Ten churches and Christian charitable organizations from China shared their experiences on charity on the first forum on the religious charities and social development held in Nanjing on Oct 13.
Rev. Deng Yanying from Wuxi Church introduces the church's charitable experience in three aspects. Firstly, there has been a breakthrough in the concept of charity that it is not necessarily required to do charity with an enough fund and every member can serve others with the talent and gifts God gives them. Moreover, social service is not secondary to personal salvation as seen from theology. Thirdly, Christ's love is universal, wide, long, high and deep rather than narrow and selfish for the Bible says to add love to brotherly kindness.
In the recent years, Wuxi church has set up a specific group to take the lead and a foundation as a guarantee to promote charity career. Featured ministries like a bazaar to support low carbon environmental advocacy, an auction selling calligraphy works and paintings, providing community assistance and caring the children with autism have been developed. Besides, Rev. Deng shares the experience on charity propagation, organized various activities and keeping information open and transparent.
Besides, Rev. Ma Xin from Zhoukou CCC&TSPM shared the church's development lead by the idea of serving as "three functions" & "three services." He also conveys the social service idea -- "holistic shepherding".
Rev. Ma says that based on the condition that Zhoukou is an agricultural city and 90% of the churches are located in the countryside, "three functions" for the local church means making a church into a "chapel" where Christians worship, a "lecture room" used to spread the legislations and knowledge and a "classroom" to train members enriched with practical technology.
"Three services" refers to developing volunteer preachers into preachers proclaiming the gospel, servants serving the believers and technicians helping the villagers to cast off poverty to get rich. The church in Zhoukou has constructed a social service platform to make an overall arrangement of the social service ministries of the city, carrying out medical service through Zhoukou Gospel Hospital and assisted the poor mountain areas and places in need through a service. Besides, a service center has provided assistance to the agricultural production in the whole city.
For the "holistic shepherding," the church has compiled books on Christian theology, policies and legislation and skills to get rich.
Cao Shengjia, the president of the volunteer service of Zhenjiang "Home of the Reed", says that the home, founded in August 2014, aims to promote the welfare of the vulnerable groups and community development, as well as to preserve the ecosystems and protect the environment.
It has provided social service, aiding the disabled and the aged, supporting anti-drug work, community development and environmental protection. Statistics shows that 5200 lonely elders and disabled people have received assistance.
Cao adds that the home has stressed on the organization's construction, resource integration, vision leading, pursuing effects and excellence. It has spent the corresponding funds on specific programs and kept the fund usage open, transparent and efficient. Aside from Zhenjiang, the organization has enlarged its services to other cities where similar workshops have been established.
Other charitable organizations including Anglican Church's Diocese of Singapore, social service centers of the Catholic Dioceses of Tianjin, Xi'an, Shanghai, Jilin and Lanzhou also shared their experiences on charity.
