Pastor holds church services in a Taipei nightclub

A Taiwanese pastor has found a new way of reaching out to youth: holding church service in a nightclub. Every Sunday morning, the laser lights come on and the stage comes alive with worship music. In just one year, this unusual church has expanded to a congregation of 1,000 people. Our reporter Stephany Yang spoke with the church’s lead pastor to learn more. Bathed in laser lights, the live band brings a pulse-pumping performance. It looks like a wild Saturday night. But it’s Sunday morning, not Saturday. And if you listen to the lyrics closely, you’ll find that they are songs of worship. The creator of this event is Pastor Peter Wan. Before he came to Taiwan, he spent two years at a church in Oklahoma, working to reach the homeless. He moved to Taiwan in 2009 and began serving as a pastor. In January 2019, he founded a church called The Hope. In just over a year, the church has grown to a community of 1,000 people. Three church services are held every Sunday in a nightclub, two bilingual and one in Mandarin Chinese. Peter Wan PastorIt''s actually incredibly hard to find space in Taipei. An opportunity presented itself for us to meet in this nightclub. It''s a wonderful space. It''s a place for us to be able to invite friends to come, who might not have wanted to step into a church for whatever reason. We want to really share the message of hope with them. It might not be in a church building, but it''s a full church experience. Because church is about people, church is about God. Church is about God reaching people, touching people''s lives. That''s what we want to see when people come, because church is not just about a building, it''s about building people. Every Sunday around 7 a.m., volunteers converge on the nightclub to transform it into a church. Besides cleaning the sofas, they fill the dance floor with chairs and bring in the pastor’s pulpit. They turn the entryway into a comfortable living room where people can converse and drink coffee. Peter Wan Pastor Because we are meeting in a nightclub right now. So we can only gather on Sundays. We don''t have that space any other time. So that limits on some of the things we can do. So hopefully we can find a space where we can renovate. Hope week is something that we do a few times a year. Every time during Hope Week, what we do is we find a few organizations here in Taiwan. We come to them and we say, “hey we got all these people that come to our church, what can we do to help you guys?” It''s a way for us to be engaged with the community. It''s a way for us to help people understand that church isn''t just about getting people to come to us. It''s about going to the people. Pastor Wan says that having a home of their own can help the church serve and reach more people in the community. The Hope has launched an online campaign to raise funds for renting and furnish its new home.