Puli Christian Church - De Fen Tang ®H ¨½
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- 1997 Report, September-December - (by
Alain & Rita Haudenschild)
A. The Church:
The church has begun as a bible-study group
in 1993. Mr. You, who was the leader of this bible-studies is a graduate
of Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary in Taipeh and eager to establish
a vibrant church which nourtures its members with the word of God.
As a friend of Mr. Garlic, who founded the Bamboo Bible Valley Camp, he
was involved in a church founding project at Sung Chu Road with the Conservative
Baptist Mission for about one years time. That time helped him to understand
what missionaries do differently in churchplanting. Mr. You is an
evangelist. In conjunction with Pulis Christian Hospital he could attract
about 50 people to regularly come together reading the bible and
worshipping the Lord. When we arrived in Puli in September there was just
about the time to think about the next steps in church-growth to be taken
. Our relationship to Mr. You traces back to the time, when Rod Seib and
later Alain were conference manager. At the occasion of our annual conference
in Puli we had to talk with brother You about the various details. In that
time brother You shared his vision about starting several churches in the
Puli area. According to his judgement there were no vibrant, spiritually
living churche around who would have sufficient spiritual life to attract
the people for the gospel. That is why he asked Alain to consider helping
him to fulfill his vision.
B. The Assignment
While in the beginning there were several
options to support the church, we spent some weeks to see how we should
invest our lives best. Since another part of our present assignment is
to promote national church based missions we tried to include this element
in our considerations. What therefore soon attracted our attention was
our neighbour, the Bethel Puli Girls Bible School with its emphasis
in missions in their curriculum. We won- dered, whether the church could
possibly work closer together with the school in order to share the christian
teaching resources more effectivly. As a matter of fact, what nobody knew
by September was clear in November already. By the end of the year a contract
was signed in which the Bethel Girl Bible School church, Puli Christian
Church De Fen Tang, invites the Puli Christian Church to rent their
church-building for a period of five years time on Sunday morning and Tuesday
evening. The juristical name of the church under which officially the church
runs is therefore Puli Christian Church De Fen Tang.
C. Our Ministry at the Puli Christian Church
In the first months we were mainly trying
to learn more about the church, its structure and the people. The areas
in which we were most regular involved were: The Friday evening
cell-group, weekly two prayer-meetings, Sunday worship, student work at
the University in Puli, visitations, attending coworker-meetings.Besides,
Alain began to teach the first Discipleship Training Course ¡§Survival
Kit 1¡¨ (Chinese-Version), and was first invited to preach in
November.
D. Preaching Ministries
We both were scheduled to preach at
the bible-schools chapel-time every Wednesday.
Alain was invited to preach in Pastor Zhangs church close
to Hueisun national park at the occasion of Christmas.
E. Conclusions
The church is willing to face the Puli society¡¦
challenges. The most flourishing ministry is the childrens Sunday school
programme. The necessity for evangelism is clear. The evange- listic meeting
in December was a big success, and yet showed the underlying weeknesses
too, the follow-up work and training. For the big plans the church has
not yet the well-trained people they need. Some of the training we
can provide. It seems to us we are just there at the right time helping
to set up a training-programme concept in Pulis multicultural place as
well as cross-culturally broaden their perspective for the support of missions
with their own life.¡@