Chaiyi Church, Taiwan

Pastor Cheong EunKyu (The Fourth Batch)

1. Is Taiwan a small island?

Taiwan is shaped like a sweet potato.  It is 380 kilometers from north to south and 140 kilometers from east to west.  It is one-seventh the size of the two Koreas and one-third the size of South Korea, but its population is around 23 million and its population density is over 600 people per square kilometer, making it the second most densely populated country in the world.  Also, there are more than 100 mountains that are over 3,000 meters in height. Seven mountain ranges extend from the north end to the south end, so it is never easy to travel from east to west.  Domestic flights in Taiwan are said to make a detour to the north or south to avoid the mountains.  That shows how high those mountains are.

When the Golden Angels and the church members of Toegyewon Seventh-day Adventist Church came to Taiwan to help out with the evangelistic meeting in Taidong, and I went to the airport with Pastor Jeon JaeSong of Taidong Church to meet them.  After picking them up on a chartered bus, Pastor Jeon said, “You are one-fourth of the way to your destination.  You have nine more hours to go.”  Having just completed a three-hour flight, they didn’t seem to believe it.  They thought that an additional nine-hour flight would take them out of Taiwan.  But it was true.  They left the airport at around 4 p.m. that day and arrived at Taidong after 1 a.m. the next day.

2. Will we have any problem communicating if we speak in Chinese?

There are over 13 languages spoken in Taiwan.  Besides Taiwanese, Chinese, and Hakka, which most Taiwanese speak, there are 10 other native languages of Taiwan.  I thought that learning Chinese would enable me to speak with anybody, but the reality was much more complicated than that.  According to the residents of Taiwan, the farther south you go, the more hatred there is toward the national language, Chinese.  In fact, I found out that an elderly man recently lodged a strong protest against a guest speaker because he delivered his speech in Chinese instead of Taiwanese.  That’s reality here.  Eight percent of the Taiwanese population speaks Taiwanese, and just half of one percent is Christian.  However, most of the churches in Taiwan speak Chinese, and that is the language that PMM pastors study when they go to Taiwan.

3. What do Taiwanese people believe in?

Taiwan is composed of ethnic religionists (70%), atheists (24.2%), and Christians (4.8%, 1.6% of which are Catholics).  There are 22,000 Buddhist temples in the country, as well as 243 gods from various folk tales.  There is a shrine for every 20 people, and many people are so afraid of death that most of their daily life is wasted in false worship of these gods.  The ethnic religion of Taiwan, combining Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, has a tremendous influence on its people.  There is a saying in Taiwan that goes, “Taiwanese do baibai to worship anything,” which implies criticism of their willingness to do baibai to worship men, evil spirits, gods, or anything else. Both bai and baibai are really hard to translate into Korean.  In the dictionary, bai means to bow down and pay respect, and baibai is a ritual held on holidays in Taiwan and Minnam (south of Fujian).  But bai doesn’t simply mean to bow down and to respect in folk beliefs.  Actually, baibai is such a frequent and cumbersome event that it’s not quite right to consider it as a mere ritual.  There are palaces in every city of Taiwan, and the scene of everyone standing there and making supplication to their gods amidst the strong smell of incense looks very strange to me.  The palaces in Taiwan, such as Jinan Temple, Thean Hou Temple, Pung Tien Temple, Jingan Temple and Tung Lung Temple, are not royal residences. They are the places where people do baibai to worship false gods.

Taiwanese people still have strong faith in baibai nowadays, but there is a striking trend toward people doing baibai to worship another god if the god they worship doesn’t answer their prayer the way they want.  For example, a person that used to do baibai to worship Mazu turns to Wangya if Mazu doesn’t answer his prayers, or to Sangjegong, Taejaya, and so on, in the hope of obtaining his desires.  It is said that worshiping Nato, Ohyunjae, and Youeunggong enables people to make a lot of money from gambling, be forgiven for sexual abuse, get revenge on people they hate by manipulating others, and harm others by sending evil spirits.  Nowadays, there is an increasing number of people that worship ghosts as well as these evil false gods.  Ethnic religionists even create new gods, so it’s hard to estimate how many gods there are in Taiwan.  According to the Taiwanese people, anything that lasts over 100 years will become an object of worship, and any relatively good person becomes a god.

4. How much influence does Korean Christianity have on Taiwan?

In Taiwan, there are a number of Korean missionaries from other denominations besides the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  Around 400 youths from Samil Church go on a short-term mission trip to Taiwan each year, Duranno Praise and Worship from Onnuri Community Church is starting a tremendous spiritual awakening among Taiwanese young people, and “Praise and Worship School,” which targets young people and students, attracts 2,000 to 3,000 people every summer and winter.

5. Is Hallyu (Korean Wave) still going on? How much is it affecting people in Taiwan?

The dedication of Korean missionaries is moving the hearts of the Taiwanese people.  A lady that got baptized last December and recently helped out with evangelistic meetings in two PMM churches said that the praise of the Golden Angels touched her heart.  My church members also didn’t mind traveling for an hour to visit Douliu Church to be blessed by their music ministry.  Recently, a Taiwanese lady told me that she wanted to learn from Korean churches.  The hard work that PMM senior pastors have done to grow their churches is very refreshing to Taiwanese pastors.  Taiwanese people have been deeply touched by the dedication of the Golden Angels, who praise God with all their strength.  Seeing lay people spend their own time and money to fly to a foreign country for an evangelistic meeting is making such an impact on the people here.  It’s a great challenge for Taiwanese church members, who regard the pastor as the only one that should work to grow the church, to see Korean lay people dedicating themselves to God’s work.

There are many problems in Taiwan, but God has, and is, the solution to them.  Taiwan is a land of evil spirits, but the one and only God is deeply concerned about it.  God has given His faithful servants a challenge, but He has also given them the promise of victory.  As there is a new day after a dark night, so I look forward to experiencing the power of God when He gains the final victory over Satan and destroys the spiritual darkness of this world.