Taiwan Church News 3296 Edition April 27 - May 3, 2015 Church Ministry Seminar of General Secretaries From Non-Aboriginal PCT Presbyteries Summoned Again Reported by Simon Lin On April 20 and 21, a seminar of general secretaries from PCT non-aboriginal presbyteries opened at the Education and Training Center of Nan Shan Life Company at Taichung. Rev. Lyim Hong-tiong, PCT General Secretary, addressed to the seminar members that the purpose of this meeting was to consolidate a common missionary goal through direct communication and mutual understanding. In addition, since 1999 PCT General Assembly had established the Code of General Secretary for each presbytery, which stated explicitly: "...an integral church does not refer to either General Assembly or local congregation, but is built up and hub around the presbytery". General secretaries of the presbyteries of Chi-hsin, Taipei, Hsin-chu, Cha-yi and Ping-tung delivered their ministry report at the first day of the seminar. Some presbyteries, which did not establish the office of general secretary, also assigned their presbytery Moderators to attend. Rev. Su Cheng-chai, general secretary of Taipei presbytery, suggested that the administrative authority and its related responsibilities of the general secretary within a presbytery should be specified in details further, in order to materialize the ideal of a PCT church governance hub around the presbytery. Otherwise, the General Secretary in presbytery is only positioned as a chief of staff, without authorization to nominate his/her cabinet members or propose any budget. Regarding the extention of One-Lead-One Movement until 2020, Rev. Lyim Hong-tiong advised each presbytery to set up a practical growth target watching closely their own actual contexts without slipping into formalism. Rev. Hwang Hse-wei, general secretary of Cha-yi presbytery, shared the critical steps how Cha-yi presbytery could submit a 100% complete church members statistics: First, strictly demand each local congregation to submit their members statistics during the presbytery's internal audit; secondly, for those who failed to submit the statistics, there will be a second audit till the target was reached. Rev. Chor Chon-jen, general secretary of Hsin-chu presbytery, complained current PCT format for church members statistics does not consider the "pre-evangelical ministry" undertaken by many churches in their own communities. Rev. Chor questioned if some modification on this format could be made? Against this, Rev. Tsai Nan-hsin, Executive Secretary of PCT New Doubling Movement Center, admitted it's a real problem faced by PCT as PCT has a wide difference between urban and rural churches. However, Tsai promised to make General Assembly play as a plat-form from next year, inviting different churches with same type of ministry to share and support each other. Rev. Hwang Hsien-kwan, general secretary of Chi-hsin presbytery, expressed that this seminar was very meaningful to him. Because he used to think there was not any relationship between the general secretary of a presbytery and the General Assembly; now, for himself personally, he understood the general secretary of a presbytery could play an important role as a part of the General Assembly. Translated by Peter Wolfe |