[3320]Follow Jesus And Imitate The Life Of Christ

Taiwan Church News

3320 Edition

October 12 – 18, 2015

Editorial

 

Follow Jesus And Imitate The Life Of Christ

 

Five dimensions of an integrative mission, specified as proclaiming the gospel, cultivating the children of God, ministry of love , social reform and caring for the creation, are initially proposed by Council of World Mission(CWM) in 1998 and later accepted by a PCT mission seminar as the framework of her 21st century mission policy. In addition, considering the plural-religious contexts in Taiwan, an extra dimension as “the gospel and culture” is specially included by PCT. Therefore, six dimensions of mission become PCT’s fundamental perspectives of the 21st century mission. Especially, when the dimension of cultivating the children of God is considered, it is the most important engine to empower the religious education of PCT.

 

Retrieving the 150 years’ mission history in Taiwan, at this very particular moment to commemorate PCT150, we find our forebear missionaries, like Dr. James Maxwell, Rev. Thomas Barclay, Rev. William Douglas, Rev. George MacKay and etc, were all so bravely humble to imitate the selfless love of Christ. For the sake of the gospel, they left their comfortable zone, practiced an obedient life and came to a never chartered island – Taiwan. Through establishing the hospitals, setting up the schools and building up the churches island-wide, these pioneering missionaries served a comprehensive ministry caring for the body, mind and soul of the Taiwanese.

 

The vision of the third Sunday of every October, now named as “Day of Church Education Ministry” (previously known as World Sunday School Day, but name-changed in a resolution by the 56th PCT General Assembly) in PCT’s annual calendar, is to build up an education ministry of cultivation and discipline for a Christian faith ensuring that such a faith could be appropriately proclaimed in every generations.

 

The formation of a Christian’s spiritual life begins from the first phase as “to learn”, and then “to do”, finally in the phase as “to be” sharing the fragrant lives of a Christian. But it’s quite a paradox in our current ecclesiastic education, on the one hand, we instruct our children that the chief end in life is to glorify God and to enjoy him; on the other hand, we implicitly allow our children to be absent from the church assembly or Sunday service with the excuse of attending a cram class. Does this phenomenon suggest that we, as the critical successor of the Christian faith in the family, no more insist the core values of the Christian faith? This is a really serious issue deserving our sincere reflection as it would cause our children to overlook or even contempt the importance of faith!

 

Religious education is the very foundation to carry on a pious faith. The way how a Christian predecessor lives out her imitated life of Christ is just like the rain could revive a dried-up desert. Just like the words Paul had written to the believers in the early churches: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”(1 Corinthians 1:1), “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you”(Philippians 4:9), these are sincere advices to us to live a Christ-imitated life like Paul and pleased to God. Dear sisters and brothers! The responsibility of education ministry within the church does not rest on any people other than those who have determined to follow Jesus and imitate the life of Christ.

廣告/美好腳蹤368認購

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