During the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, stark contrasts emerge between urban and rural churches in China. Urban churches often feel empty due to believers returning to their hometowns, while rural churches become lively with the influx of these returning Christians.
This phenomenon reflects not only the mobility of Christian communities but also the challenge of effective pastoral care during the holiday. Against this backdrop, this article explores strategies for specialized pastoral care during the festival to promote believers' spiritual growth and church development.
Urban Churches: Creating Warm Communities for Believers Who Staying in the City for Spring Festival
During the Spring Festival, urban churches can organize activities, such as "New Year Gatherings for Stay-behind Believers," providing platforms for interaction and sharing. Through the activity, they can feel the church's care and warmth, alleviating the loneliness of being apart from family.
Additionally, social media, church apps, and similar platforms can be used to regularly publish Scripture resources, prayer guides, and spiritual reading materials, providing continuous spiritual nourishment for stay-behind believers. Online group discussions or Q&A sessions can also be introduced to encourage mutual support among believers as they face the challenges of the holiday season together.
Stay-behind believers who don’t come back to their hometown may experience greater psychological stress during the Spring Festival. Churches can invite professional counselors or pastors to conduct mental health workshops, offering emotional support and helping manage mood swings that arise during the festive period.
Rural Churches: Welcoming Returning Believers and Promoting Integration
Rural churches can prepare plans for receiving returning believers in advance, including welcome ceremonies, faith-sharing sessions, and special worship services, helping return believers feel the warmth of home. Volunteers can be assigned to provide one-on-one assistance, helping them quickly integrate into church life.
Among returning believers, there may be new Christians or those with a weak foundation in faith. Rural churches can offer basic doctrinal training to strengthen their spiritual foundations. Leveraging the concentration of believers during the Spring Festival, rural churches can also organize urban-rural believer exchange meetings, where participants share their life experiences and insights into faith, fostering mutual understanding. Additionally, discussions on establishing long-term collaboration mechanisms can help facilitate resource sharing and coordinated development between urban and rural churches.
Cross-regional Collaboration: Building an Urban-Rural Church Community
Churches can establish online communities involving both urban and rural believers, such as WeChat or QQ groups, to regularly share church updates and spiritual resources, fostering interaction and communication among believers.
Urban and rural churches are encouraged to form partnership relationships through mutual visits, educational support, and material assistance to strengthen the ties and collaboration between believers in both regions, with the development of church ministries.
Taking into account the unique characteristics of urban and rural churches during the Spring Festival, special ministry projects can be planned, such as the "Urban-Rural Children's Reading Program" and "Returning Believers Volunteer Service Teams," to meet returning believers' desire to participate while bringing care and support to stay-behind groups.
(Originally published by the Gospel Times, the article has been edited under permission and the author is a pastor in Guangzhou. )
- Translated by Abigail Wu
