

Standing at this historical timing of 2015, marked as the 150th anniversary of PCT's evangelical mission, we cannot help but dedicate our utmost gratitude and appreciation to the pioneering foreign missionaries who came to Taiwan from the distant corners all over the world. Their devout minds and simple hearts in the faith of the Lord sacrificing their whole life to preach the good news of Jesus Christ deserve our admiration to learn and follow.

Just like Abraham is called by the Lord, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.... and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed"(Gensis 12: 1~3), the pioneering missionaries not only brought the good news into Taiwan island but also imported professional expertise and techniques to facilitate the modernization of Taiwan. And these historically ground-breaking ministries laid down a solid foundation for PCT's evangelical mission, transforming our faith into an unbreakable threefold cord: evangelicalism, education and service.

In the same logic, to witness PCT's vision of church: becoming the sign of hope, PCT's Evangelicalism Committee also has a threefold cord ministries to run deep into our church and society. The first cord is to build up the partner relationship among churches both overseas and domestically. Now PCT have 13 overseas missionaries actively engaging with the ecumenically local churches in the field of evangelical or social ministries, regardless of the issue whether local church is Presbyterian or not. Domestically, the partner relationship is encouraged to forge an evangelical cooperation between Taiwanese-dominated urban church and the aboriginal church. And the objective is to plant more urban aboriginal churches to serve the increasing urbanized aboriginals.

The second cord is the One-Lead-One New Doubling Movement with a purpose to increase our membership and enhance the quality of our faithful service. This is an evangelical movement under way and supported by PCT General Assembly with many events, like supporting each Presbytery to mobilize on the missionary ministries, opening seminary to train the disciples, inviting local churches to function as the seed-church and etc.

The third cord is about the scripture reading. Especially, in 2015, PCT has published a brand new quarterly entitled as "SAY YES" for the juvenile, intending to extend the words of Lord into the hearts of our next generations. Hope such important PCT tradition, treasuring the words of Lord, could help our juvenile youth to carry on the service and commitment to Taiwan society.

And such a threefold cord, manifested in ecclesiastical partner relationship, One-Lead-One Movement and the emphasis of scripture reading, will be PCT's guidance in missionary ministry and evangelism. In addition, we can discipline and cultivate our missionaries, patronize our seminary students and evangelists, and expand th frontiers of the kingdom of God.