Baoshan Gospel Addiction Treatment Center of Yunnan held its relocation ceremony and 10th founding anniversary celebration on Tuesday.
Initiated by the Baoshan CCC&TSPM in October 2007, the center has finally relocated to Yangyi Village, Xiyi Township, Longyang District, Baoshan. It was originally based in a church and one year later moved to Changlinggang, which is close to the Burmese border. Owing to the city's planning, it was then housed temporarily in a pastor's home before finding its new home.
More than 1,000 people, including Elder Fu Xianwei, chairman of the TSPM, and Rev. Yu Wenliang, chairman of the Yunnan TPSM, attended the ceremony.
Elder Fu said on Monday, "The Gospel centered addiction treatment is a new attempt made by Chinese Christianity."
Baoshan is on the China-Myanmar border. Statistics show that 28% of the world's illegal drugs enter through the place to various parts of Asia. As a result, many people become drug users and this brings harm to their families and society.
The center promotes battle with drugs by the power of God's gospel rather than medicine or willpower, offering eighteen-month long training and care free of charge.
During the period of living with other fellows and the center's staff, addicts are required to study the Bible, pray, and sing hymns. The ministry provides employment and theological training opportunities to graduates and some who succeed through the treatment even become workers.
It has served more than 180 drug addicts in the past decade, becoming popular in Yunnan and being called "Rebirth Paradise." Statistically, over 30% of the trainees do not relapse within the first five years.
Some of the addicts who have achieved successful rehabilitation were even drug addicts for decades.
The rehabilitation unit has 22 workers. In addition, it has a scientific management mechanism that bans smoking and drinking and has strict controls on family visits and working principles. It adheres to loving a person without indulgence and disciplining him or her without hurt.
Pastor Xu Chengyun, the founder of the treatment center, said that as the center becomes larger a higher operating cost will be a challenge, especially after the relocation.
In addition, a farm and a chicken farm affiliated with the center will face relocation. Moreover, the jobs and resettlement options of the former graduates will be affected.
The gospel-based addiction treatment's teacher Ren Yichao said that the kind of treatment was a Christian practice targeting drug rehabilitation originating from the opium addiction treatment for Chinese people offered by western missionaries in the 19th century.
Due to a lack of complete information, the Chinese church only gained a Christian spirit from the opium addiction treatment, he said, so drug rehabilitation centered around the gospel was basically a unique model created by the Chinese church as a successful case of the sinicization of Christianity, he added.
During the ceremony, Brother Zhao from Baoshan shared his testimony of quitting drugs. Addicted to drugs for over twenty years, he failed to abstain from drugs in compulsory detoxification settings and through penal labour and re-education through labor. However, he met Jesus in the center and was free from drugs after accepting Jesus. The success couldn't be made without his Christian parents' prayer. Later he married a woman and had children. What's more, he has become a co-worker of the center.
- Translated by Karen Luo
