CEP SEASON TWO EP:05 - WITH GUEST PETER WAN
By Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger
Welcome to Season 2 Episode: 05 of the Church Explained Podcast. A conversation to help grow your leadership, develop your team and build your church. Your hosts will be Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger. We will talk about all things leadership with key team players from IKON Church and other guests during each show.
Join us for part two of the show, where you will hear Peter explaining how they have built a team with many young leaders who did not come from a Christian background. He also shares why they grew during the last two years instead of closing as many other new churches did during this season.
You will love this!
SHOW NOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
David Mckeown 0:00
Hey, welcome to the church explained podcast, a conversation to grow your leadership and build your Church. Today we are back with Peter Juan. He was with us on the last episode, he shared some of his story. And today you're going to hear some of the Church scene in Taiwan and what he's doing there. We hope you enjoy the show.
Nathan Benger 0:27
I wonder if we dive a little bit into your Church, Peter, and I know you've chatted with Dave offline and talked about having a young team and a young Church, I wonder if you just kind of paint the picture for us what that looks like, maybe also speaking into, you know, having that young Church, that young team, the opportunities with that, but also the challenges with that as well.
Peter Wan 0:50
Okay. Well, our churches as young in both that were only through yourself, but also by the people that made up the Church, that makes up the Church, and, and the majority of the people in our Church are single, and available, and ready to mingle. So we're always trying to get them to, you know,
Nathan Benger 1:14
right now,
David Mckeown 1:15
we make it a dating app. Oh, yeah, this
Nathan Benger 1:17
is another.
Peter Wan 1:21
So we, so we, yeah, so we would do these events called date, my mate, right. So where we would, we would encourage them to bring up a mate, like an opposite sex, a friend from the Church that they're not interested in, but they think somebody else might be interested. And so we do all these different things to get them, you know, even connected, but I think, and so it's a young Church. Now, obviously, there's, they're still older folks. And we tried to, we tried to serve them well, too. But the majority are younger. So one of the thing is that we have great volunteers, because they have a lot of time, they don't, you know, they they're not, you know, they don't have to rush home to take care of the kids. So we just have such incredible group of volunteers. But at the same time, so many of them are so young, in the faith, a lot of them are first time, first time, you know, this will be like the first ever Church experience. And, and so, so I mean, so that's good and bad. The good thing is, it's their first Church experience, they haven't been burned by, you know, previous Church experiences, and they're, you know, eager to serve. But then, at the same time, you got to really disciple that make sure they, they're not just here for the excitement. They're not just here for the, you know, for the, for the atmosphere, they're not just here for the, for the social connections, but they're here because, because because of the gospel of Jesus and what it means to follow God. And yeah, and even my team, like my, actually my staff team, most of them are our most of them are very young. So a lot of them are first generation questions. Some of them have only been Christians for a couple of years. The the lady that helped build our entire creative ministry, she she was a flight attendant for 11 years, before joining us on staff, to Bill our communications and all these things that we do. The guy who helped me build the, the guests experience, he was a graphic designer for many years, and now he so he built a guest experience. Now he's building the Church ministry. For us, the another girl who helped build the the, the our Church life part, our small group system, I belong groups. She was a assistant to the editor of Elle magazine in Taiwan for many years, but that was her previous job experience. So we're working with people who have really no experience working in Church, many of them didn't even grew up in a Church. So that's, that's wonderful. Because, because then you can really do just first principle thinking like, if this is the task, if this is the, if this is what we want, if this is the problem, what if something how do we come up with a solution so you don't have all these baggage is and it has to be like this has to be like that we can just tackle the problem and just try to solve it and come up with creative ways to make things happen. But, but at the same, there's also a challenge because because not everything that works, it's biblical. Not everything that works is at the heart of God. Right. And so you got to you got to be able to process all these with them and like okay, well that works, but that's not exactly the way to do it. You know, that's, that's, that could build a Church but it wouldn't be a healthy Church or that could do this, but it wouldn't. It would help us grow fast, but it wouldn't help us go Long and some of these other conversations that we have and but one of the amazing thing is that the most rewarding thing is that that team right now, even though they're young, now they're having conversations with me about how do we grow a healthy Church? How do we make sure people aren't disciple? And I just love that. Because three, four years ago, these were people, I was just a sapling starting out in the fate now they're having conversations with me about, man, we got to go deeper, we got to, you know, we can't just be about this. We have to be about more about going deep with God and helping people. So that has been absolutely rewarding journey just to see the growth. Yeah.
David Mckeown 5:39
So some of some of the challenges you mentioned, there was some of the innovative ideas that could work in other settings, but not necessarily in Church. Yeah, that's an interesting place to be, isn't it for churches normally the other way, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Peter Wan 5:56
Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Because people, yeah, because when you grew up in a Church, where you spend so much time in Church, you just automatically go to, if you want to do this, you have to do that. And really, like there are many other ways to go about it. And, you know, so I think so that was one of the, the, the opportunities, but also the challenges that, that having a young staff team having young leadership team provides
David Mckeown 6:23
for Ireland. So PJ, I know you've mentioned previously, even on this podcast, that the Church is relatively new, it's a Church planter, the last few years, and obviously, we're coming out of a lockdown many countries, all the pandemic stuff. I think people are breathing again, we're at the other side of it. But tell us a little bit for you, then what was that like planting the Church getting it going? In the midst of the lockdown? What again? What were the challenges and opportunities in that?
Peter Wan 6:55
Oh, wow, I'm so thankful that when we started the Church, we did not know a pandemic was coming. Because if I did, I don't, I would have funded the Church because of all the challenges that it comes with, but But looking back, I think the pandemic actually helped us grow. And how can I explain why, what I mean by that, so we started Church in 2019. Right, so this is one year before the pandemic. So the good thing is we have one year to get it started before things went into lockdown when and all that kind of stuff. And so the Church was growing, you know, that one year, you know, when you first started the Church, you're not, you're not you just think, how do I get people in the doors? Right? How do I make sure they come on Sunday? Like if we're being honest, like it's, you're not really begin that fight? Now you just like, how do I get more people in on Sunday, you're not really thinking about all these different ministries or the long term, whatever. And, and so that was kind of like the first year for us. And then the pandemic's started. And, and so we thought, Oh, my goodness, people can come anymore. And we can do service anymore. So what do we do so, so that's when we started doing online Church. So now before that, we we didn't really have a real online presence at all, we kind of like, like I said, like, you're just trying to get people on, you know, Sunday. So you don't, we didn't really want to put anything online, so people can just watch at home, because we want them to come. But that kind of changed everything. So we started had, we had to put things online. And so my team and I we gathered together one afternoon, and we're just talking is it okay? If, if everybody's at home? What can we do to reach them? You know, besides just putting our sermons online, because because we can do that, but everybody's doing that. And there's so many options out there. And, and, and, and by the way, and people probably watching Netflix and not watching our sermons. So what do we do? So we just start brainstorming, and we came up with this idea of a youtube show called asking for friends. So we say, Hey, how about, let's just do a youtube show where I'm sitting there with a couple other pastors and and people can ask us questions about, you know, just any questions, but they asked him for free, right? It's not like so they ask us anything from like pornography, masturbation, everything. I don't know if I can say that well.
Peter Wan 9:34
And so we just started making all these so we will answer questions about faith and sex and all these different things money and just the real questions that people have, but they're afraid to ask. So and so we start asking, we started recording these and we put them on youtube and that just went viral. Like there is someone out there a video with like, I think, you know, 150,000 people watching me talk about masturbation or talk about pornography, and it just it just sometimes I think, oh my gosh, I can't believe the videos out there of you know, and all these people are watching this but, but that actually help all these people who previously were not interested in Church, start watching our youtube channel. And then we will link at the end of the channel, a sermon. So they will watch the video, which is like, you know, 10 minutes or so and then they will watch the sermon afterwards. And, and people start connecting online, they started joining us online, for Church. And so when the lockdown ended, when we could meet again, the Church came back with more people, like all these people that we didn't even know started showing up. And they would tell us why I started watching, asking for a friend. And then so I started watching your sermons. And I thought, oh, man this way. So I decided I wanted to come check out the Church, and then they will get baptised. And so we met so many of these people. And so so in a way, God work, how things go for the look for the all things together, work together, for the good of those would love God, not call according to His purpose. And so we really saw that work out for us. And so, so yeah, so we actually came up, came back out of the lockdown with more people than we have. And but it was really, it wasn't like we were massive planners or anything, it was really just sitting around the table. And then somebody came up with this idea. And we started to just go, You know what, they just do this, they just make videos of talking about all these different subjects. And so what I learned from that was, you know, don't be afraid to engage the questions that you won't actually ask, I think sometimes the Church, we're very good at answering questions that nobody's asking. And then the ones that people are asking we, because we're afraid of how people might look at us. And you know, and, you know, so I think what I learned is that just just answer those questions. We didn't have the perfect answers for these questions. But I think people mean that they're not looking for perfect answers. They're just looking for Pastor to be honest about these issues and talking about,
David Mckeown 12:16
yeah, they're definitely looking for you to be real in the moment, don't they? So so just, you share with us a little bit, obviously, during that time, your social presence grew on youtube. What did that look like before and after? Just to give us a wee bit of insight there?
Peter Wan 12:33
What before, so like, 2019, we have probably, you know, two 3000 people subscribe to our youtube channel. And then now it's about, I think, 80,000 people. And so they and then they would, so that's how we start. And then we started an online campus. So we actually started, we ship our staff around and, you know, one of the staff became the online campus Pastor, she, I call her one day said, Hey, I need you to become the online campus Pastor. She's like, what is that? I said, I don't know, we're figuring it out. And so because we have all these people, were just they would tune in, like on Sunday life to watch and they would chat on the on the on the on a youtube chat. And so we start building these teams, volunteer teams, that would call them after its online broadcast, to pray with them, when we're sending gifts. So we're doing all these, we did our first online baptism a couple couple of months ago, just you know, baptising people through zoom and all that kind of stuff. And, and what we found out was because because we're Chinese speaking, so there's some Chinese people everywhere. So a lot of the people who are watching are actually not located in Taiwan. So they're in places like Malaysia, Singapore, even Europe, and all these Chinese speakers that were queuing and watch, watch the watch the online watch online Church. So that's
David Mckeown 14:03
good just to get that clarity. So when you're preaching and sharing your preaching primarily in Chinese, but also, I think you do some English as well, don't you But primarily, your audiences to Chinese.
Peter Wan 14:15
So I so we do three services on Sunday. So we broadcast three services out. So the first service I do, I would preach in English and have a interpreter on stage and the interpreter would do simultaneous translation. So I will say something, she will say something, I will say something she will say something so that's our 930 service, and then at 1130 and two o'clock, it just me preaching Chinese, this is the same sermon in Chinese. And so then, at the end of after we broadcast them out, we take the video down, then we just upload the sermon out and we just put it up. So we put up a bilingual one, and then pure in like just a straightforward English, Chinese sermon on youtube.
Nathan Benger 15:05
Not so good. Just thinking about Taiwan and maybe the Church scene there. For somebody who doesn't know, what does that look like? What does it look like? You know, kind of like coming out of lockdown. Is it thriving? Is it surviving? Yeah, just give us an idea of what the Church scene looks like in Taiwan.
Peter Wan 15:27
I think the I think the traditions Taiwan are facing the same challenges that churches everywhere facing I think, I I've seen a lot of churches really Flyff in the midst of the pandemic, because they're able to pivot really fast into into seeing something new opportunities. But I've also seen a lot of churches struggling back, I actually know a few churches that actually had to close down because of the pandemic and and they never reopened back up. And so I think COVID Kind of just a seller with everything, right? I think. I think if some churches were already not doing so well, then it kind of just ended the lifespan of that local Church a little bit earlier. But so I think some churches are struggling, I think the ones who are really fighting are the ones who have pivoted, fast. I think in this age that we live in, it's actually not about speed. It's not about doing something fast. But it's about being agile, it's about willing to let go of what you're used to. And I think that's a challenge for all of us, especially leaders, because we kind of when we have a vision for something, we kind of stake our reputation and stake everything on and we're like, this is what we need to do. We got to do this. And so it's hard for us to say then, wow, actually, for this next season, we're not going to do that anymore. We got to pivot and shift to something else. And so I think and so I think it's more important to be agile, rather than being fast. I think, the it's not just about, get it done the fastest and the most effective way possible. But it's actually learning to ask the right questions. I think, being in this pandemic, we need to be careful to not come up with answers so fast. I think we need to we're still in this period where we still need to just ask questions about what what's going on, and what is the future of the Church minute look like. And I don't think we should try to arrive at a conclusion too fast. And I think we should just, you know, stay flexible. And if we can do that, which is really harmful. Because I am a planner, I like to plan things out. Like I really do. I'm like when I watch Netflix, you know, when people watch Netflix, they they watch you know, whatever they want on whatever day they want. For me it's different. If I watch it on Tuesday night, I will watch this particular show, if I watch on Wednesday night, I will watch this particular show. So the way I watch Netflix, this is the way we were watch cable TV like 20 years ago, right? Because I like plenty I like everything to be in order. But so this whole pandemic has just kind of blown that out of the water. So I have to learn to be flexible. And by I've learned when you're flexible you You see God do amazing things. And, and like the whole asking for friend video that we did, that series that we did. What I learned is a lot of times God uses the things that you did not plan that you did not foresee to bring you the biggest incomes. And so if you can just be Igel be, be faithful, be persistent, just heading in the same direction. Just go just going after God. My thing it's going to work out by the
David Mckeown 18:45
end. Yeah, fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. And I think just coming through the podcast and picking up some of the things that you've been sharing this idea of being big another as the hero of the story that's really important that you know, putting them first. And I think it sounds like really God got to the right place at the right time. If I can use that phraseology really to have an impact, but so many people and into their world, really I think you weren't the right place at the right time as well. Yeah. And you were prepared to take a risk. And I think there's something in that for leaders as well. Yeah, but being agile and willing to take a risk as well. Now, you mentioned when we were chatting previously about the sort of percentage of growth within Taiwan, with the Christian faith, can you just mention that a little bit? What does that look like today? You know, what's the percentage of Christianity in Taiwan? And how quickly has that grown?
Peter Wan 19:40
The latest stats, stats out of Taiwan is out. The nation is about I think about eight to 10% depending on which study you're looking at. That's question so now that might seem quite little, like 8% 10% But, but considering for the longest time that That number was about two to 3%, for about 150 years of Christianity come into Taiwan. And it's really only in the last 20 to 30 years that that number has moved from that two to 3%. To where we are right now. And so I think we're in this time when I think people are hungry, people are seeking the truth. People are flexible. And so I think, you know, I think, I think it's, I think there's so many people out there and, and Taiwan, what, wherever people are listening, I think it would be true in whichever city when nation, there are always people who are ready to hear the gospel, you know, that the parable of the sower, and then shows us that in the majority 75%, you know, the, this the the Cedar Falls and all these kinds of soils, and, and there was this last soil that was good, and so only that one out of four, so it was good. So maybe there's only 25% of people at any given time, would like to hear what you have to say about the gospel. But but but that's enough, because if you would just do that consistently. And, and and faithfully that you will get a heartbeat. So I think by now what we're seeing is, is the fact that many people over the years, leaders and pastors who have gone before me have consistently, persistently just preach the gospel, and just do the hard work of the ministry. So I'm here and my generation were able to, to reap a reward that we have not, you know, we're reaping a reward that we didn't work for, that somebody else did. But at the same time, it's a reminder that we got to be sowing into our generation that we might not even see the reward, but the next generation will. And so I think that's a beautiful picture of God's kingdom, because it's not just about us, it's not just about it's not just about my generation, it's the generations that we're connected to, and what God is doing in the bigger picture of things.
Nathan Benger 22:04
That that's just amazing. And, again, you know, speaks into that whole thing around, you know, you, you put yourself in a ministry, and you listen to a leader. And here now, you know, you're speaking about, you know, the generations before, and you're reaping the harvest of that. And I think that whole generation and legacy thing is so important. Like, who has been your greatest inspiration, and why have they been your greatest inspiration?
Peter Wan 22:35
I'm one of so I think it depends on which areas of my life but in terms of ministry, one of the Pastor that has influenced me the most early on in my life was the Pastor I was working for when I was in seminary, so I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I know most people probably have never heard of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I think Michael Topham transformation Church made the city famous before that. Most people have not heard of Paul's, Oklahoma when I was there. Definitely. Most people have not heard of the city, but but when I was in a city, I was going to school and I was working for a Pastor, Pastor Greg, and he, he started a Church that ministering to the homeless in downtown Tulsa. And so the Church has about 100 people, the majority of them 80% of them are homeless. It's about 20 of them 20% that have, you know, have jobs, but the majority are homeless. And so I was working for him and, and he taught me a lot about ministry. I remember, every Sunday, we would cook a meal for the homeless. So we would do Church on Sundays, but before we would do Church, we will have to cook we will cook breakfast for about 100 people, right? So these are homeless people coming in, they get a meal and they get a message. That's why they get and, and so I was in charge of cooking, cooking the meal every Sunday. So I was working together with another friend. He used to work. He used to be a chef in the US Army. So he's used to cooking for a lot of people. So he taught me how to cook for 100 people. And, and because we're making breakfast every Sunday, so we will make scrambled eggs. Now. One time I was making these scrambled eggs, right? We have like 100 eggs, we're beating all the eggs, and it's tiring to be 100 eggs at a time I want to give a beat like just even five eggs. It's hard. So try to imagine with a spatula, leaving, you know, close to 100 eggs at a time my my arm felt like it was going to fall off. So I was doing that one day, you know, beating just beating the eggs like my Pastor Greg, you walk in and he saw me beating a eggs and I was sweating. And he said this to me. He says Hey Peter, you know, most is as most homeless men are Most, most ministry, the minister to the homeless, when they make scrambled eggs for the homeless, they will buy these powdered eggs. I don't know if you have those in the UK, but powder, eights are these. They're like, they're supposedly made from real aches, but they're just powder and you put them in hot water. And it makes it you know, it looks like scrambled egg but it tastes like scrambled a but it's not really scrambled. And he says Most, most, most homeless ministry, which is us that he says. But he says we don't have a lot of money in his Church, but we can afford real aches. And so we're gonna use real aches, because people are worth it. And that's stuck with me. He says, because people are with it. And that one sentence has really formed the gist, you know, the, how I do ministry, people are worth it. And so it was really through him. And when I started the hire, that he would pour into these people, because these people, you know, you love on them. And really, they they don't give you anything in return. They're not volunteering at Church, they're not doing anything else for you. They're just showing up, you know, and, but he really taught me how to love these people. And I think that that one lesson has impacted me impacted me the most over all these years
David Mckeown 26:25
for Lent. Or Peter, it's been great to be chatting with you today. We've got one final question. We love to ask all our guests, which is this? It is what's the one question that the ones asking you that you wish they would? And what is the answer to that question?
Peter Wan 26:41
Oh, that's a good question. I begin as a Pastor, I think people are always asking me what they should do. And I will, I will wish people would stop asking me what they should do. Because first of all, I don't know, their situations, I don't want to give advices I don't want to say do this and not knowing exactly what they're going through. But I wish people asked me more about not on what to do, but how to think. I think that's more important. I think. I think Jesus really show us this, I think people will always come to him with questions. And he really just gave a straightforward answer, because I think he realised the issue is not it's not that people don't have the answer is people have been asking the wrong questions. And if you're asking the wrong questions, if you're not asking the right questions, if you if you're not asking the right questions, you'll never write out the right answers. And so he will always reframe the questions and then give an answer to it. And so he was changing the way people would ask questions and the way people would think so I wish people would do that. More. Interestingly, in Chinese the word for knowledge, in Chinese is share one. And the phrase share when literally means learning how to ask a question. So the word for knowledge is not knowing something, it's learning how to ask a question. And I think I think that's, there's some truth there, you know, so I wish people would stop asking me what to do. Because most of the time, I really don't know what they should do. And I don't want him to do something and then blame me afterwards if it didn't work out. But just ask me that. And I think that would probably help help all of us, you know, if we can learn how to ask the right question.
David Mckeown 28:35
Definitely agree around answer there.
Nathan Benger 28:38
Yeah. Amazing answer. Peter. If people wanted to connect with you, what's the best way for them to kind of like follow you follow what you're doing there in Taiwan.
Peter Wan 28:47
I think the best thing if you're on social media is it's not a follow me because my my, my Instagram is very boring. It's I don't have a key managing it. It's just me posting pictures of my kids and what I'm eating. So I don't think you'll find that interesting at all. But no one's going to go to our Church instead. Instagram is at the whole dot see the whole SEO or people can go on youtube. Just type in the hole? I think they'll find it. Yeah, I think most of your listeners will be English speaking. We do have some English contents there and but but the majority of them are in Chinese. But if you're interested to see what God is doing, check us out. Definitely.
David Mckeown 29:32
That's great. Yeah, it's
Nathan Benger 29:33
been so good. Peter and want to say a big thank you for being with us on the church explained podcast and just want to say to everyone who's listening, wherever you're consuming this content, if you can, like share, subscribe, however, you're consuming this content and that makes a big difference towards there at the church explained podcast but we're looking forward to the next time on the church explained podcast and we can't wait to have you on with us we'll see you soon
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
