WarrenInSC
Puritan Board Freshman
My question is, is it a proper ministry for a church, as a church, to be publicly joined with congregations of other religions (apostate mainline, Unitarian Universalist, Reform Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, JV, etc.) in 'faith based' social work ministries? Take your pick of the cause: hunger, homelessness, literacy, whatever.
There seems to be a growing trend among 'evangelical' churches to make such partnerships, including PCA churches, in order to show how concerned they are with social ills, and that doing so is a necessary part of their gospel witness.
The common scenario is:
- Community wide publicity of the different religious congregations working together for a common social good
- A specific prohibition against integrating evangelism (what the 'social ministry' network would call prostylization) by any particular congregation taking part in the work. The rationale, of course, is how can you have inter-religion/inter-faith group members work together and evangelize for their own religion at the same time. The rationale is also that by integrating evangelism, it might scare away some of the prospective beneficiaries of the social work ministry - they might have their own religion after all.
- Just as important a component as the above, is the promotion of the program by church leadership as a core way the congregation expresses the love of Christ for the unloved and forgotten - with the hope that the ministry recipient may bring up a question of faith allowing the evangelical church member to respond with a testimony - and thus not violate the prohibition against integrating evangelism
What do you think?
There seems to be a growing trend among 'evangelical' churches to make such partnerships, including PCA churches, in order to show how concerned they are with social ills, and that doing so is a necessary part of their gospel witness.
The common scenario is:
- Community wide publicity of the different religious congregations working together for a common social good
- A specific prohibition against integrating evangelism (what the 'social ministry' network would call prostylization) by any particular congregation taking part in the work. The rationale, of course, is how can you have inter-religion/inter-faith group members work together and evangelize for their own religion at the same time. The rationale is also that by integrating evangelism, it might scare away some of the prospective beneficiaries of the social work ministry - they might have their own religion after all.
- Just as important a component as the above, is the promotion of the program by church leadership as a core way the congregation expresses the love of Christ for the unloved and forgotten - with the hope that the ministry recipient may bring up a question of faith allowing the evangelical church member to respond with a testimony - and thus not violate the prohibition against integrating evangelism
What do you think?
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