The Church in the Community

Not one organisation

You have already studied how Christians worship, the sacraments, and where and why they go on pilgrimage. This part of Practices asks something different: what churches actually do for the people around them, and for people on the other side of the world. Before any of the detail, one thing is worth getting straight, because it explains a great deal of what follows. The Church is not a single organisation. Christians are divided into traditions, chiefly Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, and those traditions have their own structures, their own leaders and their own charities. That is why your specification names three aid agencies rather than one. It would be easy to read CAFOD, Christian Aid and Tearfund as a list to memorise. They are better understood as evidence: a divided Church still acting on the same conviction, through separate organisations, at the same time. Hold that idea and the local half of this topic and the worldwide half stop looking like two different subjects.

Five terms this topic needs

Five terms your specification uses. The first two are often confused, and the difference matters in an exam answer.

Practice to what it is

Telling and sending

A student writes that mission and evangelism mean the same thing. What is the more precise account?

• Evangelism is one part of mission; many Christians understand mission to include practical service and working for justice as well
• They are interchangeable terms for sharing the Christian message
• Mission is one part of evangelism
• Mission happens abroad and evangelism happens at home

Two scales, one conviction

Your specification asks about the local church and the worldwide Church. The activities differ because the scale differs, but the reason given for them is the same.

True of these two practices

Select the TWO accurate statements about food banks and street pastors.

• Street pastors offer practical care to people who need it rather than preaching to them
• Food banks are often run by churches together with others in the local area
• Both are ways of persuading people to become Christians
• Both are run centrally by the worldwide Church rather than locally

Why the specification names three

CAFOD, Christian Aid and Tearfund all work internationally, all respond to emergencies and all fund long-term development. So why does your specification name three rather than picking one? Because they come from different parts of the Church, and that is worth understanding rather than memorising. CAFOD is the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Christian Aid is sponsored by a body of churches from across Britain and Ireland, so it represents a range of traditions working together. Tearfund grew out of the evangelical Protestant tradition. Their emphases differ a little, but their work overlaps a great deal, and that is the point. The Church is genuinely divided, and these agencies are separate because of those divisions. Yet all three act on the same conviction at the same time in the same places. Many Christians would say that is reconciliation working outwards: traditions that disagree about important things still recognising the same obligation to people in need. If an exam question asks you to explain the work of Christian aid agencies, naming one is enough for the facts. Explaining why there is more than one is what turns a description into an answer.

The three agencies in words

Your specification names three Christian aid agencies. _____ is the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Christian _____ is sponsored by a body of churches from across Britain and Ireland. _____ grew out of the evangelical Protestant tradition. All three respond to emergencies and fund long-term _____. That there are three rather than one reflects the fact that the Church is _____, while the work itself overlaps a great deal.

Where the answer stops reporting

Four sentences from an answer about Christian charitable work. Select the ONE that asserts a belief as fact instead of reporting it as something Christians hold.

• Many Christians believe that helping people in need is required of them rather than optional.
• Christians point to the parable of the sheep and the goats as a reason for practical care.
• God judges people by what they did for those in need, so churches must run food banks.
• Some Christians understand mission to include practical service as well as sharing their beliefs.

The parable behind the food bank

Ask Christians why their church runs a food bank and many will point to one passage. In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 25, Jesus tells a parable in which a king separates people as a shepherd separates sheep from goats. What divides them is not wealth, status or belief, but what they did for people who were hungry, thirsty, a stranger, ill or in prison, and the king tells them that whatever they did for the least of these, they did for him. Christians read that as identifying God with the people most easily overlooked, which is why many treat practical care as something their faith requires rather than something admirable but optional. Here is how to use it in an answer. Many Christians point to the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 as a reason for practical care, since it presents care for those in need as the basis on which people are judged. This is why a local church may run a food bank and support an agency such as CAFOD, Christian Aid or Tearfund at the same time: the conviction is the same, and only the scale differs. Notice that the parable is described rather than quoted, and that the belief is attributed to Christians rather than stated as fact. Both are what the exam rewards.

Said by whom

Assemble a sentence that reports a belief properly rather than asserting it.

Named work drill

Five quick questions on the terms and organisations this topic names. Three lives.

A church decides how to respond

A local church is deciding how to use what it has. Take the decisions in order, thinking about what the specification says each practice is for.

• People locally cannot afford enough food. What is the practice the specification names for this?
• Volunteers want to help people in the town centre at night. What should they understand their role to be?
• The church also wants to support work overseas. What does the specification expect you to know about the agencies?
• Someone asks why the church does any of this. What is the best-marked way to answer?

Explain what the Church does

Explain how the Church works in the local community and around the world, and why Christians give for doing so. Report beliefs as beliefs rather than asserting them.

• Describe two things a local church may do for the people around it
• Explain what street pastors do, and what they are not there to do
• Explain the difference between mission and evangelism
• Name the three aid agencies your specification names, and say which tradition each comes from
• Explain why there is more than one Christian aid agency, and what that shows about the Church
• Explain what reconciliation means and give an example of the Church working for it
• Explain what persecution means and how the worldwide Church responds to it
• Give a reason Christians offer for this work, attributed to them rather than stated as fact