Aid Despite Faith

25-01-2022 | Empowerment | GraceStation Press

"As a nonprofit, you should be focused on humanitarian activities and not include faith? After all, churches exist for this reason.”

Yes, Christianity is fundamentally a religion of mission and evangelism and it is in the DNA of all Christians and the church to share the good news of Jesus with others and to seek to win others to Christ. This is who we are. Christianity without evangelism is not Christianity.

How does this translate into the work environment. Are we as Christians meant to fulfil our core mandate of mission and evangelism in the workplace? Well yes, we are.  

More specifically should an organisation (nonprofit like GraceStation) attach faith to the aid offered? It's a free world, so sure why not, but we believe within context. Let’s explain: 

Yes GraceStatation is founded on our Christian belief and we have a focus on the poor and needy across 5 operational strands based on Matthew 25:31-40, and Yes we are driven by our faith and actively promote this in the workspace and desire to promote this to our beneficiaries. So, does this mean we only offer aid to individuals with the same belief? Or in the form of a mandatory evangelistic message that accompanies the aid gift? Well no, although this isn't wrong, it is not our ethos. 

As a nonprofit, we believe charity in its truest form is the act of doing something without the expectation of anything in return. We see charity as “Godly love”; love given without any expectation of receiving anything in return. This is essentially the model Jesus showed during his ministry. Yes, Jesus' ministry was an evangelistic one, but the love He showed to people when He cared for them, healed them, welcomed and shared fellowship with them, was always done with a no strings attached approach. Luke 17:11-19- the healing of the 10 lepers, only one of them ever returned to say thank you, yet Jesus still showed love to them all.

This is our model of Giving for Change, giving purely through love without the expectation of those in receipt of our aid responding with any kind of act of faith or belief in God.

Our job is to be ready to provide an answer to questions anyone might ask, upholding a “no strings attached” approach to our service and let the love of God speak for itself.

Yes, we are a faith-based nonprofit, and yes we will gladly engage in conversations about our faith if you want to, but we’re not saying “you can only access our aid on the condition you listen to a 5-minute presentation and read this tract". We offer aid in faith that Godly love speaks for itself.