TAIWAN – Starting from Aug. 18, Taipei Franklin Graham Festival prepares to hold Christian Life & Witness Course all throughout greater-Taipei. For the past 60 years, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has been providing this world class discipleship training courses in countless countries in the world.

Dr. Billy Graham hopes that this course can be used to prepare for counseling and follow-ups prior to the evangelistic festival. Following the footsteps of his father, Rev. Franklin Graham agrees the importance of this unique course, “Christian Life & Witness Course is to help believers to reignite their faith and to share with others, so it provides the best preparation prior to renewal and evangelisms. Every Christian should view this exciting courses as the most important training opportunity.”

In June, BGEA sent Dr. Bob Kendig to Taiwan to prepare for Christian Life & Witness Course, trained around 60 teachers. From Aug. 18 to Sept. 21, a period of five weeks, each week from Monday through Friday, over 90 courses will be held in Northern Taiwan. Anyone who is above the 13 year old can participate once a week at 90 minutes per course. The 5 course topics will be divide weekly into “Effective Christian Life” in the first week, “Victorious Christian Life” in the second week, “Testimony of Christians” in the third week, “Follow-ups and Care for New Believers” in the fourth week, and “How to Lead Smalls Groups in Bible-Study” in the fifth week.

On the night of Aug. 18, over 200 participants crowded a church in Bianciao. Under the leadership of the lecturers, students learned from clearly how to fill God’s word in their every thought and to tightly hold on to the promise of God.

To meet the BGEA’s standard of education quality, all lecturers must receiving training each Monday morning, in order to ensure the full compliance of the education contents and curriculums. Through the word of mouth, the number of participants in the second week far exceeded the number of participants in the first week. Around 7,000 people participated in the first week, and over 10,000 people participated in the second week.

A husband and wife, who currently attend a church in the Neihu District, participated in the courses held in Sinjhuang. He said that the courses are easy to understand and the life testimony of the lecturers and the after course study guides helped him to reflect deeply. A sister who is attending the Shihlin Bread of Life Church and has been a believer for seven years said that the courses offered is a complete discipleship training course. She learned the thoughts and attitudes that a Christian should have and the method on walking closely with the Lord.

The director of the TFGF care committee expressed the consistent intervention of God’s hand from the recruitment and selection of lecturers to coordination with churches to provide meeting spaces. This is a cross-denominational service, which unites the churches together. He further stated that only the students who has received equipping of Christian Life & Witness is eligible to apply for this festival’s care personnel and he hopes that every church pastor can be an example to participate in the courses and encourage the congregation to participate. The goal of the conference is to equip 25,000 people, 12,000 people applying to be the care personnel.

Towards the end of Oct. in 1975, Rev. Billy Graham held a five day evangelistic conference in Taipei, which attracted over 200,000 people to participate. After 33 years, his son, Franklin Graham, is also inspired to continue the baton race to hold the mission festival in Taiwan. The preparation committee believes that this year is the year of harvest of the gospel. With the theme “Revival Begins from Me”, they are encouraging the believers to receive equipping, so they can be the messengers of the gospel to testify for the Lord during the Franklin Graham Festival to be held in October.

[Editor's note: reporter Ian Hwang from Taipei contributed to this report.]