From July 3 to 8, the Northern Asia-Pacific Division’s (NSD) Adventist Mission Department hosted simultaneous evangelistic series at 21 churches in the Taipei, Taitung, Taichong, and Kaohsiung areas of Taiwan. Leaders from the NSD and the Korean Union Conference (KUC) served as speakers, while service teams and evangelistic teams from various institutions, churches, and organizations, including South Korea’s Sahmyook University, led the simultaneous evangelistic series.
The goal of the meetings was to revive the Seventh-day Adventist mission in Taiwan, which has been declining over the past three years due to the impact of COVID-19, regional church leaders said. NSD leaders hope that members may now approach the mission with a renewed spirit.
Adventist Mission director Sun Hwan Kim explained the uniqueness of this event. “In Taiwan, the church is divided into flatland churches and indigenous churches, and more than two-thirds of the churches participating in this simultaneous evangelism are flatland churches. However, several large indigenous churches were not excluded,” Kim said. “The church aims to foster unity among the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Taiwan through this simultaneous evangelism and desires for the church to witness the work of the Holy Spirit firsthand.”
One of the churches involved in the evangelistic series is the Luzhu church, led by Se Dam Kim. It is a pioneering church in Taoyuan, with approximately 20 members. The Gwangju Bitgoeul church of the Southwest Korean Conference sent a mission team of seven youth members to the Luzhu church for this evangelistic meeting. They assisted in conducting evangelism among local children and parents. The Gwangju Bitgoeul church raised 6 million won (about US$4,700) in mission funds for this evangelism effort and donated it to the Luzhu church.
Se Dam Kim expressed gratitude to God for sending the youth members from Gwangju Bitgoeul church and for the raised mission funds, as they had encountered challenges in finding a missionary team for the event. He also extended his appreciation to Gwangju Bitgoeul church.
Jin An Jung, the leader of the mission team, expressed his joy in being able to go to the mission field with the youth to pray and share the message of Jesus. He expressed hope that individuals would encounter Jesus during this time and that the young people involved in the mission would be grateful to God.
NSD North Korean Mission director Beom-Seok Oh and his mission team held an evangelical meeting at Xindien church from June 26 to July 1. Xindien church is located in the large city of New Taipei, right next to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. New Taipei is a densely populated city with a high level of education.
The Xindien church is served by three Korean pastors. However, due to the recent pandemic, the church had cooled its missionary enthusiasm and hadn’t held a missionary meeting in the past three years. A total of seven mission team members, including Oh, four deaconesses, and two young people from Korea, decided to join this evangelical program. For the past 100 days, Xindien church pastor Min-Seop Kim had been praying with the church members every morning, sharing the names of the interested souls and the lost sheep. During this time, the mission team members met through group calls and prayed together.
On the morning of June 26, as they were leaving for Taiwan, deaconess Mi-Sook Ko was injured in a car accident on the way to the airport and had to be hospitalized, so she couldn’t join the mission trip. Despite this setback, the members felt the need for prayer even more and promised to pray throughout the evangelism. While in the hospital, Ko supported the evangelism meeting through prayer.
The mission team held a prayer meeting at 6:30 a.m. each morning and then took to the streets to distribute invitations. In the afternoon, they organized a cooking class and a cultural experience class.
Taiwanese felt attracted by demonstrations of Korean cuisine. [Photo: Northern Asia-Pacific Division]Mrs. Wang was one of the first fruits of the recent evangelistic meetings in Taiwan. [Photo: Northern Asia-Pacific Division]Evangelistic meetings took place simultaneously at 21 venues across Taiwan. [Photo: Northern Asia-Pacific Division]Young missionaries also participated in the recent evangelistic initiatives across Taiwan. [Photo: Northern Asia-Pacific Division]
The Taiwanese people show great interest in Korean culture, so they were eager to learn the Korean language and cuisine and even took pictures in hanbok (Korean traditional clothes). In the evening, Oh preached the gospel in English, with interpretation into Taiwanese. The topic of the sermon was “true happiness.” For a week, Oh proclaimed that real happiness and the value of life are found in Jesus.
Several people made decisions about their faith, and two decided to get baptized.
Mr. Wang and his wife were baptized together, and the day of their baptism was even more special because it marked the 50th anniversary of their marriage. Wang had graduated from the MIT engineering department in the United States many years ago. He and his wife are Taiwanese who had been born in Korea and moved to Taiwan 50 years ago.
While attending another Christian church in Taipei with their daughter, Mrs. Wang heard about a church with a Korean pastor nearby, so she started attending Xindien church to maintain her Korean language skills. While learning Korean from Kim’s wife, she was touched by the love of the pastor and his wife. Through this evangelical meeting, she made up her mind and decided to get baptized. The Wang’s son, along with their daughter, who works as a TV anchor at a Taiwanese broadcasting station, attended the baptismal ceremony to congratulate them.
Mrs. Wang said, “With a renewed mindset today, I will now have Jesus as my groom and live a new life in the Lord.”
Hye-ran Sun, a deaconess who participated as an overseas mission team member for the first time in her life, said, “I realized that evangelism is about receiving much more than giving,” and expressed her desire to get more involved in such evangelical meetings in the future.
Min-seop Kim added, “During the past three years of the pandemic, there have been many concerns and doubts about whether an evangelical meeting would be possible. But through this experience, we have regained our confidence, and we are very grateful that the passion for mission has been reignited.”
While preparing for the evangelical meeting, the mission team members adopted “prayer and thankfulness” as their motto. They prepared for the meeting through prayers and continued with prayers throughout. God blessed them with precious fruits, for which they were thankful and gave honor to God for making it all possible.
The original version of this story was posted on the Northern Asia-Pacific Division news site.
