Taiwan Church News
3764 Edition
April 15 ~ 21, 2024
Weekly Topical
Campus Fellowship Old Bones Recruited to Discuss New Campus Ministries
Reported by Sunny Hong from Taichung
To build up a campus ministry alliance between local pastors and campus ministry co-workers, who had once actively engaged in the PCT Campus Fellowship in college days, the PCT Campus Ministry Committee held a “Conference of Campus Fellowship Old Bones” at the Chong-Hsiao Road Church in Taichung on April 15.
Rev Hsei Huei-juan, secretary of the PCT Campus Ministry Committee, says that the purpose of this conference is to invite local pastors, who had positively engaged in the campus ministries, to exchange, debate and forge a consensus for future PCT campus ministry, in order to find strategies that can offer pastoral care to college students and proclaim the evangelical faith in campus.
Based on a statistics of the PCT Campus Ministry Committee, Rev Hsei indicates that more than 200 serving pastors, once enrolled as members of the PCT Campus Fellowship in the past decades, accounts for about one-sixth of the current PCT pastors.
It is very natural, Rev Hsei remarks, that pastors, once had actively participated in PCT Campus Fellowship in college days, would have a better understanding of the difficulties faced by campus ministries and be more willing to care the college students and support diverse campus ministries. Therefore, through discussion and sharing, Rev Hsei wishes that local pastors and campus ministry workers can build up consensus and channels to facilitate and strengthen campus ministry across Taiwan.
In a session named as “Dreaming Time”, moderated by Rev Lin Hsih-hao, a director serving at the Hualien College Student Center from the eastern Taiwan, many pastors and co-workers are invited to deliver their thoughts on the shapes and outlooks of current youth and students, write down what they observe on them and report some noteworthy social phenomena they have noted.
A common feature observed by these pastors and co-workers is that today’s youth and students generally feel confused about their future prospects, and are quite afraid and anxious about how to adapt to the rapid changes in social events. In addition, youth and students are generally good at traditional and static study, but lack the ability to take care of themselves.
Especially under the rapid changes and social pressures from a very fast-changing milieu, their parents’ expectation and guidance may shape the youth and students in next generation, which will become radically different from the past for sure.
After the workshop session, pastors and co-workers reached two consensus: First, the fear and anxiety that confronts the youth and students must be taken care of, better to solve these through proper counseling and positive disciplining; secondly, under the influence of the rapid changing world, the youth and students usually show closed mindset to be shy away from outside world.
Most pastors believe that this backtrack problem is related to original family of the youth and student, who are desperately in need of an intervening care and support from the pastor and local churches. Especially, considering the original family of the youth and students are members of local church, many believe its the duty of local church to reach out.
In this regard, Rev Chang Ren-her, pastor of Hsin-Tun Church of Taichung Presbytery, expresses that the church has various ministries to promote, and its contact with college students is often indirect. He urges front line campus co-workers to search, focus and build up a series of campus ministry models, which may help local church to support proclaim the gospel on campus more effectively
He also encourages college student centers to cooperate with neighboring local churches to up-grade Sunday school education on the qualities of teachers and teaching materials. For example, a joint training workshop may be organized and implemented as a pioneering program to connect campus ministry with local churches, he suggests.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
