Friends of the Church in China
Church-run Social Service Projects in China
Prior to 1949, churches in China were very active in social outreach, running many schools, hospitals and other charitable concerns. However, this situation changed after liberation in 1949. Overseas missionaries left China, and Chinese Christians were suddenly all alone - a tiny minority religious group within a country ruled by an atheist Communist party hostile towards religion. Christians kept a low profile and devoted their energy, resources and attention to surviving. Thus, church-run institutes or welfare projects were either closed down or assumed by the state.
Chinese Christians tolerated many harrying years during the political upheavals of the 1950s, 60s and 70s and spent the rest of the 20th century re-building their churches. Their experiences taught them to be wary about getting involved in wider Chinese society. The rather conservative theology taught by some foreign missionaries prior to 1949 reinforced this view, with Chinese Christians drawing a line between believers and unbelievers, concentrating more on personal salvation and less on the needs of those outside of the church.
Fortunately, both Catholic and Protestant church leaders recognised that for Christians to have a positive presence in society they needed to get involved in meeting the needs of the less fortunate around them. To this end, Protestant church leaders established the Amity Foundation in 1985 to engage in poverty relief and social welfare projects all over China, and the Catholic Church established similar social service centres, such as Jinde Charities which was started in 1997.
Groups such as these have faced difficulties persuading local Christians to take part in social service activities. Many don’t understand the need for such activity on the part of the church saying things like, “You are a nun, why are you distributing information about HIV/AIDS?” or “Salvation is only to be found in Jesus Christ, not outside.” The China Christian Council established a Social Service Department in 2002 precisely to tackle such attitudes among believers. Using Jesus’ own words, “For the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:45), the Social Service Department provides church communities with the theological underpinnings and motivations for getting involved in society.
Even when Chinese Christians see the need to get involved in social service outreach, a number of obstacles stand in their way. Most Chinese Christians are based in poor rural areas and live impoverished lives themselves. They hardly have enough to make ends meet and pay for the upkeep of their own churches and church workers, so there is usually little left over to give to social service projects.
Secondly, due to a lack of experience or education, Chinese Christians sometimes adopt a wildly ambitious and impractical approach to any projects they do undertake and give little thought towards practicalities such as materials and finances needed to implement a project, and more importantly how to keep it sustainable. When working with local Christians, staff from the Amity Foundation have sometimes questioned plans as unworkable, only to be told, “Have faith! If you pray hard enough, God will provide!”
Despite such obstacles, Christians in China are undertaking a number of small scale social service projects, such as opening kindergartens, retirement homes or medical clinics, taking care of orphans or helping school-less children return to school. Through the work of Catholic social service centres, the Amity Foundation and the China Christian Council’s Social Service Department, Christians have also been involved in HIV/AIDS prevention, working with children with autism, helping secure wheelchairs for the physically handicapped, and infrastructure projects such as the building of roads, bridges and water supplies in remote villages.
There are more and more such examples of Christians in China becoming conscious of their responsibilities to their fellow human beings, reaching out to help, and earning a positive reputation for Christianity in the process. However, there is still some way to go. Some churches on setting up social welfare projects decide to open them up only to Christians, or they offer special rates to believers and higher rates to non-believers. While these service projects are designed to care for social needs and encourage people to consider Christianity, such behaviour can cloud these well-intended efforts. There is still a way to go before social outreach becomes second nature to most Chinese Christians.
One good example of a church-run project is in Daiguancun village, Hunan province. This village had no stable water supply, no road, no doctor, no medicines and a very low standard of living for its residents. A graduate from Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, Pastor Feng, came to that village to serve the Christians there and, seeing the conditions, borrowed RMB 200,000 (£14,000) from the Amity Foundation to try and improve things. Water sources were purified, dammed ponds provided a plentiful water supply, a road was constructed as well as a church, a primary school and a new pig farm. And every family was provided with running water and a biogas system for cooking and heating. Due to the road, people can now get in and out of the village for medical treatment when they need to.
As a result of all this work, the lives of the villagers in Daiguancun have completely turned around and they are very conscious that a Christian did all this for them. Couplets pasted on the sides of doors say: "Christianity helped the poor to become strong; Daiguancun people have the hope of becoming better off." Even the mayor of the village encouraged Pastor Feng to go to other villages and try and make converts there, as he recognises that Christians pay taxes on time, obey the law and are generally good citizens. However, the pastor is already busy enough, tending to 1,000 believers spread over six rural congregations. She has already built two new churches in the area and uses profits from the pig farm and a small church-run clinic to sponsor two medical students from the area.
11.2009