PCT remembers William Campbell and ministries for disabled people

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

3107 Edition

September 12-18, 2011

Headline News

PCT remembers William Campbell and ministries for disabled people

Reported by Simon Lin

Written by Lydia Ma

This year is the 90th anniversary of Rev. William Campbell’s death and a 
thanksgiving and memorial service was held on September 19, 2011, at Hsin-hsing 
Presbyterian Church in Kaohsiung. Co-sponsored by Sign-Language Presbyterian 
Church and Taiwan Sign-Language Outreach Association, the service emphasized on 
ministries for the hearing impaired.

Referring to people with hearing impairment, Taiwan Sign-Language Outreach 
Association General Secretary CHen Yu-lin said they are a minority group in 
society that God wants to win over as well and Christians should reach out to 
them because they are also part of God’s flock. 

"If it weren't for Dr. William Campbell's work in Taiwan, this country's 
special education would never be where it is today," said Mackay Memorial 
Hospital Taitung Branch chief chaplain, Rev. Pan Hsi-chi. He hosted a special 
time set aside to remember Dr. William Campbell after the service and 
underscored that Campbell was the father of special education in Taiwan because 
Taiwanese society at the time didn’t care for people with disabilities. For 
example, blind people at the time were often marginalized, relegated to doing 
hard labor, or simply thrown out to the streets to beg for a living.

Seeing 17,000 people facing such unfortunate lives broke Campbell’s heart and 
he began to write to his sending church to raise funds to start a school for 
blind people. The school began by teaching Braille so that students could learn 
to read, get an education, and get a job to support themselves. Campbell’s 
efforts and the school’s success eventually became examples for Taiwan’s 
special education curricula. 

"There are about 118,000 hearing impaired people in Taiwan, and reports say 
this number has increased by 2,000 in recent years. But a look at the number of 
hearing-impaired people in our pews is disheartening. We have less than 400 of 
these people among us," Chen said using statistics about another group of 
disabled people as example.

He underscored that the dearth of ministries for people with disabilities is a 
severe blow and challenge to PCT members today, whose church history includes 
being a pioneer in special education and whose God is a friend of the blind and 
deaf and marginalized.

From Chen’s experience in the past 20 years, he observed that the greatest 
challenge or reason why deaf people are neglected is poor communication and 
these people's inability to attend weekly church meetings.

"Sign language should be placed in the category of cross-cultural mission, 
because this language is entirely different from Chinese,” Chen said, adding 
that churches need a whole new strategy when it comes to reaching out to deaf 
people if they want to be successful sharing the gospel with them.

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