2018 Jul - Message from Pastor Brian Wong

In 1978, the Chinese government proposed reformation and opening up as the nation’s development directions. It pointed out three aspects that needed to be actively pursued: community services, community environment, and community culture. From this we can see that to build a healthy and harmonious society, we need to develop all three areas in a well-balanced way and all are indispensable.

Community services refer to providing services that are appropriate for residents and helpful to daily living. These services can be related to physical health such as classes for Tai Chi, Baduanjin, aerobics, brain health exercises, etc. Of course, physical exercise is only one part of community services. Healthy community services also care for people's daily spiritual needs. All in all, the services provided by North York (Chinese) Baptist Church Community Service Ministry, whether they be fitness classes, interest classes or workshops, are focused on relevance and helpfulness to our neighbours in the community.  

Community environment is not only about the environment of our community, but also addressing the needs of the residents and how government policies may affect people’s livelihood. The workshops provided every Thursday are typically closely related to people’s need in terms of their health knowledge, livelihood and government policies.
  

As for community culture, what do people desire? I think it is a culture of love. We all yearn to be loved and cared for. If we can support each other and care for each other in a community, then this community must be a favourable area that everyone wants to live in. To build a culture of love, we must first understand the source of love; the Bible says: “We love because God first loved us.” (I John chapter 4, verse 19) Only when we know the source of love and establish a loving relationship with this God who loves us, we can see a community of love among us. We will then build up this community culture of love together. To establish this community culture of love, is also a vision of the Community Services Ministry of North York (Chinese) Baptist Church. I hope that we will all be working together towards this common vision and move forward into a bright future.