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The Bamboo Union, as Lu eventually gets ‘round to explaining (he loves telling a story, remember?), is even now one of Taiwan’s most notorious criminal gangs. “In those days [early 1970s] the union had 45,000 gangsters working for it. These men would indulge in every type of criminal activity: kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, gambling and prostitution, working as hit men – basically anything illegal that paid well.”
Pastor Lu’s Church Planting Evangelical Seminary is nicely located in one of Jhongli’s more scenic spots. Low, very basic buildings are grouped around a pond – “where you can catch all sorts of fish” – the pastor tells me with some pride. The buildings house the seminary’s classrooms where some 150 students are trained in theology, pastoral counseling and other related subjects; it’s an administrative section and a dormitory. The church is a part of the World Wide Chinese Missionary Fellowship, though Lu stresses the denomination is irrelevant: what matters is that people come to the church, listen to the gospel, and see the Light.
It took the pastor in his former avatar a long, long time to see the Light. During this time he had several run-ins with the law as he went on a spree of bloody violence and extortion. With all the skill of a practiced raconteur, Pastor Lu animatedly tells of his several escapades as a convicted Bamboo Union heavyweight: a prison break and escape into the heaving Pacific Ocean during typhoon winds and rain; surviving a set-up by a double-crossing friend; abortive attempts to smuggle himself into Hong Kong on a steamer; brutal beatings in prison and finally a combined prison sentence of 38 years on a false charge of which he was eventually acquitted and released in 1979 after spending most of that decade behind bars.
Against the backdrop of a repressive martial law in Taiwan, Lu’s various prison terms were carried out in impossibly inhuman conditions leaving him with broken foot-bones and psychological scars that will last a lifetime. That he saw the Light in such an environment is probably reason enough for all the fuss he manages to drum up 26 years after his release. The president of Taiwan honored him last November as one of the country’s 10 greatest contributors to society.
In his office, a small elevated inner-chamber separated from a slightly larger anteroom by Japanese-style screen doors, Pastor Lu attributes his ‘turning point’ to the 500 letters of That was one happy ending quickly achieved. The other ending – to make peace with his hometown of Wuku (in Taipei County), was harder in coming. The people of Wuku saw Pastor Lu as the local thug, the one who had terrorized them for years. This was a prodigal son they were reluctant to embrace. He badly needed that embrace, for Wuku had no churches then and a well-known preacher and religious guide for Pastor Lu wanted him to become Wuku’s pastor and establish the town’s first church.
He says his prayers, hard work, and genuine desire to be different finally won the townspeople over and, in time, Wuku’s first church grew from a congregation of zero to 300.
In his office, Pastor Lu has a large corkboard covered with photographs showing him first as a young boy, then as a gun-toting Bamboo Union tough and finally as Pastor Lu the convert with his wife and family. Possibly because his story has that winning combination of heroism, romance and really good luck, it has been instrumental in helping him attract followers to his Planting Church. At his seminary and through his 40 churches scattered around Taiwan (and 500 ‘church points’ in Mainland China with whom Pastor Lu hopes Taiwan will one day peacefully reunite), Pastor Lu – who later earned doctorates in theology and education from Texas University – has managed to win over scores of believers. “I had visited other churches as a child” says Bruce, a young student at the Planting Seminary with a masters in accounting, and suicidal tendencies so intense they would not allow him to live a normal life. “But with Dr. Lu it is different – he has helped me in self-betterment.”
Predictably, the majority of Pastor Lu’s believers, like Bruce, have had more than a few hard knocks in their lives. Any pastor preaching any religion anywhere in the world can tell you how terribly difficult it is to make rich, successful, beautiful young people get down on their soft knees and thank God for the sunshine and the flowers, and how much more terribly difficult it is to get them to actually part with some of their wealth for God’s good work — a difficulty pastor Lu is too familiar with.
“Here in Taiwan it is difficult work and to win over more followers because the people are comfortable and free -- no struggle. They can say what they want, so they do not face difficulties. But in mainland China where it is difficult, where everyone is not so free, over there people are ready to believe and worship.”
So there you have it – God’s own dilemma – but Pastor David Lu is working on it. And if he uses the same determination that helped him overcome a terrible past and build a church that reaches out to troubled souls everywhere, he will crack it, give or take a couple more rib-eyes at St. Paul Steakhouse in good ole’ Jhongli. |
