A Year of Missions in Taiwan - Part 2

< PART 1
So in Part 1 of my reflection on this past year in Taiwan, I compared this year with my previous year spent doing missions here, almost 7 years ago, and outlined some of the significant differences.

In Part 2, I want to look at whether a few of the lessons I learned over the past year could be profitable for other new missionaries going onto the field or thinking about doing so.

One could argue that, as a new missionary myself, I'm hardly qualified to give out advice. Perhaps, but I would argue instead that someone has recently been through the struggles you are undertaking or about to undertake can be more helpful than someone who experienced them long ago. One of my best language teachers in seminary was a (comparatively) young adjunct professor. She had written no famous books, and had zero name recognition even in some other departments of the same seminary, but she'd learned Greek recently enough that she remembered how to teach it to students who hadn't studied it before. My much more venerable and revered Hebrew professor, despite being a gentleman and a noteworthy scholar, and wonderful man of God, was nearly unable to teach Hebrew to us, because he simply couldn't reach back 5 decades to remember what it was like to not know Hebrew.

So I do this not from the prideful assumption that I have insights others don't, but from the perspective of wanting to share things I wish I had known a year or two ago. It's not comprehensive by any means; most major missions organizations these days will give you a lot of helpful information and training.
These are just a few things I've learned along the way.

I. Preparing for the Field

1. Long-term Network Building

A. If possible, start with a firm foundation

I am not with a denominational organization, some of which will simply cover most or all of your financial needs directly. (Though I'm given to understand this is becoming less common) That meant I have been responsible for building and maintaining my own support network. Though at times that was socially exhausting to the point of literal sickness (not illness) for an introvert like me, it was a crucially important experience as well, and a blessed one. God taught me a lot through developing those relationships with people and churches.

A missions-minded sending church is a huge blessing...
From the missions conference last year

I was very grateful to have a sending church that had a focus on global missions in its very DNA from the beginning, and to have spent many years there. So when I made the decision to become a full-time missionary, I began with a financial and spiritual support base which many new missionaries do not have. Also, and I don't mean this cynically, large churches simply tend to have more resources. Don't treat them like cash cows, but as collaborative ministry opportunities. Asking whether your intended ministry fits within their mission vision never hurts, and they might even give you a few minutes to share so that individual people can hear your vision for ministry and decide if they want to find out more. Finding a big church who is excited about ministry in your particular target area is great: they want to send, and you want to go.


So if you feel a calling from God for international missions, and understand Him to be leading you towards Going, I advise you to get plugged into a church that prioritizes the Great Commission. Don't bang your head against the wall of a church that doesn't think missions is important, unless you feel burdened to focus on changing the climate of that church instead of going on the field. It's very unlikely that you can do both of those things at the same time, and very likely that attempting to do so will leave you stressed and burnt out. I don't mean you have to leave your home church; I have (last I checked) three churches and another fellowship supporting me, and have enjoyed my interactions with all of them. Some are more missionally-focused than others, and some have more to do with Taiwan than others, and the combination has worked out fairly well.


B. Network inside the culture before you leave

That leads me to my second point, which is if you already know the culture you're going to, if possible try to visit and make connections at some churches with fellow believers from that culture. And not just to say hi. Try to spend visit there a few times, explain your vision for ministry in their culture, and make some friends. That may be impossible if there are no churches of that culture in your area, but you'd be surprised. I certainly was- in 2012 I didn't know there were any Chinese churches in North Alabama at all, and by the time I left for Taiwan in 2013, I'd visited three and one was helping support me.

A Chinese church I didn't know was in Alabama

One Chinese supporting church in Texas sends mission trips every year to Taiwan, so I'm able to keep in touch with them and keep serving together with them even on the other side of the world. It may not work out that way for you, but it's not unlikely that contacts you make in the US in a culture will eventually help you make contacts in that culture on the field as well. It's a small world after all.

Note: One must be cautious when visiting a new church. Having not (I assume) spent a great deal of time in your destination culture yet, there may be things going on you don't understand. Immigrant churches sometimes end up being composed of a certain subculture within a given culture, and if you come in excited about reaching people group A from country Z, you may be surprised to get a fairly hostile reception and discover that these people are indeed from country Z but are all from people group B, who were oppressed by A historically and are still quite upset about it.

In my own networking, for example the Chinese churches I visited in the US tended to be divided into Cantonese speaking, Chinese mainlanders, and Taiwanese, larger churches often having combinations of these groups, often with their own services and fellowships. So going into a Chinese church of Taiwanese people and explaining that I love Taiwan is an almost guaranteed enthusiastic welcome. Going into a Chinese mainlander church or fellowship and saying you love Taiwan and want to do missions there can get you a rather frosty reception, or people trying to convince you to go to China instead, both of which have happened to me. I also agreed to share at one church only to find that it had split from another church that was discussing whether to support me, due to disagreements, and there were still some bad feelings there. But I still shared in all of those situations, and most people were gracious and willing to listen even if they weren't interested in supporting me. Just be aware of the possibility you're not communicating what you think you are.


C. Some net-working is appropriate for fishers of men

Bad pun, sorry, but perhaps an appropriate one.
Global Missions today is an increasingly complicated venture, which I personally think is good and appropriate. The world is a complicated place, and one can't keep approaching world missions with one or two traditional paradigms and expect them to work in every situation. But even if your situation is different from mine, if you plan on tent-making on the field or already receive your support from some other source, you still need a network. Missions is not a one-way street; you can enrich and encourage the body of Christ in one place by communicating what God is doing in other places, and they can encourage and support you with prayer in your current ministry. They might even come and visit you, and get more interested in the needs of your field.

Missions is also impossible alone; missionaries are sent, and they are received. (that's true both cross-cultural missionary efforts both internationally and locally) Sending is a blessing, going is a blessing, and receiving is a blessing, and all three are necessary parts of the missionary task. Don't try to put all of it on yourself- Jesus didn't, and Paul didn't, both because the work was designed to be accomplished by many people working together to the glory of God, and also because working solo means you miss out on the chances to bless, inspire, and teach other people, let alone learning from and being inspired by them.

My final advice regarding networking is: delegate. Build a core team of people who trust you and are excited about what God is doing in your life, and ask them to help. Some people are really good at networking. They can access to other people and churches you don't, and might come up with ideas you wouldn't have thought of on your own. They'll also be informed about your plans, so if people have questions and you're not around, they can share your vision and also connect you with those people.

2. Visa Issues

And now for something completely different: the frustrating task of acquiring a travel visa.

"Were notarization procedures properly followed on the authorization form we need to begin the process
of applying for permission to begin the application permission approval process?"

I have had basically nothing but stress, trouble, and frustration in acquiring my visas for Taiwan. Others have related similar experiences, while others have expressed surprise, as their process went smoothly. And Taiwan is a very easy country to visit, it's just living here that can be tough to get permission for, partially because the stated requirements ultimately aren't the important thing. If the visa office (or someone with influence) decides you're ok, then you're good to go, even if you don't meet the stated requirements somehow. If they are suspicious about something (or want to reject your application for other reasons they aren't required to tell you, quotas or religious discrimination by the one person looking at your form or any other reason), they can simply say no and not explain. That's pretty normal for visa offices around the world; America doesn't exactly make the process easy either, because so many people want to come in legally and then stay illegally. (Yes there's lots I could say regarding that topic, but no, I'm not going there)

However, some of my missionary friends were trying to get into countries where it was not at all clear whether they'd be issued any kind of permission to enter the country whatsoever. Your target ministry area may be that kind of place, and your ability to remain there will be heavily dependent on political conditions and travel permissions for foreigners.

Some people understand this clearly. Having a paperwork disability, I confess I did not expect this portion of the process to be so troublesome or important. I was entirely focused on network building and getting ready to leave the country, when suddenly the entire process came to a crashing halt when the office decided that though I met every requirement for the visa for which I was applying, they weren't going to let me apply for it. I then spent two or three months in limbo while we figured out what to do. Well-meaning friends kept asking why I was still in America, people on the Taiwan side were confused why I hadn't arrived yet, etc. The psychological stress was considerable. I prayed a lot, and can only conclude that God had His own reasons for not allowing me to leave yet, because I missed several important events in Taiwan due to the delay.

All I want to say here is this: your visa/legal status is important and can't be taken for granted.
So my advice is simply to be aware of this, and start educating yourself early. Maybe the process will be handled by your organization, but it never hurts to understand it yourself anyway, you may find it necessary to do some things yourself, or your situation on the ground may change too abruptly for your organization to make those decisions for you. After running into all the problems, I did some googling and found other people were sharing their experience regarding visa acquisition problems (some of them because they'd been trying to do illegal things on purpose, making it more difficult for all of us...). You might find it helpful to do the same, though obviously you can't trust everything people randomly share online.

Also, make very sure the information you have is up to date. Forms can change or be updated without much notice, and using the wrong form can torpedo the whole process for these excessively bureaucratic procedures. Doing it right the first time is always safer, if possible. But our God is sovereign even over the mysterious inner workings of bureaucracies.

3. Expectations

I've written on this in previous posts, but I think it's important enough to mention here again. Expectations are impossible to entirely avoid, but they can be the source of much frustration and heartache on the field.

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."
   All's Well That Ends Well - William Shakespeare

My culture shock was a lot less severe my first time coming to Taiwan because I decided ahead of time I wasn't going to try to guess what things would be like, and would certainly not expect them to be like America and then complain when they weren't. I would just prepare a blank space in my mind and fill it in once I got to Taiwan. (So not "oh, that's weird," but "I see... noted.") It's impossible to prepare a totally blank space, of course; we're deeply and subtly influenced by our birth cultures and worldviews, but I believe it's a worthwhile effort.

But other expectations can be even more dangerous. Will you necessarily get along with your coworkers well? Will locals understand your unusual situation and take it into account? Will you have ways of spiritually nourishing yourself and your family without a church like you had back home?

And the most potentially upsetting expectations are the ones we don't know we have, the ones we're blind to. I wrote about "life shock" in Part 1, and that experience revealed to me some expectations I hadn't realized I'd been carrying with me this time.

In the end, I don't think it's possibly to track down and neutralize all our expectations. But I believe what we can do as believers is set our expectations instead on God's promises and truth in scripture. He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it. In this world we will have trouble, but Christ will give us His peace. God will redeem for Himself some of every tribe, tongue, nation and people. He will never leave us nor forsake us. Those are things we can expect, that are good and right to take as given and set up as a foundation from which to live and work.

II. Arriving on the Field

1. Riding out Culture Shock

Culture shock will happen, whether you try to get used to your new culture and surroundings by the 'dip your foot in the pool' method or the cannon ball method. (If the latter, be careful you don't accidentally mess things up with people you'll later be trying to minister to and/or share the gospel with)

I think most missionaries going onto the field are aware of culture shock these days, so I will just quickly suggest a few strategies for more successfully coping with it.

Culture shock? Shockingly delicious, I say.

A. Set yourself up to profit from it - turn upsetting or off-putting experiences into learning opportunities. "Why" is always a good question, even when coming out of frustration, because you're recognizing something happened for a reason. Ask yourself what God was teaching you through that experience, how it will equip you to deal with future problems. Don't imagine you can avoid it like an obstacle, think of it as an annoying but necessary set of steps that you are climbing, so you can see a little more clearly from the top.

B. React into the culture - One thing I figured out last time I lived here was that, when tired, overwhelmed, or upset from cultural stress, I could choose to retreat from the culture, doing something familiar that dispelled the cognitive weirdness, or I could react into it, purposefully doing something I enjoyed about Taiwan to make myself feel better that I couldn't have done in America. It's like the difference between reacting to tiredness during a workout by taking a break vs. shifting to a different muscle group instead. Neither is wrong, and rest is crucially important too, but the latter will build your endurance and strength much more quickly the more often you can do it. It will also help the new place start feeling a little more like home.

C. Give yourself time and grace - This is tricky, because there really are missionaries who need a little pushing at first, a little motivation to put themselves out there more and try harder. Sometimes I'm like that too. (Other times I feel like quoting Shakespeare: "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.") But just in learning the language you are literally changing neuron connections in your brain, reprogramming it. That simply takes time. The longer it takes, the less you're able to do in the mean time, but at the same time burning yourself out at the onset puts you on shakier psychological ground for the duration. (That doesn't mean you're being a bad Christian. You can fully believe and take refuge in the truth that God is good and you must love your enemies while the dangerous, stress-induced idea is slowly growing in your mind that these people might sort of be your enemies. That's not sin, it probably just means you need rest and some encouraging experiences to offset the stressful ones)

You also need to give yourself grace, because God does, but sometimes other people won't. Local people are sometimes very understanding and helpful, but not always. Sometimes your inability to speak their language makes them think you're just dumb. ("Why can't you talk like we do? Even our little kids can")
Again, that's not a culture specific problem. A family friend of some of my cousins adopted a Korean girl years ago, and a cashier asked her how they would talk to the girl when she grew up. There's a huge difference between growing up aware of multiple languages and growing up totally monolingual.

And sometimes people will be impatient with you not knowing things there's no possible way you could know. America is a low-context culture, things are usually expressed explicitly and there are fewer 'hidden rules' that everyone knows without having to say, behaviorally speaking. Other places are high-context, and you're just going to have to spend a lot of time figuring things out. Sometimes other missionaries can help you with this, sometimes well-traveled locals can, sometimes neither option is available. Sometimes there's basically no way to know how to react to a situation until it happens and you see how other people react to it, or until you make a mistake and someone finally loses their temper and says "don't you know you're supposed to..." and you think "aha, now I do!" Compliments will come in their time as well.


2. Eating Weird Things...

Where You lead me, I will follow;
What You feed me, I will swallow.
(Commonly cited "missionary's prayer")

I have a slight advantage here in that our parents made us eat things we thought were weird growing up (canned sardines, carob, etc), so the idea was instilled at an early age that one -can- eat the strange thing, you just have to see how far away you can push that part of your brain that cares about what you're eating. I'm also pretty curious, so I typically want to know what the strange thing tastes like.

Taiwanese culture is a food culture. Everyone will encourage you to try their favorite things and local delicacies, and most locales really do have their own special delicacies. I've eaten things like pig intestine, goat stomach, snake, brains (can't remember of what, but I made sure it wasn't a cow or deer), wood fungus, the infamous 'stinky tofu', duck tongue, rooster comb, pig spinal cord, (cooked-)blood rice cakes, bird's nest soup, jellyfish, sea cucumber, squid on a stick, river shrimp, fish eyes, and a kind of little salt water snail. Probably lots of other things people would think are weird too, like buddha-head fruit or pitaya/dragon fruit, coffee jello, or bitter melon (tastes like an aspirin) but at this point my weird meter is kind of skewed. Basically if other people are happily eating it, I will too. (Of the above list, the least tasty were the rooster combs, which were too greasy, and the sea cucumbers, which were not cooked with enough seasoning according to another person at the dinner party)

Some of our short-termers from a great group we had this Spring, trying Stinky Tofu,
an "aromatic" local snack. Not everyone hated it, just most everyone did.

If you really have trouble with culinary curiosity, or came from a background where even fish was suspect, you might try making a list of local dishes or types of food, and crossing them off the list. Especially for families with children, you could have a reward system worked out for being willing to try to new things. Some might unexpectedly become new favorites, but of course probably not if you've already decided you're not going to like them.

Being willing to try local food is often a quick way to connect with people, especially if you'll try things that most outsiders don't want to eat. It's sort of a little rite of passage to see how serious you are about adapting to local ways. Just be aware that in poorer areas people may be giving you their best and keeping little for themselves. Sometimes there's not much you can do about that except pay it forward when it's your turn.

Finally, on a very practical level, some of the weird food is also highly nutritious, and provides the local diet with nutrients it doesn't get from other foods. And you may need those nutrients too, living there.

3. Spiritual Warfare

If you are from certain church backgrounds, you may be quite familiar with this, or even wary of it due to people overdoing it. But at least in my experience, coming out of conservative evangelical churches, this wasn't really discussed. The truth is, though, that making a decision to serve God full time is putting a target on your back for the enemy, and in many parts of the world, especially the 10/40 window and 'global south,' spiritual darkness doesn't bother to hide itself like it does in the US (though it's increasingly obvious there) and some other places.

The reason for this is, I believe, that inside cultures considered Christian, seeing weird or frightening stuff, glimpsing some kind of supernatural reality, is more likely to drive people to church, to ask a pastor or priest what on earth is going on. That's counterproductive to the enemy's purposes, and so in those places he uses deception and distraction, seeking to steer people away from spiritual things into the bondage of the world instead. Out in the idolatrous and/or 'folk religious' areas of the world, there is no need to sneak around, and the darkness is much more obvious, from Mexico's Day of the Dead to Taiwan's Ghost Month.

For missionaries, your presence in an area considered enemy territory is noted and not welcomed. (I think of the chilling passage in Acts with the Sons of Sceva where the demons already knew who Paul was) In certain places, that may translate into oppression. Things go wrong more often than they should, you and your team feel stressed, anxious, or argumentative, temptation starts feeling less like a shoulder-devil whispering in your ear and more like he's calling for artillery strikes on your areas of weakness, etc. You may get sick more often than just a new environment or unfamiliar weather would suggest. Local people in spiritual captivity may be very unfriendly to you, even hostile. And specific incidents can sometimes get more intense than all that, but I think that's unlikely to happen to most new missionaries. Although someone did ask me a several months ago whether I wanted to go upstairs and help the church we were visiting do an exorcism. (I prayed while remaining downstairs, since the pastor hadn't asked me to join them, but the guy ended up saying he didn't need them to do it. I'm not sure if he was actually possessed or just a little mentally addled, though we were taught that's often not an either-or but a both-and situation) More recently, a student asked me if I wanted to go his house to witness his father call spirits into himself and do miracles. The darkness here is real.

Now, I'm not saying you might be under a voodoo hex and need holy water. You don't need a crucifix over your door on idolatrous holidays; we don't fight spiritual darkness with superstitious/folk religious ways of thinking, that would only enable it by playing into the fear the enemy seeks to instill in us. Scripture is clear, we have an enemy, that is not merely metaphysical or representative of our own internal struggle but a host of real entities, that desire to wreck God's plan to the furthest extent they are allowed. For reasons I do not entirely understand, but I suspect have to do with His greater glory and our own sanctification and reliance on Him and sharing in the victory of Christ, He has chosen to not restrain them entirely, but let us call on Him for help to overcome the enemy.

I think the two easiest mistakes here to make are a) to dismiss it all as make-believe (scripture is quite clear we live in a supernatural world) or b) to be unhealthily interested/attracted. (the deceiver is so-named for a reason; those who think they can intentionally interact with darkness and not take harm need a pride check)

In general, the solution to spiritual attacks/warfare is actually straightforward:
A. Pray, and confess any unconfessed sin.
B. Pray, and remember your identity in Christ.
C. Pray, and fill your mind with scriptural truth, not the enemy's lies.
D. Pray, and covered in Christ's protection and authority, rebuke the enemy in His name.


That's not a magical formula, it's just the basic points I was taught, based on scriptural principles, and it works. It's a testimony to our faith too. If Jesus is not who He claimed to be, why does darkness hate and flee from His name?

Let us never forget; the name of Christ has been exalted above every other name in heaven and on earth and under the earth. That name has authority over all evil. Let us neither misuse it, nor fear to use it appropriately.

On a more long-term level, we need to be continually praying for God's protection over ourselves, our ministry, our coworkers, our families back home and supporting churches (another way to get at us), and for those people to whom we minister that the chains of darkness on them be broken and God deliver them from bondage to the enemy in which they have lived their lives. He can do it and He will; it's been happening for thousands of years, and continues today all around the world.

The Light of the world has already come.

In Conclusion...

There are usually always things you can do to make your adjustment to the field easier, but often it's just a case of learning to live in a less comfortable environment than you're used to. Just keep finding joy in our God and the good work He has given us to do, love and pray for your coworkers, and you'll find a lot of shorter-term problems resolve themselves.

And I think that's enough for one post. Next up, a picture post, with some highlights from this past year and some of the interesting places I went and things we did.

A Year of Missions in Taiwan - Part 1

In a few days, I'll have been in Taiwan a year, again. The experience of my first year here -seven years ago now- and this one have been radically different. In this post, Part 1 of my look back over the past year, I want to outline some of the differences between that first year, a 'long short-term' trip, and this one, my first of many years here as a long-term missionary, Lord willing. It's been harder than I expected, in many ways, but He is good, and we see Him at work in our midst every week.

My previous year in Taiwan vs. This Year:

1. The Sense of Distance

Thanksgiving 2007... An unknown sea lies ahead

That year: Last time I lived in Taiwan, I had the fascinating experience of a whole year in which I felt the "coolness" of living overseas, in a culture very different from my own. Tolkien once described someone as having wandered into the remote distance of a certain place, yet retaining that enjoyable feeling of remoteness even after what had been distant was now his surroundings. That's how the first year felt, even after the initial adjustment. It never stopped feeling exciting; there was a little thrill every time I went outside, like someone had put a filter on reality that upped the contrast on everything, or caffeinated the air.

Early 2014...  A mountain has been climbed... but there are more

This year: This time has been exactly the opposite, so consistently that I was quite surprised. I haven't gotten the deeply excited, travel-y feeling even when it would make sense to have it (visiting little towns up in the mountains and pounding rice to make mochi, watching the World Cup with a bunch of other people at 3AM in a McDonalds in Kaohsiung, painting a paper lantern with Chinese characters and sending it up during the lantern festival, etc). I even wanted to make it happen sometimes, trying to close my eyes and get the feeling back, to help with the cultural adjustment. But other than a few brief moments (a dusty, late summer sunset over Taichung, a lone dragon kite on a rain-misting afternoon by the sea, white egrets in an emerald rice field glimpsed from a train window...), Taiwan has refused to seem anything but a perfectly normal place on planet earth in which I currently happen to be, which is in many ways much stranger than the opposite feeling. I don't have a good explanation for it, but I'd love to hear from anyone with a similar experience. (For some reason, I have the strong impression that passing the one year mark will make a difference, perhaps by making it undeniable that I'm moving into new territory in my Taiwan experience, despite the fact that this is already constantly true. The mind is a tricky thing.)

But when those moments do happen...

2. The Human Element

That year: My organization had an office in Taipei, I lived in my organization's housing in the middle of Taipei, and participated in a few different ministries with other missionaries, both long-term with my organization and other foreign teachers there for the medium or shorter term. I hung out with mostly expats in Taipei (foreign teachers and missionaries), but spent a great summer with my local friends down in Taichung doing evangelical summer camps, and by the time I left had a number of local friends in Taipei as well. It was pretty awesome.

This year: This has been the hardest thing, hands down. Both the organizational office and housing got sold a couple years back for reasons unnecessary to delve into, and no one else in my organization is up here anymore. Of the fun cross-organizational church-planting team that was here when I arrived a year ago, all the non-Taiwanese members have returned to America for varying reasons, and I'm the only foreigner left. (I'm single, so it's just me here) I definitely am blessed to have Taiwanese coworkers with whom I share "one heart and mind" in the Lord, but they are of my parents' generation and also not able to understand what it's like to live and adjust cross-culturally. I also discovered my friends in Taipei were 6 years further along in their lives, a few had moved abroad, and most didn't see each other often anymore. On the other hand, I have been very encouraged to find a few Taipei friends from before were excited to see me again, and to have made a few new friends here as well. But as it happens, all those friends, both old and new, are non-believers. It seems that, once we have a social circle at church, we stay inside it. I've been pondering this phenomenon and thinking it might be a crucial part of the reason we find it so hard to evangelize. (I could, of course, go to a church to meet Christians, but since I'm working on planting one, I don't have Sundays available to do that.)

So having lost both the expat and local relationship networks this time, working missionary hours (because when your work involves people attending optional activities, you are busiest when people are free and most free when they are busiest), and investing most of my time in lower-income community outreach and ministries that involve mostly young children and retired/elderly people, it's been a rough slog, relationally speaking. It's easy to say "go get plugged into new social groups, find churches that meet on other days than Sunday, etc." but hard to do so when you're an introvert and have invested most of your social energy in your outreach ministries, and also when you don't know at least one person in that group who can introduce you to the others, or even one person to go there with you. "Hey tonight let's go check out that group..." is very different than "Hm, do I want to be the random new guy tonight?" Not when I'm exhausted, no. Some coffee and a book, please, so recovery can start... not for socializing, but for the next day of ministry.

(If this section sounds like complaining, it's not meant to be; especially I want to emphasize that it's no one's fault. A wide range of factors all contributed to my current situation, and it will improve over time. It's just been especially difficult for this ending-of-the-beginning stage.)

3. The Work

That Year: Having quit my job as a computer engineer for the year of ministry in Taiwan, I still found a use for my skills in doing some work on the office computers. I participated in several English club programs, helped out at a local church, did a summer and winter VBS and eventually started an English Bible study there, and spent the entire summer working at evangelical summer camps.


This Year: Having recently graduated from a fairly well-known seminary, I receive a certain amount of respect here for having those credentials but I have not yet been able to use most of what I learned there. (It's ok, those kinds of opportunities will steadily increase if God chooses to prosper our church planting efforts here.) But we've done summer camps and VBSs and Bible studies, and we teach English in after-school classes and Bible stories and music classes to community kids and parents. I continue to meet with friends and students fairly often for English/Mandarin practice (with those conversations tending to be fruitful ones), and we've recently started a weekly house church meeting.

Being able to speak some Mandarin makes a huge difference this time, letting me jump into ministry right away. I still can't preach in it (I could "share," or spend a very long time writing a sermon and then read it from the pulpit, but I can't preach a full length sermon off of main points yet), but I can pray in Chinese now, and my current level lets me have lots of conversations (sometimes fairly deep ones) and be able to teach people who need everything except the exact English phrase or word being studied to be in Chinese, which is really helpful.

To use the common analogy, we've done lots and lots of seed-planting and lately some watering, and we trust that God will do with that as He wills, and we'll be able to see more fruit in time. The mission field is a long-term game, really a multi-generational one (whether you realize it or not, which is the scary part; everything you do has long-term consequences one way or another). We've also received a couple of short term teams who had great servant-minded attitudes and worked hard, which was as always very tiring for us as the receiving missionaries but fruitful as well, and our endeavor was blessed by the good work they did.


4. The Ministry Struggles


That Year: Language was a big struggle then, because without a translator I couldn't talk to anyone who didn't have at least some English, and definitely had to stick to English for any actual teaching or ministry. This meant I often struggled just to understand what was going on (A language barrier can be surprisingly easy to overcome when communicating one-on-one, but is more like a language cliff when lots of things are going on around you at the same time and you need to know what some of them are). Sometimes I struggled to understand what the Taiwanese people I worked with were thinking and expecting, and experienced some frustration both when I met with unexpected difficulties and when people seemed to expect me to know what they were thinking. It took time to learn that local people and even coworkers, unless they have spent some time as a cultural outsider in a new place themselves, can't really empathize with your difficulties in acting "normal" and communicating effectively. We might laugh at the unenlightened soul back home who says "why can't they just speak English like normal people," but people in other cultures don't necessarily think much differently. (This time in Taiwan I've had a number of people express surprise that I was a different kind of person than they thought I was. It turns out some of them hadn't realized I didn't talk about certain things because I didn't know how to do so in Chinese; they just assumed I never thought about those things or wasn't interested in them.)

This Year: Being on a church-plant opportunity, we continually seek to figure out the needs in our community and meet them as a testimony to the gospel and a demonstration of God's love. This area has barely been touched by the gospel, and while a few small churches exist on its outskirts, once you leave the main road it's only shrines and little temples inside the neighborhoods. There is poverty, not desperate but real. We recently discovered some kids that attend our community English class hadn't been eating lunch before doing so. One girl's parents are a man who lost an arm in an accident and now sorts trash for a living, and the wife he got from Vietnam. The daughter has a serious learning disability. She always sweetly shares her food with the other kids. Some of these people are just barely getting by. Some are not so badly off, by comparison, and comment that our English classes are too easy for them/their kids. Our classes are a mix of white and blue collar, working and middle class, kids who attend specialty school after school to get a headstart on their college exam, 12 years early, and kids who run around the neighborhood unattended after school because their single parents can't be away from work to watch them.

I have years of education in logic and apologetics, and a mind that is naturally equipped for critical and analytical thinking. I am not being boastful but simply stating a fact when I say that most of my friends and family would advise against trying to argue a point with me. And, those abilities don't go very far in this community, in this kind of work. That's not to say that logic and apologetics are not valuable, they certainly are, and have been helpful when I've had the chance to share the gospel with college students. But it's become clear that in a sense I've been trained as a world class sniper when what's wanted here is hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. A lot of humility comes with the realization those loving, but odd, and not very bright people that you once struggled not to look down on as an immature young Christian might run circles around you when it comes to being Christ to struggling people.

After grad school/seminary I could parse New Testament passages in the original Greek and explain the difference between nominative-accusative and ergative-absolutive languages. In some of our outreach ministry, I am inclined to think someone who was good at hand puppets and doing silly voices would be vastly more useful. Yet God works through our weaknesses, even weakness we had in other contexts pridefully assumed was strength.


5. The Cultural Adjustment

2007... What -is- this?
Trying a new food with my Taiwanese friend Carol
('a-gae', in Danshui)

That Year: I'd done three short-term trips to Taiwan, so it wasn't a totally new experience coming to Taiwan, but living here certainly was. I still remember my first trip to the drugstore, my exploratory trips to local restaurants, etc. (I get a bit nostalgic thinking about how everything was an exciting adventure.)

I had a bit of culture shock, and was a bit homesick for the holidays (though I haven't ever experienced the really severe homesickness that some people do; we moved a lot growing up so I don't have any one particular place that is obviously home, and missing my family tends to be heavily mixed with gratitude for having a loving family to miss), but Taiwan is a fun and interesting place for a young person to live, and I enjoyed the process more than I got stressed out from it. It was the reverse culture shock that hit me going home that came as a real surprise and took some time to get over.


This Year: I had sort of assumed that, having lived here a year before, I wouldn't have culture shock this time. In general that was actually true. I wasn't surprised by much I encountered, was actually looking forward to the food that scares a lot of short-termers, etc. What I've found though, is that what we call culture shock is really a combination of a number of things. Some of it is displacement shock, which you get moving to any new place, and some of it is what I call "life" shock. Things happen to make you realize your life isn't how it used to be, and those kinds of changes can be unpleasant. Now I did have some culture shock this time too, mostly having to do with being immersed in the culture to a much greater extent than I was last time, and being in a different community. I can't recall getting a lot of frowning stares living in the middle of Taipei city, near a major university, but I get them in this community fairly often, that sort of thing.

But, for example, as I mentioned above, it wasn't that my friends spoke a different language from me (I could muddle along in it reasonably well by the time I got back here), and I already knew they'd use different -ways- of communicating (a deeper difference than simply using different-sounding words), but I wasn't thinking of the fact that 6 years for me had passed for them too. Upon arriving, I spent a confused month or two before rapidly discovering, to my disappointment but begrudging understanding, that things were "different now," "not like before," etc. (I don't believe any human being enjoys that realization, but denial only hurts yourself. In this world we will have trouble, but Christ has given us His peace, and not as the world gives.)

2014... I think I know what this is...
Trying a new flavor with the same friend Carol...
in the brownie shop she's now opened 7 years later

So here I can offer a bit of advice* to outgoing/new missionaries, which is: don't confuse all the 'shock' you experience for culture shock. That can lead to resenting the culture, which can cause all kinds of problems in both the short and long term, and greatly inhibit the depth of your ministry. So much of the discomfort is simply displacement shock- moving to an unfamiliar place, losing your relationship networks, encountering weird people (it's hard when you don't know the culture yet, but sometimes it really isn't your lack of cultural flexibility, they're just an odd person), going through legal processes that are hard no matter where you are, etc. And sometimes, as I found, life can shock us all on its own.

(*- Offering advice is always a risky business, but I'll try to do my best at providing some for new missionaries in the second part of my reflections on this year in Taiwan, coming soon.)
PART 2 >

An INTP on the Mission Field: The Thin-skinned Shall Not Inherit the Mission Field...

As I approach a year on the mission field (two years of experience, counting the previous year that was a short-term trip, and quite different from this year), I increasingly encounter the need for thicker skin.

To elaborate upon the old schoolyard retort: sticks and stones can break my bones, but insulting words which I consider to bear no legitimate correspondence to reality are, despite being unable to cause me physical harm*, yet at times frustratingly able to send me into unproductive introspection.

(*- No, despite living in Taiwan I have yet to encounter the legendary Lion's Roar kung fu ability. Actually my experience thus far is that Americans are both more excited about and more likely to be training in Asian martial arts than Asian people are. A friend explained the reason, but it will have to wait for a relevant post.)

INTPs can be a bit thin-skinned. This comes partly from our tendency towards polite and reasonable social behavior. We would not randomly insult someone out of anger, and if we do, it tends to be sarcastic, methodical, and cutting, a katana strike at some real flaw which really does hurt the person. To simply toss unspecific insults at someone because we're angry with them would be worse than wrong, it would be inelegant. Unfortunately, other people may perceive our analytical comments as insults, something to which we are often oblivious; sometimes, ironically, because those people aren't thin-skinned and simply take it in stride. (If they know us well, they may be used to it and realize we don't mean it that way)

Thank God for the Mrs. Hudsons of the world...

Still, that preference for politeness and reasonableness (as we perceive them) leads us to typically avoid insults and provoking language in general, as they lead to angry emotional reactions, confrontational behavior, and escalations of stressful social situations, all of which INTPs prefer to avoid if possible. So -irrationally, I must admit- we often expect other people to play by the same rules. But many people don't. They've had hard lives, they're stressed today, they simply don't think much before they speak, they don't view you as a peer and thus don't feel it necessary to extend courtesy towards you... there are lots of reasons why someone doesn't think twice about shooting an insult. They have a headache and aren't even the slightest bit interested in how that relates to something you read about plate tectonics the other day, and can't you get out of their way already?

Perhaps you are an INTP reading this, and you can simply shrug or chuckle and let the insult slide like water off a duck's back. This could theoretically be based in pride ("Did a worm speak just now? Amusing..."), but if your reaction is of that kind, stop reading this and repent before God graciously cuts you off at the knees and lets you hobble around on the stumps for a while to learn humility. If not, then it's a valuable quality. I suspect, however, that many are like me. I catch the insult in a little bubble, a protective mechanism to limit its hurtful potential, and began peering inside and analyzing it, beginning to dissect the contents, introspectively. Is this true of me? Is this a fault which others perceive which I've been blind to? Is this an area in which I have a natural weakness, or is it due to laziness or other misconduct? Do I have responsibility for making sure this is an insult which will be inapplicable the next time someone offers it? Et cetera, ad nauseum. I've lost many hours of my life to these kind of depressing ruminations. (Some introspection is good, but for INTPs it's like our Fortress of Solitude where we can hide for ages)

Mission Field Insults

Despite inheriting the Chinese cultural indirectness, Taiwanese can be quite forthright with insults. This is especially true of physical appearance, which is not taboo like it is in America, where one has to be very careful even with positive comments on someone's appearance. In Taiwan, "wow, you got fat," is a totally normal comment, one I've heard several times upon returning from living in America (truly is the Standard American Diet called "SAD"), and heard directed at other people as well. I personally am not especially bothered by this kind of insult, since being an INTP, I have a tendency to view my body as simply a physical shell. I do prefer to be in shape, and so if I let my body get so out of shape that people begin to remark on it, then I deserve whatever comments I receive, and typically they will motivate me to do something about it. But for INTPs ultimately it is the mind that matters.

That means insulting my lack of knowledge in an area in which I considered myself fairly well-versed will get you a lot farther than a physical insult. At the same time, prizing rationality as I do, I may give you a 'touche,' and resolve to further my knowledge in that area. "Correct a wise man and he will love you" (Prov 9:8b) applies to INTPs, even those of us who would claim to be far from wise, depending on how the correction is administered. I may even upgrade my opinion of you, since someone who can be my teacher even in a small way is someone who can help me in my relentless task to forge order from the chaos of existence and a comprehensive theory which encompasses all of my experiences, as I have explained in a previous post.

Questioning my judgement or thought processes will get you a reaction, however, as you're trying to undermine my most important tool for making my way in the world. It would be like telling a fashion designer not that a particular outfit of theirs was a failure, but that they were going colorblind. And questioning my motives might get you a fairly hostile reaction, though that's probably of most people regardless of personality.

My basic premise is this:

On the mission field, the thin-skinned may not last long.
You are in a culture that doesn't understand yours, among coworkers you didn't choose and who inevitably will sometimes rub you the wrong way, and often looking like an idiot to the locals as you try to make sense of a new language and lifestyle. People will insult you, it will happen. It may happen quite frequently.

Some favorite insults I've received in Taiwan:
(in Mandarin from local people)

"Wow, you got fat." (Me: "Haha, yeah") "No, I mean, really. You really got fat."
"I had thought your Chinese was impressive, but it's actually not that good"
"You foreigner teaching these children is an educational failure"
"Young man, I can tell from your face that you're ignorant"

Those are just a few of many more. The first one didn't bother me overmuch (I always gain weight in America and lose it in Taiwan), but the others rankled quite a bit; I don't try to remember insults or cultivate resentment (I attempt to actively avoid doing so) but I still very clearly remember the situation in which each of those were given (The third one was from an angry hobo! I kid you not).

The insults are not only cross-cultural, however. I've heard stories of some cringeworthy public encounters, with missionaries saying things to other missionaries that are just short of nose-punching territory. The mission field is a stressful place, and tempers flare. Teamwork takes constant active effort to maintain, and if not, can fall apart quickly with disastrous effects for the ministries and gospel effort in that location. Even if in our generation such dramatic personality clashes are less common, one is no less likely to encounter passive-aggressive sniping, which is in many ways worse. (Speaking generally, and not of my specific team. I feel blessed in my fellow missionaries)

So it's basically inevitable that if you let those insults simmer, and develop into resentment, cracks will develop rapidly in the "one heart and mind" that we should have as fellow missionaries. If things really get bad, people will leave the field. And if they're from local people, then you will find your motivation and willingness to embrace and learn local culture begins to drop and turn into a desire to separate yourself from it, retreat from it, to return home, or into a bubble of fellow expats who understand you, or at least insult you for reasons you both understand.


For INTPs, the solution is not to endlessly mull over these insults, trying to explain them away; that's an effort inevitably doomed to failure. If you do succeed in explaining it away, then you begin to resent the person who offered the insult, and might still harbor doubts about whether it might not be true after all; INTPs are masters of self-doubt and insecurity. And if you don't succeed in explaining it away, you are left with the conclusion that you really are deficient in that area. You've taken a further step towards judging yourself based on other people's opinions, and not God's opinion of you.

There is not even much profit in defending one's self at the time. That is my natural reaction, wanting the record to be straight one way or another. In cross-cultural situations, it often feels (rightly or wrongly) that the insult is stemming from a cultural clash, and explaining your reasoning or how things were different in your home culture will clarify the misunderstanding, leading to the retraction of the insult. This has basically never worked, even with otherwise fairly nice people. You are merely looking like someone who can't handle insults, which in many cultural and subcultural contexts matters much more than whether or not the particular insult is true.

This, of course, is common knowledge for many people. I am not pretending that everyone suffers from the same thin skin problem. But I suspect many INTPs are going through a similar internal process, even if they're good at hiding it on the outside.

The solution, I submit, is simply to grow thicker skin. If a fishing hook gets caught in your finger, trying to jerk it out will often cause a lot more bleeding than pushing it through and out the other side and cutting the barbed end off. The "tougher" solution is actually quicker, less painful, and heals more quickly. An insult can be dealt with similarly. Just accept it and move on. A tactic I've observed in Taiwan is to simply agree and thank the person, and I'm working on adopting it.

Also, INTPs are especially good at the clever sort of humor or wordplay which can defuse an insult or even turn it around. Instead of an angry retort, self-deprecating humor or some other response might carry the day. But that's all based on being able to "take" the insult. Just take it. A winsome response can then be used if appropriate, but not out of defensiveness.

Turning the Other Cheek

I mentioned martial arts at the beginning, and it provides a helpful analogy here. A lot of martial arts styles observe that while one can meet force with force, that can be problematic and cause injury. Of course, Muay Thai goes the other way; after beating down a few banana trees kick by kick, meeting force with force causes injury to the other guy. But as followers of Christ we are more or less specifically commanded not to use the Muay Thai style of insult resolution. (That "turn the other cheek" verse that people argue about is talking about taking an insult, not an actual dangerous blow.)

This is not what Jesus meant

Many styles, wanting to avoid things like dying young from brain trauma, have techniques which redirect the force of a blow or intended blow, moving with it and using the fighter's own momentum against him. In the end, one has exerted much less energy, to much greater effect. Sometimes the fight can be entirely ended in this way, and at least one fighter is keeping a clear head, something that appeals strongly to an INTP; coolly parrying a blow with efficiency and technique. It's how we like to see ourselves, at least. Yet the natural INTP way of dealing with insults, by contrast, might be more akin to an untrained man, who upon being struck is either mainly concerned with trying to establish that he is in the right and the other party is in the wrong, or if sufficiently hurt, lashes out instinctively to hurt back.

But the well-trained martial artist not only knows how to defend himself well, he realizes that he may not need to strike back at all. The knowledge that he can defend himself easily allows him to take blows if he wishes, not having an inferiority complex to defend. He is not concerned with others' accusations, because he knows himself.

If we are secure in our identity in Christ, knowing who we are, and have trained ourselves in the art of graciously dealing with insults and harsh comments or criticism, we need not be taken aback by them, nor need they develop into divisive resentment. We can turn the other cheek; we can take it.

As in all things, Christ is our model. When attacked by the Pharisees, Jesus never sunk to their level, He never "hit back." Sometimes He replied with piercing insight, sometimes with winsome wordplay, and during His mock trial and humiliation He simply did not open His mouth.

So in the end, if all else fails, and the insult hits home, and we can't respond appropriately, we only have one response: to forgive as we have been forgiven. Not forgiving doesn't exact any kind of revenge on the other person, it only hurts us, and we have that command, that as Christ forgave us of a multitude of sins, so we must forgive one another.

May we be strong to do so, by the grace that is in Him.

"No Other Gods before Me" vs. "It's Safer to Believe them All"

(The Puzzle of Religion Pluralism in Taiwan)

Dragon Mountain (Longshan) Temple in Taipei

I was reminded recently of one of the difficulties in sharing the gospel in Taiwan. A friend invited me to eat dinner with her family, who were very happy to have a missionary over. They are not believers, but the mother told me "the world is a more beautiful place because of people like you." She then claimed proudly that Taiwanese people love diversity and can respect any kind of thinking or religion or worldview.

In the context of our conversation, her claim was more or less accurate. In the West when you share the gospel outside of a relational context (and sometimes even inside one) with another Westerner, the person with whom you are speaking typically knows that you are making a truth claim that demands a decision on their part. They may become defensive or even angry because they know you are communicating that their current status is unacceptable and wrong, and they need to accept the truth you are presenting to them. All too often, no matter what we say, what nonbelievers hear is "you are broken... and I'm here to fix you."

In Taiwan, this is much less the case. Especially young people are interested to hear what you believe, if they think you are an interesting person (normally Americans are in this category by default), and will thank you for sharing something with them that is so meaningful to you. But to them your sharing confers no responsibility on their part whatsoever; you're just discussing one belief system in the spectrum of beliefs that make up society. You might get more or less the same reaction talking about how important it is for us all to do our part to protect the environment, or the importance of spreading literacy in developing countries.

I recall a restaurant owner in Kaohsiung one year who, after finding out we were a short term missions team, happily gave us a discount for our meal, explaining that he gave the largest discount to Buddhist monks, the second largest discount to Christian missionaries, and also a discount to students who were doing their mandatory year of military service.

If all religions are basically good and help their adherents to be better people, it's an entirely reasonable and morally upright attitude, and indeed that is how the world thinks. If one religion is true and the others false, however, it's wishful thinking, hiding behind pleasantries because the implications of having to sort through what is true and what is false on one's own are too daunting.

"A Name-Unknown Diety"
Shrine to an unknown god in Keelung

Pluralistic yet Traditional

 

So Taiwan is something like a truly pluralistic society, rare in this world, and for adults already established in traditional beliefs it can be hard to get anywhere until people find themselves in truly despairing circumstances and reach outside themselves for help. (By contrast younger generations of Taiwanese increasingly don't really believe traditional religion at all, they participate in it purely as a family activity, and are much more open to a message of God's unconditional love; more and more of them are from broken families and have only received very conditional love at best)

Often, people come to Christ in Taiwan due to the help and support of Christian friends in a time of crisis in their life, after which they are willing to begin going to church and eventually believe. Baptism, however, the symbolic step which has the effect of officially separating them from Chinese traditional religion, doesn't come until years later, when they feel confident enough to take that step, knowing it may lead to ostracization and fighting within their family. Some people won't do it until after their parents have passed away.

This may seem like a contradiction: how can a people be so pluralistic, yet the decision to become a Christian cause such problems within a family?

The answer is largely in how different Christianity is from a traditional/folk religion. In Chinese traditional religion, it is not at all important what you "believe in your heart" about the gods and spirits; people don't even think in those terms. The gods did not create you (there is a creation account, but that's largely irrelevant and the original creator god is not accessible to people), nor do they love you. The important thing is that you do X, Y, and Z, where X are typically actions that involve protection from evil spirits and their influence, Y are actions that bring yourself and by extension your family or business blessings and prosperity, and Z are actions that promote family and community connectedness and honor spirituals connection to the past.

There is also a saying in Taiwan, "it's better to believe than not," which basically means that belief is better and safer than doubt, since while no one is quite sure whether the host of gods and spirits of the Chinese pantheon (and others) exist in reality or not, it's safer to act as if they do, rather than risk the disfavor of the unseen. It's more or less the polytheistic version of Pascal's Wager.

So the problem with Christianity in a Taiwanese family is not at all that you believe there is a Creator God, that you believe Jesus can purify you from your sins by His sacrifice and save your soul from eternal punishment, etc. Even the Trinity is no problem; in Asia religions are supposed to be mystical and occasionally not make sense in human terms. I haven't met a single person in Taiwan who rejected Christianity on logical or argumentative grounds that did not at the same time reject all religions in general in favor of secular scientism.

Dragon Mountain (Longshan) Temple in Taipei

There's No Fun in Dysfunction in Taiwan

The problem here is the fear that, once you believe another God ('The Western God,' as is all too often the perception here), you will stop "being a good Taiwanese family member." You will stop observing the proper safeguards against evil and misfortune ("Sure, maybe your god will protect you," the conversation would go, "but what about the rest of us? It's your responsibility to join in the ceremonies on our behalf."), you will stop appealing to the gods for luck and prosperity, which for the majority of Asian families is not an individualistic affair- your own prosperity affects your family and others-, but most importantly, and this is the sticky point for most families, you will not observe the proper rituals together with the rest of your family for your ancestors after they die.

Imagine a large and close American family who would call themselves Christians but aren't too serious about it. Suddenly one of the aunts has "an experience" while on a trip to the Himalayas and wants to convert to Hinduism. It's a bit awkward, and there is some disapproving gossip, but if she doesn't start acting too weird no one wants to openly complain. But let us say she then refuses to join the family for Christmas because she doesn't believe in celebrating Christian holidays anymore, and on top of that won't attend the funeral of beloved Grandpa Joe unless she's allowed to offer rice balls on his coffin to appease his restless spirit, and begins inviting the kids in the family to go down to the Monkey temple with her, meet her guru, and present offerings to Shiva.


This situation might be unacceptable to many families by itself. Now imagine after all that, the only son of one of the more prominent couples in the family now professes a desire to become Hindu as well. You can imagine that it is a rare family who would react happily to this news, let alone the mother and father, who now imagine Christmases with their only child refusing to come home, and perhaps eventually no flowers being placed at their graves, but rice balls offered up in Hindu ceremonies, and who knows what else.

For a more traditional Taiwanese family, which is still the default here, that's a reasonable picture of what it feels like to them when family members start becoming Christians. (It's even stronger than in the example because in Chinese culture your parents have much more input into and control over your life than in the West, even into adulthood, and expect you to worship them after they die just as they had to worship their parents), Nearly all cultures place a strong emphasis on holidays/times of family gathering and the proper way to handle a death in the family. Disturbing these meaningful observances due to a 'foreign religion' will not be looked upon favorably.

Dragon Mountain (Longshan) Temple in Taipei

The solution for many Taiwanese Christians is to demonstrate that they are indeed still part of the family, and that Christ and the Church are purifying and not corrupting influences in their life. That can be easy in very open-minded families who aren't picky about the traditional rituals or have already stopped practicing some of them, or very difficult in families who are very traditional or have members with religious responsibilities. For my friend mentioned at the beginning, she is a believer but her parents believe children should be able to choose their own religion. That is increasingly common in Taiwan, yet those holidays and worship of deceased family members are often still problem points. It seems like a small thing to ask for the family, who don't worship idols because the gods they represent are worthy of worship, but in hopes to get favor/assistance/protection from them in exchange for the worship. The idea that there could be a transcendent God, a Most High God whom is the only God worthy of worship and indeed the only God who can rightly be worshiped, is more or less totally absent from polytheistic religions. (Communicating that concept is an essential part of the pre-evangelism process in Taiwan; sometimes people think they can just add Jesus to their personal pantheon and if he's a nice god he'll get along with the rest ok. As Westerners we do this with our schedules instead.)

Sometimes it takes a very bold believer to be the first; to be willing to endure their family's criticism and shaming and appear to be a "wayward son/daughter" in order to follow God. Sometimes their living testimony then shines in such a way that the family changes their mind about the faith, and may even look favorably upon other young members becoming Christians. That's not something we can make happen as missionaries, it takes courage and faith on the part of local believers. But we can pray for them, encourage them, and work alongside local churches to help them function in a healthy way, where young believers can be trained in sound doctrine and grow in their walk with God and older believers can set an example in faith and good works.

Looking Forward:

In the future, things may actually improve. There are some interesting parallels with America here. Fewer and fewer Taiwanese are choosing to follow traditional religion strictly, and the rapid loss of traditional morality is impacting Taiwanese culture in a negative way, similar to what has occurred in the United States, at the same time as the economy has gone from formerly booming to stagnant (again, similar to the United States.) And the people I've talked to seem to feel the same way about the situation as do conservative-to-moderate Americans: uneasy at what seems to be a downward spiral for the culture into disorder and moral decay, hoping for answers and a way out of this mess but not too optimistic about future prospects.

Taiwan's birthrate has plummeted, now the lowest in the world. Divorce rates have rapidly increased, and stable, traditional family units, long considered the foundation of Chinese culture, are increasingly disappearing

Whereas in rapidly post-christian America we have seen a general turning away from the Church as the societal default, in Taiwan's pluralistic culture the historical default is not Christianity but Chinese traditional religion (Sometimes inaccurately referred to as Buddhism, with which it actually exists in paradoxical but comfortable parallel. Thus is religion in East Asia). If the Christian churches are seen as a stabilizing influence on society and a source of moral goodness, they can become an increasingly acceptable option for Taiwanese, who already seem largely more concerned that their children at least be decent people than that they follow traditional religion. It's the perfect time for outreach and for churches to demonstrate the love of Christ and the unshakeable wisdom of the truth of scripture. (And not the false promises of the prosperity gospel which itself is merely monotheistic idolatry)