Why I'm Going to Taiwan, Part Three

This is the last of a three-part series on why I'm going to Taiwan for long-term missions.

Reason I'm going to Taiwan #3: The gospel is barely present there.

This might seem like a very obvious reason, but I have listed it third for a reason. While it indeed is a perfectly appropriate motive for taking the gospel cross-culturally in general (An all-consuming zealousness for God's greater glory in all the world would seemingly be the highest motive, but wiser men than I have weighed in on this issue), it does not necessarily lead us directly to a particular ministry field. We must be careful not to substitute pragmatism or even splagchnizomai for God's leading. Many places in the world lack widespread gospel presence, and while that fact obviously shows we have much work ahead of us to fulfill the Great Commission, we must still go through the process of seeking God's will and determining to which ministry field we will go.

Missiologists would identify our current phase of world mission as focusing on unreached people groups. This is as it should be, as our responsibility is to take the gospel to every culture, and not to move through cultures one by one until the gospel is accepted by a majority in each (something which we know from Scripture (Matt 7:14) will sadly seldom occur).

So one can see that the least-reached areas deserve special attention and focus, and many are called, as was Paul, to preach the gospel where Christ is not known, so as not to "build on someone else's foundation." (Rom 15:20) But the appropriate ministry area for any particular missionary, however, is not necessarily the "least-reached" one, but the one to which God leads him.

For me, realizing (really realizing, not just acknowledging as a fact) just how few Taiwanese know God or have a chance to hear about Him in a relevant way rocked me to my core. Knowing that for every 100 Taiwanese people I saw on the crowded streets, at least 97 of them did not know Christ, and would die unreconciled to God and be eternally away from His presence, was almost more than I could bear. (For more info on the state of the church in Taiwan or anywhere else, I recommend looking at the latest edition of Operation World.)

That was one of the primary motivators for me to consider missions in general. (I hadn't yet decided on Taiwan in particular, that process is described more in the first two parts of this series.) I enjoyed my job as an engineer, and knew it was a blessing from God. But I could no longer in good conscience merely sit at my desk every day and make a very good income knowing that halfway around the world, people I had become quite aware of through my trips were living and dying almost wholly without the knowledge of the gospel. I could not do it.

So I began to open myself to the idea of missions, although I had never considered myself missionary-material before. Honestly, I wasn't crazy about working with people at all at this point. I did C++ programming mostly at work, and it made sense. Tell the computer to do A, and if it didn't do A, you could be more or less certain that you had told it wrong. People, on the other hand, were unpredictable, and seemed to get emotional over the strangest things. (On the Myers-Briggs personality test I am an INTP, aka the Rational-Architect, which is not at all what people generally consider "a missionary personality.")
So I prayed to God, and suggested that if He wanted me to be a missionary, He would have to help me develop a heart for people in reality and not merely the abstract. This prayer He has been continually answering since I prayed it; I am a very different person now, though still an INTP. (I have also learned that there is no "missionary personality," and that INTP's or ESFJ's are equally able to love people and serve God cross-culturally. I am living testimony that someone whose idea of a satisfying night was reading books on Chess strategy alone with some hot tea can be used by God just as much as someone whose idea of a satisfying night is sharing your deepest feelings with two dozen of the new best friends you met last week... but more on that in a later blog entry!)

Concurrent with this growing missional awareness was the realization that God had plans for me that involved Taiwan specifically. During my second trip to Taiwan, while praying at the gospel-sharing evening of our summer camp, God spoke to me as clearly as He ever has, and let me know that I needed to go back to Taiwan. I asked the missionary field leader there what to do. He recommended I stay in Taiwan for a year and experience life and ministry there, and then make a decision about longer-term ministry, if that was applicable. After prayer, I felt strongly that this was the next step God was leading me towards, and so I agreed to do it.

Then it was a question of quitting my engineering job. Strangely, this was one of the easier parts. Once God had made something as clear as He had made this to me, it was simply a question of whether or not I would obey Him. And I had no desire to end up in whatever the equivalent of a big fish's stomach for three days would turn out to be for me... so I thanked my boss for the opportunity to work at my company and the experience I'd had there, and gave notice. To say that the next year I spent in Taiwan was life-changing would be both trite and an understatement. By the end of that time, I was not only convinced that long-term service in Taiwan was something God had prepared me to do, but that I would be happy to do it, if that was His will. (The process of determining that with confidence is dealt with in the previous two entries.)

So that completes the story of why I am going to Taiwan, and I would welcome any additional questions you might have.

Praise be to the Lord Most High for calling each of us in our weakness and imperfection as vessels of His own gospel, that we might share in the eternal blessing of bringing glory to His name!