An Unchurched Path to a New Church Beginning

I never imagined that I would become unchurched.

Having grown up in church and answered the call to full-time ministry in college, both my wife and I spent more than ten years pastoring arts students and young professionals in a parachurch organization in Taiwan. Afterward, we decided to attend seminary for further training in the U.S. During that time, we came into contact with leaders from our former church in Taipei who were starting a church plant in the city’s business and fashion district. Enthusiastic about our credentials, they spoke of wanting to reach the unchurched, with us at the helm. Although we originally had other plans, we decided to answer the call and return to Taiwan, believing our path was set: we would serve and eventually retire at this church.

In Taiwanese, one common greeting between both friends and strangers is “tsia̍h-pá–buē?”—literally, “Have you eaten and become full yet?”

It was not even our first day on the job before we began to clash with the leaders. Our agreement was to start work on the first of the month, a Tuesday. However, when they realized we would not be at church the preceding Sunday, they asked us to “give an explanation” for why we were in Taiwan yet didn’t plan to worship with them that weekend. Our attempts to communicate what we thought were reasonable expectations of ministry and privacy were met with the claim that the church is the household of God, where “pastors are like parents in the family, and church members are like children.” Under this paradigm, parents are expected to have no boundaries, allowing the “children” to claim all parental time and energy as their own. 

Clash of Cultures

We did not subscribe to this way of doing church. Yet no matter how we tried to explain the importance of rhythms of rest and ministry and other guidelines to the long-term well-being of any person—pastor or otherwise—our perspective was belittled as a “misguided understanding of ministry” and evidence of “spiritual immaturity.”

From a dispassionate standpoint, we could see where this conflict came from: the leaders’ personal temperaments, cultural differences (e.g., Asian collectivism vs. North American individualism), and regional church history. (Regarding the latter, Taiwan experienced 38 years of martial law during the Cold War—one of the longest in modern world history—which made international ecumenical learning during that time nearly impossible. It also produced a generation of leaders shaped by patriarchal and authoritarian thinking, and local churches that lacked denominational oversight or regulatory checks and balances.) However understandable these factors may have been, the friction in our situation only worsened over time. 

Unfortunately, our story is not unique. Although Taiwan and other nations in the “global south” are often touted as models of church growth, growth alone does not preclude spiritual malpractice. A recent issue of one of Taiwan’s leading Christian magazines highlighted numerous such cases, including newly appointed ministers chastised by elders for requesting labor protections, youth labeled “disobedient” for not inviting more acquaintances to outreach events, and burnt-out congregants who fled church after being overworked with parish assignments and duties.[1] In such cases, rather than offering hope, liberation, and encouragement amid everyday struggles, Christianity became a means of oppression. To paraphrase Paul ironically, it was because of our naïve commitment to church that we became “of all people most to be pitied.”

A Clarifying Moment

Though a case could be made for staying and trying to fix the institution from within, we ultimately chose to resign and step away to protect our sanity. We had been so eager to lead this church in reaching the unchurched—how ironic that we became unchurched ourselves! Yet this realization also brought a moment of clarity: Could it be that God was preparing us for this very path—that as unchurched pastors, we might then be able to pastor the unchurched, those whom current expressions of church and Christianity fail to reach?

I still believe that denominations and their polities can be healthy expressions of Christianity. Yet as I consider the vast majority of unchurched people in Taiwan and around the world, I struggle to imagine how existing forms of church can realistically serve them all. So I can’t help but wonder: Might the Spirit be moving—not only within established institutions but also beyond them—to create new ways of “doing church”? Ways that, while not meant to be universal or even long-lasting, make sense in their particular circumstances.

Two Taiwanese concepts have inspired me thus far:

I. The aesthetics of traditional Taiwanese opera are encapsulated in the term “one table, two chairs,” which refers to the set pieces on stage—if not for which, the stage would often be completely bare. Yet with only these three items, an endless array of scenes can unfold: Placing the chairs upstage of the table creates a magistrate’s throne; side-by-side, they resemble a fireplace; stacked together, they become the peak of a mountain; and, of course, placing the chairs on either side of the table forms a dining room scene.

In the same way, I believe that wherever there is a table and two (or more!) chairs, a version of church can be manifested: a living room where people gather to share and laugh, an office desk over which prayerful questions are spoken and pondered, and, of course, a common dining table that becomes the Lord’s Table when we eat together in memory and thanksgiving. In these moments, people gather to share—whether tangibly or intangibly—believing that our being together, invoking the Spirit’s presence, manifests a kind of church.

Keeping in mind that what we know as traditional church architecture is still an imported—if not colonial—concept in Taiwan, and that the most down-to-earth expression of communal gathering is people sitting under a banyan tree in a village plaza drinking tea, I would like to imagine that a new way of doing church will concentrate on the essence of being present to one another and to the Spirit: two chairs and a table.

II. In Taiwanese, one common greeting between both friends and strangers is “tsia̍h-pá–buē?”—literally, “Have you eaten and become full yet?” Often exchanged when people run into each other around mealtimes, it can also be used at any time of day as a metaphorical “How are you?” The phrase implies not only a holistic view of personal physical, mental, and spiritual well-being, but also a sense of community. Asking this question, the speaker sees the other as one of their own and assumes a kind of responsibility for their nourishment and care.

Momentous Meals

I see this as a striking reflection of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, particularly in John 21, where Jesus, after asking the disciples, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” proceeds to cook them a breakfast of grilled fish and bread. In Luke-Acts, the resurrected Jesus is made known in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35), and the early Christian community centered itself around “the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). As Berkeley Divinity School Dean Andrew McGowan writes, “Christians met for meals.”[2]

Liturgical history shows us that these substantial meals later developed into tokenized, ritual meals. But given the Taiwanese love of food, my wife and I  are now implementing an intentional weekly dinner gathering in Taipei with other unchurched people (Christian and non-Christian), drawing from our experiences in leading similar gatherings during our studies abroad. Instead of regarding church as something required of believers on top of their existing social relationships and prior commitments, our dinner gathering, to a certain extent, is the church gathering, nothing more, nothing less. Traditional models of doing church in Taiwan regularly require Christians to spend their precious few hours of non-work downtime on church activities—work-life balance is still a luxury in contemporary urban Taiwan, and a majority of people work overtime. Oftentimes this leads either to the formation of “church-only Christians” who lack relationships outside the church, or to a demographic of people who decide to forego church altogether because of school or work. By contrast, we are trying to transform the common Taiwanese dinner table—something everyone already cherishes and needs as a fact of life—into the Lord’s Supper, where, yes, there is thanksgiving and fellowship and a sharing of God’s Word, but also a real meal.

Made from Scratch

We ask participants to commit to the gathering, either by showing up or by hosting the meal in their homes in teams according to a rota. The mealtime itself is designed to be short enough so that it is not an overly burdensome banquet each week. Another aspect of our intentionality is that the meal should be prepared from scratch rather than store-bought, so that the time and effort spent in preparation and cleanup naturally creates a deep sense of community (meal prep and cleanup themselves become opportunities for chitchat that leads to real and meaningful connections). And, of course, over food and drinks, we talk about God and our lives. In a city where the economic realities rarely allow working people the comfort and nostalgia of a home-cooked meal, we hope to feed each other’s stomachs as well as our souls, echoing Jesus’s actions, the early church, and the communal sentiment in “tsia̍h-pá–buē.” So far, a few families are regularly involved in these dinner church gatherings, with a couple dozen people in various stages of commitment. 

I never imagined that I would become unchurched. Yet being unchurched, I am discovering that whenever we intentionally put a few chairs and a table together to have a meal, we are manifesting a new—or perhaps ancient—way of doing church in our time.

Born in Taiwan, Vincent Wei-Cheng Lin ’24 S.T.M has a B.S. from National Taiwan University and an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary. Since college he has been active in theater as a producer and director and also as a minister to students in the arts.