Being Renewed for Ministry in a Changing Global World
Written by John McCall, PC(USA) Mission Worker in Taiwan, September 2024
I have served in Taiwan as a Presbyterian Mission Coworker for 27 years. Prior to serving in Taiwan, I was pastor of the Black Mountain Presbyterian Church just outside the gates of Montreat. Almost all of the Presbyterian pastors in Taiwan live in the church building. They are expected to be on call 24 hours a day and church members often stop by the pastor’s residence to ask questions or just chat. In the busy life of serving and also of parenting young children, these pastors can often become tired both spiritually and physically. I hold regular spiritual retreats for pastors in Taiwan, but they are often on their cell phones during these retreats responding to members’ needs and sometimes have to leave the retreat to respond to a pastoral emergency.
So, a number of years ago, I decided to hold a ten-day spiritual life conference for Taiwanese pastors and some pastors from Guatemala in Montreat. For two days, about 20 PC(USA) also pastors joined us. I called this conference “Sowing Seeds of Understanding, Being Renewed for Ministry in a Changing Global World.” This time we invited pastors from Malawi, Africa to join us.
In the beautiful natural setting of Montreat, we meet together each day to engage in Bible study, share the joys and challenges of ministry and family, visit area churches, stay with families from East minster Church in Columbia, SC, visit a shelter for veterans, and spend two days with PC(USA) pastors praying together, sharing together, and dreaming together how God can renew the church after COVID in this time of great challenge for the church.
I invited a very gifted Taiwanese pastor to join this conference last time, and he quickly agreed. The next day he called me and said that because they were building a new church building, he didn’t think he could attend. Because we have a good relationship, I said to him, “it is precisely because you are building the new church, that you need to go.” He joined us, and on the third day of the conference, he said to me, “I realize that in the busyness of ministry, I have fallen out of love with Jesus. I also have been giving my church members a lot of pressure. This week is helping me to fall back in love with Jesus.”
One other Taiwanese indigenous pastor, whom I taught in seminary, was not a very motivated leader. When I visited his church in his first year of ministry, he did not have much vision or direction for the church. He then joined us in Montreat. About a year after returning from Montreat to Taiwan, I visited him in his church again. The church was full of village children and youth. There was great energy and this pastor had new vison and direction. I asked him what had changed. He replied in one word, “Montreat.” His experience at this conference energized him and gave him vision.
One of the Malawian pastors in conversation with an American pastor received new vision of how to help Malawian men be more faithful husbands and fathers in their families. This led him to begin a new program which has transformed many families.
These ten days renew these pastors to go back to their places of service, to their families, and to their communities with new hope, new vision, and renewed love. They go back knowing more about their sisters and brothers in other places like Africa and the U.S.
I remain grateful to Montreat Conference Center for their warm hospitality and generosity in allowing these changes to take place.
We meet each day in the Way Out Building, a place where years ago missionaries were sent out into the world. Now, it also serves a Way In, where we welcome the world church to Montreat and are also changed by them.
