Recent Worship service at New Hope Church, Taipei

Last Sunday I preached at New Hope on Luke 17:20-37 about the urgency of believing the Gospel and sharing the Gospel with others.

Below are short video clips of the service taken by the wife of one of the Taiwanese pastoral interns.

One of the hymns. We alternate singing one verse in English, one verse in Mandarin.

We eat lunch together and then after lunch there are two fellowship groups that meet. One is a guitar fellowship where they practice playing hymns. The other is a Taiwanese - Language Bible Study Fellowship where 1. we learn a Taiwanese hymn, 2. we read a section in Taiwanese from the Gospel of John, 3. we hear a testimony in Taiwanese from one of the members, and 4. We close in prayer. This fellowship is designed to give Christians practice in sharing the Gospel to older generation Taiwanese who do not necessarily speak Mandarin very well.

Eric sharing his testimony. Eric is a graduate of Christ's College in KuanDu.

Praising Christ through the Centuries

An Advent Poem -- Attributed to 9th Century A.D. poet Cynewulf (from The Christ, Part 1 - Section 10, Lines 348-377) translated from Anglo-Saxon by Burton Raffel

Oh Holy Lord of Heaven, You
and Your Father lived in that noble place,
Ruled together, before time began.
None of your angels existed, then,
None of the mighty Hosts of Heaven
Who guard and keep Your Kingdom, Your glorious
Home and Your Father's, when You worked Your wonders
You and He, making world
And stars and all this great creation.
In You, and in Your Father, rests
The joy of the Holy Ghost. Now
Your creatures join in a humble prayer,
Lord and Savior and God, beg You
To hear Your servants' voices. Our souls
Are tormented by our own wild longings.
Here in our miserable exile devils
And damned souls twist their savage
Chains around us. Our only safety
Is in You, eternal Lord: help
These sorrowful prisoners of sin, let
Your Coming comfort our misery, despite,
Oh Christ, our bitter lusts and our crimes
Against You. Pardon us, remember our misfortunes,
Our stumbling steps, our feeble hearts,
Remember our helplessness. Come, King
Of men, come now, bring us Your love
And Your mercy; deliver our souls, grant us
Salvation, God, so that in all we do,
Now and forever, our days on earth
Will work Your holy will among men.

====================

Original Anglo Saxon:

Ēalā þū hālga heofona Dryhten,
þū mid Fæder þinne gefyrn wǣre
efenwesende in þām æþelan hām.
Næs ǣnig þā giet engel geworden,
nē þæs miclan mægenþrymmes nān
ðe in roderum ūp rice biwitigað,
þēodnes þrȳðgesteald ond his þegnunga,
þā þū ǣrest wǣre mid þone ēcan Frēan
sylf settende þās sidan gesceaft,
brāde brytengrundas. Bǣm inc is gemǣne
Hēahgǣst hlēofæst. Wē þē, Hǣlend Crist,
þurh ēaðmēdu ealle biddað
þæt þū gehȳre hæfta stefne
þīnra niedþiowa, nergende God,-
hū wē sind geswencte þurh ūre sylfra gewill.
Habbað wræcmæcgas wērgan gǣstas,
het[e]l[a]n helsceaþa[n], hearde genyrwad,
gebunden bealorāpum. Is sēo bōt gelong
eall æt þē ānum, ēce Dryhten.
Hrēowcearigum help, þæt þin hidercyme
āfrēfre fēasceafte, þēah wē fǣhþo wið þec
þurh firena lust gefremed hæbben.
Āra nū onbehtum, ond ūsse yrmþa geþenc,-
hū wē tea1trigað tȳdran mōde,
hwearfiað hēanlīce. Cym nū, hæleþa Cyning;
ne lata tõ lange. Ūs is lissa þearf,-
þæt þū ūs āhredde, ond ūs hǣlogiefe
sōðfæst sylle, þæt wē siþþan forð
þā sēllan þing symle mōten
geþēon on þēode, þīnne willan.

Please keep praying for parents of members of New Hope. Many of them are not yet Christians. We visited one mom last Sunday in a countryside area near Taipei to share the Gospel with her. We hope to do more of these visits. Almost all of our conversations over an hour were in the Taiwanese language.

One other thing you might enjoy watching:

The following is a video made by OMF. You can get a little bit of a feel for how a foreigner adjusts to living in Taiwan. You get little glimpses of what Taiwan is like.

LEARN - Taiwan from OMF Taiwan on Vimeo.

Would you like to come visit on a short-term mission trip? Or become a long-term missionary to Taiwan?

Pictures from Taiwan

Arriving in Taoyuan International Airport:

New Hope Church members fellowship at our apartment.

Mid Autumn Festival: Workers at a small video rental store are grilling outside the shop.

New Hope Church members learn guitar together after lunch on Sunday's.

Jeremy Lin's talk

Many of you know that Jeremy Lin, the NBA basketball player of the "Linsanity" fame, is Taiwanese. You may not know that he is a Christian. Here is a video of him speaking about his perspective on his life, success and his faith: Please pray that God will use this testimony to awaken sinners to their need for Jesus Christ.

The Blessings and Challenges of the Small Church

- Rev. Joel H. Linton, August 31, 2012

Taiwan has many small churches: many have a building but only perhaps thirty members to support the pastor and maintain the building. Rural churches and churches in economically depressed areas of the United States may have similar problems. My thoughts about what are the blessings and challenges for small churches are as follows.

Limited If Any Growth Through Transfers:

For Taiwan, there are very few Christians compared to the overall population, perhaps 2-3 percent. Therefore a church may possibly grow by transfers or even "sheep-stealing" but such growth will in the long run be a detriment to the growth of Christ's church in Taiwan. It is better to have many smaller churches 100-200 people than to have one mega-church. Without being specific, I'll just cite studies of Korean mega-churches and the effect on the region that support the case.

For Churches in the U.S.: it seems that because of the economy in many areas, especially rural areas, many people are transferring away. Therefore the church will not tend to grow in numbers by transfers. So a reformed presbyterian church cannot simply focus on providing a home for Christians who are already reformed. Further, the size of the small church presents a simple yet difficult barrier to many who might visit but prefer a bigger church.

Blessings of a Small Size

That the church is small is good for a number of reasons. Here are five listed below:

1* Everyone has to help and cannot sit passively and anonymously like at a big church. That is healthy.

2* Also, it means that you may be more humble and less trusting in your own strength or your own understanding and more trusting in God and leaning on Him for results. That is a good place to be in.

3* It also means -- that you need to seek growth through conversion and discipleship rather than transfers. Being small helps focus the energy in the right place.

4* Being small also challenges you to grow in your own life rather than coasting on what you have already attained.

5* Being small means that there is more need for you to give sacrificially of your time and money. That also is a good thing.

Growth through Conversion and Discipleship:

A church might take the strategy of being the best Biblical teaching around. So Christians who became believers in other churches might possibly feel a need at some point for more meat from the pulpit and so begin to come to that church. However they also bring a lot of their ideas and notions with them that may be create conflict in their new church and ultimately lead to their leaving it and taking a few of the existing members along with them. Care must be taken to disciples these folks that were converted at another church.

Ideally church growth will happen through the church members focusing on evangelism and discipleship: sharing the gospel, making disciples and then helping them mature, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded them.

Growing through conversion and discipleship is illustrated in Acts. Every Christian at the church can make it a regular part of their lifestyle to share with others the amount that they know, even if it is only how they became Christians. Adult men and women need to step up. But also, parents can train their children to share the gospel.

Conversion and discipleship of others will most likely come through investing in relationship with non-Christians that are ongoing. Are you doing that weekly?

Discipleship: Like in Titus 2 more mature Christian women should find younger women to mentor. The implicit parallel is there more mature Christian men should find less mature men to mentor. There is a corollary: No matter what level of maturity you are, find someone to sharpen you even as you find others whom you can devote your time to sharpening.

Finally -- Hospitality seems so key these days. Are you inviting neighbors over for dinner, or people you know at work or parents of other children in your kids' school? Are you prepared to invite a newcomer over to your house after the church worship service on Sundays? Just think if each visitor had two or three families inviting them over, it would make an impression, especially if these families did actually follow up their invite and the newcomer ended up being hosted in several homes. Also in my experience a lot of evangelism and discipleship happens when others come to hang out at the house and you ask pertinent questions about the sermon or other part of the worship service that Sunday. When they leave, ask them if they have any prayer requests and pray with them out loud for God's blessing on their lives.

Please pray for us and the Taiwanese churches where we serve as we seek to practice what we preach in Taiwan.

Aliens and Strangers

Recently, I have been reading parts of the Sermon on the Mount with my children. We had a discussion on how to store up treasures in Heaven. One blessing of growing up in a missionary family is that you have to learn to not hold on tightly to the things of this world. In early August, the girls had to say goodbye to their dog, their favorite toys and places to play, and also to their relatives and church friends and places of familiarity and security.

The picture above was taken at one of our last Sunday worship services at Redeemer Presbyterian in Florence, Alabama

Moving back and forth from the field reminds us that we are like Abraham: "And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country -- a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:13b-16)

The following is Andrew Webb's commentary on how sadly even Christians will store up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. It is a great reminder for us:

"I'm sure you've probably heard how they trap Monkeys in Indonesia. I always thought the story was made-up for the purpose of teaching until I actually saw it being done on a National Geographic special some years ago. A monkey trap is made by taking a hollow coconut and making a hole in each end, one large and one small. The small hole is used to attach the coconut to a tree or a stake by a rope and the other larger hole is kept open. Some sweet fruit is then put inside the coconut. Now the hole large enough that an open hand can be put in, but a fist cannot be drawn out. So the monkey comes along, smells the fruit and sees it and reaches into the coconut to get it. His hand closes around the fruit and becomes a fist. And so he's trapped.

The monkey will literally become frantic, especially when the hunters close in on him, but only very rarely will the monkey do what seems so obvious and let go of the fruit in order to draw his hand out. Greed and poor abstract thinking skills keep him trapped and spell his ultimate doom. I always thought it was particularly sad that he doesn't even get to enjoy the fruit that was used to trap him.

"Silly monkey!" I mean, you laugh at the silliness of a creature that can be destroyed simply through it's unrelenting greed. And yet, the devil has successfully been using the same sort of trap on professing Christians for years. They are doing well, and then something sweet and desirable is offered up to them, their eyes get big, their hearts are filled with lust and they reach out to grab it and… they're trapped. All they would need to do to be free is let it go, to repent of their decision, but they can't, they'll become frantic with worry and make ship-wreck of their faith first. Paul knew the sadness of watching this awful process "Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica" he writes in his last prison epistle.

Now you know if they do indeed leave the faith and never return it indicates that they were never truly converted "They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us." (1 John 2:19) If what they truly treasure are the fleeting things of this world: possessions, honors, pleasures, it shows that their heart never truly was Christ's for as Leon Morris put it:

"The Heart and the Treasure go together. Anyone's heart, the concentration of his energies and interests, is always with his treasure, i.e. the things he values most"

But that knowledge is cold comfort indeed for the aching heart of the Pastor who sees it happen to one entrusted to his spiritual care. I would much rather endure a personal loss than watch a person come near to the kingdom and then walk away like the rich young ruler because they love the fleeting treasures of the world more than Jesus.