Taiwan Church News

3346 Edition

April 11 - 17, 2016

Church Ministry

Proposing Women Leadership, Asian Fellowship Of Mission 21 Partners Convenes At YSTCS

Reported by Lin Chia-jin

From April 10 to 12, a women leadership workshop organized by Asian Fellowship of Mission 21 was held at Yu-Shan Theological College and Seminary(YSTCS) in eastern Taiwan. Over a hundred female pastors, from Swiss, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, were invited to attend this convention.

Through discussing practical issues for women in the church, like how to break through a traditional male-dominated framework; reclaim the female right of self-definition; speak out in the public spheres; make the awareness of gender-issue as a mainstream agenda; materialize the spirit of CEDAW(The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women), this women workshop wished to demonstrate the charisma and importance of women leadership in the ecumenical world.

Pastor Claudia Bandixen, the general secretary of Mission 21 from Swiss, remarked that actually it was a veryluxurious time for women to attend the one-week assembly. For female pastor, she not only had to handle the church affairs but also the family demands. In contrast, male pastors seldom had such kind of burden. She encouraged female pastors to break through the limitation of such male-dominated traditional framework.

Ms Chiu Kai-li, an assistant professor of Taiwan Theological College and Seminary, was invited to deliver a speech onhow to overcome the traditional male-dominated framework of theology; Rev. Tau Yueh-may of The Garden of Hope Foundation explained how CEDAW was practiced in Taiwan; Current general secretary of PROK(The Presbyterian Church of Korea) and Rev. Hwang Chiu-lan from BCCM(Basel Christian Church of Malaysia) were invited to share the roles and challenges in Korean and South-Eastern Asia respectively.

Translated by Peter Wolfe