Interview with Kim Crutchfield ... Part One

When Kim Crutchfield received his doctorate from Columbia Theological Seminary in May, he was aware that he had traveled a long way from his earliest memory of religion --- sitting in an A. A. Allen tent revival. 

And some of the traveling has been literal:  Kim is currently the pastor of Taipei International Church in Taiwan.

To mark the occasion of Kim's recognition as a Doctor of Ministry, I thought it would be interesting to interview the United Methodist minister about his spiritual journey that has taken him through Pentecostalism, the Princeton classrooms of the late biblical scholar Bruce Metzger, the megachurch of the notorious bishop Earl Paulk, and now to the pulpit at Taipei International.

The interview will be posted in three parts:  today (Kim's background and thoughts on Pentecostalism), next Saturday, July 24 (his experiences at Princeton with Metzger), and finally, Saturday, July 31 (what he observed at Earl Paulk's church in Atlanta).

JR:  Kim, first tell us about your church in Taipei and how you came to pastor there.

KC:  My family and I were in the Philippines for several years, serving as United Methodist missionaries. I taught at Union Theological Seminary in Das Marinas, Cavite, and my wife, Stephanie, worked with an indigenous people group known as the Ayatas in the mountains of Tarlac (the Crutchfields are pictured below).  On weekends, I taught in the adult education department of Union Church Manila, an international church in Manila.

When our mission term of service was up, our mission board wanted to reassign us to Cambodia.  However, the pastor of the Union Church Manila told us about another international church pulpit that had recently become vacant, the Taipei International Church.  We prayed about it and then dropped in our application.  In a few short months, TIC decided that we were the couple for the position.  We moved to Taiwan in late November 2003.

Taipei International Church is an international congregation.  It is now in its 53rd year.

In 1957 a Methodist missionary began the Wesley Methodist Church in Taipei among the Mandarin-speaking Chinese who migrated to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek.  That congregation opened an English-speaking service that became Taipei International Church.

The people of TIC come from many countries and from all different denominations.  TIC is an exciting place to serve God.  The congregation is committed to mission on the island and in Asia, with outreaches to India, Indonesia, Cambodia, and the Philippines.  A large part of the TIC constituency is Filipinos who serve as Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs).

We hold a special Tagalog Fellowship every Sunday, with several satellite congregations around Taipei.  Our youth have a worship service called Paradyme that meets every Sunday morning as an alternative worship service.

TIC supports many missions on Taiwan ranging from orphanages, crisis counseling services, ministries to rehabilitate alcohol and drug abusers, Gideon's International, and Christian camps for Thai workers.

TIC is a vibrant congregation serving the Tienmu section of Taipei.  We hold our main services in the Taipei American School.

JR:  What was the area of study you pursued in your doctoral program?

KC:  I entered the program at Columbia Theological Seminary called "Gospel and Culture".  This program aimed to equip the learners with tools to help us interpret the culture around us in which we do ministry.  The professors taught us the skills to serve as "theological ethnographers".  We interpret culture and gospel.  This is of particular interest to me.  Western culture is changing.  To speak a meaningful word of good news to the world in which we live,  we must understand the culture and how the gospel addresses it.

Since coming to Taiwan, I live for the first time in a culture that is not predominantly Christian.  Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism form the dominant religious committments in Taiwan.  Christianity comprises only about 2% of the population.  Through my program, I learned how to observe another culture and seek for better understanding.  What do the people value?  How do they think?  What symbols speak to them?

My studies led me to reflect on the phenomenon of ancestor homage, as they practice it in Taiwan.  My final project paper was on Concern over Ancestor Homage in Taiwan:  Toward a Culture Specific Catechesis for Taiwanese Christian Seekers.  I offered my reflections on how the church may respond to Taiwanese who seek to enter the church but struggle with family pressure to continue to worship their ancestors.  I hope to make a contribution to the ongoing dialog of Christians in Taiwan as they seek to evangelize and initiate new Christians into the faith.

JR:  As you evaluate your youthful years in Pentecostalism, what were some of the major pluses and minuses you saw?

KC:  Pentecostalism stresses that everyone is a minister.  Even as a child, I believed that God could use me to serve.  We believed that the Holy Spirit works through men and women, boys and girls.  Some scholars call this "the democratization of the prophetic spirit".  We were taught that the Holy Ghost (back then, we usually followed the KJV) would anoint "sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants, old men and young men" to speak the word of God.  God was near, not far away.  The Holy Spirit brought God close.  The Holy Spirit was God-in-Action among us, granting power for effective service.  Pentecostalism also led us to exercise spiritual gifts.  Prophecy and tongues were the main ones people talked about in our churches.  The plus was that we believed God could use us in the exercise of those gifts.  One did not need a seminary degree, or, even an office, to serve as an instrument of God's work in the world.

One minus was that our church stressed that the Holy Spirit would only come on persons who spoke in tongues.  They stressed the "baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues".  We looked at non-Pentecostal Christians as nominal Christians, lacking the Holy Ghost power.  That set up a natural one-upmanship, separating us from other brothers and sisters in Christ.

I also witnessed many cases of the abuse of prophecy.  Prophecy was often misused as a tool of crass social manipulation.  Some folks have trouble separating their own prejudices and biases from what God might say.  It is easy to add a "Thus sayeth the Lord" to cloak one's own agenda.  I have seen that happen before.

The Pentecostal movement stressed heart religion and experience.  That is a plus.  However, they were often suspicious of intellect.  Anti-intellectualism is a minus.  When I was a student in bible college, one teacher tried to dissuade me from pursuing my field of interest, ethics.  I believe she thought it too mentally challenging.  I have to laugh about it now --- I thought schools and colleges were centers of learning.  Yet, in that case, too much learning proved threatening.

NEXT SATURDAY:  Experiencing Princeton and the scholarship of Bruce Metzger.  Read it here.

Kim and Stephanie Crutchfield