Taiwan Church News

3302 Edition

June 8 - 14, 2015

Editorial

Know Thyself, March Forward To Next 150

This year, 2015, is PCT's 150th anniversary of mission in Taiwan. Exceptseveral grand assembly specially held by PCT General Assembly, different types of celebrations in medium size will also be convened at local presbyteries. Looking back into the past of PCT, we were not going easy and smooth; rather there were many problems hanging inside our church, even misunderstood by the government and other denominations. Yet, thanks for Lord's grace, He still led us go past over 150 years! Among these events of celebration and thanksgiving, we should carry on the commandment entrusted passed to us, marching forward to the next 150 years of mission.

In Lord's grace, PCT has evolved into a middle-class church, possessing manycharacteristics of the middle class in secular society, such as conservative, stability-preferred, reformation resistant and etc. If we PCT wish to carry on another 150 years' mission, we have to reflect and check into ourselves, asking a question: Do we really know PCT? We shall admit, if we reflect into details, we still do not know ourselves enough.

In recent decades, what our churches were chasing for? The answer is theworshiping style and member growth of the mega-church. Our churches always fix our eyes on some metropolis mega-church as the models, but forget 60% of our church whose members are under 100 people. In local ministries, our churches prefer to work with other denominations yet overlooking our own faith tradition deemed as old, clumsy and outmoded. To follow up the trend, our churches continuously try to outsource a proper way to facilitate church growth but only some techniques could be found. We want to imitate the charisma of the urban churches, but always forget that our churches are in rural area. In the dimensions of youth participation, children's pastoral care and power structure inside of church ministry, we have also seen that there are many phenomenons deserves to reflect and improve.

Even though the problems are so many, we still find that there are so many PCT pastors sticking to their local churches, accompanying their church members and catering their neighbors. And this is our soft power! In the past decades, many people witnessed the speedy growth of the Church of the Bread of Life (CBL). Seeing CBL attracted so many young people, many churches naturally followed and imitated. But, now, time is up for CBL to face the phenomenon of the youth-turned-aged members in their church. And PCT had already experienced this issue and known how to handle long time ago.

Today, evangelical mission in many other denominations still put their focuson personal faith into salvation. But we PCT had developed from such personal faith into six dimensions in order to make our mission more inclusive and comprehensive. We should not indulge in our past dazzling mission history. The things worthy of our pursuit are responding to the call of God under current Taiwan's context and holding the spirit of faith like our forebears did in the suffering and challenges. Once again, we have to focus our attention on the suffered, the weak and the marginalized, spending time and effort to understand them, breath with them and accompany them. These are not any tactics or strategy, concerning about cost and benefits only, but due to a determination to imitate the spirit of love and sacrifice from Jesus Christ!

In this information age, we have to locate our spirit of faith in thetradition of Calvin teachings; identify our foot steps within Taiwan history; realize our mission in the sufferings of Taiwan people. If we would imitate Jesus to suffer for the kingdom of God and follow our forebears to persevere in faith, putting these ideals into praxis in Taiwan society unceasingly and demonstrating with actions to tell the story that church is the sign of hope, then we will be capable of marching toward the next 150 years of mission!