T23 - my final day in Tek-Tung (for now)

Well today is my last day at Tek-Tung, before heading back to Taipei tomorrow on the HSR. After the excitement of having afternoon tea yesterday, today was pretty realxing in comparison! After prayers and breakfast I spent a little while in front of my laptop, and then headed out on foot with my camera in hand to try and capture as much as I could of Tek-Tung town and the church. In the afternoon I met with the ministers and we prayed for each other. It was a wonderful time to share, encourage and offer ourselves to God once more for him to guide and lead us. After my daily tabletennis match (my ability didn’t quite turn up today!) the church met for a prayer meeting. It was another inspiring time. I was asked to sing a couple of songs and say a few words towards the end of the meeting. The theme of the prayer meeting was to focus on walking closer with God and knowing him more. I sang ‘In Christ Alone‘ and then after I talked about one of the readings and prayed for the people in the church, I sang ‘All I am and All I have is yours’ (this is the song as it should be, not how I did it, in case you couldn’t tell )….

Because today was a bit quieter, I had the opportunity to think about something that’s been on mind for a little while here in Taiwan. My walk this morning added to my thoughts. You see there are many things that you do in Taiwan that are the opposite in the UK. For example, when the sun comes out, in Taiwan, everyone goes inside to the safety of shade and air con. When its hot, everyone closes the windows in the house. If you want to dry your clothes quickly, you bring them inside to where the air con works to remove the humidity from the air. Not to mention making sure you get on the right (or is that the left?) side of the road when you jump in the car. But there is another thing which is really the opposite of the UK, and that is the religious presence in many towns and cities. Tek-Tung is a small town/village, perhaps about the same size as Knaresborough (where my ‘home’ church is). This is the main religious building in Tek-Tung:

This is in sharp contrast to any town or village in the UK in which the main central religious building would be a church. When I showed the children at the school a picture of Durham Cathedral, they were gob-smacked that a church could be that big. There are currently many theologians in the West talking about and investigating Christendom, or more precisely post-Christendom. What exactly (post-)Christendom is, is also a contested question. But generally we’re talking about an official capacity of the church that was established when Constatine, after a vision of Christ, won a battle to become Roman Emporer (without my book by Stuart Murray I’m guessing, but it was about 325AD). He then made Christianity THE official ’state’ religion. From this beginning Christendom went on to have some particularly nasty streaks. Clergy became powerful people, and huge churches were built to show the money and the power that the church had (has). Often the church would force people to attend, and society became ‘Christian’. This label still exists in the UK today, the majority of white western Britons will tick the box that says ‘Christian’ on a census form. Mission in Christendom became a matter of extending the geographical boundaries. The crusades were typical of mission during Christendom. Many theologians in the UK think that christendom has just about run its course, and that post-christendom is on the horizon. They are asking what form the church will take in an environment in which the church can no longer claim a monopoly in the spiritual market-place, and perhaps more importantly how mission and evangelism will work in this new environment. But in Taiwan things are very different. If anything you get the impression that the main-dom is actually a Buddhist-dom or Taoist-dom (the two religions are quite inter-mingled here). Hence the large three-storey temple in a relatively small place. But what is really interesting is that the church here has not had the luxury and comfort of being a state religion. The church only has a voice when people think it has something useful to say, rather than random news articles seeking out the opinion of an archbishop or two. I also think that it makes the church here much more mission and evangelistic minded, which can only be a good thing. Whilst post-Christendom may well be different from a church under Buddhist-dom, there is much for the church in the West to learn from the church outside Christendom. The ideas of power, mission and respect mean different things, as do inter-faith relationships (or, perhaps I should say, the lack of them). More to ponder….

I hope that this will not be the last time that I see my new found friends and Christian brothers and sisters in Tek-Tung, I have learnt so much, have much more to gain from spending more time with them.

This entry was posted on 08/10/2009 at 08:22 am and is filed under Paul's diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.