The Context

This week we would like to develop a little context for our mission. As many of you know, the way the Episcopal Church arranges missionary work is through invitation. The Bishop of a diocese (Taiwan) calls The Episcopal Church Center in New York and says something like "I would love to have two recent college graduates from the University of Colorado come to Taipei to begin a campus ministry." The Episcopal Church then finds the absolute best candidates and sends us on our way.

What happens when the best candidates arrive is they adapt to the "actual context," the reality of the situation on the ground. The reality of our situation is that we are working closely with the Dean of St. John's Cathedral, Rev. Samuel Y.C. Lin. He is the friendly smiling man in picture #1. The cathedral (picture #2) is responsible for hosting us and providing a home base for our new campus ministry. In support of this new venture, they provided a large office (picture #3) and a whole lot of freedom in planning.


Rev. Samuel has about 12 years of campus ministry experience as the chaplain at St. John's University, an Episcopal college in Northern Taiwan. He is acting as our mentor and guide for when we have important questions like "where can I find tape to post a sign on the wall?"

Over the coming weeks we will be planning our strategy for meeting other chaplains, students, and parishioners at St. John's who will be our support team for the start-up of this ministry. The second major part of the context is National Taiwan University (NTU). NTU is actually very similar to CU Boulder. There are about 35,000 students spread across undergraduate colleges, graduate schools, and a medical campus. NTU is Taiwan's largest public university and is reserved for the best and brightest. All university admissions in Taiwan are done by standardized college entrance exams. There is no need for involvement in service work, sports, extracurriculars. What matter is you study hard and long.

NTU is located in an upscale neighborhood of Taipei city. There is a large park nearby that is surrounded by the largest churches in Taipei. This area also features tons of restaurants and nightlife for the college crowd (picture #4).

There are a few other universities in the area, most notably National Taiwan Normal University and National Taipei School of Education. So once school starts in September, the area around the cathedral will be swarming with college students. It sounds like a great atmosphere in which to begin a campus ministry.

The bonus picture is of Royal Palm Boulevard, the main drag at NTU. The building at the end of the road is the main library. As you can see, we basically live in Southern California. Plus humidity. Lots and lots of humidity.

We must leave you here and continue entering into our context. Our next step is registering for Chinese classes at the Normal University. Yikes! Please keep us in your prayers.


Until next week,

Elizabeth and Seth