Taiwan Church News
3405 Edition
May 29 – June 4, 2017
Headline News

Invited By Berliner Missionswerk, PCT Delegates Attend Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag 2017

Reported by Lin Jia-chin

To commemorate the Reformation 500, a festival of Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag 2017(the Church DayFestival) was magnificently held from May 24 to 28 at Berlin, Germany. Over 130 thousand visitors were attracted from all over the world to participate in kinds of memorial events for this historical event of Reformation.

Invited by Berliner Missionswerk, a long-term ecumenical partner in World Council of Churches, PCT also sent a team of church officials led by General Assembly Moderator Rev Chen Ming-che to celebrate Reformation 500 and visit some historic sites famous in the Reformation.

Except attending the Church Day events at Berlin, PCT delegates visited Eisleben – the place where Martin Luther was born and died, Wittenburg – the place where Luther is said to post his reknown “95 theses” on the door of All Saint’s Church in Wittenburg, and Wartburg Castle where Luther translated New Testament from Greek into German.

Plainly organized by the laymen, Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag 2017 is an event consisting ecumenical worships, Taizé rituals, and all kinds of innovative liturgies. There are also hundreds of forums exchanging opinions about politics, economics, social issues, arts, musics, and cultures. Especially, the participants’ fervent passion and dynamic energy are vividly demonstrated in 730 booths and 26 exhibition sites operated by kinds of church missionary and social welfare institutes.

In the morning on May 25, PCT delegates visited Berliner Taiwanese Women Association and encountered Rev Chao Yo-yuan, 86-year-old, who drove from Colonge to attend Church Day festival, at the exhibition site of Church Ministry. Rev Chen Ming-che was very much moved when he saw Rev Chao set up a booth, named “Taiwan in die UNO”, urging the world to accept Taiwan as a member-state of United Nations.

Rev Cheng Kuo-chong, director of PCT Church and Society Committee, specially pointed out that Rev Chao and Rev Dr Shoki Coe were both founding members of the Taiwanese Self-Determination Movement. Up to date, Rev Chao still engages in Taiwan independence movement, Rev Zeng said.

In the afternoon on May 25, PCT delegates visited a sanatorium for elders run by Diakonie Berlin, initially an overall Diakonie institution of the Protestant church in Germany but later localized as single regional associations, and held a meeting with sanatorium’s director and social workers to learn and communicate.

On May 26, PCT delegates held a meeting in the morning with Berliner Missionswerk to understand how the review process of sending the youth volunteer overseas is done in German; visited the Kaiser-Wilhelm Memorial Church in the afternoon; and attended the Night of Mission, held by Berliner Missionswerk, praying with near 300 ecumenical church fellows.

Later in that night, PCT delegates shared their dinner together with Dr Shieh Jyh-wey, Taiwan ambassador to German, Berliner Missionswerk’s Director Roland Herpich and Deputy Director Christof Theilemann, and the spirituality master Fr Anselm Grün. After dinner, they also visited St Nicholas’ Church which contributed an invisible but influential power to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1989.

On May 27, PCT delegates specially paid a visit to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, its attached underground information center, and the Berlin Wall Memorial. After seeing the heinous murder and cold-blooded killings suffered by the Jews of Europe during WWII, Rev Chen Ming-che could only describe his emotions in an extreme shock and utterly painful.

Rev Chen remarked that he really could not believe these atrocities committed by Nazi regime were so horrendously done by a country historically rooted and pledged in Christian faith. This history of holocaust only proved how fragile the human nature is, Rev Chen said, adding that the human being always need to be vigilant and tremulous before God asking his mercy and grace!

Translated by Peter Wolfe