Taiwan Church News

Indigenous community seeks help in face of sluggish and shady government rebuilding efforts

Reported by Simon Lin

Written by Lydia Ma

Fuxing Borough in Taoyuan District, Kaohsiung, is located in an area where two rivers converge. On June 11, 2012, torrential rains caused the river to overflow and 12 houses belonging to indigenous families were washed away because subpar construction work caused the river embankment to break. According to a recent update from Fuxing Borough director, Tu Yao-shun, the government has ignored residents’ welfare and their demands for government compensation. Furthermore, restoration of the embankment has been delayed again and again. In view of the approaching rainy season, local residents are very worried about their safety and very angry about being treated as second-class citizens.

Tu, who is also a member of Fuxing Presbyterian Church, told Taiwan Church News that the national government doesn’t seem to care about the safety of indigenous families living in the area and government agencies have been passing the buck. However, local residents have been living in fear every day because they are worried that history will repeat itself when the rainy season comes. Tu said that these indigenous families have convened meetings and created a self-help association to protect themselves due to the government’s unresponsiveness.

South Bunun Presbytery’s pastor Rev. Lituan has been very concerned about the situation on the ground and has already reported these residents’ plight to the PCT General Assembly. According to Lituan, World Vision Taiwan is planning to build some emergency shelters further upstream. However, lack of funding and other legal issues have prevented it from starting this project. World Vision is currently negotiating with the city government and seeking partner organizations to help them in this project.

According to local native residents whose homes have been destroyed, the soil upstream has become loose ever since Typhoon Morakot, resulting in severe landslides whenever it rains. In the past 3 years alone, the riverbed has grown 30 meters taller. Strangely, though the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 3 years to fix and clear the riverbed, the situation has not improved. They argue that the reason is because though backhoes continually dig up rubble and place it aside, the rain eventually washes the rubble back into the riverbed, making all cleaning efforts pointless.

Though local residents have demanded change, nothing has been done and the riverbed continues to grow taller and taller. This situation has many residents wondering if there is some sort of conspiracy between government officials and contractors to drag out the cleaning project indefinitely and get more money for it. Hence, residents are urging that public investigators be called to look into the affair.

Protest banners have been put up by a self-help organization created by local residents.

Photo provided by the Morakot Independent News Network.

Local church sets tone for Passion Week by revamping the sanctuary

Reported by Fang Lan-ting

Written by Lydia Ma

Visitors who visit Renhe Presbyterian Church in Tainan this week will find that its sanctuary has been redesigned in time for Passion Week. Sitting on a long communion table is a cross adorned with a purple silk scarf and a crown of thorns hanging loosely on the cross. The sanctuary was transformed and these objects were placed in this way purposely to remind the congregation of Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God who is also a majestic king.

According to the church’s pastor, Rev. Song Hsin-hsi, the church decided to mark Passion Week this year by turning the sanctuary into a venue ready to host a real memorial service of a loved one. The church hoped that this familiar setting would help the congregation grasp the wonder of God becoming flesh and God suffering with humanity. However, the story doesn’t end there because Christ’s suffering and death is ultimately followed by his resurrection. Song underscored that the Christian faith is real and alive and it must be personally experienced.

Photo by Fang Lan-ting

Denim Bible Youth Assembly draws a huge crowd of youth to the Word

Reported by Chen Yi-hsuan

Written by Lydia Ma

The Denim Bible Youth Assembly, an event that created a stir and drew an audience of 1100 youths when it was last held in 2004 in Taipei, was held in Chiayi on March 16. The event drew a crowd of more than 1500 youths to the city’s east district gymnasium. This year’s assembly program included many activities that young people typically like, such as praise and worship, drama, magic shows, etc. In all of these activities, the main goal was to highlight the importance of the Bible in everyday life. Teens were taught to love the Bible passionately, read it with enthusiasm, and build their lives on God’s word.

Heping Presbyterian Church led youths in a passionate praise and worship time and this segment was followed by an equally enthusiastic Bible pop quiz. Heping Church’s pastor, Rev. Timothy Ko, gave a short sermon and a well-known drama company presented a skit.

Taiwan Bible Society (TBS) was the main sponsor of this assembly and it gave each participating youth an assembly t-shirt as well as a denim Bible cover. TBS marketing director Cheng Hsin-er said that every activity in this assembly is geared at promoting the Bible and encouraging youths to love the Bible and find answers to life’s questions in it.

According to TBS, the denim Bible was introduced to them for the first time during a business trip to South Korea. As soon as TBS staff saw the denim Bible cover, they were convinced that it would be a “cool” thing that youths would appreciate because wearing jeans has become trendy nowadays. From that point on, staff began to think of ways to link fashion with evangelism so as to market the denim Bible.

Youths pour over their Denim Bibles for answers.

Rev. Ko speaks to youths.

Photos provided by TBS

Christian professor uses university’s compulsory community service class to help local indigenous church

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 asked Aping to teach 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 and Aping will need to find help elsewhere at the end of May.