| Summary: | 碩士 === 長榮大學 === 社會工作學系(所) === 99 === In its early years of evangelistic work in Taiwan, the Christian churches proclaimed the gospel and engaged in medical and educational work. These ministries were cooperative with each other in both social and gospel aspects. In recent years the model of neighborhood service has flourished as yet another model of ecclesiastical cooperation with the wider society.
Gospel proclamation is at the heart of the mission of the church and is the basic motive for social cooperation. At the heart of gospel proclamation is the actualization of the Kingdom of God among human beings. That actualization in the context of church/society interaction is the starting point for this thesis.
The process used interviews, surveys and analysis. On the one hand, the neighborhood work of local congregations and the actualization of the Kingdom of God were seen as separate entities. In this way, the sovereignty of God was regarded as something heavenly and in the future. An alternative understanding is posited as normative trust in the Kingdom of God as in the midst of humanity in the here and now. Research methods looked at earlier reports of church participation in neighborhood work to discern these two models.
Resources for the work found plentiful reports from past actions of churches in neighborhood social participation. These were highly varied in content and approach. But all were designated as efforts to understand and establish the Kingdom of God in such a way as to influence the church and the neighborhood. Sometimes it was difficult to disentangle separate strains of emphasis. Some churches centered their approaches on gospel proclamation with clear bias towards the spiritual aims and content of their actions. This limited neighborhood participation opportunities. And often the emphasis on a congregation’s own human resources served to reduce the respect given to expert personnel.
This results of this thesis suggest that Christian churches contemplating neighborhood service consider how, with their theological foundations, they can establish common consensus with the neighbors, become guides to what might be possible, discuss the needs of the neighborhood with the residents, empower the neighborhood, enlist expert resources and act systematically towards fruitful results.
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