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RE: church and community
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Dan Law
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Nov 21, 2005 06:26 PST
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Dear Tim:
Be forthright and clear about your church's conditions for renting your
facilities to the group. They will respect your conditions.
Our church (a Chinatown church) has our conditions and has always been
forthright about renting our sanctuary/facilities for weddings and
funeral servives. And there has been NO problem.
This is a free country. There is no need to compromise.
Don't for one moment think you need to compromise your Christian stands
to appease the community in order to have a testimony. Once you start
compromising, there will be no end to it.
Christians can impact their community BY MANY MEANS. Compromises are
certainly NOT among them.
-dan, a lay leader in church
ep-@aol.com wrote:
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Hi Tim,
That's a good question. I just want to ask what they want the facilities
for. Is it a dinner dance? Is it incense burning and idol worship? etc.
I guess it would depend on what for...
My experience in Asian Churches and non-Asian churches and this is my
opinion only is that a lot of the reasons we don't reach Asian Americans
is because we do not allow them inside our buildings. We build them to
stay out. For example, some of the churches I know during the weekdays
stay pretty much empty even though on the weekends it fills up to 500 or
so people. The Catholic church stays open and allows people to come and
go and join programs etc. The larger mega churches are offering
programs like even recycling computers day for the community. What is
the mission of the church? Is it to own real estate and have a building?
or is it to build relationships and have a common place to come to in
order to build that relationship. Our 5 year old church is renting a
high school right now. The stage is used for other reasons during the
week, but it is also being used as a platform for worship leading. I
don't see a separation of church and tax payer funded state building
here. So...bad things may be: if you rent to one group, do you have to
rent to all? They may accidentally burn down your place... Good things:
You definitely can have some face in the community and be known to be
generous. It may be the only chance someone gets to step inside your
church. Take a look at why supermarkets are having all kinds of other
stores within their stores. Anyway, I hope that the leadership can
trust God to take care of the message...Peace on Earth, Good Will toward
Men....
Patty Kashiwamura
-----Original Message-----
From: tim-@alumni.virginia.edu
To: water-@topica.com
Sent: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:16:39 +0000
Subject: [ waterwind ] church and community
Hi Waterwind,
I have a question regarding the relationship between the church and the
local Asian American community.
The local Chinese school in town recently asked to rent our facilites
for a Christmas event. There was a lot of concern among the church
leadership about compromising the mission of the church and sending a
mixed message to the community, as far as culture and true faith. I
realize that historically, Chinese churches often served as the center
of the Chinese culture including language classes and community events,
with both good and bad results. Yet, I can also see that this would
provide an excellent opportunity to build relationships with those
outside of the church and could potentially be a very positive way of
opening the door and even demonstrating God's love to the community.
I'm wondering what kind of experiences other leaders have had, good and
bad, and things to look out for. Does your church have policies about
this type of thing? What would you do?
Tim
--
Tim Liu
English Pastor
First Chinese Baptist Church, Virginia Beach, VA
http://www.fcbc-va.org
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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