Taiwan Church News
3186 Edition
March 18-24, 2013
Church Ministry News

Reported by Simon Lin

Written by Lydia Ma

Kuinung Presbyterian Church, an urban indigenous church from South Bunun Presbytery, has been searching for people to help out in its children’s ministry for a long time. The church’s prayers were answered through the help Dr. Hor Lien-I, a Christian professor from National Cheng-Kung University (NCKU). Hor is currently the department chair of NCKU Medical College’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology and her department’s program includes a compulsory course on “community service”, which requires students to volunteer for at least 20 hours before they graduate.

When Hor, who had always had a burden for indigenous churches, heard about Kuinung Church’s plight, she arranged for 20 of her students to go to Kuinung Church in small groups to help out for the duration of 10 weeks beginning from March 18. This partnership will help college students understand the hardships that indigenous peoples face when living and working in urban areas besides fulfilling part of their academic requirement, said Kuinung Church’s pastor, Evangelist Aping.

Aping’s church is not the first urban indigenous church to benefit from partnerships with NCKU. In 2012, NCKU students helped Nankay Presbyterian Church, another urban indigenous church, by teaching science, health education, music, and badminton classes for little children.

Speaking about the needs of Kuinung Church, Aping said that she had told Dr. Hor that the children needed to improve their speaking ability. She explained that she had noted that most children in the church didn’t know how to express themselves well and rarely conversed with adults. Hence, they mostly responded to questions using short “yes” or “no” answers. Aping later discovered that adults also had the same problem. She believes that the root cause of such a passive and low level of interaction between indigenous peoples and the general population is due to a sense of inferiority as indigenous peoples are usually manual workers with very limited levels of education.

When Hor realized the needs of Kuinung Church children and understood that education was an integral part of their development, she consulted a social worker with experience in youth counseling to create a program that her students could use for the children. She also taught her students about indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures.

On March 18, a bunch of students from NCKU went to Kuinung Church to help out. They led a few conversation lessons to hone the children’s conversation skills and helped them build some self-confidence. Kuinung Church also sent a few youths from the church to help out because indigenous children can be quite boisterous. These sessions will take place on Saturdays and Sundays from now until the end of May when the semester ends.

According Aping, it is very stressful for indigenous peoples to work in urban areas because they still need to work during the weekends. For this reason, the church has long hoped to offer childcare during weekends so as to discourage children from going to internet cafes or other shady places and loiter there all day. However, due to the church’s limited manpower and resources, such programs have never taken off in the past. However, with the help of NCKU and God’s grace, this kind of long term children’s ministry might just be possible now.