Sanchong Church-Plant ("New Blessings") Update

Photo by Dilip Bhoye (dilipbhoye.com)

by Kalan Spencer

When Kayt and I first moved to Taiwan, we were recent college grads and newlyweds who wanted to teach English abroad for a couple years. We had no plans to stay long-term or do full-time ministry here. But over our first two years in Taiwan we met a handful of remarkable OMF missionaries serving in Wanhua and we also discovered the City to City church-planting network. In the place we already lived, a place we had grown to love, we saw great need and opportunity. As we prayed about staying in Taiwan and how we could serve, a number of different people (from a variety of backgrounds and experiences) said, “We need more churches and we need them in Sanchong. It is the least churched area per capita in all of northern Taiwan.”

Moving from prayer to planting was not very straightforward. Since we did not originally have plans to stay in Taiwan long-term, we had not really learned any Chinese. So, we started with that, but I had to keep working part-time as an English teacher to keep my visa. After two years of classes at NTNU, we moved to Sanchong with only our family and lots of prayer. At this point, we had three kids under age four. I had just one contact in Sanchong who owned a cram school, and our preliminary goal was to get to know the area and as many people as we could. I taught English classes, ran Bible story events, did language exchange, shared the gospel on the street, and prayed a lot. Kayt hosted English story-time at the library, threw parties for neighbors at our house, and did Bible storytelling, all while pregnant with our fourth child.

It was slow, steady, and tiring. But God was faithful, and we loved seeing glimpses of the Holy Spirit at work in gospel conversations with neighbors and coworkers. One night, at a Chinese New Year Employee party (尾牙), a Taiwanese woman recognized Kayt from a mutual friend’s birthday party five years before. This woman and her husband were both Christians who lived just a five-minute walk from us in Sanchong! A friendship was born, and then a mission. The four of us launched an outreach group to serve Sanchong and to help people meet Jesus. For months, it was just the four of us. Occasionally a non-Christian friend or two would join us, but they rarely stuck around.

Slowly, however, the group grew. We met Christians who did not have church homes and lots of people who were fascinated by our families’ dynamics (two Christian families with four kids each). We saw several people come to know Christ after attending the group regularly. After a year, we had a core group of members. Last fall, we transitioned from outreach group to house-church. Then, in the spring, we moved into a local pre-school to have morning worship.

The day we launched morning worship we looked at our group picture afterward and said in amazement, “Wow, we have a little church here!”

Everything that has happened is a testimony to God’s glory. In many ways, we are the least qualified people to do this: different language, different culture, different history. But this is ultimately God’s project and we just get to join Him for what He is doing.

Our church seeks to develop healthy family relationships, meaningful work, and missional living, all out of the richness of the gospel. In short, we want to bless others because of the blessing we have in Christ. Everything we do grows out of that truth. Last year, Kayt launched Mothers of Pre-schoolers (MOPS) Taiwan to train local Christian leaders and to reach out to the community. There are about 10-15 adults and 10-15 kids each week at Sunday worship and we are beginning to train deacons and elders.

Someone once told me that if I served in Sanchong, I would need to pray every day because “Sanchong belongs to the temples.” I know what he meant, and his warning is well-taken. But what has happened, and what is happening, shows that all places, like Sanchong, belong to the Lord.

For the LORD Most High is awesome,

the great King over all the earth.

—Psalm 47:2