Homelessness 無家可歸, a Cross-Cultural Perspective

I had a special experience this weekend, having served at a homeless facility. It's not that I haven't served with the homeless in different ways before. As a Christian I have helped out in various homeless shelters but this was with a Chinese Christian group that was there to help American homeless in our inner cities.

The woman, Sister Amy or 王愛敏, is from Taiwan, and various Chinese church groups come down and help out serving food or setting up for the services that are held in the inner city facility. Photos from their web page in Taiwan and in the U.S . They have similar facilities in the Phillipines and in other places.

I got there about 10 in the morning and talked with a man, a Christian believer, who had been out of prison for about 6 months. He was so thankful for what he had in life and had a great testimony that he shared with me. Then our Chinese Christian friends from our group at church arrived and we set up the food to be ready to serve. I think there were 90 plates in all. A great experience to serve together. It was nice to see this Chinese-run ministry because some feel that the church in some cultures are not yet mature enough to reach across cultural boundaries, but this shows that reality is rapidly changing. In fact, the majority of ministry across cultural boundaries is done today by non-Western churches.

My impression is that homelessness does not seem to be as much a problem in affluent collective cultures as they are in the individualist West, but that gang problems are an issue. There is a little more protection from the group/family, but of course this can work the other way for problems of crime in groups. Not surprisingly, this ministry that works with individual homeless men and women in the United States, works with youth that have fallen onto hard times in gangs in Taipei. In poorer areas of the world, such as India, they work with children in poverty.