Sunglasses ~ gifts for us all from St. Peter's Church, Chiayi!😎
St. Peter's Church, Chiayi has much to celebrate this year ~ and in hosting the Taiwan Episcopal Church 2024 Diocesan Convention, we all gathered to celebrate their 60th anniversary and to mark their new status as a parish, with their vicar, Archdeacon Simon T. S. Tsou now becoming their first rector. Thanks be to God for their vision, enthusiasm, dedication and joy in serving God! (And thanks for the sunglasses, which they gave as gifts to everyone - hence the above photos!) 😎
The sign says: "I❤️St. Peter's" - me too!
The opening service of the convention took place at St. Peter's Church, Chiayi on Friday May 3, 2024, but most of us had arrived a day earlier for a workshop led by Archdeacon Simon Tsou and his team, sharing with us about the church and its ministry. First to arrive in preparation for the convention was the Rev. Canon Bruce Woodcock, Asia Pacific Partnership Officer for The Episcopal Church, who came bringing official greetings from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. Bishop Lennon Yuan-Rung Chang welcomed Bruce on arrival on April 30 - and we are grateful to Bruce for staying on an extra day after the convention to preach at St. John's Cathedral English service on May 5 ~ thank you!
We all met up on Thursday May 2 to travel on the same 7:46 am high-speed train from Taipei, which picked everyone up as we traveled south to Chiayi, arriving there at 9:15 am, to be warmly welcomed at the station by the St. Peter's Kindergarten principal, Ms. Amy Liu and church members. Off we set for St. Peter's Church, to receive a big welcome there too!
We learned about the history and ministry of the church, and even got the chance to participate, joining the seniors in their exercise programme and in DIY craft classes! Ah, it was fun! What is really inspiring is to see how the church and local government are working together in running this new seniors' programme, in fact the mayor of Chiayi City even attended their opening ceremony last year, along with Bishop Chang. The seniors all live locally, and many have grandchildren studying in St. Peter's Kindergarten, where there are about 130 children, and the daily activities always start with the seniors joining in a song and prayer in the church. Their enthusiasm is infectious and we had such a great time together!
Chiayi lies on the Tropic of Cancer, 250 km (150 miles) south of Taipei and 115 km (70 miles) north of Kaohsiung, on Taiwan's west coast. For those of us from the grey and gloomy north, especially rainy Taipei, it was such a nice change to leave the overcast skies behind and instead be somewhere sunny, with blue skies, wide roads, slow traffic, low-rise buildings, green parks where people were sitting and talking, and the rush of every day life was less in evidence. These days Chiayi struggles to keep its young people, who seek their fortunes in bigger cities further north or south, but in days gone by, especially in the Japanese era, the area was famous for hinoki (Japanese Cypress) timber, which led to the building of the mountain railway up to Alishan, in the central mountain range, and now a major tourist destination - although the recent earthquakes have forced tour groups to go elsewhere for the time being. After the workshop was over, and en route to our hotel, we visited Chiayi's restored Hinoki Village 檜意森活村, with its wooden homes - now shops - where the workers and directors of the Chiayi Forestry Bureau lived during the Japanese era.
Our hotel for the convention was pink, like a cake, and situated near Renyitan Reservoir, in Chiayi County and on the route up to Alishan, chosen because it was much cheaper than staying in the city itself. The reservoir dam was a footpath, where we could walk and enjoy the distant Alishan scenery....
And we spent the first evening celebrating the birthday of one of our cathedral delegates, Robert, who suddenly found himself surrounded by people and cake and lots of happy birthday singing!
Up early the next day, Friday May 3, to see the hazy sunrise over Alishan...
And off we went to St. Peter's Church for the start of the diocesan convention including registration by QR code, and preparations for the opening service...
The opening service started with the banners from all our churches being brought into the church as part of the procession, plus the St. Peter's Choir and all our clergy. The Bible readings were in both Taiwanese and Chinese, and Bishop Chang gave the sermon. Among other things, he said that this year, the Taiwan Episcopal Church celebrates its 70th anniversary, and St. Peter's celebrates its 60th anniversary. Just as St. Peter's has now grown up, come of age and today becomes a parish - and thus less dependent on the diocese - so the challenge for the Taiwan Episcopal Church is to grow and mature our diocese into a province and become less dependent on The Episcopal Church. We hope and pray we can see that vision achieved in the next 15-20 years!
The service included a beautiful anthem from St. Peter's Choir...
and performances from the St. Peter's seniors group..
and the older kindergarten children, all conducted by Simon's wife, Lisa - she also made the beautiful flower arrangements for sale in the church entrance...
as well as prayers and liturgy marking St. Peter's becoming a parish.
Then followed Holy Communion....
And the final blessing from Bishop Chang....
After the service, the diocesan Trinity School for Christian Ministry (TSCM) with former dean, Rev. Canon David Chee and present dean, Dr. Tim Pan, introduced and presented graduation diplomas and certificates to our 4 graduating TSCM seminarians.
Yu-Lin, my former colleague in the St. John's University Chaplaincy becomes only the second person to have completed all her theological study at TSCM, and she's done it even while giving birth to baby Enoch halfway through her course... well done Yu-Lin, and thanks to her husband, San-Yuan for all the childcare and support! We love their family so much, including Yu-Lin's parents and younger brother who traveled from Tamsui, Taipei especially for the graduation (and yes, to see their lovely grandson of course!)
Rev. Jonathan Liu also graduated from TSCM - he is actually a priest in San Jose, California and joined all the courses online - he came to Taiwan especially for the occasion!
Our other 2 seminarians, Mu-Chi and Jun-An, both completed their theological study elsewhere and have spent a year doing TSCM courses to upgrade their qualifications and prepare for ordained ministry in the Taiwan Episcopal Church. Both are now assigned to church-planting ministry in south Taiwan, while Yu-Lin continues on at St. James' Church for the next year.
The formal convention meetings then started in the afternoon and continued on all evening and until lunchtime the next day. Yes, I tried to get photos of everyone!
There were several significant matters, notably the passing of resolutions that Christ Church, Chungli and St. Paul's Church, Kaohsiung both become parishes this year. Thanks be to God, and congratulations to them!
Dr. Tim Pan announced that the diocese currently has 16 clergy, and since TSCM started only a few years ago, so another 8 are being added to that number over the coming few years. It is hoped that most will be able to start their ministry by church planting, and we were able to hear updates of the new church plants at Hsinchu, Linkou and one starting soon in northern Kaoshiung. TSCM is now starting a Masters in Theological Studies in September primarily aimed at church members who seek more theological training but don't feel called to seek ordination. Bishop Chang said that as we now have enough clergy, it is better if clergy can retire at 72, so he announced the coming retirement of Rev. Julia Shu-Hua Lin, who is actually 75 but has been vicar of St. Stephen's Church, Keelung for many years. She will retire in July, and plans to return to her home city of Taichung, offering to help with ministry there in the newly-formed central deanery. In connection with that, next year sees the creation of a third deanery, so in the future, the 3 deaneries, north, central and south can work towards becoming 3 dioceses, and thus a province. This is the central deanery photo, with clergy and delegates from Hsinchu, Taichung and Chiayi....
Bishop Chang presented Rev. Julia Lin with a retirement gift on behalf of the diocese. Thank you Julia and we wish you well!
There were other announcements and elections of different committees, reports from each church and clergy, and lots of conversations and meals and coffee in between. Suffice it to say, we had a great time, everything went well, and we left with grateful hearts, already looking forward to next year's convention, to be hosted by Christ Church, Chungli in 2025!
Showing everyone the Christ Church, Chungli T-shirt design - it's beautiful!
And finally, thanks to Bishop Chang, Archdeacon Simon Tsou and everyone at St. Peter's Church, Chiayi for their warm welcome and all their hard work to make sure everything went so smoothly. And thanks be to God for his many blessings!
St. Peter's Church clergy and church members at the convention
And not forgetting special thanks to St. Peter's for the sunglasses - they come from one of their church members who runs an optical company making glasses - we all got a pair, and some had a great time posing for photos! 🤣😎🤣
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