全文檢索
Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 13th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2010> he Shepherd of Prisoner- Huang Ming-Chen
The Beacon of Prisoners and the Tutor of Lost Teenagers
      For more than two decades, Pastor Huang Ming-Chen has visited all the prisons in Taiwan and educated and guided every prisoner with love. He never stops visiting prisoners in the jails, and has gradually conveyed the positive power to those helpless prisoners through his sincere concern. Pastor Huang Ming-Chen burns himself to light up the beacons for prisoners. He evangelizes the jails in the hope that the prisoners can genuinely repent and turn over a new leaf. He helps the prisoners to regain both physical spiritual freedom and guide them to the way of peace from dark corners.
 
 
The seed of Christ
      Huang Ming-Chen was born in 1944. At present, he is the chief director of a well-known Christian prison fellowship in Taiwan . His major work includes providing education and consultation to jails, reconstructing the family relationship of prisoners, and settling down and guiding lost teenagers and rehabilitated criminals. He wrote several books such as “The Angles in the Jail”. He was brought up in the rural area of Changhua. In his childhood, there was no church in his hometown. The first time he went to a church was his participation in summer Sunday school when he was a first-year junior high school student. A missionary evangelized him and a group of children under a one-hundred-year-old Jiadong tree. He felt thankful at that time. Afterwards, a church was built on the vacant land in front of that tree and he felt quite marvelous. Ever since there was a place for gathering, there were more and more church members. For preparing for university entrance examination, he moved to church to live with the old resident pastor and study spiritual courses everyday, which contributed to his inward peace and enabled him to focus on studying for the entrance examination. He successfully passed the entrance examination of Normal Taiwan Normal University and Central Police Academy (today's Central Police College ).
      He gave up the opportunity to study in National Taiwan Normal University and chose to study at Central Police Academy . When he was a college freshman, he received baptism and became a Christian. After four years of severe police training, he served at Police Department of Taipei City Government right after graduation. Afterwards, he returned to Police Academy to work as a police instructor. In 1971, to compete with his classmates for being the “police chief” as soon as possible, he chose to pursue further education in the US . It never occurred to Pastor Huang that the person who intended to study, obtain the degree, achieve success, and win recognition as soon as possible would become a full-time missionary in the future and changed from a police officer to a pastor of prisoners.
 
 
He developed his unbendable character for guiding prisoners when studying abroad in the US
      After being a police officer for four years, he went to study “Crime Prevention” in California State University at his own expense and worked part-time such as making sandwiches in a restaurant to earn tuition during the spare time. After six months, his wife went to the US with a dependent VISA. To reduce economic burden, he moved out of the dormitory just rented and worked part-time with his wife to complete his study at graduate school. He cultivated his unbendable character and ability to bear hardship when studying abroad, which helped a lot to the education work in the jails in the future.
      After obtaining the mater's degree, he pursued further education at the theological seminary in San Francisco , US , to study “the origin of human crimes and strategies for removing the root cause.” When he studied abroad, he always helped the Chinese church gathering around. In 1976, his first daughter was borne and he also graduated from the theological seminary. He passed the recruitment examination for social service staff of California State Government as he wished and left bank to engage in the service work of social welfare in government.
 
 

Satisfactory family and church life
      The 8-year working experience at Department of Social Service in California State Government was the happiest time in his life. On the one hand, the government had a sound personnel system and provided staff with a lot of holidays and welfare, which enabled him to live a normal family and church life. On the other hand, the property of the job belonged to “system of responsibility.” As long as he handled well the job of settling down more than one hundred political victims from different places around the world, he would be safe and well. Therefore, it was a delightful job. When serving victims in the US , he profoundly felt the human suffering and life value. During one Thanksgiving, the church invited the victims to dine together. A Vietnamese victim representative delivered a speech in the dinner party, “To us victims, everyday is Thanksgiving,” which impressed him a lot.
      When studying at the theological seminary, the church pastor made him the person in charge of the Chinese Department. After he started working, he spent his spare time on church. However, his “side job” (church work) almost became his “principal job”. Afterwards, more and more people joined the Chinese Department and the person in charge became the “seven member group” in charge, which laid a great foundation for the development of Chinese Department in the future.
 
 
Returning to Taiwan for doing missionary work and facing important choices in life
      Someday in 1986, when he cultivated his spirituality, he recalled that he was saved by God in the church when he was a junior high school student and it should be his turn to pay back. It was the time for “paying back the debt of evangelism.” He wrote a letter to the church in his hometown and hoped to arrange the gathering of the youth. Therefore, he spent his holidays to return to Taiwan with his family for a short evangelism.
      When he got off the plane, the sentence in the bible “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” resounded around his ears. Didn't that mean to care about those in the prisons? Therefore, he went to evangelize hundreds of teenagers at Tucheng Juvenile Detention House in Taipei and Changhua Reform School. It was sad to see the children being put in jails. It occurred to him that if they had gotten in touch with church earlier like he did, perhaps they would have not in the jails. After the courses at Chuanghua Reform School were over, a young teacher told him that she was a resident missionary assigned by the “prison fellowship” and hoped that he could meet the chief director of prison fellowship, Mr. Kuo-dong Lu. At that time, Mr. Kuo-dong Lu was over 70 years of age and hoped that he could be the successor of the prison fellowship.
 
 

A full-time missionary
      At that time, the couple both had jobs and good payments in the US and their church life was quite smooth. In addition, their children were too young while the parents-in-law in the US were too old, thus, they had no reason to return to Taiwan . However, the request of Kuo-dong Lu was earnest. After a while, a letter saying that the directorate of prison fellowship had agreed to appoint him as the chief director, and asked him to reply in three months. To him, it was a great challenge and choice. After discussing with parents-in-law and family praying, they were willing to say goodbye to their family, and the church also promised that they would take care of the elders. After everything was arranged well, he wrote in reply and expressed that he was willing to undertake the task. However, the new sermon place had just been set up and he could not leave at that moment. Therefore, he asked for a two-year extension.
      In July 1988, Pastor Huang brought his family back to Taiwan to success the work with a salary less than 1/5 of the original work and started his journey of the long-term evangelism, which has lasted for 17 years up to now. It is a great transformation in his life. When he went to study abroad in the US , he only intended to obtain a degree to become the police chief as soon as possible. It never occurred to him that he would become a pastor and a full-time missionary after 17 years when he returned to Taiwan .
 
 
Being imprisoned with prisoners to experience their feelings in person
      After returning to Taiwan from the US , Pastor Huang engaged in the work of prison fellowship wholeheartedly. To understand the mental status and life of prisoners, he asked his classmate who works as the warden to arrange him to be imprisoned for one day to experience the feelings behind bars in person. In the juvenile detention house, he lived with more than one hundred of juvenile prisoners to understand their life and how terrible it was to lose freedom. He also ate a “prison meal” for the first time. Although it was a pot meal, there were fish, meat, and vegetables, which were almost better than a meal of an ordinary family. However, he saw that the kids devoured like a wolf because even delicacies from land and sea were tasteless when one lost freedom.
      After taking over the Christian prison fellowship, he evangelizes prisoners at each prison every Monday. On Tuesday and Thursday, he handles the prison fellowship gathering at Taipei detention center or Taipei Prison to provide individual consultation for prisoners. He will visit all the prisoners in Taiwan every year. Up to now, his footprints can be seen all over Taiwan and he has visited numerous prisoners. He is also an honorable instructor for prisons. He has seen each kind of criminals such as juvenile criminal, female criminal, felony criminal, and condemned criminal. Some unruly criminals will refuse to eat, intend to commit suicide, or “give up their life” and these criminals will be handled by Pastor Huang. He never gives up any prisoners and has instructed and evangelized more than 200 condemned criminals.
 
 
The love and acceptance of family are the keys for prisoners to reform themselves

      Based on his long-term care about the prisoners in Taiwan and their family, Pastor Huang profoundly feels the importance of the mental and physical reconstruction of the criminals. The prison fellowship holds the activity of “angle trees” on Christmas Day every year, and cooperates with churches around Taiwan to deliver gifts to the family of prisoners. The events also encourage the children to write to their parents in jails upon receiving the gifts to encourage them to turn over a new leaf in the future. He also appealed to the society and family to accept rehabilitated criminals with forgiveness and offer them one more change. He said, “The love and acceptance of family are the keys for prisoners to reform themselves.” If people can accept the rehabilitated criminals, the chances of making mistakes again will be reduced.
 
 
Better family, less crimes
      The experiences of getting in touch with prisoners makes Pastor Huang understand that the causes for juvenile crimes are all “family problems.” When a teenager does not receive love ad concern from parents and family, he/se may commit crimes due to behavioral bias and further becomes a prisoner. The prison fellowship takes care of kid at the edge and used to set up a small-scale juvenile detention house in Beitou, which has guided 60 kids in ten years. They found that juvenile criminals could reform themselves once they were cared and helped. Because it is important to prevent and correct juvenile crimes, he decided to found “Faith, hope, and love youth academy” in Fuxing, Hualien. After 5 years of arrangement, the academy finally started to enroll students in February 2002. The youth academy accepts the children of misbehaviors and their misbehaviors will be corrected properly. He said, “I am willing to accept and embrace them and enable them to study.” He usually goes to the academy to keep their company and live with them. Up to now, 150 members have been guided and over 90% of the 100 teenagers who left the academy successfully pursued for further education or obtain stable jobs. Only few of them committed crimes again.
 
 

Take off! The flying teenagers
      To construct the confidence of the children and make them experience successful experiences, Pastor Huang taught then to ride bicycle in his unique way. According to the findings of Japanese crime studies, children who ride unicycles will not become bad children. Therefore, all elementary school students in Japan need to learn how to ride unicycles. He said, “Riding unicycles requires the balance of brain and cerebellum. Once everything is balanced, the thought and behavior will not deviate.” At the age of 61, he learnt to ride unicycle and taught children to ride it. In addition, he also introduced the unicycle to Banchiao Juvenile detention center and made the probation officer, Lu Su-Wei, lead 30 children to complete the 1000 kilometers journey of unicycle across the island in 20 days. The journey was shot as a documentary film “Flying teenagers,” which won the best documentary film in the 10 th Taipei Movie Festival.
 
 
I never give up on them!
      Pastor Huang hoped to make dropouts in the academy become graduates and further become college students after graduation, He said, “They will be sent abroad one day in the future and then return to Taiwan to serve the society. I never give up on them.”