In the past seven years, the Agape Caring Center
has been providing trainings for caring and
opportunities for serving, such as the two-year
program of “Barnabas Caring Seminar”,
“Journey to Intimacy”, “Caring for Cancer Victims”,
and Sunday Caring Stations.
Thanks be to God, many brothers and sisters have
been equipped through these trainings or found
the caring platforms where they can serve.
During the second half of 2012, upon the
recommendation of the Senior Pastor,
Agape Center coworkers began to ponder
on how to gradually turn the caring ministry from
“orientated within the church” to
“ directed toward outreach”.
After much prayer, we have confirmed the
following ministries:
(1) Community Praise Exercise:
Through sharing of the Praise Exercise,
besides maintaining our health with
physical exercises, we are also improving
our relationship through interaction with
others and increasing the quality of life.
Thanks be to God, we have more than
30 students participating in the weekly
Tuesday and Thursday exercises.
(2) Free of charge community classes:
Based on material developed by
Dr Wei-Jen Huang, “Journey to Intimacy”
aims to facilitate healthy and harmonious
family relationship.
“How to develop Children’s Potentials”
teaches us how to be parents that follow
God’s hearts. We have more than 20 students
participating in the weekly Tuesday and
Thursday classes.
(3) Senior Apartments and Convalescence Homes:
Thanks be to God, He has opened another
door for ministry. Besides 20 some odd
volunteers periodically serving approximately
100 seniors at two convalescence homes twice
a month, we will start outreach ministry in a
senior apartment in El Monte starting in September.
Besides the current monthly seminar, we will host
the mid-autumn festival on September 29, with
close to 100 attendances, including 50 seniors.
In the coming 2013, not only will we continue to
provide to our communities, families, crisis caring,
and the above ministries, we will also pay close
attentions to the needs of our communities and
promote suitable outreach ministries, such as,
parent and children relationship, how to deal with
addictions, hospice caring, Celebrate Recovery,
“Good Neighbors” support groups, etc.
We hope the various outreach ministries can become
artificial reefs to the “fishing ponds” of our church.
We also hope these reefs attract more fish so to win
more to Christ.