SEND International Focuses on the Least Reached People of Taiwan
Detroit, Michigan (PRWEB) April 22, 2015 -- About 3.5 million people in Taiwan live in 60 cities and towns along the western side of the island. Most of these least-reached towns are connected by two ancient roads, old Routes 1 and 19. SEND International is working to plant churches among these remote towns.
The last 150 years of church planting has succeeded in reaching Taiwan’s 15 largest cities. However, dozens of smaller communities along these two roads remain almost completely unreached with the gospel and most are less than 1% evangelical. These are the hardest cities and towns to reach. They comprise the majority of the working class, factory workers and farming-related industry in Taiwan.
In order to reach these towns with the gospel, SEND Taiwan launched Vision 119, calling for 119 workers to plant 60 churches along old Route 1 and 19.
SEND’s goal is to reach all 60 areas by 2029. They believe that strong churches in these areas, in partnership with the larger churches and seminaries in the bigger cities, will be able to complete the evangelization of Taiwan.
SEND missionary Mark Harbour says, “We immediately recognized there’s a sense of urgency about doing this. We want to focus our efforts on reaching the least-reached areas of Taiwan.” Highlighting that urgency is the fact that 1-1-9 is also the emergency number in Taiwan. “So this is an emergency. There’s many people that need to know the Savior,” says SEND missionary Jonathan Thar.
SEND Taiwan specifically seeks to engage Taiwanese (Hoklo), Hakka and foreign workers and brides through their outreaches. Since Vision 119 was launched in 2010, the missionaries have made significant progress in several towns, including Gongguan, Dalin, and Chiayi.
SEND Taiwan missionaries are reaching these cities through a wide variety of ministries, depending on the needs they find. They offer tutoring, meal distribution to the poor, children’s ministry, ESL, Bible storytelling, and discipleship. For several summers they have put on Happy Family Concerts in multiple towns involving both local and professional musicians. The missionaries recently launched parenting classes and hope to also start a college ministry.
Partnership is vital to realizing their vision and they partner with national leaders and other organizations such as Logos World Mission Fellowship. Beth Quimbo, SEND missionary in Taiwan, says, “I hope all the Taiwan Christians will really stand up, hand in hand. We need to become a team to share the gospel.” She adds, “I want to see the revival of Taiwan.”
“It’s going to take a lot of workers,” says Mark. “These are hard areas. We believe by partnering with like-minded believers, groups, and churches that we can have church-planting teams in strategic areas to evangelize, disciple and plant reproducing churches.”
SEND is looking for 119 missionaries who have a passion for sharing Christ with unreached people. If you are interested in learning more about this ministry, please contact Amy Walters.
SEND has created a series of videos about this ministry. You can click this link to view videos about Vision 119. These videos offer a glimpse into this exciting ministry.
SEND International is an interdenominational faith mission agency with approximately 600 missionaries in more than 20 areas of Asia, Eurasia, Europe and North America. SEND’s mission is to mobilize God’s people and engage the unreached in order to establish reproducing churches. SEND members are multinational and are recruited and sent from sending offices and partner agencies around the world. For more information on SEND’s mission and ministries, visit http://www.send.org.
Amy Walters, SEND International, http://www.send.org/, +1 (248) 477-4210 Ext: 168, [email protected]
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