Taiwan again...this time Peter

It has taken us nearly two years, but we have finally visited all the countries where we have personnel and active partnerships.  Taiwan was the last--simply because it was the least urgent.  Ruthie and Nancy Jo visited Covenant expat personnel more than a month ago.  Now it was my turn--to visit Taiwan Covenant churches.  I went not so much to encourage or catalyze, but to listen and learn.   

Amazing!  Taiwanese Covenant churches are growing like crazy!  There are now four churches with close to 1,000 members.  One church--the mother church at Xindian--is just finishing a new sanctuary.  They are not into thinking small or being timid.  In order to take the church to the people, they decided to buy a building designed for a shopping mall.  The first three stories are, indeed, going to become a shopping mall.  But the fourth story...a 3,000 seat sanctuary, visible from one of Taipei's most important freeway interchanges.  

Xindian church taking shape in a shopping complex

Looking down on the shopping mall

  

Three more things really caught my attention:  the way churches are reaching into their communities, their mid-week prayer meetings attended by hundreds of people, and the bridges they are building into the mainland. 

Nearly every church I visited has afternoon tutoring programs for children from the neighborhood.  Many churches were actively involved in public schools in their neighborhoods where they have been asked to teach classes on ethics and other relevant subjects.

Teaching in a public school

A restaurant operated in a shopping center as an outreach to ex-prisoners

And those prayer meetings!  Hands stretched out.  Praying out loud, speaking in tongues--these were unlike any other Covenant church I have been in.  But why shouldn't they be?  Different is good.  The Apostle Paul said,  "Do all speak in tongues?  Do all interpret?"  I take it the answer is "No."  But then he said, "Now eagerly desire the greater gifts."  As for me, I just sat there--enjoyed the worship and the praise.  And I prayed again, "Lord, give me those gifts you want me to have."  (I Cor. 12:30-31)

 

Now about those bridges.  Nearly every pastor I met is involved in active ministry in the mainland.  When I was growing up we talked about "the iron curtain, the bamboo curtain"--those barriers separating the communist/non-communist world.  This is not news, of course, but...those things don't exist anymore.  Hundreds of bridges have been built.  It's hard to escape the conclusion--that's a good thing, an amazing work of the Spirit.