Professional Dissertations DMin

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Project Report

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry

College

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Program

Doctor of Ministry DMin

First Advisor

S. Joseph Kidder

Second Advisor

Kurt W. Johnson

Third Advisor

Cheryl Doss

Abstract

Problem

The number of senior citizens in Hong Kong is increasing. By 2036, approximately one-fourth of the population of Hong Kong will fall into the elderly category, representing a challenge to the government as well as to the church. However, there is a scarcity of research done on elderly evangelism and an accompanying dearth of literature on the topic, therefore there is a need for a research study on how to evangelize the elderly, to make a significant contribution to an increasingly important ministry of the church.

Method

A “Four-stage Elderly Evangelism Model” was developed and implemented to reach the members of Siu Sai Wan Social Center for the Elderly of Hong Kong-Macao Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. It consisted of four biblical principles: (1) visitation evangelism, (2) friendship evangelism, (3) culturally-relevant competent programs, and (4) dynamic worship. The model was divided into two parts, the “going” and “coming” parts. The “going” part in which members go out and reach the people included visitation evangelism and friendship evangelism. The “coming” part, meaning that the church encourages the people to come to them, was based on providing competent programs and worship events to attract the people to join the members. The model was implemented and tested to measure its effectiveness.

Results

The survey of the model showed an overall mean of 4.18 (on a scale of one to five), this represents a gain of 26.94%. The respective gain of each principle is: (1) 39.2% in visitation evangelism, (2) 18.88% in friendship evangelism, (3) 29.79% in culturally- relevant competent programs, and (4) 28.78% in dynamic worship. On the other hand, the elderly baptismal figures showed a significant gain of 79.31%. It indicated the model was working and successfully implemented.

Conclusions

All four aspects of the Elderly Evangelism Model proved to be valid and workable. This model will be a valuable tool on how to evangelize elderly Chinese. Elderly Chinese generally have inherited the largest portion of traditional Chinese culture. This model may also fit to evangelize other age groups when the programs and worships are designed to be culturally-relevant and seeker sensitive.

Subject Area

Church work with older people--Seventh-day Adventists; Church work with older people--China--Hong Kong; Evangelistic work--China--Hong Kong; Siu Sai Wan Center for the Elderly (Hong Kong, China)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/483

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