As more and more overseas Chinese use English as their primary language, Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism (CCCOWE) urged for everyone to pray for the English Task Force (EFT), which is an English ministry serving the second-generations.
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Last month, ministers from various places gathered in Toronto to explore the different strategies to develop EFT. They’ve invited many English-speaking pastors in Toronto to get to know ETF and garnered the feedbacks from them, according to CCCOWE.
From June 27-30, the ministers convened to discuss about and pray for the details of the 8th CCCOWE English gathering, and they urged that all ministers and coworkers and believers to pray for this as a top priority.
In CCCOWE’s statement, it introduced that whether the overseas Chinese remain overseas until the end of their lives or return to their homeland after establishments, the main form of language used by the 1.5 generation or the second-generations are slowly shifting to the common language used indigenously. These overseas Chinese will slowly not use Chinese as their primary form of community, so the importance of the English ministry is becoming more apparent.
Furthermore, as the 1.5 generations or the second-generation Chinese become more assimilated to the local culture, the overseas Chinese churches that purely speak “Chinese” will have difficulties meeting their needs. Not only do the overseas-born Chinese (OBC) and the first-generation seniors have difficulties communicating with each other, but because of the differences of the way that they were educated in their family, society, or schools, and the change in thought as a result of different cultures, they also faces the crisis of their self-identity.
Beginning from former general-secretary of CCCOWE John Kao, the seriousness of the above problems was discovered. As the current overseas Chinese population resides mainly in English-speaking regions, CCCOWE’s second-generation English ministry EFT was started. Continuing to meet this growing need, the current general-secretary Morley Lee is actively pushing to develop the English ministry department.
At the 7th CCCOWE gathering held in 2006 in Macau, it was the first time for the conference since its inception in 1974 to have a Parallel English Track, which provided the English-speaking Chinese brothers and sisters an environment where they can communicate at ease. Until now, CCCOWE center continues to persist in pushing for the development of the ETF ministry among the English-speaking second-generation Chinese ministers from all age groups around the world who approves of the CCCOWE movement.
For more information on CCCOWE Center ETF ministry, please visit: http://www.cccowe.org/eng/
Reporter Luke Leung translated the article.
