교회의 본질적 기능인 사회봉사활동 실천 방안

Abstract

The functions of church include worship, education, companionship and community service. Evangelical preaching and community service are two inseparable primary functions on which church is built. Although the local churches and christians are well aware that community service is the means to express the type of the church's existence, they gain negative images because they do not put it into practice well. Such phenomenon created a situation where it is hard to approach to the local community and non-christians with the gospel, which in turn led to the consistent minus growth of church. Of course, weakened community service of church is not fully responsible for the minus growth of church. However, as all kinds of statistics indicate, the community service felt by the local community and non-christians is ignorable. The financial operation of church for community service and relief also indicates that it is only 3.11%, which suggests that the current community service of church is far away from the essential function or principle of the financial operation of church. This study is aimed to propose the need for community service by local churches and christians and specific measures to put it into practice in order to guide church to perform its inherent function. As the measures, this study proposes the community services that the local church regardless of its size or budget and the christians regardless of economic status or age may participate in. The local churches and christians have to break out the dualistic attitude in which they only seek for social salvation ignoring gospel or only preach gospel being passive in community service. In particular, where the local churches are only interested in building expansion and they shift their responsibility of community service to the social welfare institutes, they can be regarded as deviated from the inherent function of church, which in turn results in social disregard. The local churches and christians should remember that the early Korean churches were able to settle down due to the community services including education, medical services and enlightenment movement as well as evangelical preaching. They should also strategically and actively perform community service as an essential function of church to create positive image for church through exemplary serving and loving.