Shock: When Church People Met Community People

After giving AIDS Prevention Training in our own school to the students, we went to Changde city right away to give the same training to 83 students--they were from both Changde churches and 49 communities of Changde city. Among them, 30 students from churches and 53 students from the communities. What happened in the first day really gave me a shock!

In the morning, a speaker from World Relief gave all the students a lecture on how to take good care of AIDS patients. She was an American and as any American liked to do, she had all the students discuss this and that. After discussion, she asked students to share their opinions. When Christians stood up, I began to shock.

"Brothers and sisters," (Do you address only to Christians? )
"Praise God for this opportunity,"(Do the community people know "God"?)
......
"Give thanks to our Lord. Amen!"(Do the community people know "Lord"? What does "Amen" mean?)

They totally forget the presence of 53 community people, none of them was Christian!

In the afternoon, the whole class divided into two: church class and community class. In order to establish future relationship with community people, we invited a local pastor to join us as one of the trainers in community class. Again, during her teaching of AIDS Prevention to community people, I heard "God""Lord""Amen".

"Sensitive", later as we finished the first day's training, we summerized, "Our church, our pastors need to be sensitive to the need of unbelievers. Be the same people as they do, don't think if we put God on our mouth we can win their soul."

Did our church become a club for saved people? instead of a training center for more workers to be equiped to go out and save more souls? We need to repent, if our church and our pastors forget the mission of the church.