Hi! My Name is Ben Franz, my family and I are currently serving God in Aroma Church, Taipei, Taiwan.

I just want to give you a quick backstory of myself and my time spent serving God.

2001: I am 12 years old and I decided to give my life to Christ in my local sunday school program.

2001-2007: I served in my local church as toilet cleaner, kids church helper, sound guy, overhead projector song lyrics changer, bass player, and on the cafe team.

2008: I am now 19 and my young adults pastor and the lead guitarist from our church worship team are going to Osaka, Japan to plant a new church, they invite me along. I decided to go and help them through ACC missions. I am told I need to save $10,000 AUD first. So I worked 60 hours a week in insulation for one month and then 60 hours a week in Weis Ice-Cream factory for 5 months to save the money. At the same time I start leading my first small group.

2009-2010: After I finally had the $10,000 I moved to Osaka Japan to help with the church plant. At that time the church was about 50 people. Some missionairies like me, some Japanese Christians who had gotten saved overseas then came back to Japan looking for a church, and many of them new believers. It was an amazing year, I worked part time teaching English to pay my living expenses, I helped with university outreach, street outreach, street band (where we played worship songs and invited anyone who stopped to listen to church), I played guitar at church, led the production team for Tuesday night church, and led a small group. After one year we had seen many Japanese come to Christ (and even some foreigners including a Canadian and an Aussie), and the church had grown to 100 people.

2010-2012: I moved back to Australia to finish my education degree, did 1 year of online bible college at the same time, played bass at church, led 2 different small groups, started an outreach to skate park kids, and helped with Red Frogs and the young adult ministry in our church.

2013: After my one year in Osaka, God had given me a heart for missions, I moved back to Japan, this time to Sapporo, Hokkaido to help with a church plant there, also only around 50 people, again I helped with street outreach and street band (except in winter it was -10 degrees some nights so it was a bit brutal on the body), university outreach, lead a small group, and this time I also lead the worship team. I taught English again to cover my living costs, and my home church in Australia helped with some sponsorship as well. After my one year there, we also saw many salvations, baptisms, and the church grew to about 100.

2014: I was asked if I could move to Taipei Taiwan to help lead a church plant of about 20 people. Initially I was hesitant, as I had spent years self learning Japanese, and felt that that was where God wanted me to be long term. However, after prayer, the Holy Spirit strongly urged me to move to Taiwan. I lead the church there for 9 months, in that time we saw 11 people get baptised, I was running the service, preaching, leading and playing in street band, playing guitar and kajon, running the worship team, sound team, lights team, small groups, young adults ministry, and leaders training, while at the same time adjusting to a new culture, and taking daily Chinese classes (Chinese was much more difficult than Japanese, I couldn't learn it on my own.) My home church in Australia supported me financially, but after rent, food, transport and Chinese lessons, I had no money left so I also took a part time job. All of this at the time was too much for me, so I stepped down from leading the church after 9 months and focussed instead on leading the worship team, and a small group, while still helping with street band, at this time the sponsorship stopped coming from my home church in Australia and I took a full time teaching job.

2015-2017: I continued to help in the church in anyway possible including running language exchange before the morning service, helping with welcome team, lights team, media team, and street outreach.

2018-2020: My wife and I felt moved by God to leave that church and join an all Chinese church. There we had a rest for a short while before we started leading the English bible study and community. We helped organise events such as board game nights, and bicycle rides, picnics, and translation for events hosted by the church.

2020-2022: We felt called to start a bilingual church service within that Chinese church, so with the help of our small group and two associate pastors and other church members, we launched a twice a month bilingual service. I would share preaching responsibility with the associate pastors, and we also ran a free language exchange before the service, through this many people would stay and join to the church service to practice their Engish listening. This service saw many people hear the gospel for the first time, including Taiwanese, Japanese, Indonesians, and many other nationalities. We saw several salvations, and at least 3 of those salvations I know are still going to church and have or are going to get baptised.

2023: After the birth of our daughter, and encoutering some health issues, my wife and I no longer had the energy to work 2 full time jobs, and keep running the bilingual service, but we still had a passion for bilingual services, because we love how the English would attract Taiwanese and other Asians to church and subsequently to hear the gospel. Also we found it the best way for foreigners and Taiwanese to be able to worship and serve God together.

So although the bilingual service at that church had to close down, we then got to move to our current church, Aroma, it is also bilingual, it also uses English outreaches to help Taiwanese and other Asians to come to know Jesus, and it also has a great community.

2026: After serving in Aroma in translation, leading a small group, and teaching in the English outreach ministries, I was offered a position as an associate pastor here at Aroma. I gladly accepted and have been working here since February. It's been a dream come true, because I missed being able to serve God as much as I did before having children, now I can have a family and also serve God more than just on Friday nights and Sundays.

Thank you for reading, please pray that God will continue to open the hearts of the people living in Taiwan, and that he would use us to share the gospel effectively.

Website: www.franzmissions.com